Our Lady (Eppingen)
Our Lady is a Catholic parish church in Eppingen in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg . The church has been attested since the Middle Ages and has been rebuilt many times up to the recent past , also due to its use as a simultaneous church from 1707 to 1878. It has significant wall paintings from the 14th century in the base of the tower and, together with the neighboring, earlier St. Catherine's Chapel, forms a striking ensemble in the historic center of Eppingen.
history
A church in Eppingen was already mentioned when the place was first mentioned in a deed of gift from Emperor Otto III. attested from the year 985. According to legend, the church was founded around the year 635 by the Merovingian king Dagobert I during the time of the Frankish conquest and the associated Christianization in Kraichgau and Elsenzgau . With a donation from Emperor Heinrich IV. In 1057, a large part of the city with the church came to the Speyer diocese , with which the community (later the Catholic community) remained until the reorganization in the 19th century. Since 1057 there was also the Speyrer Pfarrpfründe at the Eppinger Church .
In the high Middle Ages around 1200 there was an early Gothic choir tower church on the site of today's church . The choir in the base of the tower faced east, and the nave was connected to the west . The tower and nave were expanded and rebuilt several times.
When the Reformation was introduced in the Electoral Palatinate in 1555 , to which Eppingen had belonged since the 15th century, the place initially became predominantly Lutheran, and in 1562 the ruler introduced the Reformed Confession. Depending on the sovereign, the creed changed a total of eleven times. Since 1698 there were again Catholic clergy in Eppingen, after there had been a few Catholics before, but they had been looked after by neighboring pastors.
In 1707 the parish church was divided as a simultaneous church between Catholics and Reformed by a partition wall: the Reformed received the nave, the Catholics the choir. Around 1750 there were also Lutherans again, but they were able to use the former St. Peter's Chapel , which was located elsewhere in the city, for their services. The Catholics had received the comparatively small choir of the church and, due to lack of space, expanded it in 1806/07 to include a transept to the north. After Reformed and Lutherans merged to form the Protestant community in 1821 and the St. Peter's Chapel was closed in 1827, the nave section became too small for the Protestant community, which had grown to over 1,700, so that the Protestant side considered a new building.
After construction began on the Evangelical City Church in 1876, the Catholic community acquired the formerly Protestant parts of the church. The largest and oldest of the four bells, the Osanna bell from 1516, was transferred to the new Protestant church in 1878. The old cornerstone of the church from 1435 was also placed in the Protestant church. In 1881 the Catholic community finally acquired the nave from Stiftschaffnei Sinsheim and was thus in possession of the entire church building. The church was expanded in 1890/91, with a cross- vaulted choir drawn in in front of the original choir tower. As a result, the choir tower lost its original function and temporarily degenerated into a lumber room, before it was restored and made accessible again by Valentin Peter Feuerstein in 1962/63 . The cross vault in front of the choir was removed when the church was extended from 1969 to 1974 by a transept directly in front of the tower, giving it its present form.
The parish of Our Lady Eppingen with its branch parish of Mariäorben Mühlbach forms the pastoral care unit Eppingen with the parishes of St. Valentin Rohrbach , Mariä Birth Richen and St. Marien Gemmingen / Stebbach .
description
Architecture and equipment
The church has a Latin cross plan , with the east-facing tower forming the short upper part. The nave forms the longer lower part of the cross facing west, the transept is the crossbeam. In the crossing of the nave and transept are the celebration altar and the ambo . To the west of the nave is a small vestibule with Gothic arched portals.
The oldest parts of the tower, built on a square floor plan, date back to 1200, the octagonal tower is more recent. The old nave with vestibule adjoining it in west-east direction is dated to 1435 at the main portal, the transept in front of the tower was built from 1969 to 1974 in place of the choir from the 19th century.
There are galleries on the western wall of the old nave and above the sacristy in the southern wing of the transept .
In the center of the tower chapel is a bronze tabernacle stele by Frido Lehr from 1974. Lehr also created the modern celebration altar and a matching sandstone ambo in the crossing , both of which take up the Gothic friezes of the tower chapel, as well as the lecture cross and a multi-part in the north transept Way of the Cross .
The renovation from 1969 to 1974 was carried out under the direction of building director Hans Rolli and the building supervisor Günter Sauer, who himself created the stained glass of the sacristy windows . The historical frescoes in the basement of the tower and on the north wall of the nave were restored by Valentin Peter Feuerstein , who also painted several tracery windows and other decorations in the church, including in 1977 the portal arch of the southern side portal with themes from the apocalypse that reflected the historical The milk witch painting on the opposite north portal added.
There is a historic pulpit at the northern corner of the transept . Its handrail, which has also been preserved, was fixed in the south transept at the font. In the church there are other religious works of art from different eras, including a baroque Madonna figure in the choir, but also a series of seven glass motif panels by Markus Artur Fuchs from 1997.
On the south side of the church there is an armacross by Friedrich Andernach (1955/92), which addresses the Roman centurion Longinus , who opened the side of Christ with a lance, and a sundial from 1995.
