Old church Stuttgart-Heumaden
The Old Church , located in the Heumaden district of Stuttgart ( Sillenbuch district ), is used by the Alt-Heumaden Evangelical Church .
New building in 1499
In the 15th century Heumaden was attacked several times by the Free Imperial City of Esslingen . In the course of rebuilding after the attack in 1499, a new church was also built.
The eastern part of the church seems to date from this time : the choir with its late Gothic tracery windows and buttresses as well as part of the nave . The floor plan of this part of the building at that time corresponds to the current one. The western part of the ship was then about two meters lower than the choir. Probably in the same place as today, a much smaller tower was enthroned on the roof.
As the congregation grew, the church was extended to the west. The date of this construction project is not known, but the newly added part of the building probably looked rather poor in appearance, as many structural compromises had to be made. For example, only relatively small windows on the street side were possible because half of the wall was in the ground.
During the Reformation in the middle of the 16th century, the wall paintings were painted over. The altarpieces were also removed after the gold had been scraped off. Presumably between the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War an antechamber was built in. Now not all churchgoers had a clear view of the altar , but the Protestant church service focused more on listening to the sermon .
There is speculation about the name under which the church was originally consecrated. According to the book about Heumaden, which the then pastor Fritz published in 1916, it was a Marienkirche . A bell from 1480, which hung in the church tower until 1899 , had the inscription " Holy Ottilie, please for us" and thus gave rise to assumptions that it was an Ottilien church. The place Heumaden also belonged for a long time to the monastery of St. Odile in Alsace . A St. Blasius Church would also be conceivable , because after a legal dispute that Johannes Reuchlin settled at the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century, Heumaden came to the Benedictine monastery of St. Blasien in the southern Black Forest . Because of the unclear sources , the building of the church is known today simply as "Old Church Heumaden".
On February 17, 1615, Heinrich Kepler , the brother of the astronomer Johannes Kepler , was buried in the cemetery surrounding the church . Heinrich Kepler's sister was the wife of the then Heumaden pastor . However, the tombstone is no longer preserved today.
First reconstruction in 1666
The Heumaden Church was also damaged in the Thirty Years War. In addition, the church tower was struck by lightning in 1666, so that far-reaching construction work was necessary. The discussions about financing received in writing give a clear picture of the poor conditions of the rural population at the time.
In 1667 the stalls and panels were repaired and the paint was renewed. The 3 by 3 meter high tower, which is 3 meters high, was replaced by a taller and wider structure with the current dimensions. A new bell was purchased from the workshop of Hans Jakob Ernst in Esslingen, which is still hanging in the church today. It is the only bell that survived the two world wars.
Hans Bockel, who originally came from Möhringen and was mayor of Heumaden at the end of the 17th century (1676 to 1691 or 1711), donated the early Gothic crucifix in the choir room. It seems to be much older, but the origin is unknown.
When an organ was bought in 1758 , a second antechamber had to be built in for it. It is no longer known where it was. It was demolished in 1786 and the organ was placed in another antechamber behind the choir. Other renovations were also carried out this year. The floor and some of the stalls were renewed, the transom walls and some of the beams in the tower were replaced. In 1793 the roof was re-covered.
Until 1841, the north side of the church and rectory were surrounded by a 5 meter high wall, which had a passage to the rectory and the cemetery. To make room for a watercourse from the street down to the fountain, this wall was torn down, which gave the church and rectory much more light. Remnants of the wall can still be seen along the footpath on the east side of the church.
Until 1875 the outer walls of the church tower were plastered. Then, on the advice of a building expert, they were shod with zinc sheet.
Before the major renovation in 1893, the church had four windows in the choir and one in the nave, as well as small openings with windows, some of them round, some elongated, some square. The organ stood on the gallery in the choir and covered the four windows there. On the north side of the choir was the entrance door to the organ with a high stone staircase. The pulpit , similar to a wooden box, stood on a solid stone substructure coming from the sacristy to the left of the pulpit door. Some of the chairs were crooked, making it difficult to sit up straight. The floor was uneven and the northern outer wall was covered with mold . The entrances to the galleries were via external stairs. The organ "often whimpered during prayer and was silent while singing".
Second renovation in 1893
Between July and December 1893, the entire church was thoroughly renovated. The building was exposed on the street side, the outside stairs were removed, the steps in front of the church were moved inside, two large pointed arch windows were installed on both sides of the nave , the fifth choir window and the buttresses on the choir, which had partially disappeared, were restored and the roof was re-covered with interlocking tiles. Inside, the front church in the choir was removed and a new one with two longitudinal galleries was built in place of the old western front church, which also accommodated the organ. The ceiling of the ship was raised to match that of the choir, and more light was added to the ship through four skylights. This is where today's beautifully patterned wooden ceiling was created. The choir was separated from the nave by an arch, the new pulpit was placed close to this choir arch, because that way you could see the pulpit better from all places in the ship, the altar was moved back into the choir room, the entire stalls were replaced and a new organ set up. The tower remained in its old condition.
The architect and building officer Heinrich Dolmetsch was won over as the master builder for this thorough renovation . In particular, he built many churches in southern Germany and from 1906 to 1908 he was in charge of the new construction of the Markuskirche in Stuttgart South .
Modifications in the 20th century
The two-manual organ, the oldest parts of which date from the 19th century, was expanded to 15 registers in 1960 by the Weigle organ building company in St. Johann-Upfingen on the Swabian Alb .
In 2002 the outer sandstones were cleaned and treated and in August 2004 the interior painting of the church was renewed.
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 44 ′ 43 ″ N , 9 ° 14 ′ 18 ″ E