St.Bartholomäus-Kirche

St. Bartholomew-Wesselburen

St. Bartholomew's Church in Wesselburen is named after one of Jesus' twelve disciples. At the site where the current church stands, a church was already built before 1200. It had the length of the current church and the width of today's altar area. Its walls were made of fieldstones. If you walk around the chancel from the outside, you can still see them. From this oldest period of our church comes the sandstone font, at the center of which stands the depiction of the four primary rivers flowing from paradise. After about 2 centuries, a reconstruction took place: a side aisle was added to the north and south, and a three-nave church was created. The sacristy and the eastern end walls of the two side aisles of this Gothic building have been preserved in their original form. Everything else fell victim to the great fire of 1736. Only two late Gothic figures, Mary and John, from a master close to Brüggemann, were saved by chance. They stand today on the side of the pulpit. After the great fire, which also reduced large parts of Wesselburen to ashes, the master builder from Heide, Johann Georg Schott, was commissioned to rebuild the burned church. From the old church, the only partially destroyed surrounding walls could be reused. The three-nave structure was abandoned, and an almost square church nave with a narrow chancel and apse, a wooden cradle vault and three galleries was created. The tower stump in the west was partially removed and integrated with the church nave under a unified roof structure. The bells were hung in the tower stump. In 1738, the new church could be consecrated - in the presence of Duke Carl Friedrich, who had determined the current form of the church, an unusual roof structure with the prominently visible bulb-shaped turret. The furnishings of the church are uniformly in the late Baroque style. The pulpit comes from the Wesselburen carpenter and sculptor Albert Heinrich Burmeister. It is supported by figures of Moses and John the Baptist. The altar was made in Lübeck: as a replica of the altar from the time of the Church of Mary. The reconstruction of St. Bartholomew's Church just two years after the fire is the reason for the inscription in the vault, Original: "The wrath of God burned me through fire (1736). Now I am rebuilt, but how? By the hand of God (1738). You hold your hand over me." Noteworthy are the "Red Chair" under the organ and the "Blue Chair" to the left of the chancel. The seats in these were sold to wealthy citizens to finance the construction of the church. The church council has decided to replace the existing Tolle organ from 1968 with a reconstruction of the original instrument of the Arp-Schnittger student Klapmeyer. Because this instrument represents an important building block in the overall artwork of St. Bartholomew. Therefore, in 1995 the St. Bartholomew Organ Building Association was founded. Through the contributions of the members, fundraising at events of all kinds, benefit concerts of our organist Gunnar Sundebo, etc., the financing of this extensive task has been supported with 400,000 of 560,000 EUR. After years of work, the organ has now been consecrated.