Barfüßerkirche, Erfurt

The Barfüßerkirche (pronounced [ˈbaːʁfyːsɐˌkɪʁçə], "Discalced's Church") in the historical city centre of Erfurt in Thuringia, Germany, belonged to the most important church buildings of the city and was one of the most elaborate mendicant churches in Germany until its extensive destruction by bombing in 1944. It was mainly built in the 14th century as a monastery church of the Franciscans, who were also called Barfüßer (the Discalced, meaning "the Barefoot"). The choir was restored in the 1950s; besides the nave's ruin, it is situated west of the Schlösserbrücke bridge on the right bank of the Breitstrom, a branch of the Gera river.

History

Franciscans' monastery

On 11 November 1224, the friars of the Franciscan Order, founded in 1210, settled outside the gates of Erfurt as the first mendicant order of the city. From 1221, the order spread throughout the empire as far as the Baltic Sea within a decade and favoured the cities for its monasteries. In Erfurt, they first took over the abandoned Church of the Holy Spirit, which had previously belonged to an Augustinian nunnery. At the instigation of the Archbishop of Mainz, they began building a church and monastery in 1229–30 and probably devoted themselves to nursing the sick. Seven years after their arrival, in 1231, they moved into convent buildings on the Gera river on a plot of land given to them by the archbishop's vicedominus of Apolda, Gunther. On 25 September 1259, Archbishop Gerhard I of Mainz was buried in this church. The monastery was ravaged by fires several times; in 1463, numerous Franciscans died of the plague.^[1][2] In the course of the 13th century, the Erfurt convent became one of the central places of the order's province, where most of the provincial chapters of Saxonia were held in the Middle Ages. Therefore, it can be concluded that the buildings must have been of a certain size.

The Franciscans probably soon founded a school and, from the beginning of the 1230s, a house of studies (studium custodiale, studium particulare) existed in Erfurt for the education first of the young friars in the Custody of Thuringia, a subdivision of the Saxon Franciscan Province (Saxonia) founded in 1230, but the studies soon developed both in terms of their level of content and their extent. The lector had a socius at his side, and from 1371, a second lector is recorded.

After the city fire of 1291, construction of a new monastery church began, the choir of which was consecrated in 1316. Construction work on the nave of the three-aisled pillar basilica lasted until the beginning of the 15th century, and the tower was completed around 1400. The High-Gothic church with a long continuous gable roof was one of the largest churches in the city and was a prominent feature in the cityscape during the following centuries.

The elongated nave differs from that of the neighbouring

Around 1925, Lyonel Feininger painted several pictures of the Barfüßerkirche, one of which is kept in the Angermuseum in Erfurt, another in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. In the course of renovation work by Feininger's student Theo Kellner, ceiling paintings by Charles Crodel were created in 1938, destroyed in 1944.

During the

On 27 November 1944, on the night of the Sunday before Advent on which the dead are commemorated by Protestants in Germany, the church, as well as the neighbouring residential area and the vicarage, were hit by an aerial mine during the attack on Erfurt by several British Mosquito bombers.^[11] The nave was destroyed, the high choir severely damaged. The clean-up work and the salvage of valuable architectural parts took place under the difficult wartime and post-war conditions. The partially destroyed pews of the church were burnt by the freezing population in the harsh winter of 1945.

On Ascension Day in 1957, a service was held again for the first time in the high choir, which had been repaired since 1950 and separated from the destroyed nave by a wall. The remains of the coloured glazing of six windows (from 1230 to 1240) had been inserted into the tracery of three windows on a smaller area. The high altar from 1445, which had been freed from its walled enclosure and restored, was put back into use.^[12][13] The remains of the nave could only be statically stabilised.

Due to declining membership, the congregations of the Barfüßerkirche and the Predigerkirche in Erfurt's city centre merged in 1977, and the Barfüßerkirche was handed over to the city. After further renovations of the choir, the church building became the branch of the Angermuseum for Medieval Art in 1983. Since 1989, further urgently needed conservation measures have been carried out. In November 2011, the city of Erfurt received the sum of €100,000 from federal funds for restoration work as part of the "Nationally Valuable Cultural Monuments" monument preservation programme.^[14] A total of €1.3 million was spent on static stabilisation and stone restoration as well as monument preservation work until 2015.

