Pilgrimage church Oberbiederbach
The pilgrimage church Oberbiederbach is a Catholic church in the Biederbach district of Kirchhöf.
history
Because of the large extension of Biederbach over numerous districts, the believers initially used various places of worship: The residents of the Biederbach districts of Frischnau, Untertal, Dorf, Hintertal and Illenberg stayed with the parish of Elzach , the residents of Selbig and the residents of Oberspitzenbach formed their own community and Oberbiederbach received its own parish . It was not until 1971 that the St. Martin chapel in the center of the community was consecrated.
In the confirmation certificate of Alexander III. of August 5, 1178 as well as in the Liber decimationis from 1278, Biederbach is not yet mentioned, so at that time it had no church and no parish. As a Meiertum, the place should have already existed at that time. He was first mentioned in a fiefdom letter from the St. Margarethen Stift Waldkirch dated May 23, 1324. A Liber marcarum from 1360 lists Biederbach and Prechtal as branches of the parish of Elzach. This is the ante quem terminus for building a church in these places.
In 1493, Oberbiederbach was still a branch of Elzach; In the middle of the 16th century, however, it must have been an independent parish, as there is a dispute for the year 1550: Sebastian von Ehingen accused the canons in Waldkirch of evading their duty, in Biederbach, Siegelau and Suggental one To hold pastor. A visitation report shows that Michael Mai was the resident pastor in Oberbiederbach for 1581.
During the Thirty Years' War , probably around 1634, the Oberbiederbach church was burned down by the Swedes . The parsonage was also destroyed and the pastor chased away. Around 1650 the church was rebuilt as a makeshift, Oberbiederbach again became a branch church of Elzach. The supervision was the responsibility of pastors, who were also responsible for Oberprechtal and the Neunlinden Chapel in Elzach. In 1778, however, what was then the Neunlinden Chapel fell victim to a flood.
In a letter dated October 31, 1706 to Bishop Johannes Franziscus of Konstanz , the parishioners of Biederbach demanded their own parish again. The permit was granted in 1707, but only became legally valid on April 30, 1709, after the Biederbachers had declared their willingness to contribute 40 guilders to the pastor's salary every year . Andreas Nitz, previously a chaplain in Elzach, became the new pastor.
The Oberbiederbach pilgrimage church, which is also the parish church of Oberbiederbach, is an externally simple building with baroque furnishings that rises on a hill that slopes steeply to the east. The roof of the church tower is bell-shaped like many churches in the Allgäu and Tyrol , but this does not correspond to the condition after the reconstruction in the 17th century: On a Menzinger map from 1655, the Oberbiederbach church is a small church with two windows in the side wall of the nave , which carries a pointed roof turret near the gable end, whereas the current roof turret is located above the choir and has a different roof shape.
The tower was re-covered in 1680 and the sacristy in 1730 . Around 1750 the church was in such a bad structural condition that under Pastor Jakob Kaltenbach, who worked in Oberbiederbach from 1752 to 1785, an extensive renovation was decided, which probably came close to a new building. According to the inscription above the lintel, this measure was finished in 1761. The current external shape of the church goes back to this renovation measure, as does most of the interior. Pastor Kaltenbach used his private fortune for this.
Apparently, after the church was redesigned, the congregation was no longer financially able to consecrate the church: it was not until 1775 that the Upper Austrian government ordered the provost of the Waldkirch choir to have the church consecrated at the expense of the tithe, which was on August 19, 1775 happened. Auxiliary Bishop August Johann Nepomuk Maria Freiherr von Hornstein and Weiterdingen zu Konstanz carried out the ceremony.
During the Revolutionary Wars and the battles for the Biederbacher Höhe in 1796, the church was partially destroyed; It was rebuilt in 1798.
In 1799 the first organ was purchased. It came from the organ builder Martin from Waldkirch and had nine registers and a baroque prospectus. The shape of the prospectus has been preserved, the organ was found to be defective in 1857 and repaired by Fridolin Merklin from Freiburg. In 1935 it was replaced by a new instrument supplied by the Überlingen Organ Builders .
In both world wars, two of the three bells had to be released; They were replaced in 1950.
During a renovation in 1970, the ceiling and wall paintings of the church were painted over because a restoration could not be financed. Another renovation took place in 2005. At that time, the electrical and lighting system was renewed and the interior repainted without the old paintings being brought to light again.
Patronage
St. George , who can be seen on the outside of the gable wall as well as on one of the high altar paintings, may have been the first patron saint of the church. According to oral tradition, the patronage of the church was only passed on to St. Mansuetus with the delivery of the new high altar around 1752 . Mansuetus can be seen in bishop's robe on the main leaf of this altar; a woman kneels at his feet with a child; a banner bears the inscription “Heiliger Manschwede bit für uns”. Presumably, however, Mansuetus was the namesake of the church even before this altar was erected, since the church bill from 1690 “St. Mansuetus ”and residents of Biederbach were assigned the first name Mansuet as early as the 15th century. Jakob Kaltenbach's predecessor in office, Pastor Franz Josef Bieler, named St. Georg as the first and St. Mansuetus as the second patron of the church in 1749.
