Elisabeth Church (Kassel)

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The Elisabeth Church around 1803 (right at the edge of the picture); to the left is the military school built between 1826 and 1829 as a court administration building
Friedrichsplatz on the city map of Kassel 1786 (detail); The Elisabeth Church at the bottom right

The first Elisabeth Church in Kassel stood at the eastern end of Friedrichsplatz on its north side, on the site of today's State Theater . It was damaged by bombs in World War II and demolished as the city was rebuilt.

history

Construction as a court chapel

The church was built by order of Landgrave Friedrich II (1720–1785) of Hessen-Kassel , who had already secretly converted to the Catholic faith as Hereditary Prince in 1749 . Friedrich commissioned his court builder Simon Louis du Ry with the construction, which, however, was not allowed to look like a house of God from the outside and was called the "spiritual house", because the Landgraviate had been Protestant since Philip I and that of Friedrich's father Wilhelm VIII in 1754 issued Assekurationsakte ordered him to leave the Protestant religion in Hesse untouched,

The building was built between 1770 and 1777 and dedicated to St. Elisabeth of Thuringia , ancestor of the Hessian landgraves. The Kassel court musician Christian Kalkbrenner (1755–1806) composed a mass especially for the consecration ceremony .

Du Ry created a building with a large domed rotunda that extended over the entire height of the building, which accommodated the altar area and which he embedded in a rectangular structure on the outside. The apartments of the three Catholic court chaplains employed by the landgrave were in the right, eastern part of the building . The classical building was three storeys high . The facade facing Friedrichsplatz was nine- axis , with three-axis central projections , which was crowned by a flat triangular gable. The north side was designed in the same way. The east and west sides were triaxial. The building was covered with a hipped roof with dormers . In order to balance the color of the north side of Friedrichsplatz, the church at its eastern end was given the same white-greenish-gray paintwork as the White Palace in the west.

The roof turret serving as a bell tower in the middle above the dome, which is not visible from the outside, was only added in 1809, during the short-lived reign of Jérôme Bonaparte as King of Westphalia . The bells hung there were brought to Kassel from Hildesheim on his orders .

As early as 1774, when the church was still under construction, the court organ builder Johann Stephan Heeren (1729–1804) received the order from Landgrave Friedrich II to build the organ . After the completion of the church, Friedrich furnished it with works of art from the landgrave's collections.

The first pastor of the landgrave's chapel was the court preacher Heinrich Bödiger (1713–1780).

Use as a parish church

After the death of Frederick II in 1785, who was buried in his church, the "Spiritual House" became the parish church for the steadily growing number of Catholics who came to Kassel as civil servants, members of the military and later as industrial workers. Since this congregation had grown to more than 10,000 members towards the end of the 19th century, the building of further Catholic churches became urgently necessary, and in 1899 the church of Sankt Familia on Kölnische Strasse was consecrated. It was followed within a few years by the churches of St. Maria (Rosenkranzkirche) in Kassel-Vorderer Westen (1899–1901) and St. Joseph on the Rothenberg in Rothenditmold (1906/07).

Destruction and demolition

In the heavy air raid on Kassel on October 22nd, 1943 , the Elisabethkirche burned down after a bomb hit . Possible reconstruction was practically not considered, and like many other monuments in the city that had been damaged by acts of war but not destroyed, it was ultimately a victim of the city's reconstruction. It was blown up in 1954. In its place is the State Theater, built between 1955 and 1959.

Replacement new building

A new church was therefore built on the other side of Friedrichplatz. Today's St. Elisabeth Church was built in 1959/60 and consecrated in November 1960.

From the interior of the former Elisabethkirche five pictures by the Kassel court painter Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder were saved from its destruction . Ä. taken from his Passion and Ascension cycle painted in 1778 for the Elisabeth Church.

The coffin of Landgrave Friedrich II, who was originally buried in his church, stands today on the staircase to the gallery of the successor church.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Sankt Elisabeth, The Church on Friedrichsplatz (Kassel city portal)

Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 45.7 "  N , 9 ° 29 ′ 56.4"  E