Berger Church (Stuttgart)
The Berger Church is the Protestant church in the Stuttgart district of Berg and the center of the "Evangelical Berg Church" within the Stuttgart church district . It is the neo-Gothic successor building to a medieval parish and pilgrimage church above the Neckar at the intersection of Klotzstrasse and Ottostrasse near Schwanenplatz. It was built on the site of Berg Castle at the end of the 13th century and a choir was added in the 15th century .
location
The Berger Church is located in the Berg district of Stuttgart in a dominant position on a mountain spur in the west of the Neckar Valley. The area of the church extends north of Klotzstraße at a height of 235 meters and drops to the north and east to 220 meters to the Neckar valley. The Mühlkanal, which was drained in 1929, used to flow past in the east, a branch of the Neckar (since 1937 the street “Am Mühlkanal” has been reminiscent of the canal that used to flow here). In 1942, an air raid shelter with an entrance at the foot of the church at the Wera house at Nißlestraße 22 was built under the church .
Building history
Due to the early onset of industrialization in Berg, which was heavily promoted by the Württemberg royal family , companies settled here whose labor demand accelerated population growth. Soon the old church became too small and a new building seemed necessary.
In 1851 the parish council of the Berger parish asked the royal finance ministry to allow the church to be expanded. Due to the proximity to Rosenstein Castle and Villa Berg , the residence of the Crown Prince couple, an architectural competition was held. The winner was chief building officer Ludwig Friedrich Gaab , who planned a new building in the medieval style while retaining the architecturally valuable old choir according to the shape and space of the church .
After a few changes to the plan, the new church was built between 1853 and 1855. In contrast to the original plans, the entire church, including the choir, which was considered valuable, was demolished. The Württemberg king contributed a large part of the building costs from his private assets, which made the elaborate decor of the church possible.
During the first renovation of the church in 1893, five new glass windows were installed in the chancel, heating and gas lighting that was modern for the time was installed.
Renovations to the exterior were decided in 1912, as the risk of falling rocks increased due to increasing weathering.
During the Second World War , the church was hit by two incendiary bombs and burned out. Demolition of the building was initially considered, but since the outer walls were well preserved, it was decided in 1954 to restore it in a simplified form.
Building description
The Berger Church is the first neo-Gothic church in Württemberg. Their style follows the tradition of the early neo-Gothic of the first half of the 19th century. This was mainly influenced by the romantic reception of the Middle Ages in general and classicist architectural ideals in particular. The buildings of this time were mostly limited to decorative elements such as pointed arch windows , pinnacles , tracery parapets and openwork spire helmets, some of which were painted in front of - or put on - the facades and components of the otherwise more modern, i.e. classically developed buildings.
The outer
The Berger Church follows this design principle. Its exterior shows a completely symmetrical arrangement of three lined up structures of different heights made of sandstone blocks . The 33.4 meter high tower in the west is followed by a five-bay and originally three-aisled nave, which is closed in the east by a short, lower choir formed by five sides of the octagon. The building has a regular vertical structure with buttresses, slender window openings and portals on the sides of the nave and the walls of the choir apse.
Due to the position in front of the west facade of the nave and its relatively high height in relation to the total length of the complex, the tower becomes the dominant component of the church. Its structure is divided into four floors and a tower spire. The lowest floor, built on a square floor plan, is broken through on three sides by open portals and thus forms a vestibule for the main portal on the west side of the nave. A long, three-lane tracery window rises above it and a rose window on each side of the tower. Above this equally square second floor, on the third and fourth floors, there is a return to the tower octagon with a clock bottom and bell room. This opens on all sides with two-lane tracery windows overlaid with eyelashes. The top of the tower is formed by an openwork tracery helmet richly decorated with tracery and crabs, which ends in a large finial.
The north and south facades of the nave are symmetrical. In the middle of the five yokes, separated from each other by buttresses, there is a portal richly decorated with tracery in tympanum and eyelashes and a round window above. The remaining yokes are adorned with two-lane tracery windows with couronnements made up of two three-pass and one four-pass. The same windows originally adorned the polygonal choir. This is accompanied by small rectangular extensions with pent roofs in the north and south. These include the sacristy and stair access to the basement of the church.
