Werner Chapel (Oberwesel)

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The historic Werner Chapel is a Gothic religious building in Oberwesel on the Middle Rhine in Rhineland-Palatinate . In 2008 it was placed under the patronage of the canonized Franciscan Rosa Flesch and renamed the Mother Rosa Chapel.

The small building has its origins as a chapel of a medieval Bürgerhospital for which the founder, the Holy Spirit - patron saint had chosen. The chapel was consecrated to Werner von Oberwesel until 2008 - at the latest when an additional patronage was first mentioned in 1656/57 - and since then has been named after the founder of the order Rosa Flesch, a sister of the Waldbreitbach Franciscan Sisters of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of the Angels .

Today's chapel, on the left the hospital tower, battlements, through Wernerstraße and in the front right half tower of the D'Avis house

location

City panorama with object designation HOSPITALE (wall crown in the center of the picture) around 1581

The property of the former Heilig-Geist-Kapelle was part of a civic hospital foundation on the Rhine-side Wallstrasse and city fortifications of the early core city, which ran parallel to the city ​​wall and was referred to as Unterstrasse in the original cadastre until 1813. It was later called Untere Kirchstrasse (until 1889) and was evidently preserved documents and depictions by the engravers Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg and Merian as early as the Middle Ages, but also later a densely built-up street. It was not until the last decade of the 19th century that the street between the Red Tower (also Haagsturn) and Schaarplatz was renamed to today's Wernerstraße of the city.

Since the late 16th century, several buildings have been grouped around the chapel, which is part of the inventory of the Heilig-Geist- Hospital , and are designated as hospitals on the Braun & Hogenberg plaque - in the top of the wall below the Gothic chapel . As was customary at the time - for example, the location and design of the original Heilig-Geist Hospital and its chapel in Mainz are comparable - such hospice facilities were built near a city gate and typically integrated into the battlements of a city ​​wall . The Oberwesel facility was located on the north-south axis of through traffic and at the same time between two of the first four former defense and gate towers of the core city, the hospital tower and the Steingasse gate tower, whose streets were the main connections to the western fortifications of the city.

history

Chapel and Holy Spirit patronage in the springs

In a will - a Transsumpt from the year 1368 - the first reliable mention of the Wesel Heilig-Geist-Hospital was for the year 1305. For the year 1387 the elevation of the altar in the hospital church to a "Beneficium Ecclesiasticum" by the Archbishop of Trier is Kuno II von Falkenstein , who possibly also donated the chapel himself. According to information from 1388, builders and procurators are said to have been the lay judges H. Mehrfracke (this can only be proven from 1350) and J. Ringrebe, who may also have been responsible for the construction of the associated chapel.

Winand von Steeg around 1426, unsuccessfully fought for the canonization of Werner

In the years 1426 to 1429, Wynandus de Stega, canon of the Andreasstift in Cologne and acting pastor in the neighboring municipality of Bacharach , led the process to achieve the canonization of the day laborer Werner from Womrath , who was allegedly killed by Jews from Oberwesel , but was unsuccessful at the Roman Curia . In a copy of the case files of the proceedings at that time (still available and today in the Trier city library), among other things a wooden statue (later referred to as the Werner column) is mentioned, which (“... et hoc in Weslia superiori Treverensiun diocesis, ... ubi nunc est hospitale sancti Spititus… capella et Choro statua ejus lignea,… ») have their place in the Holy Spirit Chapel.

Also at this time the Holy Spirit altar of the chapel was mentioned, which was referred to as the benefice of Johan Schalk, a cleric of the Trier diocese from Oberwesel, but who was far away in the service of a bishop at the Roman Curia in the Vatican . In 1578 a dean from Oberwesel shared with Archbishop Jakob III of Trier . von Eltz said that the Wernerus column, protected by an ark, was still on display in the city's hospital and bore the following inscription: "Anno Domini 1287 Wernerus Wammenraidt suffered the Dodt the 13th Calendas May, in this the column St. Wernerus is".

Just as the dean chose the designation hospital, the chapel also appears under the designations of striking buildings on the copper engraving by Braun & Hogenberg of 1581. There the entire complex was given the designation "Hospitale". In 1593 an inventory revealed the local ownership of the hospital buildings. In the listing of the properties , among other things, were given: a "summer house", the "chapel or church", a "wine press house", a "car house" and an inner courtyard. Further acquisitions, also in neighboring towns, were not discussed. In 1656/57, on the occasion of a visitation in the final protocol, in addition to the main patronage of the Holy Spirit, the first mention of the Werner patronage ("... Habet sacelum sub invocatione Spiritus sanct. Patronus: sanctus Wernerus. Altare unum"). About 30 years later, the hospital and the chapel were partially destroyed in 1689.

Destruction in the Palatinate War of Succession

At the end of the Palatinate War of Succession , the troops of Louis XIV set fire to countless buildings in Oberwesel when they withdrew in 1689, and entire streets were destroyed. One of the heavily affected streets was the “Unterraße”, which ran parallel to the banks of the Rhine and then reached from the Red Tower to Schaarplatz, and where the Heilig-Geist Hospital and its chapel burned down.

In a later period (1916), the Cologne art historian Edmund Renard found that in a list from files from 1697 the fire damage had been estimated at 6,200 thalers . In addition, there was the loss of the bell and the value of the destroyed church ornament, which was given as 200 thalers.

Investigations, traces and findings

Stonemason's mark on the middle corner cuboid

On the two-storey chapel, stonemasons left several markings in the form of stonemason's marks . Two out of five of these traditional hearty markings are on the outer apse obtained, and further in the brickwork of the road transit. For the building history of the substructure and the original upper church structure, the experts lack the evidence of exact dates , as could be obtained in Oberwesel for example with some high medieval buildings by dendrochronological investigations of beams. This could be due to the destruction by fire, which spared no wooden components. As far as the chapel was concerned, the first thing that fell victim to this fire was its roof structure , so that a saddle roof with a pointed roof turret no longer appears in the depictions from the 18th century onwards.

The start of construction, which has so far mostly been associated with the year of the alleged murder of Werner von Oberwesel (1287), became more similar regional in view of the development of further archival resources, but also due to the results of comparative material investigations and craft design forms (e.g. preserved parts of the garment or the tracery ) Buildings, considered unlikely. The floor plan of the upper chapel presents itself in an approximately square yoke with a 5/8 end , but it should not correspond exactly to the dimensions of the substructure, but is slightly offset inward. This led the experts to assume that the entire building was not created “in one piece”, but it could not be proven whether the substructure was once the basement of a previous church or that of a private house. The long construction time of the chapel - the completion of the building is dated between 1340 and 1350 - can be explained by the limited funds that were available for a simple hospital church .

The change in the city's political situation around 1309 may also have played a role, when the status of the Free Imperial City was lost and the then Electorate City first had to consolidate financially. The early Gothic tracery windows only had narrow garment profiles and the rib and belt brackets were also made smaller. These were similar to the consoles of the side aisles in the Liebfrauenkirche , from which conclusions could be drawn about the temporal classification.

  • City wall and road passage to the north

  • Passage to the south side

  • Chapel substructure on the city wall

  • City-side chapel substructure

The vaulted substructure leans against the west side of the city wall on the Rhine side and uses this as additional stabilization. The buttresses of the chapel structure, which are typical of Gothic churches, rest on the east side on the city wall, with the battlements running through them.

Partial reconstruction around 1700

The chapel with its substructure at street level and the half-timbered buildings surrounding it on the city side , which then as now also included hospital buildings, was not spared from the destruction. It was rebuilt at the beginning of the 18th century as a shortened hall church with a 5/8 end of the choir , so that it was now completely free on its west side. There the einjochige, with a had Kreuzrippengewölbe equipped Chapel stump as a preliminary conclusion of a Notwand, which was designed as a framework and only some 100 years later plastering received. The roof structure of the sparse reconstruction was now provided with a baroque hood , in contrast to the originally purely Gothic structure - in keeping with the taste of the time .

Construction details, dimensions and materials

The exact dimensions of the original structure are not known. After a construction survey carried out in 1916 and a reconstructed floor plan , master builder Heinrich Riebel concluded three yokes, Renard four yokes destroyed in the war, which had formed equally large fields west of the now existing yoke.

