Evangelical Church (Ruppertsburg)

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North elevation of the church
Interior to the northwest

The Evangelical Church in Ruppertsburg , a district of Laubach in the district of Gießen ( Hesse ), is a late Baroque hall church with a hipped roof , which was built as a transverse church between 1750 and 1757 . The tower in front of it to the north with its high, two-storey hooded helmet characterizes the Hessian cultural monument .

history

Church from the northwest

The previous building from the pre-Reformation period was dedicated to "Our Lady". The Marienkapelle was built in 1183 by order of Abbot Friedrich von Mönchen from the Hersfeld Abbey at the same location as the present church. It was ecclesiastically subordinate to the Archdeaconate St. Johann in the Archdiocese of Mainz . With the introduction of the Reformation in 1544 under Friedrich Magnus I von Solms-Laubach , Ruppertsburg, which was co-administered by Laubach at the time, switched to the evangelical creed. Until the second half of the 16th century, the parish remained part of the Laubach parish and Gonterskirchen until 1702 .

The church was renovated in 1698/1699 and made an independent parish in 1702. Johann Theodor Seiler was the first Protestant pastor in Ruppertsburg from 1702 to 1725. Due to the increase in population, the church was soon too small and was demolished. In addition, the poor state of preservation was made even worse by a lightning strike in 1742. In 1742, Count Christian August zu Solms-Laubach flanked the new building plans with an appeal for collections, which he addressed to all 36 Protestant noblemen and free imperial cities . Similar petitions followed between 1741 and 1745 to the British and Danish kings.

The tower was first erected between 1750 and 1752, but was probably not completed until 1753. The foundation stone of the church was laid on August 19, 1754 . The topping-out ceremony is said to have already taken place on October 15, 1754, which is considered unlikely in view of the only two months of construction time or is explained by the fact that the foundation stone is in a higher layer of the wall. Although the construction work was not yet completed, the first official acts were carried out as early as 1755. In the same year a tower clock was installed. The masonry work was completed in 1756. After delays caused by the Seven Years' War and an increase in prices, the inauguration did not take place until Pentecost Sunday 1757. For cost reasons, the municipality initially decided not to paint the interior and plaster the exterior. In 1773 the interior of the church was painted and furnished.

A new tower clock with three faces by JF Weule from Bockenem was purchased in 1901. After a lightning strike in 1903 severely damaged the church roof, a lightning rod was installed in 1904. In 1907 a renovation followed, in which the paintings in the Louis XVI style . exposed and refreshed. In 1951 the dials and the tower cock were re-gilded and the church roof was re-slated. During the renovation in 1970/1971, the color scheme of the galleries and the bench parapets, a red, white and blue marble imitation, was restored. In 1975 the cock was gilded again, the back of the church roof was renewed and the dome was resurfaced. After a lightning strike in 1978, the spire burned down. During the renovation, the tower pole only received one knob; before there were two. The windows were provided with cathedral glass in 1967 . In 1981 an external plaster was applied for the first time. In 2005, the tower was renovated and three bronze bells were installed. Since January 2017, the Protestant parish of Ruppertsburg has been connected to the parish of Gonterskirchen and is part of the Grünberg dean's office.

architecture

South view

The transversely directed hall church is built in the center of the village at a central crossing made of quarry stone . The garments and structures are made of red sandstone. The white plastered, strictly symmetrical building above a base made of rubble masonry is influenced by the Dutch Reformed church building and is considered "a textbook example of a Protestant transverse church with the altar and pulpit positioned one above the other in the middle of the longitudinal wall". The floor plan of the Ruppertsburg Church with the northern tower and the southern annex for the sacristy and pulpit staircase may be based on a design by Leonhard Christoph Sturm from 1712. The architect was Johann Wiesenfeld.

The church has corner blocks on the north tower and the ship and is closed off by a shed roof. The gable ends are also slated. A central projection on the south side is closed off by a flat triangular gable and serves as a sacristy, in which the staircase to the pulpit is also built. The frontispiece already shows classicist influences. The long sides in the north and south have two large arched windows, while the gable sides have no windows. The southern risalit and both gable sides have a simple rectangular portal in the middle. A small arched window is let into the south portal. The portals are accessible on all four sides via open stairs.

