Former Lutheran Church (Handschuhsheim)

The former Lutheran Church in the Heidelberg district of Handschuhsheim is a listed historical building that was the church of the local Lutheran congregation from 1784 to 1821 . Since 1870, again in private ownership, which serves as Kirchel known home today only residential purposes.

history

The religious conditions of the communities on Bergstrasse were regulated in 1650 in the Bergstrasse Recess ( Recessus Stratamontanus ) between the Electoral Palatinate and Kurmainz . Simultaneous churches were agreed in Handschuhsheim, Seckenheim and Dossenheim , with the Catholics taking the choir and the Reformed the ship of the local churches. The Lutheran congregations were still so small that they were not mentioned in the treaty. The Lutherans in Handschuhsheim held their services at first in private houses, later in the Gasthaus Zum Goldenen Lamm . In 1750 the Lutheran congregation in Handschuhsheim, as a subsidiary congregation of Heidelberg, had grown to 50 souls (with a total population of around 1,000 people) and the desire for its own church was loud. With its own funds, the community was finally able to acquire the building at Oberen Kirchgasse 20 in 1783 and convert it into a church with a caretaker's apartment on the ground floor and a prayer room on the first floor.

The exact age of the building on Oberen Kirchgasse is unknown. By the time the Lutheran Congregation acquired it in 1783, it had had at least four previous owners. In 1727 it was owned by an electoral Palatinate conductor from Kloster Lobenfeld who was not known by name and sold it to Hans Peter Vetter and his wife. The widow Vetter sold it to Johann Christian Steinbacher and his wife in 1746. In 1773 the master miller Friedrich Hübsch owned the building. It was from him that it finally came to the Lutheran Congregation.

The building was used as a church until 1821 and when the Reformed and Lutherans united to form the Evangelical Regional Church, it came into the possession of the Evangelical community, which in future celebrated its services in the Vitus Church . The Lutheran Kirchel continued to serve as a space for Sunday school and Mittwochsbetstunde, also the choral society founded in 1847, took advantage of Liederkranz the prayer room for its samples. During the renovation of the schoolhouse in 1860–62, the church was an alternative location for teaching.

In 1870, the Protestant community auctioned the building and its furniture to the highest bidder. A Henry James Smith acquired the Kirchel for 1,150 guilders and sold it in 1893 to the Maurer Karl Anton Evil and his wife. After their death, the saddler Jakob Karl bought the building, whose descendants still owned it in the late 20th century.

Bells

The Huebsch family, who bequeathed the building to the Lutheran congregation in 1783, were also the founding family of the church bells, which were cast by Anselm Speck in Heidelberg in 1784 and hung in an octagonal turret. The big bell with the strike tone A weighs 94 kg, the small bell with the strike tone H weighs 50 kg.

After the building was sold, the bells of the church were initially placed in the old school building, and the roof turret was removed. The larger bell was only temporarily in the Heidelberg Museum, then came as an evening bell in the Handschuhsheimer Friedenskirche, which was completed in 1910, and was sold to Wilhelmsfeld in 1921 , where it is still in the Protestant church today. The small bell became the school bell in the new Handschuhsheim schoolhouse in 1896, where it heralded the start of school until 1938. In 1942 the bell had to be delivered for armament purposes, but was no longer melted down and returned to Handschuhsheim after the war, where it was used again as a death bell in the local cemetery from 1949 to 1964 . Then it was stored in the Friedenskirche.

description

The building at Oberen Kirchgasse 20 with a floor area of ​​13.20 meters by 7.60 meters is a three-story residential building. It has a striking bell-shaped gable facing the street . The first floor has three high windows with semicircular blind arches . The two windows on the ground floor and second floor are much smaller and more simply framed. The facade is framed and structured by corner blocks and transverse cornices. The top cornice protrudes from the facade and forms the console for a stone pine cone at each end . Above that sits a round window in the attic. The roof is designed as a cross-shaped structure with four roof structures. On the gable facing the street is a historic weathercock (renewed in 1920 based on the old model) . An octagonal roof turret for the former church bells that was once placed on the crossing has not been preserved.

A prayer room was set up on the first floor, which took up about half of the floor space and had a ceiling height of 3.60 meters. The ceiling was later lowered by about a meter so that the room became more homely. The hall was painted with evangelist symbols and portraits of the reformers Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchton, as well as a fighting angel on the ceiling. The bells were rung directly from the prayer room. As a special feature, possibly from the previous use of the house, the prayer room has a stone window niche in one of the window reveals , as is usually found in castles.

literature

• Eugen Holl: A gem in Handschuhsheim - The former Lutheran Church , in: District Association Handschuhsheim eV Yearbook 1991 , Heidelberg 1991, pp. 27–35.

Coordinates: 49 ° 25 ′ 38.7 "  N , 8 ° 41 ′ 16.5"  E