Furnishing
The high altar of the church is said to have come into the church before the major reconstruction of 1760/60 around 1752. Pastor Kaltenbach bore most of the cost of this work of art. While it was once assumed that it was an altar from the Alpirsbach monastery , it is now assumed that the altar, whose artist could not be identified, was either created specifically for the Oberbiederbach church or comes from another church. Mansuetus, who can be seen on the main sheet as a bishop, is depicted again in life-size as the assistant figure on the right, while the assistant figure on the left depicts Nikolaus von Myra . He is also the patron saint of the parish church of Elzach . St. George on horseback can be seen on the upper altarpiece.
The two side altars are probably a few decades older than the high altar. The right side altar is adorned with a painting of St. Wendelin , the left bears the miraculous image of Our Lady with the baby Jesus , to which the Oberbiederbach pilgrimage goes back.
Both the figures on the high altar and the baroque pulpit on the left side of the church are made by the Freiburg carpenter and barrel painter Wenz. The pulpit was completed in 1797.
On the right side of the choir there are plastic representations of St. Joseph with the baby Jesus and the baby Jesus, on the left the figure of St. Anne with Mary as a child and a representation of the Mother of God with the baby Jesus.
One of the three bells is from the time before the church was rebuilt. It was cast by Edel in Strasbourg in 1741 and is consecrated to the Mother of God. The other two bells were delivered in 1950 by B. Grüninger Söhne KG in Neu-Ulm . The large bell with a diameter of 900 millimeters and a weight of 398 kilograms has the chime g sharp and bears the slogan “After a war in a difficult time, Sacred Heart you remain a helper!” The small bell with the chime c sharp weighs 178 kilograms and has a diameter of 677 millimeters. It bears the inscription "Holy Mansuets pray for us!"
Pilgrimage
An old border line ran between Biederbach and Freiamt , which once separated the margraviate of Baden from the rulership of the Elz Valley, which belonged to Upper Austria. Under the Austrian influence, the Elz Valley remained Catholic, whereas the Freiamt in Baden had become Protestant.
In the church of Freiamt-Brettental there was an image of Our Lady that had been placed on the church warehouse after the denomination change. From there it was stolen on March 11, 1778 by Johann Jakob Spath and soon afterwards it was placed in the Biederbach church. Johann Georg Schlosser , chief magistrate in Emmendingen , learned of this theft and informed the Baron von Wittenbach in Elzach about it on December 1, 1778. The baron then turned to Pastor Kaltenbach and asked for further clarification. Kaltenbach, at an advanced age, sent Spath to Elzach. He stated there that the image of the Virgin had already survived several attempts at destruction by the residents of Brettental and had miraculously reappeared in the church. He first turned to the old, then to the young pastor, and the latter gave him permission to take the picture with him. But when he turned to Vogt Thomas Wöhrlin with this decision, he said that the picture could not be removed permanently from the church, it would always return there. He, Spath, then had the picture shown to him by the local schoolmaster, who initially promised him to send him this Maria for a tip. But since he had not kept his promise, Spath finally removed the picture from the church on March 11, 1778 at three o'clock in the morning and carried it home. However, after he informed his wife that he wanted to have the image of Mary clothed, a violent argument ensued, in the course of which his wife angrily jumped out of bed. In doing so, she apparently sustained such a painful injury that she asked him to go up to the image of Mary and pray for her. She was then healed and Maria received her dress. He, Spath, then went to Einsiedeln as a pilgrim on Easter and reported these incidents to the confessor there. The latter referred him to his own pastor, who then recommended that Mary be set up in the local church for general veneration.
Baron von Wittenbach had this statement recorded and forwarded it to the government of the Upper Austrian region, which he also informed that the margraviate demanded the extradition of Spath and his punishment in the Pforzheim prison. Such extradition was prohibited by the government on December 22, 1778. Finally, Brettental was compensated with 17 guilders, the image of the Virgin was recognized as miraculous and transferred from Spath's court to the church in a solemn procession, which at the same time began the pilgrimage in Oberbiederbach. It stood there first on the high altar, then on the right side altar, now on the left. The cloth clothing that Spath had acquired was later removed. The portrait has been repainted several times, most recently in 2001.
literature
- Alfred Allgeier: The pilgrimage church in Oberbiederbach , parish of Oberbiederbach 2006
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Allgeier 2006, p. 6 ff.
- ↑ Allgeier 2006, p. 13 f.
- ↑ Allgeier 2006, p. 3
- ↑ Allgeier 2006, p. 4
- ↑ Allgeier 2006, p. 18 ff.
Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 7 ″ N , 8 ° 1 ′ 37.8 ″ E