St. Matthäus, Melle: A Historic Catholic Parish Church in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page17 sections
History
St. Matthäus is a Roman Catholic church in Melle, Germany, founded around 800 as the baptismal church of the Grönegau after the establishment of the Diocese of Osnabrück around 780. It stood on a bishop-owned farmstead on a rise above the Else river valley near the Wiehen Hills and became the original parish of the Grönenberg deanery. The surviving old church is regarded as an outstanding example of Lower German architecture around 1200.
Early parish and medieval expansion
The earliest surviving written reference dates from 1169, when the church was called Parochia Menele, meaning the parish church of Melle. The foundation of the town belongs to the same period. St. Matthäus probably first stood under the patronage of Saint Peter. An eleventh-century sculpture of Peter’s head, once set into the sacristy wall, survives in the Diocesan Museum in Osnabrück. During the twelfth century, the patronage probably changed to Saint Matthew as devotion to the apostle spread in Germany.
The church was enlarged in 1375 with a choir and a side aisle. In 1443, Heinrich of Münster, administrator of the Diocese of Osnabrück, granted Melle town-law privileges. The Grönenburg castlemen and many parishioners established a vicariate in 1461, giving the parish two clergy members.
Confessional division and Catholic continuity
The Reformation reached Melle on 1 August 1545. St. Matthäus then became a simultaneous church, meaning that Catholics and Protestants shared the building institutionally and for worship. This arrangement lasted until the Protestant St. Petri Church was built in 1651. The Recessus Mellensis of that year divided the church’s property, leaving the church, its valuable furnishings, and the vicar’s and sacristan’s houses with the Catholics. Jesuits carried out pastoral work in the parish during this period.
A plundering in 1630 removed church ornaments, chalices, and covered vessels for consecrated hosts. Later inventories from 1651, 1705, 1724, and 1900 trace the equipment that survived and the liturgical possessions subsequently acquired. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the von Nehem family of Sondermühlen supported the Catholic congregation with an altarpiece, decorated chalices, a monstrance, and an eternal-light lamp. The surviving monstrance bears the arms of Friedrich von Nehem and was donated in 1676.
Fire, rebuilding, and nineteenth-century parish life
The great Melle town fire of 10 May 1720 destroyed the church roof structure, bells, and clockwork. The massive vault protected the interior, allowing worship to continue while the damaged parts were rebuilt. Reconstruction was completed by 1722 during the pastorate of Friedrich Wilhelm Hoet, whose tenure also saw the rebuilding of the tower, roof structure, vicarage, and school. A new three-bell peal was completed in 1727, and the clock was replaced after the fire and repaired again in 1724.
Canon and provost Theodor Heinrich von Nehem commissioned the 1681 altarpiece showing the martyrdom of Saint Matthew. Around 1800, Pastor Johann Heinrich Richter commissioned figures of the four evangelists and later obtained the former organ of the Dominican church in Osnabrück after secularization. Pastor Johann Bernhard Siebenbürgen founded the Catholic St. Matthew Hospital. The fourteen Stations of the Cross were produced in 1893 for his golden priestly jubilee.
A cemetery surrounded the church until the end of the nineteenth century. A Catholic school was later built to the south, and the new church eventually rose on the school’s site. The parish’s wider organization also developed over time. Sondermühlen joined the St. Matthäus pastoral area in 1965, Buer followed in 1990, and Riemsloh and Schiplage–St. Annen were added in November 2010 to form the Melle-Ost parish community. Since the late 1980s, the vicar’s position has generally remained vacant because of the shortage of priests.
The new church
A ten-year planning process led by Hans Ostermann and Bernt Droste of Münster resulted in the decision to retain the old church while constructing a second building beside it. Work on the new church began in spring 1973 along the old church’s southern exterior wall. Bishop Helmut Hermann Wittler and Dean Klaus Plate laid the foundation stone on 4 October 1973 and consecrated the building on 19 October 1974.
The new church was designed for the liturgical requirements associated with the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic council held from 1962 to 1965 that promoted changes in worship and pastoral practice. It became the Sunday and festival church and a venue for large concerts, while the old building continued as the baptismal, wedding, and weekday church. Together, the two buildings preserve the parish’s long development from an early medieval baptismal church to a modern Catholic complex.
Remains
The medieval church
Structure and portal
The old church stands on the Kohlbrink, a rise in the Else valley beside Melle’s town hall and the Protestant St. Petri Church. Its exterior walls are completely preserved and faced with squared greenish reed sandstone quarried from the nearby Wiehen Hills. The vault keystone bears the year 1213 in written tradition. The medieval building was enlarged in 1375 by adding the choir and side aisle. On the south wall, the Beautiful Portal, also called the Bridal Portal, has an entrance arranged in three stepped orders. Each order contains three column settings, and the capitals carry richly carved naturalistic foliage.
