Church in Lüdershagen (Hoppenrade): A Medieval Evangelical Village Church in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 3.3
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page16 sections
History
The Church in Lüdershagen (Hoppenrade) is an Evangelical village church in Lüdershagen, now a locality of Hoppenrade in Germany. Construction probably began in the early thirteenth century, during the late Romanesque period, and may have continued as the building adopted features associated with the transition to the Early Gothic style. Its long history is connected with the clergy, landed families, and rural communities of the surrounding Mecklenburg region.
Medieval Lüdershagen
Lüdershagen first appears in written history in 1288. In that year, Bishop Hermann of Schwerin confirmed the foundation of a hospital in Dobbertin. The foundation document named Pastor Detlev of Lüdershagen and the knight Detlev Wackerbart of Lüdershagen among those who helped endow the institution for the care of sick nuns from the Dobbertin convent. On 13 June 1288, Wackerbart also witnessed a document at Schwerin.
Wackerbart remained connected with the Dobbertin institution. In 1302, the Dobbertin monastery sold him an annual payment of 72 chickens from the village of Zahren near Kuppentin. He gave this income to the Dobbertin hospital, which may at that time still have operated mainly as a monastic infirmary. These records place Lüdershagen within a network of religious, charitable, and landed relationships during the period when its church was being built or completed.
The noble von Cölln family held its seat at present-day Kölln from about 1237 until the family died out in 1660. Heinrich de Colne, the first member of the family known from 1237, was also associated with Lüdershagen. The family may therefore have helped establish the church village, although the precise role of its members in the foundation remains uncertain.
War, rural decline, and the collapsed tower
The Thirty Years’ War, the major European conflict of 1618 to 1648, brought continuing hardship to the pastors of Lüdershagen. Their complaints describe the effects of wartime conditions but do not report damage to the church itself. The village was described as a sheep farm in 1627. By 1663, its population had fallen to two farmers, one smallholder, and one day laborer.
The church underwent a decisive physical change in 1776, when its west tower collapsed. The remaining tower walls were rebuilt only to the height of the nave, and the roof was extended westward across the reduced tower area. The bells apparently cracked when the tower fell. The altered west end still preserves the evidence of this event in its irregular masonry and reduced form.
Nineteenth-century remodeling and rediscovery
In 1836, Friedrich von Blücher took over the Lüdershagen estate and its church patronage from Privy Chamber Councillor Karl Christoph Count von Bassewitz. From January 1847, the interior was remodeled in the Neo-Gothic style under the direction of Josua Klockmann of Hoppenrade. The earlier furnishings were removed and subsequently destroyed. Valuable carvings, including an elaborately carved church chest, were stored in the loft of a pigsty in Hoppenrade and gradually decayed.
The church received a west organ gallery in August 1889. During the same year, Pastor Wilhelm Schulz began uncovering paintings that had been covered with later layers of paint in the chancel. The roof was renewed in 1891 to reduce moisture damage. Further work to expose the paintings began on 4 July 1898, and a report dated 9 November judged them probably thirteenth-century and of high art-historical value.
Friedrich Schlie and the Güstrow building surveyor Raspe recommended restoring the paintings in December 1898. The Mecklenburg Commission for the Preservation of Monuments approved the recommendation in February 1899. Regent Johann Albrecht and Princess Elisabeth of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach visited the church on 18 March 1899 to inspect the exposed paintings, the collapsed tower, and the bells. From 14 November to 9 December 1899, the Rostock court decorative painter Krause and two assistants restored the chancel paintings, and the scaffolding was removed on 20 December.
Later conservation and present parish
In 1988, the Schwerin Institute for Monument Preservation was informed that leaking roof surfaces were damaging the painted vault. After German reunification, the ceiling beams, roof structure, and roof covering were secured, repaired, and partly renewed. These interventions helped preserve the surviving medieval fabric and the chancel paintings.
The church is now part of the Evangelical-Lutheran Reinshagen parish, which includes Lüdershagen and several other localities. The parish belongs to the Rostock provostry and the Mecklenburg church district of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Northern Germany.
Remains
The church is a very elongated rectangular fieldstone building with a slightly recessed square chancel. Medieval fieldstone churches were built mainly from locally gathered or quarried stones set in mortar, while brick was commonly used for openings and decorative details. The building has a pitched roof covered with plain clay tiles. Its nave is unusually long and slightly wider than the chancel, while the reduced west-tower area forms part of the present roofed structure.
Building fabric and openings
Nave and chancel
Four evenly spaced round-arched windows pierce each side of the nave. The chancel has a paired window in its south wall and three windows grouped in the east gable. A horizontal round-arched frieze runs across the straight east gable, and a profiled brick portal with a round arch reinforces the building’s late-Romanesque character. A second round-arched portal on the south side has been blocked.
The chancel stands three steps above the nave and is separated from it by a pointed-arched triumphal arch. The nave has a flat ceiling formed by timber beams, and its white-painted walls are plain. Both the chancel and the former sacristy have rounded domical vaults, also called oven vaults, which lack the ribs and ridge lines associated with many Gothic vaults. The sacristy is entered through a round-arched portal in the north wall of the chancel and now serves as a winter church.
West end and former tower
The irregular fieldstone masonry at the west end indicates that the tower was added to the nave at a later stage. Following its collapse in 1776, the surviving walls were lowered to nave height and incorporated beneath the westward extension of the roof. A bell frame now occupies the ground floor behind the west gable.