View to the west to the organ gallery
Looking east to the altar in front of the tower chapel
South transept with sacristy
Historic pulpit
Evangelist symbols in the vault
Window in the north transept
Murals
In the basement of the tower, which is open to the west towards the nave, there are high-quality historical wall paintings. In these paintings is Secco painting al fresco , applied a wet layer of lime in the dry cleaning and this was then painted. The paintings were probably made in the course of a renovation of the choir tower in the 14th century, but were whitewashed at an unknown time. Essentially the preliminary drawings of the paintings have been preserved, while the painterly elaboration that went beyond this was lost, especially when the painting was uncovered in 1962/63. Due to style-critical comparisons with the paintings in the Minster in Konstanz and in the Marienkirche in Reutlingen, the Eppinger choral paintings are dated by recent research to the time around 1340/50.
On the walls of the tower chapel there are three picture friezes, one on top of the other, each separated by horizontal strips with Gothic foliage , which in turn also follow the vaulted ceiling and unite in the keystone . On the walls, pictures lined up in rectangular fields show scenes from the childhood and passion of Jesus as well as the twelve apostles, at the passage to the church two bishops can be seen. The four evangelist symbols eagle, bull, lion and human are in the vaulted ceiling . What is striking about the pictorial program is that the sequence of pictures depicting the life of Jesus ends with the burial and the paschal redemption event is dispensed with. In addition, the sequence of scenes with the Bethlehemite child murder and the flight to Egypt has been swapped with other motifs in favor of mutual axial references. Nothing is known about the unknown master of the paintings. His style refers to the painting of the Lake Constance area in the first half of the 14th century. On the north wall of the tower chapel there is a holy grave with a medieval guard plate.
In the nave on the north side there are frescoes from the early 16th century with other Bible scenes, including the Annunciation, the Birth of Jesus and the Capture of Jesus. The painting of the north side portal arch, where a milk witch and the devil can be seen, comes from the same time . The legend of the milk witch is said to go back to the Strasbourg preacher Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg , who in a sermon by 1508 made witches responsible for the lack of milk in sick cows. The devil therefore carries the milk from the cow so that a witch can milk it from an object elsewhere. The picture shows, as described in Geiler's sermon printed in 1517, how a witch milks milk from an ax. The original lettering on the picture is only fragmentary.
Tower chapel with tabernacle stele
Wall painting in the nave
Holy grave
organ
The organ on the west gallery was installed by the Klais company in Bonn on the occasion of the 1974 restoration . The two-manual instrument has 35 registers and a total of 2035 organ pipes . The Spieltrakturen are mechanically, the Registertrakturen electrically. The parapet of the gallery is decorated with a carved Stations of the Cross frieze from Oberammergau around 1920.
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- Coupling : II / I, I / P, II / P
- Playing aids : 32 × 99 electronic typesetting system
Bells
The church's bell, consisting of four bells, was cast by the Bochumer Verein in 1921 and hung in the existing bell chair made of oak wood. The four bells have the following dates:
- Bell 1: tone d ′, weight 1318.5 kg, diameter 149 cm
- Bell 2: tone f ′, weight 995.5 kg, diameter 133.3 cm
- Bell 3: Ton as ′, weight 591 kg, diameter 110 cm
- Bell 4: tone ces ″, weight 343.5 kg, diameter 91.5 cm
In the attic of the vestibule there is also a newer carillon .
Catherine Chapel
North of the church is the former Katharinenkapelle from 1450. Due to the hillside location on a hill within the city, the building, which is much higher towards the north, has been secularized and served as a school for a long time, but still has a late Gothic cross vault. At the church and the chapel there are also numerous historical grave crosses, mostly made of wrought iron, and other religious sculptures .
Since 1991, the south facade of the former chapel facing the church has been decorated with a 10 meter wide representation of a dance of death .
literature
- Church leader Catholic parish church "Our Lady" Eppingen
- Michael Ertz (Ed.): Hundred Years of Evangelical City Church Eppingen 1879–1979 , Eppingen 1979.
- Wolfgang Baunach: The wall paintings in the Catholic parish church "Our Lady" in Eppingen . In: Around the Ottilienberg . Volume 3. Heimatfreunde Eppingen , Eppingen 1985
- Beate Fricke : The wall paintings of the 14th century in the choir of the parish church in Eppingen . In: Kraichgau 16, 1999, pp. 297-334.
- Vivien Bienert: suffering to the bitter end? The program of the Eppinger choir painting with notes on the dating . In: The medieval wall paintings between the Rhine, Neckar and Enz . Heimatverein Kraichgau, special publication 35, Ubstadt-Weiher 2011, pp. 67–76.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ertz 1979, p. 16.
- ↑ Ertz 1979, p. 17.
- ↑ Baunach 1985, p. 94.
- ↑ Bienert 2011, pp. 69/70.
- ↑ Bienert 2011, pp. 71/72.
- ↑ Fricke 1999, pp. 321-326.
- ↑ Information on the organ of the parish church
Dreifaltigkeitskirche Elsenz | Evangelical Church Elsenz | Evangelical town church (Eppingen) | Evangelical Church Mühlbach | Evangelical Church Richen | Sacred Heart Chapel | Johannes Nepomuk Chapel | St. Catherine's Chapel | Birth of Mary | Our Lady of Sorrows | Lady Chapel | St. Boniface | St. Nazarius | Our Lady | Valentine's Church | Pilgrimage Church Ottilienberg
Coordinates: 49 ° 8 ′ 15.6 " N , 8 ° 54 ′ 38.3" E