Altarpieces and altar sculpture
The 1681 Baroque altarpiece commissioned by Theodor Heinrich von Nehem is now mounted on the north wall of the choir. It depicts the martyrdom of Saint Matthew, with the donor and his relatives placed at the sides and a donor inscription incorporated into the image. The painting was probably made by Andrea Alovisii, an Italian-born artist who served for almost twenty years as court painter to Franz Wilhelm von Wartenberg, prince-bishop of Osnabrück.
Georg Gerhard Wessel created a new high altar in 1810 in the Byzantine-Corinthian style, combining Byzantine and Corinthian elements. Its Calvary scene showed Christ on the cross between four stone columns, accompanied by Mary and John, and occupied the full width of the choir. Wessel also made the Joseph and Mary side altars in the Louis-Seize style, a restrained late-eighteenth-century classical form. These altars were dismantled in 1975 and stored for possible reconstruction.
A narrow Neo-Gothic high altar by the Osnabrück sculptor Seling replaced Wessel’s altar in 1871. Its Crucifixion group included Mary, Mary Magdalene, John, and weeping women. The cross is considered lost, while the figures survive. In 1932, Ludwig Nolde of Osnabrück made an altar with four lindenwood reliefs showing the Nativity, Christ’s prayer on the Mount of Olives, the Resurrection, and Christ as Judge of the World. The altar was dismantled during the 1975 restoration, and the reliefs were moved to the south wall. Vandalism damaged them in 2010, after which a restorer repaired them in 2011. A stone sacrament stele now occupies the former high-altar position.
Crosses, saints, and baptismal furnishings
The thirteenth-century Gothic triumphal cross is one of the few monumental crosses in the Diocese of Osnabrück. Its crossbeam ends carry the traditional symbols of the four evangelists: Matthew as a man, Mark as a lion, Luke as a bull, and John as an eagle. A larger-than-life oak cross from the eighteenth century formerly hung on the west side of the tower. Tradition associates it with the former Dominican church in Osnabrück and attributes it to the Münster artist Johann Mauritz Gröninger. Restoration showed that it was not made for outdoor use, so it was placed in the tower chapel after its paint layers were removed.
Another cross came from the Ellebrecht farm in Gerden, where it had stood for more than 200 years. The parish acquired it and installed it in the new church on the former exterior wall of the old building. Restoration revealed the carefully carved body of Christ. The late Baroque Man of Sorrows, an image of Christ emphasizing the physical and emotional suffering of the Passion, is a seated figure with raised, folded hands and probably another work by Gröninger.
A Late Gothic Madonna and a bishop figure, both probably made around 1470, are mounted on the former exterior wall now incorporated into the new building. The Madonna emphasizes the intimate relationship between mother and child. The bishop may represent Saint Wiho, the first bishop of Osnabrück, although Saint Blaise and Saint Nicholas have also been proposed. The baptismal font originally stood in a baptismal chapel on the north side of the tower. Its lower section is an early nineteenth-century Doric column decorated with a garland, angel heads, and an acanthus-leaf ring. The late nineteenth-century lid shows the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the Jordan. After the 1975 restoration, the font was moved to the front right of the new altar area.
Evangelists, pulpit, and devotional objects
Wessel’s four evangelist figures, commissioned around 1800, are attached to the north wall at the middle level of the nave. Their original colors were uncovered and completed during a later restoration by the Ochsenfarth restoration firm of Paderborn. Wessel also made the pulpit around 1800. Its four parapet panels contain garlands and grape clusters, while angel heads and two putti decorate the upper sections. The base has acanthus foliage and a grape, and a dove beneath the sounding board represents the Holy Spirit. The cover is crowned by the Good Shepherd carried by six broad volutes.
The fourteen Stations of the Cross, a sequence of devotional scenes representing Christ’s way to the Crucifixion, were made from fired red clay in 1893. Their oak frames follow the Neo-Gothic form of the former high altar. A late-sixteenth-century choir or church stall on the organ gallery bears two inscriptions and the arms of the Meierinck family. A late-Gothic choir stall from around 1500 stands in the altar area. Its side panels and seats are original, while its front and rear panels were renewed over the centuries. Carved lancet and multi-light window patterns, rosettes, hinged seats, and misericords, small supports beneath hinged choir seats, decorate the panels.
