Neubukow

The present font in Neubukow Stadtkirche is made of stone, and consists of a roughly hemispherical basin decorated with a blind arcade of shallow round arches, raised on a moulded round pedestal stem and a circular lower base decorated with four human heads set at 90-degree angles; the lower base is partly sunk into the flooring. No cover present [uses a 19th-century brass baptismal dish [cf. infra]). Jörg Utpatel's Das rätselhafte Verschwinden der Neubukower Taufsteine in the Kirchengemeinde Neubukow und Westenbrügge (2009/2011/2021) [https://kirche-neubukow.de/wordpress/?page_id=52] [accessed 27 September 2023] narrates and illustrates the intriguing and somewhat outrageous story of the baptismal fonts in the Stadtkirche Neubukow. A baptismal font made of granite in the 13th century, originally from the church in Alt Karin, from which church it was removed in the 19th century and re-purposed as planter in the Gutspark of that town. The font from Alt Karin was moved to Neubukow in 1950; the old font from the Neubukow reported as made of cheap sandstone ["aus billigem hellem Sandstein wurde"] as having been broken up and built into the foundations of a private dwelling in town; another font made of cast iron, on a stone base and provided with a brass baptismal dish had also been installed in between in Neubukow; the stone base of that font can still be seen outside, next to the church tower; the brass baptismal dish is still in use inside the church; the font itself is described in the same source [cf. supra] as being a mass-produced work of the 19th century ["Massenprodukt aus dem 19. Jahrhundert handelt"], and appears to have ended up in the entrance hall at Biendorf Kirche. The strange saga of the Neubukow baptismal fonts continues, as the same source reports an 1853 statement by the then pastor August Müller declaring that there was no font in the church at all, and that baptisms in the parish were performed in the houses of the new borns; further, writes the said pastor, Senator Sengbush had taken the then abandoned font and used it as part of the foundations of his new house [cf. supra] being built in the southeast corner of the market square; that house was later taken over by the Negnal family