On the north side, the tower is integrated into the center of the nave on a square floor plan. It reaches a height of 35 meters. A cornice divides the two floors of the walled-up tower shaft. In the basement, the main portal on the street side with its profiled walls and architrave made of red sandstone is more elaborate than the other portals. A square coat of arms is walled in above the north portal, which is reminiscent of the rulers in the 13th / 14th centuries. Century. Above that there is a small arched window, on the east and west side of the tower there are large arched windows. The upper floor has arched windows on the three free sides, above which the clock faces of the tower clock are attached. A pent roof leads over to the two-storey, octagonal , slated tower structure. The curved hood with rectangular sound holes serves as a bell chamber, above which an open lantern with a Welscher hood is placed, which is crowned by a tower knob, a wrought-iron cross and a weathercock.

Furnishing

Ceiling painting from 1773
Pulpit and altar

The interior is closed off by a flat ceiling over a circumferential ocher-yellow stucco strip. Painter Moogk from Laubach created the round ceiling painting in 1773. It shows the eye of providence as a symbol of the Trinity , which is surrounded by a triangle with the sun and a halo. The rays end in eight clouds, in which the four evangelist symbols and four angel heads are shown alternately, which are enclosed by a banner with the Bible verse from 1 Kings 8:29  LUT .

In the tower, two-flight stairs lead to the three-sided circumferential galleries that rest on pillars. The oldest item in the inventory is a wooden offering box from 1687, which was taken over from the previous church. The organ is placed in the middle of the north gallery. Opposite it is the wood-sighted pulpit in front of a marble-painted pulpit wall. Its red-blue marbling from the time the church was built was exposed in 1971. Profiled cornices divide the wall, which is broken through in the corners by square windows, into three levels. The polygonal pulpit widens towards the bottom and is closed off at the bottom and top by circumferential profiled cornices. The pulpit fields have coffered panels that are set off with gold paint. The octagonal sound cover is decorated with openwork carvings and curved arches that end in a gold-plated spherical cross.

The stone block altar from 1964 with a German red marble top stands on a rectangular mahogany pedestal . The crucifix and candlesticks were created in 1966. The Vasa sacra includes a silver communion chalice from 1844, which is gilded on the inside.

organ

Organ behind historical prospectus

For the new church, the organ from 1729 was taken over from the previous building. Since the old instrument was missing, Johann Georg Bürgy from Gießen built a new organ with around 700 pipes on a manual and pedal for 530 guilders. The instrument was supposed to be finished in 1818, but was not actually put into use until 1822. Already in 1826 Johann Georg Förster carried out a major repair, Adam Karl Bernhard another in 1860. The crenellated prospect pipes had to be delivered to the armaments industry in 1917 and were replaced by zinc pipes in 1923. In 1937 the Lich company Förster & Nicolaus built a new plant with an electric action behind the Bürgy prospectus. The classicist prospectus has seven axes and is crowned by four small urns and a large vase with a handle in the middle with flowers. Small pipe fields with three pipes each nestle against the two elevated round towers. The low but wide middle field is rounded on the sides. All pipe fields close at the top with a gilded veil . The substructure has been advanced by almost a meter within the gallery parapet. The coffered panels show stylized tendril ornaments in golden color in the upper part. The pipe fields rest on a wide frieze over a profiled architrave.

The instrument has 13 registers, which are distributed over two manuals and pedal. In 2000 the gaming table was moved down. The disposition is as follows:

I Manual C – f 3
Principal 8th'
Drone 8th'
Octave 4 ′
octave 2 ′
Mixture II-III 1'
II Manual C – f 3
Sing. Dacked 8th'
Principal 4 ′
Quint 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
recorder 2 ′
Sif flute 1'
Pedal C – f 1
Sub-bass 16 ′
Octave bass 8th'
Chorale bass 4 ′

Bells

Johann Philipp Bach from Hungen cast a large bell (274 kg) in 1771 and the smallest (114 kg) in 1781. The middle one (152 kg) was purchased in 1828 and came from the Otto bell foundry in Gießen. After the prayer bell rang in spring 1892, the congregation acquired a new bronze triple bell. The two largest bells were delivered to the armaments industry in 1917 as a metal donation by the German people . As a replacement, the Rincker company cast three steel bells in 1920 and took the small remaining bell in payment. In the course of the tower helmet renovation in 2005, the three missing bells were placed in front of the church in the northwest corner. The Bachert bell foundry from Karlsruhe cast three new bronze bells.

No. Casting year Foundry, casting location Mass (kg) Chime inscription
1 2005 Bachert , Karlsruhe 740 g 1 " A light rises in the darkness " [Facetted Cross]
1 2005 Bachert, Karlsruhe 545 b 1 " Graciously grant us peace " [Lutherrose]
1 2005 Bachert, Karlsruhe 374 c 2 " Praise the Lord " [symbol of Golgotha ​​hill and Easter sun]

literature

  • 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. 799.
  • Paul Diehl and others: Festschrift for the 800th anniversary of Ruppertsburg. Ruppertsburg 1983.
  • Wilhelm Diehl : Construction book for the Protestant parishes of the sovereign lands and the acquired areas of Darmstadt. (= Hassia sacra; 8 ). Self-published, Darmstadt 1935, pp. 275-277.
  • Kathrin Ellwardt: Protestant church building in Germany. Imhof, Petersberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-86568-164-5 , p. 260 f.
  • Evangelical Church Community Ruppertsburg (Ed.): 250 years of the Evangelical Church in Ruppertsburg. 1757-2007. GWAB, Wetzlar 2007, ISBN 978-3-9811345-3-7 .
  • State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.); Karlheinz Lang (Red.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. District of Giessen I. Hungen, Laubach, Lich, Reiskirchen. (= Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany ). Theiss, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-8062-2177-0 , p. 349 f.
  • Peter Weyrauch : The churches of the old district of Giessen. Mittelhessische Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Gießen 1979, p. 64 f.

Web links

Commons : Evangelische Kirche Ruppertsburg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kathrin Ellwardt: Church building between evangelical ideals and absolutist rule. The cross churches in the Hessian area from the Reformation century to the Seven Years War . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2004, p. 260 f - ISBN 3-937251-34-0
  2. ↑ a b c d State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.), Lang (ed.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. District of Giessen I. 2008, p. 350.
  3. ↑ Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Ruppertsburg (Hrsg.): 250 years Evangelical Church Ruppertsburg. 2007, p. 33.
  4. ^ Diehl: Festschrift for the 800th anniversary of Ruppertsburg. 1983, p. 93.
  5. ^ Ruppertsburg. Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on October 11, 2014 .
  6. ↑ a b Weyrauch: The churches of the old district of Gießen. 1979, p. 164.
  7. ^ Ellwardt: Evangelical Church Building in Germany. 2008, p. 260.
  8. ↑ Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Ruppertsburg (Hrsg.): 250 years Evangelical Church Ruppertsburg. 2007, pp. 33-35.
  9. ^ A b c Ellwardt: Protestant church building in Germany. 2008, p. 261.
  10. ↑ Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Ruppertsburg (Hrsg.): 250 years Evangelical Church Ruppertsburg. 2007, p. 36.
  11. ^ Diehl: Construction book for the Protestant parishes. 1935, p. 276.
  12. ↑ a b Weyrauch: The churches of the old district of Gießen. 1979, p. 165.
  13. ↑ Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Ruppertsburg (Hrsg.): 250 years Evangelical Church Ruppertsburg. 2007, pp. 46-49.
  14. ^ Diehl: Construction book for the Protestant parishes. 1935, p. 276 f.
  15. ↑ Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Ruppertsburg (Hrsg.): 250 years Evangelical Church Ruppertsburg. 2007, p. 31.
  16. ↑ Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Ruppertsburg (Hrsg.): 250 years Evangelical Church Ruppertsburg. 2007, p. 55 f.
  17. ^ Dehio: Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Hessen I. 2008, p. 799.
  18. ↑ Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Ruppertsburg (Hrsg.): 250 years Evangelical Church Ruppertsburg. 2007, p. 121.
  19. ^ Franz Bösken , Hermann Fischer : Sources and research on the organ history of the Middle Rhine. Vol. 3: Former province of Upper Hesse (=  contributions to the Middle Rhine music history 29.2 . Part 2 (K – Z)). Schott, Mainz 1988, ISBN 3-7957-1331-5 , p. 835 .
  20. ↑ Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Ruppertsburg (Hrsg.): 250 years Evangelical Church Ruppertsburg. 2007, p. 36 f.
  21. ↑ Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Ruppertsburg (Hrsg.): 250 years Evangelical Church Ruppertsburg. 2007, p. 49 f.

Coordinates: 50 ° 31 ′ 0.4 ″  N , 8 ° 57 ′ 52.6 ″  E