The following data are given for the dimensions of the substructure: length approx. 18.5 m, depth of the east yokes 4.20 m, height approx. 4.1 m, width of the east yokes 13.5 m, width of the west yokes 8.2 m and a wall thickness in the west yokes of 2.5 m. The present superstructure rose on this basement. It had a length of approx. 12.5 m, a width of approx. 8.25 m, a vault height of 12 m, a roof height of 5.1 m and the height of the tail hood , which had replaced a formerly slender roof turret then about 23.5 m. The wall thickness of the upper floor of the chapel was approx. 0.75 m.

The walls of the short Saaljoch still bear the roof structure that was created during the reconstruction in the 18th century. It is a verschiefertes hipped roof , which above the choir area in a polygonal broken, with small Walmgauben passes occupied tail hood. This carries a lantern with rectangular louvre windows , the slightly drawn-in dome top with a high point and a wrought-iron cross top.

The chapel, which is structured by the two-tiered buttresses, stands with its sides on the longitudinal walls of the substructure and forms a flush front with it. The east wall of the choir rests on the internally reinforced city wall. The low substructure that was created as a passage consists of unplastered broken slate, with the arches of the passage and those of the portals in the west wall being made of red sandstone . In contrast to the substructure, the masonry of the upper chapel was plastered with stone. The base and sill cornice , the lower halves of the buttresses - the two eastern ones are based on heavy sandstone blocks on the lower half of the city wall, which has been built in several stages - as well as their gable tops and water hammer were set off in red sandstone. The same material was used for the three windows on the east side, whose tracery and walls were also made of red sandstone, while tuff was used for the four window walls of the nave .

The original entrance to the building remained unknown; a stair tower may have served this purpose , the substructure of which Renard was able to identify in 1916.

  • Chapel access to the city wall

  • Former access north side

  • From the northern battlement to the handling

  • Exit to the battlements of the city wall

Werner relief on the outer choir

In 1727 the city had a relief made of yellow sandstone , which was 169 × 97 cm in size and represented a fictitious torture of the revered Werner. The work of an unknown stonemason was set into a specially made aedicule in a window that was walled up at the time on the side of the south-east choir of the chapel . The surviving relief showed visitors to the chapel a legendary torture of Werner for almost 300 years by two Jews dressed in typical hats , who drew blood from the cuts they had made. The relief is framed by a tape in capitals with the following text in the arch:

"S (ANCT) · WERNHERE PATRON OUR STAT OF THE POOR [...] AND APPEAL OF OBEDIENCE PLEASE"

Tape at the bottom:

"WERNHERUS. . . BIRTH TO WAMMERAT [. . . ] BY PARENTS AND THEREFORE LEAVING THE JUDGE, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, THE IUDS BEY DIESSER CHURCH IN THE Vaulted Vaulted For Three Days On This Form In The Year Of Christ In 1287 The 19th Day Of April D · 0 · M · S · W 1727 "

Today it is assumed that the point in time for the production and installation of the relief should have a positive influence on the application for the introduction of a Werner festival and that the Werner pilgrimages were expected to be stimulated.

As early as 1728, Elector Franz Ludwig complied with a request from the Oberwesel magistrate and ordered the solemn celebration of a Werner day (every year on April 19). About 30 years later Werner was included in the calendar of saints of the Diocese of Trier in 1761 . It is unknown whether the level of awareness of the Oberwesel hospital chapel has changed or the number of pilgrims has increased. In 1754 a canon of the Liebfrauenstift, the dean Richard Laurentius Beck from Oberwesel, became co-administrator of the chapel. In 1782 the city chronicle says that the missing slabs of the staircase at the “Wernerskirch” should be relocated.

The chapel in the 19th century

Werner Chapel 1819, view from the south

During the French rule in 1806 the previous administration of the hospital and chapel was replaced by a poor and charity commission, whose activity extended into the Prussian period in the 1830s. The mayor of the Mairie chaired the commission, in which a pastor was also represented .

