Ship models in churches

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"Urania" from the village church Großsolt ( Maritime Museum Flensburg )
Evangelical Church Garz with ship models

Ship models in churches are donations from guilds or private individuals. Many European churches near the coast have such models. They were donated in Catholic countries as votive and thank-you gifts for rescue from distress at sea and are therefore also called votive ships . In the Protestant North and Baltic Sea countries, the importance of professional representation predominates. Denmark has the greatest density of historical ship models in churches with around 1400 specimens. They are called in Danish kirkeskib , "church ship".

particularities

The older ships were mostly hung at a certain height in the church. Because they should be viewed from below, their rigging is enlarged, while the hull is shown reduced. The cannons of the warships often depicted in the 17th and 18th centuries are also enlarged. They stand for resistance. The designation as “ship models” is only applicable to a limited extent in view of these violations of the true-to-scale replica. It was preferred to reproduce impressive ships that did not correspond to everyday reality, but were "several sizes too big". As a kind of “dream ships” they brought the big world into the churches of the small port cities and coastal villages.

Repairs were always necessary, especially on the sensitive rigging. Until recently, this was not done by a restorer, but by a church member with knowledge of shipbuilding. The model was often modernized in terms of rigging, coloring and flagging. For example, the Vergatte von Dierhagen , a model from 1779, received modern rigging and the war flag of the Weimar Republic as part of the restoration .

function

The Protestant church, in which the congregation gathered for a common Sunday service, was (according to Konrad Köstlin ) a place of social, public representation. This corresponds to the donation of altar utensils, chandeliers, church windows and other items of equipment, each with the names and coats of arms of important families or professional groups. The ship models were among these items of equipment. A group of ship models, the dioramas created around 1900 , are nautical leisure work that only entered the church at a later date and was originally owned by the family.

In the 20th century, ship models were donated in some places as part of a modern culture of remembrance , and they all referred to the maritime past of the place.

Preferred ship types

Seemannskirche Prerow , three-masted frigate "Peter Kraft" (1780)
Typical of the 20th century: small vehicles like this Zeesboot , 1936 by a fisherman from Kirchdorf (Poel) , Island Poel , built

Warships

Among the oldest examples are a number of three-masted warships that are in village churches:

Wolfgang Steusloff interprets these donations as "self-confident markings of the prosperous group of rural seafarers". They are the sailor folk art of the 17th / 18th centuries. Models that can be assigned to the 19th century, typically with massive hulls made from one piece and subsequently hollowed out.

Sailing ships

In the 19th century unarmed merchant ships were increasingly being generated, preferably Fregatt- or full ships , barges and Briggs . Smaller coastal vehicles were hardly considered. They were almost always - contemporary - sailing ships (exceptions: a screw steamer in Wiek on Rügen and a paddle steamer in Wieck near Greifswald ). Since the ship models in Kirchen remained committed to the sailing ship, the technical progress was not followed. That is why the ship foundations in the 20th century were on the one hand historical ship types up to the Viking ship, on the other hand sailed small craft.

The term "votive ship"

One of two Orlog ship models from the 16th and 17th centuries from the Schütting , today in the upper town hall of Bremen
Votive ships and other votive offerings in the Notre-Dame de la Garoupe chapel, Cap d'Antibes, Alpes-Maritimes
The models in the Schifferkirche in Arnis were donated by local boatmen.
Votive ship from 1738 in the St. Christophorus Church in Friedrichstadt

Medieval ship votive

In 1904 Richard Andree developed the concept of the votive offering based on the southern German Catholic popular piety . For Andree there was no doubt that popular piety in remote Protestant areas, such as the coast, was drawn from the same medieval or even older source.

For this thesis, the tradition can be used that merchants in distress at sea called the Hildesheim saints Bernward and Godehard in the 12th century and, after the rescue, had wax boats hung up in the Hildesheim Cathedral as a thank you, in individual cases also a silver boat and a small anchor made of silver . There are no further written references to medieval ship votives in the Weser area. The Ebersdorf cog model is a 15th century votive offering; Nothing is known about the circumstances of how it got to a Saxon pilgrimage church.

Ship reliefs and models as a professional self-representation

Seafarers have used ship representations in various ways for their bourgeois self-portrayal, be it as a picture, relief or three-dimensional model. Examples from the Weser area are:

  • Reliefs of a galley and a galleon on the Guild Hall of the Flanders Riders in Hameln, early 16th century;
  • Relief of a three- master under full sail, gable of the market front of the Schütting in Bremen (1594);
  • Ship models from the Schütting, today in the Bremen town hall (16th / 17th century).

Depictions of ships in connection with the grave cult of seafarers have a religious component (coffin shields, speaking tombstones). Often a ship is shown that is entering the port or has arrived there. These ship pictures also indicate the deceased's profession. In this context of the “representative status gifts”, Steusloff also placed the following source text from Wismar : The ship carpenters founded a Marian Brotherhood in 1411 and on the occasion of this foundation donated “the ship in St. Nicolai and the lights in front of the image of Mary”.