Before the war, the nave and choir were adorned with a surrounding tracery balustrade and pinnacle crowns above the buttresses. When the church was rebuilt in the 1950s, however, these forms of jewelry were removed, thereby simplifying the external appearance of the church. The choir was also changed due to a partial demolition during the reconstruction, which means that it now has smaller and simpler windows than before the war.
The inner
The original three-aisles of the church were given up after the war when the church was rebuilt in favor of a simple church hall. The eight lost sandstone pillars originally carried a stuccoed ribbed vault based on high Gothic models. The pillars and vault ribs were left in the color of sandstone , the vault caps were yellow and the side walls of the nave were framed in a shade of blue. Today, a flat wooden beam ceiling closes the room at the top. An L-shaped gallery on the west and north side walls also changes the originally longitudinal character of the interior of the church. The triumphal arch between the choir and nave was taken from the old room design in a simplified manner. He leads the choir in the three steps higher. Before the war, this was where the access to the crown prince couple's box was located.
Equipment
Only a few pieces of the equipment of the pre-war building have survived. This includes, as the most valuable piece of furniture, the late Gothic baptismal font of the medieval predecessor church from 1470. Due to the destruction of the war it lost its neo-Gothic foot and was made usable again for baptisms in an extensive renovation in 2004.
Today's interior consists essentially of a pulpit decorated with reliefs by Ulrich Henn from 1955, an organ with 25 registers from Walcker & Cie., Ludwigsburg from 1956 and glass windows in the choir by Gudrun Müsse Florin from 1991. A three-part bell hangs in the tower , consisting of a loan bell from Upper Silesia and two bronze bells newly cast 1952–53.
View from the north, 1862.
View from the south, design drawing by Ludwig Friedrich Gaab, 1862.
View from the west, design drawing by Ludwig Friedrich Gaab, 1862.
meaning
The Berger Church is the first neo-Gothic church building in Stuttgart and Württemberg . It therefore has a special position as an architectural monument for the city and the region.
With it, a prototype was developed for the later church buildings of the Evangelical Church in Württemberg in the 19th century, the shape of which influenced the Eisenach regulation of 1861, which laid down rules and guidelines for Protestant church building. One of the central demands was that future buildings should primarily be based on one of the Christian architectural styles - and in particular the Gothic style, which was regarded as "Germanic" at the time. It can be assumed that this program was significantly influenced by Württemberg. The construction of the Berger Church in Stuttgart is an important testimony to this.
At the same time, in its exposed location at the eastern entrance from the Neckar valley to Stuttgart city center, the church still represents an important urban focal point as a landmark that allows the romantic lines of sight and landscape references conceived in the 19th century for the expansion of the residential city to be understood.
During the Second World War, the mining tunnels directly under the church offered most of the “miners” safe protection from the many air raids on the city.
model
The church served as a model for a 1:87 scale (H0) model, which can be found on many model railways. The model was produced by the Stuttgart model railway accessories manufacturer Vollmer . A short time later, the 1: 160 model (N gauge) from the same company followed.
literature
- Elmar Blessing; Elisabeth Frister; Bettina Sernatinger: Berger Church: architecture, history, art. Stuttgart: Evangelical Church Community Berg, 2005.
- E. Brösamlen: The beautiful Stuttgart mountain. A home book. Stuttgart 1939, pages 15-20.
- Ludwig Friedrich Gaab : The New Church in Berg near Stuttgart. According to the original drawings. Stuttgart: Jäger, 1862.
- Heinrich Hartmann: The consecration of the church in Berg, September 30, 1853. In: Evangelisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt first for Württemberg, Volume 17, 1856, Pages 99-102, 119-125.
- Eva-Maria Seng: The Protestant Church Building in the 19th Century. The Eisenach movement and the architect Christian Friedrich von Leins. Tübingen, 1995, pages 430-436, 207-209.
- Martin Woerner; Gilbert Lupfer; Ute Schulz: Architectural Guide Stuttgart. Berlin 2006, page 96.
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 47 ′ 48 ″ N , 9 ° 12 ′ 38 ″ E