In 1828 urgent repairs were made to the chapel because it was in danger of completely weathering and becoming ripe for demolition. Cost estimates for the renovation mentioned plastering and painting work, but also two buttresses in need of repair and the necessary plastering of the half-timbered west wall of the chapel. The numbered estimates are said to have been approved, but were not carried out and the chapel has not been used since the 1830s. According to information from 1841, it was only opened on Werner's Day. Information from the Rheinischen Antiquarius then mentions the renovation of the chapel in 1844.

This renovation also included changes to the interior. The previous panel painting in the three-storey high altar (height approx. 10 meters, width 5.95 meters, depth 0.95 meters) from the 18th century with a representation of the Werner martyrdom was created in 1845 because of its poor condition by the Koblenz painter Peter Joseph Molitor .

A Werner procession , the beginning and destination of which was the Werner Chapel, was first reported for the year 1852. The painter Carl Haag , who acquired the red tower of the city wall south of the Werner chapel in 1864, also handed down such a procession as a watercolor . His picture is privately owned, but a reproduction is in the exhibition of the local museum. Around 1886, the remaining masonry of the buttresses of the western nave yoke is said to have stood, but this was not reported later. Renard (1916) found reports of exterior work on the chapel for 1897, and green glazing of the windows (still preserved in 1924) is believed to have been carried out during this period. In 1889, the naming of the Lower Street, which was handed down from the Middle Ages, was changed. It was given the name Wernerstraße , which is still officially today .

  • Hospital entrance with arch from 1933

  • Pointed arch piscina with noses in the south wall

  • Madonna and Child, south wall

  • Star-decorated vault and keystone with heraldic shield

20th century

In 1902 - according to the inscription on the bell shoulder - the Ruhrort foundry T. Schürmann & Söhne (later BVG ) made a cast iron bell for the chapel . Without the crown, it had a height of 47 cm and a diameter of 57 cm. As the roof turret of the chapel shows on medieval representations, today's bell had at least one predecessor that was destroyed in the War of the Palatinate Succession. After a construction start in 1915, also in 1902, the Cologne church painter Schneider was commissioned to paint the interior of the chapel.

Several works on the chapel are on record for the years 1932 to 1934. This included repairs to the roof in 1932 and the completion of a large, Gothic-style arch in front of the west wall in 1933. This is offset from the central axis of the nave to the south and its span corresponds to the width of the adjacent room opening behind the arch. This slightly raised room , formerly equipped with a gallery , connects ( wheelchair accessible ) the chapel with a corridor of a building wing of the hospital on the first floor. In 1933/34, the provincial curator Franz Wolff-Metternich zum Gracht suggested that the vault paintings of the chapel should be exposed. Since these then turned out to be only imitation late Gothic tendril paintings from more recent times, the vault caps were whitewashed with a little addition of blue. The walls were given an ocher tint, services and ribs were painted light-sandstone-red.

The previously closed window in the southwest was opened and received baroque, colorless glazing, which was adapted to the northeastern choir window. The northwestern nave window remained walled up. The two sloping choir windows were re-glazed according to the designs of the Aachen professor Anton Wendling .

After the Second World War

Today's Mother-Pink Chapel, the hospital tower on the left and the clinic building on the right

In Oberwesel's official website , no events or dates are noted on the History / Chronicle subpage for the period between 1885 and 1950. The statements by Sebald, which are often quoted here, mostly come from the documents of the LHAK , i.e. only indirectly from the holdings of a former city archive. The information on the following changes is mostly based on activity reports which - as was the case in the time of the Rhine Province - were archived in the files of the respective State Office for Monument Preservation .

Then in 1967 the roof structure of the chapel was repaired and a new roof covering was made with slate. In 1969 the Werner relief attached to the chapel's choir was removed and moved to the Michael's chapel (cemetery chapel and ossuary ) on the west side of the Liebfrauenkirche, which was mostly only open for burials .

In the following years, between 1969 and 1974, under the direction of the Mainz architect Otto Sprengler, the exterior structure was renovated and statically secured. In the area of ​​the vaults - the hall yoke includes a ribbed vault and the slightly raised choir is closed by a six-part ribbed vault - two anchors were drawn in, the wall crowns renovated, the tuff stone walls of the windows and the sandstone cornices removed on the nave and old plaster. The interior painting of the 1930s was removed, the walls and vaults were now painted in off-white, with ribs and shield arches contrasting in gray-blue with red stripes. Window frames, consoles, piscina west arch and keystones were framed in red, the latter with green heraldic shields placed in the middle.

