The choir section of the church
The church of St. Clemens (12th century) in the hamlet of Marklohe, near Nienburg an der Weser, Lower Saxony features some of the best-preserved ancient paintings in Germany. One of only 10 churches with a complete and undestroyed mural dating from pre-Reformation (1522) times, the mural depicts scenes from the Bible with an emphasis on what happens to you if you’re “bad.” After all, in those days, people couldn’t read and so they had to be shown vivid depictions of devils showing sinners into the mouth of Hell. Scary stuff, especially by candlelight.
Come in where it is warm - going to Hell
Not all of the scenes are terrifying
We stopped and visited Marklohe on Sunday, August 2nd during our extensive tour of Germany in celebration of Jim and Carol Rosenwinkel’s Golden Wedding Anniversary. The entire “crew” came along, for a group of 13. Here’s the family outside the ancestral church.
This church is the kind of place I would divert off course just to show an American visitor. It’s one of the very few in Germany with complete and vivid paintings which predate the Reformation. The paintings were covered over and only rediscovered and uncovered in the 1960s.