Evangelical Church (Niederbiel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Church from the north
Interior of the church

The Evangelical Reformed Church in Niederbiel in the city of Solms in the Lahn-Dill district ( Hesse ) is a listed hall church . The Romanesque choir tower dates from the 13th century and received its high, three-storey hooded helmet with an open lantern in the 18th century . The ship was added in the 17th century.

history

The tower was built in the 13th century and originally served as a defense tower that was only accessible from the north. According to a legend, a wooden church in the area of ​​the oldest settlement served as a predecessor to the stone church. The (stone) church is mentioned for the first time in a document dated April 3, 1324, in which the taxes of an Arnolt, called Smeuche von Nederenbele, for the upkeep of the altar and priest were regulated. The church had two altars dedicated to Saint Stephen and Saint Christopher . In the Middle Ages Niederbiel as a branch church and Oberbiel as the mother church formed a common parish . Albshausen and Steindorf were later incorporated into the parish of Oberbiel. Niederbiel was assigned to the Archipresbyterat Wetzlar in the Archidiaconate St. Lubentius Dietkirchen in the Archdiocese of Trier in the Middle Ages . The lords of Cleen and von Werdorf held the right of patronage until 1422 and in that year gave it to the needy Altenberg monastery , to which the parishes were then incorporated. In the 15th century the church received wooden pews .

With the introduction of the Reformation in the middle of the 16th century, the parish switched to the evangelical confession.

Around 1680 the north portal of the tower was walled up and the nave was added to the west. A baroque tower structure was added to the Romanesque tower shaft in the 18th century.

The medieval St. Anna bell was delivered for armaments purposes during World War I and replaced in 1925. In 1943 the same fate overtook it, so that the parish bought a new bell in 1950. The Oberbiel parish was dissolved on July 1, 1954 and Niederbiel became an independent parish. Until the end of 2018 it belonged to the Braunfels parish in the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland , which was merged into the Lahn und Dill Evangelical Church in 2019 .

In the early 1960s, the church was given a white exterior plaster. In 1967/1968 the old wooden belfry was replaced. An interior renovation took place in the 1990s, which included a restoration of the baroque organ front. In the course of this, the organ, which had previously stood on an east gallery, was set up at ground level and the three fields of the lower case, which carried Bible verses, were restored in their original form without inscriptions. The eight-sided sound cover of the pulpit has been removed.

architecture

Tower from the northwest

The nearly geostete hall church is built in the south of the old village on a terrace overlooking the Lahntal. It stands in the middle of the old cemetery, the outlines of which can still be seen in the area.

The squat choir tower on a square floor plan from Romanesque times was originally defensive, which can be seen from the loopholes. Below the eaves are the blue dials for the tower clock in the north and south. Above the bricked up, white plastered tower shaft, which reaches a height of 11 meters, a tent roof conveys the completely shingled helmet structure. The octagonal storeys taper towards the top and are closed with curved hoods. The open lantern with a Welscher hood is crowned by a tower knob, a wrought-iron cross and a gold-plated weathercock 25 meters above the ground. The bell room houses two bells, one of which was replaced in 1950 by a bell from the Rincker company (1.02 m diameter, 650 kg, strike tone g 1 ). Like its predecessor, it bears the inscription: "I was raised for the sister who was dedicated to war, I exhort the heroes to bliss". The smaller, older bell (0.85 m diameter, strike note b 1 ) was made by Nic. Bernhard cast. The former north portal is walled up and plastered. The north window is ogival, in the east and south small arched windows are let in.

The hall building is covered by a shingled hipped roof and illuminated on the long sides through two high windows from the 18th century. The windows have round-arched reveals in the south , in the north they are flat, ogival and only have a reveal on the inside. The old portal in the west of the north wall is now walled up. Andreas Felger designed the colored glass window by the pulpit with the figurative motif of a grapevine. The building is accessed through a rectangular west portal under a modern, slated porch.

Furnishing

pulpit

A large round arch opens the flat-roofed choir to the nave. The interior of the hall is closed off by a flat ceiling with a joist and dominated by a three-sided, circumferential, wooden gallery that rests on six columns with gilded bulges. The northern part dates from the time the church was built; the southern pore was built in at the end of the 19th century. The gallery offers space for around 100 people. Your parapet has coffered panels, the light blue caught are. On the south side the gallery is shortened compared to the north side in order to leave space for the pulpit, which is placed in front of the south choir arch.

The polygonal, wooden pulpit without a sound cover rests on an octagonal base and is accessible via the angled pulpit staircase. The five pulpit fields have two small transverse rectangular panels in the lower area and large, high rectangular panels in the upper area, all of which are framed in light blue and have gold-plated profiles. They are decorated with Bible verses in gold script, which come from the four Gospels and the Psalms : Mt 28.20  LUT , Mk 9.23  LUT , Mt 28.20  LUT , Joh 14.6  LUT and Ps 23.1  LUT .

The simple, wooden church stalls leave a central aisle free and offer space for around 100 people. The altar with a curved base in the choir is made of dark, solid Lahn marble and can be moved on rollers. The baptismal font was acquired in 1880 and consists of a bowl with a lid on a tripod bronze frame. In front of the portal there may be an old baptismal font that is used as a flower pot. The floor is covered with slabs of red sandstone.

organ

Organ with a baroque prospect

In 1763 Johann Friedrich Dreuth installed an organ by an unknown builder (from around 1700) on the east side of the church. It had twelve registers , including a gamba 8 ′ and an octave 1 ′, and was originally located in the hospital church in Wetzlar. In the course of the new church there it was sold to Niederbiel and later modified by Dreuth, about which a note on the back of the music holder informs: “In 1763 I, Johann Friedrich Dreuth von Griedel bei Butzbach, put this organ here in October and the piano on the Page made, which was previously in the Wetzlar hospital ”.

