Petrikirche

The Petrikirche stands in Petershagen, a town in Germany. A predecessor on the same spot, first built around 1360, burned down in 1553. Between 1615 and 1618 the present hall church rose in its place, cut from Porta sandstone. It is a three-aisled, four-bay structure, Renaissance in style with Gothic elements throughout. The design follows the town church at Bückeburg but leaves out its ornate Renaissance facade.

The tower sits on the western bay of the central nave and carries a Welsche dome from 1732. The choir matches the width of the nave and is three-aisled with straight, slanted corners. Inside you find cross-ribbed vaults with keystones resting on octagonal pillars and consoles. The nave windows are round-arched, mostly three-part with tracery, while those in the tower are flat-arched. Above the round-arched west portal sits a bricked-up round window, adorned with rotating fish bladders. The furnishings are predominantly Renaissance: an octagonal baptismal font originally from the castle chapel, a sixteenth-century epitaph, and two bronze chandeliers. One of the chandeliers bears the year 1647.

The building was the main church at the seat of the bishop. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 it served the Brandenburg administration in the same role. Theological education and teacher training found a home here as well, and several first pastors also acted as superintendents. A renovation late in the twentieth century removed the galleries added in 1840 and gave the interior back its light-flooded Gothic character. One epitaph remembers Engelbart von Bessel and his wife Johanna von Schaumburg, ancestors of the astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel.