Our Lady of Marpingen

Our Lady of Marpingen is a 63 centimeter high wooden sculpture from the 18th century in the Saarland community of Marpingen . It is kept in a Lady Chapel with a fountain. It shows Mary dressed in a cloak with a scepter in one hand and the baby Jesus on the other arm. She wears a headscarf under her crown. The baby Jesus has turned his head to the viewer.

The veneration goes back to a legend after the Marpingen villagers heard fine singing and clinking in a damp meadow near today's church after a war. After examining the ground, a Madonna figure was found there. The site was drained and the spring was made. A wayside shrine was erected for the found sculpture . The picture was widely admired, so that Marpingen developed into a place of pilgrimage to which residents of the surrounding towns made pilgrimages to ask for good weather there.

It is not known why the traditional Madonna was replaced by the Baroque Madonna. In the 19th century the facility was redesigned several times. In 1847 a Marian column was erected on the fountain . In 1876 the pastor Jakob Neureuter from Marpingen , who played an important role in the Marpingen apparitions of Mary in 1876/1877, had a grotto built over the fountain .

In the 20th century, the spring was converted into an elaborate circular fountain system.

literature

• Gabriele Oberhauser: Pilgrimages and places of worship in Saarland - From source veneration to the apparition of Mary . Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken 1992, ISBN 3-925036-67-9