The prospectus in brown marbling is structured in five axes. The elevated central tower is flat-pointed and is flanked by two low and outside two high flat fields. The pipe fields, the case structure and the lateral blind wings have gilded, openwork acanthus work . The lower case has panels with gold-plated profiles and is built into a wooden wall.

The community purchased an electric blower in 1949. In 1961 a renovation by Orgelbau Hardt followed , which amounted to a new building. After this measure the organ had only six registers. During the renovation work in the church in 1967–1968, the organ was moved to a private apartment and lowered half a meter when it was re-installed in order to bring the prospect from the nave more into view. On the occasion of another church renovation in 1991–1992, the Lich company Förster & Nicolaus cleaned the instrument and added two additional registers. The disposition with eight registers has since been as follows:

I Hauptwerk C – g 3
Gedackt B / D 8th'
Gamba 8th'
Principal 4 ′
flute 4 ′
Octave 2 ′
Sesquialtera II
mixture 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Pedal C – f 1
Sub bass 16 ′

Parish

The parish belongs to the parish of Lahn and Dill in the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland . It has about 1,300 members and is biblical and missionary. The large number of voluntary workers is characteristic of the community. A youth advisor is employed full-time for child and youth work.

On the other side of the street there is a community hall with a large hall and stage, as well as youth, seminar and business rooms for community events.

literature

  • Friedrich Kilian Abicht: The district of Wetzlar, presented historically, statistically and topographically. Volume 2. Wigand, Wetzlar 1836, pp. 114-115 ( online ).
  • Georg Dehio : Handbook of German art monuments , Hessen I. Administrative districts of Giessen and Kassel. Edited by Folkhard Cremer, Tobias Michael Wolf and others. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03092-3 , p. 689.
  • State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.), Maria Wenzel (Ed.): Cultural monuments in Hessen. Lahn-Dill District II (old district of Wetzlar). (Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany). Theiss, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 978-3-8062-1652-3 , pp. 468-469.
  • Gerhard Kleinfeldt, Hans Weirich: The medieval church organization in the Upper Hesse-Nassau area. (= Writings of the institute for historical regional studies of Hesse and Nassau 16 ). NG Elwert, Marburg 1937, ND 1984, p. 202.
  • Friedrich Wieber: Your home in Niederbiel. Wetzlar publishing house printer, Niederbiel 1960.
  • Wolfgang Wiedl: History of the city of Solms and its districts. Vol. 1. City Council, Solms 1989.
  • Wolfgang Wiedl: History of the city of Solms and its districts. Vol. 3. City Council, Solms 1994.

Web links

Commons : Evangelical Church Niederbiel  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. Lahn-Dill-Kreis II. 2003, pp. 468-469.
  2. ↑ So the assumption of Wieber: Your home Niederbiel. 1960, p. 377.
  3. ↑ Wieber: Your home in Niederbiel. 1960, pp. 108-109.
  4. ^ Wiedl: History of the city of Solms and its districts. Vol. 1. 1989, p. 167.
  5. ↑ Friedrich Kilian Abicht: The district of Wetzlar, presented historically, statistically and topographically. Volume 2. Wigand, Wetzlar 1836, p. 114 ( online ).
  6. ^ Weirich, Kleinfeldt: The medieval church organization in the Upper Hessian-Nassau area. 1984, p. 202.
  7. ↑ Wieber: Your home in Niederbiel. 1960, p. 396.
  8. ↑ Niederbiel. Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on April 19, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Hellmut Schliephake: Bell customer of the district of Wetzlar. In: Heimatkundliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Lahntal e. V. 12th yearbook. 1989, ISSN  0722-1126 , pp. 5-150, here p. 139.
  10. ↑ Wieber: Your home in Niederbiel. 1960, p. 405.
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Wiedl: History of the city of Solms and its districts. Vol. 3. 1994, p. 388.
  12. ^ Frank Rudolph: 200 years of evangelical life. Wetzlar's church history in the 19th and 20th centuries. Tectum, Marburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8288-9950-6 , p. 27.
  13. ↑ a b Homepage of the parish: Church , accessed on April 10, 2019.
  14. ^ A b State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. Lahn-Dill-Kreis II. 2003, p. 469.
  15. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. Lahn-Dill-Kreis II. 2003, p. 468.
  16. ^ Ingeborg Oehler-Hofmann: The bells of Niederbiel. In: Evangelical Church Community Niederbiel: Community letter, No. 137/4 Sept. – Nov. 2013, p. 11.
  17. ↑ a b Dehio: Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler , Hessen I. 2008, p. 689.
  18. ↑ Wieber: Your home in Niederbiel. 1960, p. 401.
  19. ^ Franz Bösken: Sources and research on the organ history of the Middle Rhine (=  contributions to the Middle Rhine music history . Volume 7.2 ). tape 2 : The area of ​​the former administrative district of Wiesbaden. Part 2: L-Z . Schott, Mainz 1975, ISBN 3-7957-1370-6 , p. 649-650 .
  20. ↑ Church Official Gazette of August 17, 2009 , p. 226, accessed on April 19, 2020 (PDF file; 138 kB).
  21. ↑ Homepage of the parish : parish hall , accessed on April 10, 2019.

Coordinates: 50 ° 33 '18.71 "  N , 8 ° 23' 56.83"  O