After 1990, a commemorative plaque on the street-facing outer wall in front of the ruin from the GDR era was removed, which had contained the following sentence in capital letters: "Destroyed by Anglo-American bombers on 26/11/1944." Since about the year 2000, theatre performances have been held inside the war ruins, preferably comedy plays such as Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In 2007, a "Barfüßerkirche" working group was formed with the aim of raising the awareness of the people of Erfurt for this monument of national importance and thus to ensure the preservation of the ruin in the long term, or to have the church rebuilt one day.^[15] In 2009, the "Initiativkreis Barfüßerkirche" was formed as an independent association from the "Barfüßerkirche" working group. It consists of twelve voluntary members.

At the end of November 2012, the "Initiativkreis Barfüßerkirche" placed a newly cast bronze relief "Totentanz" ("Dance of the Dead") by Hans Walther (1947), based on a recovered plaster cast, on the outer wall in front of the ruins of the Barfüßerkirche, with an explanatory adjacent plaque: "Donated by friends of culture from Germany."^[16]

It is planned to intensify the use of the church as a museum, taking advantage of the Luther Year 2017, and to present the history of the mendicant orders in Erfurt.^{[citation needed]}

Interior

The polygonal choir has thirteen high windows, some of which are fitted with stained-glass panes that date from 1230 to 1240 and were already present in the Franciscan monastery. These precious panes show scenes from the Passion of Jesus and the life of Francis of Assisi. They are the oldest surviving depictions of Francis of Assisi in the territory of the former Holy Roman Empire and indicate a close relationship of the Barfüßerkirche with the mother monastery in Assisi.^[17][18]

• 
  Jesus window
• 
  Christ and ornamental window
• 
  Francis window
• 
  South window

The five-part winged

• 
  Feast day side
• 
  Sunday side
• 
  Weekday side
• 
  Gravestone of Cinna von Vargula

Also noteworthy are the gravestones of Cinna von Vargula from 1370 with an expressive stylised portrait of the deceased and of the auxiliary bishop Albert von Beichlingen from 1371.

Bibliography

• Arend-Mai, Otto (1989). Die evangelischen Kirchen in Erfurt (in German). Jena: Wartburg.
  ISBN 3-374-00936-0
  .
• Berg, Dieter, ed. (1999). Spuren franziskanischer Geschichte. Chronologischer Abriß der Geschichte der Sächsischen Franziskanerprovinzen von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (in German). Werl.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Bretschneider, Jana (2015). Honemann, Volker (ed.). Predigt, Professur und Provinzleitung. Funktion und Struktur des franziskanischen Bildungswesens im mittelalterlichen Thüringen (in German). Vol. 1: Von den Anfängen bis zur Reformation. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh.
  ISBN 978-3-506-76989-3. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
  )
• Initiativkreis Barfüßerkirche Erfurt, ed. (2014). Ein Bauwerk – zwei Schicksale. Zwischen Verzweiflung und Hoffnung: Die Barfüßerkirche zu Erfurt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Anläßlich des 70. Jahrestages der Zerstörung am 27. November 1944 (in German). Erfurt: Self-published.
• Meier, Ludger (1958). Die Barfüsserschule zu Erfurt (in German). Münster (Westfalen): Aschendorff.
• Schmies, Bernd; Honemann, Volker (2015). Honemann, Volker (ed.). Die Franziskanerprovinz Saxonia von den Anfängen bis 1517: Grundzüge und Entwicklungslinien (in German). Vol. 1: Von den Anfängen bis zur Reformation. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh.
  ISBN 978-3-506-76989-3. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
  )
• Vetter, Uwe (2004). Gemeindekirchenrat der Evangelischen Predigergemeinde (ed.). Die Barfüßerkirche. Denkschrift zur 60. Wiederkehr ihrer Zerstörung am 26./27.11.1944 (in German). Erfurt.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

References