Evangelical Church (Rodheim-Bieber)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Church from the northwest
South side

The Evangelical Church in Rodheim-Bieber in the district of Gießen ( Hessen ) is a Gothic hall church with a late Romanesque choir tower . The church is a Hessian cultural monument .

history

The origins of the Rodheim church are believed to be in the 13th century; for the year 1263 a pleban is proven. In the late Middle Ages, the parish was assigned to the Archipresbyterat Wetzlar of the Archdiaconate St. Lubentius Dietkirchen in the Diocese of Trier . Fellingshausen was a branch church until 1958. With the introduction of the Reformation in 1526, the parish changed to the Protestant creed. The local nobles Magnus Hol (t) zapfel, a Gleiberger bailiff, and Marx Lesch promoted the new faith. The first Protestant pastor was Heinrich Rabe (Corvinus) from 1534 to 1560.

In a petition from the congregation from 1681, it says, “that the church has already come to an end, that we can hardly do our worship without taking great danger to life and limb.” In 1684 the church tower was renovated, for which a collection was made in the principality was carried out, and the rectory. As early as 1701 the church was again described as dilapidated. A major renovation with an extension of the nave in the same year was the result. The small choir arch was enlarged in 1743/1744 to make room for galleries. New galleries were built in 1788. In the 18th century 40 people were buried in the church.

A profound interior renovation took place in 1836, which included a renewal of the floor, the windows and the altar made of black marble. During a renovation in 1858/1859, the parapets of the galleries were whitewashed with depictions of the twelve apostles and Paul. They were exposed again in 1958/1959, while the east window in the choir was bricked up. When the left side gallery was reduced in size, four images of the apostles with Peter, Thomas, Philip and Matthias were lost. The northern choir gallery was removed, the responsible external staircase demolished, the roofed north entrance to the tower was converted into a window and the organ was rebuilt. In 1983 a window in the north side of the choir from the time it was built was uncovered again. The interior and the roof structure were renovated in 2007.

A parish vicarage was set up for Bieber and Fellingshausen in 1951, which ten years later was elevated to an independent parish office. The year 1961 also marks the end of the Rodheim parish . The new parish hall was built in 1972 in place of the old parish barn. In 1979 Bieber was connected to Königsberg in the parish and became independent in 1987. A parish vicarage for Rodheim and Vetzberg established in 1978 was converted into a second parish office in 1981. Since 2007 Rodheim / Vetzberg are again connected to Bieber in a parish office and share a parish office. The Rodheim parish has around 2700 parishioners.

architecture

Pointed west portal

The east- facing , plastered hall building is raised on the northern edge of the village. The wall enclosure has been preserved in the south and east.

The lower part of the recessed choir tower on a square floor plan dates from the late Romanesque period. In the baroque era, probably in 1684, a slated half-timbered floor was placed over the cube-shaped shaft . A tent roof leads over to the baroque helmet structure, the three storeys of which taper continuously towards the top. From the square, windowless lower storey, an eight-sided bell storey develops with rectangular sound holes on each side, which is crowned by a closed lantern with a Welscher hood. The tower houses a triple bell. The middle bell was cast by Dilman Schmid in 1691 , the largest from 1640 (Johann Henschel, Mainz) and the smallest from 1773 (Johann Andreas Henschel, Gießen) melted down in World War I, replaced in 1920, returned in World War II and replaced by Rincker in 1950 . The top of the tower, a wrought-iron cross and a weathercock form the end. The tower reaches a height of 25 meters. The hall on the ground floor has a groin vault. The ogival south window has tracery and dates from the 14th century.

The Gothic nave was widened to the north and south in the 16th century. It is closed by a sloped roof, which is covered with small dormers. The ogival west portal and the south entrance open up the church. Large arched windows in the long sides illuminate the interior.

Furnishing

inside view
Luther with swan
Pulpit with foot and basket from the 17th century

The interior is closed off by a flat wooden barrel vault with wooden ribs. A ceiling medallion shows a pelican nourishing its young with its blood, an ancient symbol of the sacrificial death of Christ. The three-sided galleries date from 1740, the parapet paintings with figurative and ornamental depictions from the same period. The depictions of nine apostles have castles and palaces in the area as a background and alternate with stylized tendril motifs. In 1958/1859 two remains of old frescoes were uncovered in the choir, depicting a saint and the wedding at Cana . To the right of the pulpit, a mural from probably 1684 shows Martin Luther with the swan. The open Bible to which Luther points shows the Bible verse from Isa 40,8  LUT , the inscription above the Bible verse 2 Petr 1,19  LUT .

The pulpit base was made in the beginning of the 17th century, the pulpit cage in 1681 and the sound cover around 1700. The stalls from 1656/1657 have tendril ornaments painted dark green on the front and back, while the cheeks have paintings in the Renaissance style. The coat of arms door on the manorial chair for Markus Antonius Lesch zu Mühlheim ("Marx Lesch") dates from 1546. The carved baptismal font was donated in 1696 by Johann Heinrich Reh and his wife Dorothea and made by carpenter Conrad Pfeifer from Gleiberg. The church received the font made of white-veined, black marble in 1836.

