Читать книгу Romanesque Art - Victoria Charles - Страница 8

Of the ecclesiastical buildings in Saxony, the following must be emphasised alongside the Stiftskirche in Gernrode and the Michaeliskirche of Hildesheim in Lower Saxony, through which we demonstrated the main characteristics of the Romanesque style in its early and prime periods. They are the Schlosskirche (castle church) in Quedlinburg (Saxony-Anhalt) as well as the Godehardskirche (St Godehard’s Church) in Hildesheim, the Stiftskirche (collegiate church) in Königslutter and, above all, the cathedral in Braunschweig (all three in Lower Saxony). Because this cathedral was the first to employ vault construction, it became an example for the entire region. Originally a double-aisle pillar basilica, it accumulated four side aisles in the fourteenth century when its aisles were doubled. The building’s initial concept that strove for a serious, ceremonious effect was not impaired.

Horizontal plan, Maulbronn Abbey, Maulbronn (Germany), 1147 (monastery) and 1178–13^th century (church).

Wherever one finds a pure column basilica in Saxony, one can safely infer foreign sources. The church of the Paulinzella monastery in Thuringia (p.17–18), whose picturesque ruins still demonstrate today the artful structuring of the building, was built by monks from the Swabian Hirsau monastery. In the small town of Hirsau can be found a double-aisled building of about a hundred metres in length in the shape of a basilica, which was then the largest monastery with the largest Romanesque church building in Germany. At the end of the seventeenth century the church and a castle, which had been erected on the premises in the interim, were set on fire by French troops. Both magnificent buildings were destroyed by the flames. Only the cloister and one of the two original towers, the so-called Eulenturm (Owls’ Tower), survive today. The column basilica was the most common type of church in Swabia. Its most shining representatives are the cathedrals in Constance and Schaffenhausen, whereby the Constance cathedral was almost completely remodelled in the late Gothic period, particularly its exterior façade.

In the Rhineland, pillar basilicas are prevalent. This can probably be attributed to a quite common building material, the porous tuff stone, which could not be worked on in large pieces. Column basilicas are rare, particularly those with flat roofs, and the actual Rhineland building style of the Romanesque period achieved its highest development in the pillar basilica. The main representatives are the three central Rhineland Imperial Cathedrals in Mainz, Worms and Speyer. They are at the same time the most comprehensive and artistically perfected creations of Romanesque architecture in Germany. Thus, it is particularly mournful that they lost much of their original appearance due to fires, destruction in the many wars until the end of the eighteenth century, and the renovations of the recent past.