Organs, bells, and clock
The surviving Baroque organ was made in 1713 by Johann Berenhard Klausing or his father, Hinrich Klausing. It originally had 17 stops on two manuals and no pedal. The parish received it in 1819, and Caspar Melchior Kersting expanded it to 26 stops in 1861. Franz Breil carried out further work in 1964 and 1979, and the Ahrend organ-building company restored it in 2009. The pedal section was later reduced by removing three stops.
Earlier instruments included an organ recorded in 1589 and a small organ mentioned in 1651 above the sacristy on the north wall. The Klausing family maintained the latter from 1665. Johann Adam Berner built a new one-manual organ in 1721 and 1722, although the 1720 fire affected it. The tower bells are recorded from 1589 and were recast in 1591. Three large bells were listed in 1705, including a small older bell inscribed with the words “Ave Maria, gratia plena.” The fire destroyed them, leading to the new peal completed in 1727. Later replacements followed in 1792, 1842, and 1843.
The two largest bells were confiscated for wartime purposes in 1917. Parish collections paid for two replacements in 1925. The large bell was recovered from the Hamburg bell cemetery in 1946, while the middle bell was recast in 1957 and weighs 1,515 kilograms. Its inscription invokes the Queen of Peace. A tower clock probably existed from the early seventeenth century and was regulated with a sundial on the south side of the tower. Its mechanism was repaired in 1649 and 1663, replaced after the fire, and repaired again in 1724. A radio-controlled electronic clock replaced the old movement in 2006, while the historic dials and hands were retained.
Chest and crèche
A seventeenth-century oak chest with hand-forged iron straps and locks served as the collection chest until 1920. It is a rare Stollentruhe, a chest supported by projecting feet or corner posts, in the Osnabrück region. Traces of the arms of Voß zum Dyck and von Haren auf Laer remain on it. The parish’s Christmas crèche, made in 1888, contains 22 painted figures, including the Christ child, Mary, Joseph, the ox and ass, sheep, a dog, shepherds, maids, the Three Kings, and a camel. The figures reach 80 centimetres in height. The crèche stood before the Mary altar until 1972 and is now placed at the Bridal Portal between the old and new churches.
The modern church
Plan and altar area
The new church adjoins the southern wall of the old building. Its principal interior follows an approximately square plan beneath a tent-shaped folded roof. The roof supports remain visible, and its ridges, peaks, and valleys meet in a carefully executed structural pattern. About 800 seats are arranged in five blocks around a semicircular altar area. The central celebration altar and sacrament stele are made of Italian travertine. The large rising stele contains the tabernacle, the container for consecrated Eucharistic hosts, whose door depicts the burning bush. A separate column, two metres high, supports the eternal light.
Above the altar hangs a five-panel bronze cross showing the Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Christ in eternity. A bronze ambo, the raised stand used for Scripture readings, stands beside the altar and is decorated with a dove. Walter Mellmann, a sculptor from Osnabrück, designed the altar area. The church also contains Franz Breil’s organ, built in 1977 and installed to the left of the ambo. It has 30 stops and 2,450 pipes distributed across two manuals and a pedal. The second manual is enclosed, the action is mechanical, and the stop action is electromagnetic.
Stained glass
Manfred Espeter of Münster created the new church’s ornamental stained glass. Large triangular window fields form part of the tent-roof structure and narrow into rectangular windows below. Their abstract motifs include rays, clouds, drops, leaves, and crystals that catch the light. The leaf is repeated in every window. The windows use mouth-blown Echt-Antikglas with layers of colored glass and lead glazing. This layered method makes the glass opaque while admitting daylight, while integrated glass spheres and cylinders concentrate and reflect it.
The windows have no narrative program. Their triangular forms echo the church’s pyramidal architecture, and their size allows them to function visually as window walls. The old church’s figurative windows present symbols of the Old Covenant, including the Ark, the burning bush, the tablets of the Law, Christ as the shoot from Israel, and the apocalyptic Lamb. Their imagery contrasts with the new church’s tent-like symbolism of God dwelling among humanity, expressed through ideas of freedom, movement, simplicity, and closeness to nature.
Liturgical equipment
The parish retains a body of liturgical equipment accumulated over several centuries. It includes a monstrance, a vessel used to display the consecrated Eucharistic host, chalices, a ciborium, candlesticks, an eternal-light lamp, a silver incense vessel, vessels for oils and hosts, a missal with silver fittings, Marian crowns, a sceptre, a small gold cross, an Agnus Dei, and vestments. Items listed in the 1724 inventory and included in a 1900 insurance policy are stated to have survived.