Seven epitaphs are set up in the choir room . Several grave monuments remember members of the von Hol (t) zapfel family, for example for the Vetzberg bailiff Magnus († September 9, 1577) and his wife Margarete († November 8, 1583) as well as for Georg Dietrich and his wife Walpurg († 1620) . Two baroque grave monuments from 1702 and 1704 are erected north of the church. A brass plaque made in 1932 commemorates the English General Granville Eliot, who died in 1759 and was the only son of the 1st British Governor of Gibraltar.

organ

Organ in the historic case from 1828

In 1730 the church had an organ ; in a church inventory from 1780 there is talk of eight registers . In 1828, the community purchased a new organ from Johann Hartmann Bernhard , which had eleven stops on a manual and pedal. In addition to other renovation measures, a principal 8 ′ was added to the last, empty loop before 1935 , which was moved to the center of the drawer in 1958/1959 as part of a renovation and rearrangement of the organ by Förster & Nicolaus . During a restoration by the same company in 2011, almost 200 non-original pipes were removed and remade. A trumpet 8 ′ was never performed and is vacant today. The case resembles the Bernhard organs in Holzheim (1830) and Nieder-Bessingen (1831). The Rodheim organ has had the following disposition since 2011 :

I Manual C – f 3
Drone 8th'
Viola da gamba 8th'
Flauto traverse 8th'
Principal 4 ′
Slack 4 ′
Quint 3 ′
Octav 2 ′
Forest flute 2 ′
Mixture III 2 ′
Trumpet 8th'
Pedal C – f 1
Sub-bass 16 ′
Principal bass 8th'
Pommer 4 ′

literature

  • Georg Dehio : Dehio manual of the German art monuments, Hessen I: administrative districts Gießen and Kassel. Edited by Folkhard Cremer and others. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03092-3 , p. 774.
  • Erco von Dietze: Finding aid for the archive of the Protestant parish Rodheim-Vetzberg and the former subsidiary villages Fellingshausen and Bieber. 1539-1965 (1989). Erco von Dietze, Nieder-Moos 1990.
  • Dünsberg Association Biebertal e. V. (Ed.): The Dünsberg and the Biebertal. 3. Edition. Brühlsche Universitätsdruckerei Gießen 1989, ISBN 3-9800654-1-3 .
  • State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.), Karlheinz Lang (Ed.): Kirchstrasse 6, Ev. Church In: Cultural monuments in Hessen. District of Giessen III. The communities of Allendorf (Lumda), Biebertal, Heuchelheim, Lollar, Staufenberg and Wettenberg. (= Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany ). Theiss, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 3-8062-2179-0 , p. 133.
  • Ernst Schmidt: History about the church in Rodheim an der Bieber. Biebertal 1996.
  • Ernst Schmidt: Rodheim an der Bieber and its history. Beer, Heuchelheim 2006.
  • Jürgen Steinmüller, Jutta Failing: The parish and the church in Rodheim-Vetzberg. In: Heimatverein Rodheim-Bieber eV (ed.): The church and the cemetery of Rodheim. 2nd Edition. Rodheim-Bieber 2001.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. 2010, p. 133.
  2. ↑ a b Homepage of the parish: History of the Protestant parish Rodheim , accessed on July 9, 2016.
  3. ^ Gerhard Kleinfeldt, Hans Weirich: The medieval church organization in the Upper Hessian-Nassau area. (= Writings of the institute for historical regional studies of Hesse and Nassau 16 ). NG Elwert, Marburg 1937, ND 1984, p. 204.
  4. ↑ Dietze: Finding aid for the archive of the Protestant parish Rodheim-Vetzberg. 1990, p. II.
  5. ↑ Rodheim-Bieber. Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on July 16, 2014 .
  6. ^ A b Dünsberg-Verein: The Dünsberg and the Biebertal. 1989, p. 294.
  7. ^ Schmidt: History of the church in Rodheim an der Bieber. 1996, pp. 3-5. The surviving year 1634 is probably based on a reading (p. 3).
  8. ↑ Dietze: Finding aid for the archive of the Protestant parish Rodheim-Vetzberg. 1990, p. III.
  9. ↑ a b c Homepage of the parish , accessed on July 16, 2014.
  10. ↑ Dünsberg Association: The Dünsberg and the Biebertal. 1989, p. 298.
  11. ↑ 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. 141.
  12. ^ A b Dünsberg-Verein: The Dünsberg and the Biebertal. 1989, p. 296.
  13. ↑ a b Dehio: Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Hessen I. 2008, p. 774.
  14. ^ Schmidt: History of the church in Rodheim an der Bieber. 1996, p. 22 f.
  15. ^ Schmidt: History of the church in Rodheim an der Bieber. 1996, pp. 7, 21.
  16. ^ 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. 728 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 37 ′ 4.9 ″  N , 8 ° 35 ′ 58.2 ″  E