Sebald's report ends with the reference to the investigations carried out by the restorer Hartmann in 1974/75 and the mention of the reconstruction of the historical room setting.

Renaming of the chapel

  • Altarpiece October 2009

  • Former altarpiece of Werner hovering over the city

  • Altar section summer 2013, above the arch the number 1732, the year of construction of the altar

  • Nave and choir 2015

Following a resolution by the Oberwesel parish, in November 2008 the Werner Chapel was renamed the Mother Rosa Chapel as part of a ceremony following recent and long-term interior renovations. Werner's oil painting, which remained in the main altar for a long time, was exchanged for a painting by Rosa Flesch a few years later . The election of a Franciscan to be named after the chapel and hospital also reminds of the establishment of a Franciscan branch in Oberwesel, which is documented in 1242.

World Heritage cultural landscape of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley

The chapel has been part of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002 , and is also a protected cultural asset under the Hague Convention .

literature

  • Michael Imhof: The churches in the Middle Rhine Valley. Petersberg 2008
  • Eduard Sebald and co-authors: The art monuments of Rhineland-Palatinate, volume 9. The art monuments of the Rhein-Hunsrück district, part 2. Former district of St. Goar, here the city of Oberwesel in volumes I and II, State Office for Monument Preservation Rhineland-Palatinate ( Ed.) Deutscher Kunstverlag 1977 ISBN 3-422-00576-5
  • Ferdinand Pauly in: Germania Sacra , The Dioceses of the Church Province of Trier. The Archdiocese of Trier 2. The monasteries St. Severus in Boppard, St. Goar in St. Goar, Liebfrauen in Oberwesel, St. Martin in Oberwesel . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin - New York 1980
  • Anton Ph. Schwarz and Winfried Monschauer: Citizens under the protection of their walls. 800 years of Oberwesel city fortifications . Published by Bauverein Historische Stadt Oberwesel, 2012
  • Winfried Monschauer: The Minorite Monastery in Oberwesel: History of an extraordinary monument . Published by the Kulturstiftung Hütte Oberwesel, 2013, ISBN 978-3-00-043393-1 .
  • Walter Karbach: The anti-Jewish ritual murder relief from 1727 at the Werner Chapel in Oberwesel and its reluctant removal in 1970 . In: Aschkenas 30 (2020), 1, pp. 37-60.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Eduard Sebald: The art monuments of the Rhein-Hunsrück district part 2. Former district of St. Goar, town of Oberwesel in 2 volumes, here the former Holy Geist-Hospital / Wernerkapelle p. 671 ff
  2. ^ History of the Loreley Clinics in St. Goar-Oberwesel. Retrieved March 1, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Eduard Sebald: The art monuments of the Rhein-Hunsrück district part 2. Former district of St. Goar, here City of Oberwesel Volume 2, Oberwesel city center, Unterstraße, p. 1000 f
  4. ↑ Anton Ph. Schwarz in: Citizens in the protection of their walls. 800 years of Oberwesel city fortifications , fortification of the Rhine side p. 37
  5. ↑ Also mentioned in 1357 as Heinz Meinfrancke by Ferdinand Pauly in: Germania Sacra, The Dioceses of the Church Province of Trier . The Archdiocese of Trier 2., Liebfrauen in Oberwesel, personal details p. 384
  6. ^ DI 60: Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis I (2004). Retrieved March 4, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Eduard Sebald: The art monuments of the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis part 2. Former district of St. Goar, here City of Oberwesel Volume 2, public buildings p. 896 f, Unterstraße p. 1000 ff and Volume 1, former Heilig-Geist-Hospital / Werner Chapel p. 671 ff
  8. ↑ Winfried Monschauer: The Minorite Monastery in Oberwesel , Regesten for the history of the Minorites in Oberwesel, p. 91

Web links

Commons : Wernerkapelle (Oberwesel)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 36.8 ″  N , 7 ° 43 ′ 25.3 ″  E