Westwork

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St. Pantaleon in Cologne . West building. 2nd half of the 10th century

The westwork is a component of a church building . Westworks were first erected in the Middle Ages as separate church rooms in front of the basilica ; their construction began in the Carolingian period. Already in the subsequent Ottonian period the type of the westwork was mixed with other facade forms - there were no more pure westworks. The Saxon Westriegel is a special or transitional form . The westwork has functional and architectural features: it is not just a west facade that closes off the nave, but a separate structure with interior spaces that serve specific uses. Westworks therefore only appear in collegiate and monastery churches and only in exceptional cases in cathedrals (e.g. Minden ), but not in parish churches. Buildings that do not meet these criteria are not referred to as west works, but generally as west buildings .

The westwork is in front of the church and forms an independent part of the building with usually three towers, a central tower above the middle of the westwork and two flanking stair towers on the sides of the facade. There is a through hall on the ground floor and a room on the upper floor that is open to the church and is mostly surrounded by galleries. Later forms of development often do without the multi-storey room division; this is referred to as a westwork-like western building .

term

The term "Westwerk" was first used to describe bell houses (Reichenau, Hildesheimer Dom) by Franz Falk in 1869 and later in the architectural history literature by Johann Bernhard Nordhoff in 1873 to describe the western structure in Minden and in 1888 the pre-Romanesque core of the western structure in Corvey. Alois Fuchs gave the first definition of the term as it is used in research today in 1929.

History and functions

The westwork was mainly to be found in imperial monasteries in which traveling kings or emperors resided (see also travel kingship ). Reserved for them and their entourage, the westwork was mostly used for secular purposes until the Cluniac reform , for example as a chancellery or court. From a gallery opening to the church , the ruler was able to take part in the service from an elevated position. The presumed imperial throne systems are sometimes derived from the Carolingian palatine chapel of the Aachen cathedral , where, however, there was only evidence of a throne in Ottonian times.

Traditional church construction distinguishes between two areas of meaning: the actual church in the east, reserved for the saints, the ecclesia triumphans , and the bulwark-like westwork, symbol of the ecclesia militans , the place of the ruler as the protector of the church. The large number of westworks from the time of Charlemagne is striking . Only in rare cases did the westwork have a real military function (" fortified church "). Its symbolic meaning was that of a castellum in the sense of a fortress in the defense against devils and demons . While the east side ( sunrise ) was the direction of Christ and in which the apse housed the altar ( easting ), the powers of evil and death were assigned to the west ( sunset ) , who are not allowed access to the church, the " New Jerusalem " should. The altar of Archangel Michael , the leader of the angels in the fight against the demons from the west, is almost always in the westwork. Other researchers question the claim that there were throne seats for the emperor in the western works and deny that the building type should be understood as a sign of empire. You see the function more in the monastic liturgy, especially during Easter.

One of the earliest and largest known western works had the important Carolingian imperial abbey of Saint-Riquier , near Amiens in France. However, it is only known from drawings, so that the exact shape of the westwork can only be reconstructed hypothetically. The only remaining pure westwork from the Carolingian era is in Corvey , although the central tower was removed there and the side towers raised, so that today the image of a two-tower facade emerges.

Since the 12th century, the Carolingian and Ottonian westwork with its soaring interior has given way to a soaring western building of the Romanesque style or a western choir (which was often dedicated to the Archangels Michael or Gabriel) or was reshaped accordingly. Hermann Rothert advocated the thesis that these often oversized components such as the west building of St. Patrokli in Soest, built around 1200, were built at the instigation of the city council, which met there and stored weapons. The porch of Soest Cathedral was previously accessible from Domplatz and perhaps replaced the town hall, which was not yet in existence at the time - a variant of the imperial church thesis. As with most western buildings, there is no evidence of any use for liturgical purposes.

The fact that the form and function of the westwork in the strict sense can only be demonstrated in Corvey and that the interpretation as an imperial church cannot be based on any sources leads to criticism of this term and the ideas associated with it. The consequences can be different: either to recognize the term Westwerk as a designation for a supposed building type as an invention of art history and to abandon it (Schönfeld de Reyes) or to use the term more generously in practice, as Uwe Lobbedey does.

Examples

literature

  • Wilhelm Effmann: Centula. St. Riquier. An investigation into the history of church architecture in the Carolingian era (= research and findings , vol. 2). Aschendorff, Münster in Westphalia, 1912.
  • Alois Fuchs : The Carolingian Westworks and other questions of Carolingian architecture . Paderborn 1929.
  • Felix Kreusch : Observations on the western section of the Corvey monastery church . Böhlau, Cologne 1963.
  • Friedrich Möbius : Westwork studies . Friedrich Schiller University, Jena 1968.
  • Dagmar von Schönfeld de Reyes: Westwerk problems. On the importance of the western works in art historical research . VDG, publishing house and database for the humanities, Weimar 1999, ISBN 3-89739-026-4 .
  • Uwe Lobbedey : Romanesque in Westphalia . Echter Verlag, Würzburg 1999.
  • Uwe Lobbedey: "Westwerke" of the 12th century in Westphalia , in: M. Kozok (Hrsg.): Architecture - Structure - Symbol. Forays into architectural history from antiquity to the present. Festschrift for Cord Meckseper on his 65th birthday . Petersberg 1999, pp. 85-100.
  • Clemens Kosch: Pre-Romanesque west works and their changes in the Staufer period. The example of St. Pantaleon , in: Colonia Romanica. Yearbook of the Förderverein Romanische Kirchen Köln eV 14 (1999), pp. 79-102.
  • Uwe Lobbedey: West works and western choirs in the church building of the Carolingian era , in: On the eve of the imperial coronation: the epic "Karolus Magnus et Leo papa" and the papal visit to Paderborn 799 (edited by Peter Godman and others) Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2002, p. 163-191. ISBN 3-05-003497-1 .
  • Heiko Seidel: Investigation of the history of the development of sacral western building solutions in the core Saxon settlement area in the Romanesque period, mainly illustrated using the examples of the Marienmünster monastery church and the parish church of St. Kilian zu Höxter. Dissertation Hanover 2003 ( digitized version )

Web links

Commons : Westwerke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Franz Falk : On the older bell customer . In: Der Katholik 49, NF 22, 1869, pp. 589–602, 701–710, here p. 602
  2. ↑ Uwe Lobbedey: "Westwerke" of the 12th century in Westphalia. In: Maike Kozok: Architecture, Structure, Symbol. Petersberg 1999, p. 85.
  3. ↑ Werner Müller / Gunther Vogel: dtv-Atlas zur Baukunst , Volume 2, 5th edition 1987, page 371
  4. ↑ Uwe Lobbedey: "Westwerke" of the 12th century in Westphalia. In: Maike Kozok: Architecture, Structure, Symbol. Petersberg 1999, p. 87.