Round-arched sound openings appear in the brick infill on both the north and south sides, at the level of the nave windows. The tall, stepped, pointed-arched main portal in the west gable is blocked. A simple doorway on the north side gives access to the bell frame. The 1847 alterations added pointed-arched doors in the north wall for access to the galleries and blocked the former round-arched priest’s doorway. The former sacristy was partly renewed during the same period.
Crypt annex
A plastered crypt annex stands at the southeast corner of the chancel. Three coffins belonging to the von Levetzow family of Koppelow were placed there in 1908. The annex forms a later funerary addition to the medieval church building.
Interior furnishings
Most of the present nave furnishings date from the Neo-Gothic remodeling after 1847. Gray-painted pews have distinctive side panels, and two long galleries run along the side walls. Their fronts repeat the decoration of the pew ends. The gallery supports consist of slender round iron rods with capital-like terminations made from curved sheet-metal elements.
The west organ gallery, installed in 1889, has Neo-Gothic details including pinnacles and crockets. The present altar is also Neo-Gothic and bears a representation of the Crucifixion. The pulpit stands on the north side of the chancel arch and has a plain Neo-Gothic parapet.
An inventory from 1811 described an earlier altar as being in poor condition. It stood within a railing dated 1702 and had an almost four-metre-high upper structure with a Crucifixion relief and painted side panels showing the twelve Apostles and the relatives of Jesus. A painted Last Supper occupied the lower section beneath the altar structure, while another crucifix, more than one metre high, stood above it.
A cupboard bearing a carved inscription was donated on 8 May 1702 by Pastor Johannes Scheiner and Michael Zencker. Marie Bahlmann, née Jenetzky, of Charlottenthal gave an altar painting on 12 September 1881, and Frau von Levetzow of Koppelow donated a crucifix for the altar in 1882. A 1702 pulpit bearing the alliance coat of arms of the Levetzow and Brömse families was still recorded in 1901. Its panels represented Christ, the four Evangelists, Peter, Paul, and John the Baptist. The wooden baptismal font and the 1668 confessional, decorated in 1736, have also disappeared.
Organ and bells
Organ
The church had no organ for centuries. Karl Georg Friedrich Bahlmann of Charlottenthal eventually donated a harmonium. In 1889, the Schwerin organ builder Friedrich Friese III made a gallery organ with six registers, one manual, and a pedal. It was installed on the west gallery by Friese and his assistant Heideck from 30 October to 4 November. Wismar music director Massmann inspected it on 18 November, and Pastor Wilhelm Schulz dedicated it on 19 November.
The organ’s tin façade pipes were removed for wartime armament purposes in 1917. The Schwerin organ builder Marcus Runge installed replacements in June 1926. During necessary cleaning in 1979, the Plau organ builder Wolfgang Nußbücker replaced the lost two-foot octave.
Bells
Before the tower collapsed, the west tower held two bronze bells. The smaller bell had been cast in 1463. Its Latin inscription called on Christ, described as the King of Glory, to come with peace, and a garland of alternating vine leaves and grapes ran along its lower edge.
The second earlier bell carried a Low German inscription describing God in heaven and on earth, the beginning and end, and all things as being in his hands. It named Christoffer von Cölln, son of Adam, identified Adam Pullow as pastor in 1607, and displayed the Mecklenburg ducal arms. The name Jochim Pulon, probably that of the bell founder, also appeared.
Both bells cracked in the 1776 tower collapse. On 12 June 1894, they were taken through Hoppenrade to Wismar, where court bell founder C. Oberg recast them. Two new bells arrived at Hoppenrade on 19 July and were transported to Lüdershagen. The larger carried the words “Glory be to God in the highest,” while the smaller read “Come, everything is ready!” and also named Pastor Schulz. The Güstrow state building surveyor Raspe inspected them on 9 August, and Pastor Schulz formally accepted them on 19 August 1894.
Chancel paintings
The most valuable surviving interior decoration is the series of figural frescoes in the chancel vault. They are generally dated around 1300 and probably originated in the thirteenth century. Pastor Wilhelm Schulz proposed the date 1268, but Friedrich Schlie considered that attribution too early because Lüdershagen was not documented at that time.
The paintings were originally of high quality and show recognizable influences from Lower Saxon and Westphalian mural painting. The 1898 and 1899 restoration strongly supplemented their contours and internal drawing, so the present appearance combines surviving medieval work with extensive restoration.
On the eastern side of the vault, Christ as Judge of the World sits within a mandorla, an almond-shaped frame around a sacred figure. He is surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists: a human figure for Matthew, a lion for Mark, an ox for Luke, and an eagle for John. Three saintly figures stand on each side of Christ, although their attributes have not survived.
The western side shows a seraph, a high-ranking angelic being, in an attitude of adoration. Beneath the enthroned Christ, a seated Madonna with the Child appears between a male and a female saint. A four-winged angel is painted above the chancel arch on its western side. During the restoration, the two saints beside the mandorla were given attributes identifying them as Peter and Paul. Painted brick frames around the doors and windows, together with gray painted curtains in the lower zone of the chancel walls, probably also date from this work.
Memorials and funerary remains
A tombstone with a relief figure of Hans von Cölln of Groß Grabow has stood against the north side of the chancel since 15 July 1930. It was formerly built into the exterior south façade. The life-sized relief shows Hans von Cölln in armor with folded hands, a sword to his right, and a helmet to his left. The von Cölln coat of arms and the initials “H. V. K.” appear below.
Hans von Cölln was born in 1515, took part in the siege of Magdeburg in 1550, and died at Groß Grabow on 17 March 1580. A grave slab in the churchyard, on the south side near the chancel, commemorates Henning Friedrich Count von Bassewitz, who was born in Paris on 21 June 1754 and died at Lüdershagen on 24 December 1829.
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