Mountain Church (Osthofen)
The mountain church in the Rhineland-Palatinate town of Osthofen goes back to a Franconian-Merovingian Remigius chapel. The church , which is essentially Romanesque , is used by the Protestant parish today and is a listed building .
history
On the Goldberg southwest of the city was built in the Merovingian one the Saint Remigius consecrated chapel . A Franconian burial ground was found in their vicinity. Towards the end of the first millennium, the chapel and a neighboring manor house developed into a castle complex that was used by the bailiffs for Osthofen. In 1241, after a dispute between the city of Worms, supported by Worms bishop Landolf von Hoheneck , and the Osthofen citizens , this fortification was demolished at the request of the Worms, but the church was preserved.
There are only a few remains of the early Romanesque church building from the 11th century, including the basement of the bell tower. The nave, choir and the second tower floor were rebuilt in the first half of the 12th century in the style of the Worms building school . The early Gothic St. Catherine's Chapel was added to the south of the choir around 1230, and a late Gothic sacristy was built on the north side around 1505 .
In the Thirty Years War the church burned down in 1621, after which it was only poorly restored. In 1706 it was awarded to the Reformed in the Palatinate church division , but was initially used as a simultaneous church. At the same time, however, the construction work remained with the Catholic Cathedral of Worms , which refused to invest in a reformed church. Because of this neglect, the nave collapsed on Ascension Day in 1729. It was not until 1744 that after lengthy legal disputes, reconstruction could begin, for the financing of which Elector Karl Theodor, as sovereign, obliged the Worms Cathedral Foundation to finance .
The new building of the nave was inaugurated in 1745, but parts of the church furnishings such as the pulpit, the organ and the galleries were not completed until 1780. Up to the French occupation of the Rhineland in 1798, two thirds of the construction and maintenance costs for the nave had to be borne by the Worms Cathedral monastery, one third by the Electoral Palatinate , while the tower including the bells belonged to the bourgeois community until 1909.
With the Rhenish Hessian Church Union in 1822, the Reformed and Lutheran congregations also merged in Osthofen. Since then, the Protestant community has owned two churches, in addition to the Reformed mountain church above the city, the Lutheran small church in the city center.
Building description
A two-bay Gothic choir, closed at right angles, adjoins the single-nave baroque nave, in whose northeast corner the Romanesque tower is inserted. To the north of the choir, the late Gothic sacristy is attached to the choir, and to the south is the former Katharinenkapelle. The nave is illuminated by eight simple arched windows, three each in the north and south walls, the remaining two frame the likewise arched entrance door on the west side. A second baroque entrance is on the north side next to the tower base. On the north side of the choir there is a walled-up Renaissance portal, which was probably built in when it was used as a simultaneous church. On the inner walls of the choir and in the Katharinenkapelle there are several Gothic frescoes that were uncovered during restorations in the 20th century.
There are several classicist tombs in the vicinity of the church. In the adjoining old cemetery from the 19th century, there are Wilhelminian tombs and a cast-iron neo-Gothic tomb.
Furnishing
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Most of the furnishings in the church date from the second half of the 18th century. The pulpit was built in 1747 by the Osthofen master carpenter Johann Georg Wahl. Only the prospectus of the Stumm organ from 1755 has survived ; the work was rebuilt in 1903 by the Giengen organ manufacturer Gebr. Link . The pictures in the parapet of the west gallery were painted by Johann Conrad Seekatz in 1747, the parapet pictures of the north gallery built in 1780 are by Worms painter Jung.
The altar cross was made in 1964 by Hermann Tomada . Erhart Klonk's three choir windows were also installed in 1964.
literature
- Wilhelm Diehl: Construction book for the Protestant parishes of the Rheinhessen province and the Palatinate parishes of the Starkenburg province. Hassia Sacra Vol. 6, Darmstadt 1932, pp. 122-137.
- Volker Johannes Fey and Brigitte Kazenwadel: The Osthofen mountain church. Self-published by the Evangelical Church Community Osthofen, Osthofen 1997.
- Julius Grünewald: The carpenter family Wahl in Osthofen. 250 years of the baroque nave of the mountain church. Self-published by the Evangelical Church Community Osthofen, Osthofen 1995.
- Dehio manual for Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, 1972; Pp. 695-696
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - Alzey-Worms district. Mainz 2020, p. 66 (PDF; 6.5 MB).
- ^ David S. Bachrach: Making Peace and War in the City State of Worms, 1235-1273. In: German History (2006) 24 (4), pp. 505-525. doi: 10.1093 / 0266355406070327 ( Online ( Memento from December 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ); PDF; 129 kB)
Coordinates: 49 ° 42 ′ 7.4 ″ N , 8 ° 19 ′ 7.4 ″ E