Six churches in Mittelstetten: on the trail of the ringing of bells

The sound of church bells accompanies everyday life in most of the villages in the district.

They also ring the bell from the church towers in the six districts of Mittelstetten.

The association “Dorfbelebung Mittelstetten” is currently working on a brochure on the six bells.

The daily newspaper presents them in a series.

Mittelstetten -

"One day I noticed that I hear the bells every day, but never see them and know nothing about them," says Magda Schebesta, chairwoman of the Mittelstetten Village Revitalization Association. With this in mind, a new project was born - a brochure about “The Bells of Mittelstetten”. Together with Katharina Schlamp, who is also active in the club, Schebesta got down to work.

They both wanted as much information as possible about the bells of the parish church St. Silvester (Mittelstetten), the subsidiary churches St. Stephan and Magdalena (Tegernbach) and St. John the Baptist and St. Michael (Vogach) as well as the chapels St. Sebastian (Oberdorf) , St. Katharina (Hanshofen) and St. Maria (Längenmoos). They discovered that the bells and their history are just as different as the churches and chapels themselves. The three Mittelstetten bells, for example, come from a foundry in Erding, which also includes the seven-tonne model in the Old Peter in Munich and a bell for the Cologne one Dom made. The Vogacher bells were melted down during the First World War and could only be replaced in 1924 with the help of donations from the villagers.

"Not even the village elders know this past of the giants in the church tower, who ring so naturally in prayer," says Katharina Schlamp.

"So it pays to reveal the secrets of our church bells and thus strengthen the feeling of home among our fellow citizens."

The association would like to organize hikes and bike tours to the churches (see box) in order to pass the information on to interested citizens.

The planned brochure is intended to secure the knowledge that has been gathered over the long term.

The research turned out to be tedious and lengthy. It was not made easier by the fact that the various places of worship belong to different parishes, indeed different dioceses. Mittelstetten, Vogach, Tegernbach and Oberdorf are part of the Baindlkirch parish community in the diocese of Augsburg. Hanshofen belongs to the parish of Günzlhofen in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising. The little chapel of St. Maria in Längenmoos doesn't belong anywhere - it is owned by the political community of Mittelstetten. Even their exact year of construction is unknown.

Schlamp and Schebesta patiently pored over old documents in parish archives, spoke with parish archivists, interviewed church carers and sacristans. They turned to the Office for Church Music in the Diocese of Augsburg, because here reports are made about bells when the ringing should be electrified. You also wrote to the Office for the Preservation of Monuments and the Bavarian Main State Archives.

In between there was still time to apply for the VR local award, financial support for voluntary work from the Volks- und Raiffeisenbank Fürstenfeldbruck.

And indeed, the village revitalization managed to get the most votes in the Hattenhofen business area, namely more than 400 - which is all the more astonishing since the association only has 40 members.

The price of 1000 euros can now be used to print the brochures, which are to be distributed free of charge to all households.

New series:

In the new series "The Bells of Mittelstetten", the daily newspaper presents all six bells and their history in cooperation with the association village revitalization.

The episodes appear in a loose series.

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