The “votive ship” from Landkirchen

The church ship from 1617, which hung in the Petrikirche in Landkirchen on Fehmarn, was restored for the 1972 Olympic exhibition “Man and the Sea”; it was referred to alternately as a ship model and a votive ship in connection with it. The until then almost unknown object was now presented to the public in the Kunsthalle Kiel and was designated as a "17th century warship, church ship model". The assumption that the donation of the ship in 1617 was a votive offering was not confirmed by the investigation at that time. Its original purpose was to "serve the city of Lübeck as a representative decorative item". Nevertheless, the term votive ship was thus in the world and was established through publications mainly by Henning Henningsen.

There is "hardly any evidence" of the connection between distress, vows, rescue and thanks in the Northern European, Protestant coastal area, and therefore the term votive ship is judged by Steusloff as a possibly spontaneously appealing interpretation, but from a scientific point of view as factually incorrect. Köslin comes to the same conclusion: “One will certainly have to concede that behind every foundation ... to the church there can be an attempt by a person to make himself inclined to God. But this… hope differs in principle from the clear and published structure of the act of… voting. "

Catholic votive ships

Real votive ships can be found in Catholic churches on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. One example is Brittany . In the middle of the 17th century, the Jesuit order was active in this landscape and promoted the votive system combined with the veneration of Mary and Anne. They were seen as the advocates who had helped in distress. Often, votive offerings were clearly identified as such by the letters VFGA ( Votum fecit, gratiam accepit : "[the seaman XY] has made a vow, [Maria / Saint Anna] has received thanks"). In Brittany, ship models were the usual form of a maritime votive offering. They were hung from the ceiling in churches and chapels. The oldest surviving specimen is a model of the Maria ship in the Notre Dame de Kermouster chapel (parish of Lèzardrieux ), which was consecrated to the church according to the inscription “by me, MM Le Guen, 1651”. On the Mediterranean coast, ex-voto ship images are more common than models.

Web links

Commons : Ship models in churches  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

  • Detlev Ellmers: The ship as a symbol in the Middle Ages and early modern times. Bourgeois self-portrayal in the Weser river basin. In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 19 (1996) pp. 221–252. ( online )
  • Werner Jaeger: A Nefertiti among the ship models. Report on the discovery of a hitherto unknown model ship from 1617. In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 2 (1978), pp. 47-60. ( online )
  • Konrad Köstlin: Ship donations in Protestant churches. From corporate representation to a symbol of local identity. In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 11 (1988), pp. 291-302. ( online )
  • Wolfgang Steusloff: Church ship models in transition. In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 23 (2000), pp. 489–502. ( online )
  • Wolfgang Steusloff: Church ship models in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . Rostock 2003
  • Hans Szymanski: Ship models in churches in Lower Saxony . Goettingen 1966
  • Elizabeth Tingle: The Sea and Souls: Maritime Votive Practices in Counter-Reformation Brittany, 1500-1750 . In: Peter Bernard Clarke (Ed.): God's Bounty ?: Papers Read at the 2008 Summer Meeting and the 2009 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society . Boydell & Brewer, 2010. pp. 205-216.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Sell: Floating cultural monuments: Votive ships in the coastal churches testify to power and thanks (landeskirche-hannovers.de, August 8, 2005)
  2. ↑ Denmark. Retrieved January 10, 2019 .
  3. ^ Wolfgang Steusloff: Church ship models in change . S. 492 .
  4. ↑ a b c Konrad Köstlin: Ship donations in Protestant churches. From corporate representation to a symbol of local identity. S. 298 .
  5. ^ Wolfgang Steusloff: Church ship models in change . S. 496-497 .
  6. ^ Wolfgang Steusloff: Church ship models in change . S. 498 .
  7. ^ Konrad Köstlin: Ship donations in Protestant churches. From corporate representation to a symbol of local identity . S. 301 .
  8. ^ A b Wolfgang Steusloff: Church ship models in change . S. 490 .
  9. ^ Wolfgang Steusloff: Church ship models in change . S. 494 .
  10. ↑ Detlev Ellmers: The ship as a symbol in the Middle Ages and early modern times. Bourgeois self-portrayal in the Weser river basin. S. 221-222 .
  11. ↑ Detlev Ellmers: The ship as a symbol in the Middle Ages and early modern times. Bourgeois self-portrayal in the Weser river basin. S. 244-248 .
  12. ^ Wolfgang Steusloff: Church ship models in change . S. 489 .
  13. ↑ Werner Jaeger: A Nefertiti among the ship models. Report on the discovery of a previously unknown model ship from 1617 . S. 49 .
  14. ^ Konrad Köstlin: Ship donations in Protestant churches. From corporate representation to a symbol of local identity . S. 292-294 .
  15. ^ Wolfgang Steusloff: Church ship models in change . S. 490 .
  16. ^ Konrad Köstlin: Ship donations in Protestant churches. From corporate representation to a symbol of local identity. S. 296 .
  17. ↑ Elizabeth Tingle: The Sea and Souls: Maritime Votive Practices in Counter-Reformation Brittany, 1500-1750 . S. 213 .