Evangelical Church (Wißmar)

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Church in Wissmar from the east
South elevation of the church

The Evangelical Church in Wißmar , a part of the municipality Wettenberg in the district of Gießen ( Central Hesse ), is a late classicist cross church . It was built between 1827 and 1830 according to plans and under the direction of the Prussian architect Friedrich Louis Simon , a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel , in place of a previous medieval building. The church with its 35 meter high west tower is a Hessian cultural monument .

history

Interior facing north; the pulpit on the left of the gallery, the organ on the right of the gallery and the altar at the bottom right

Wißmar had a small Romanesque chapel from around 1200, which was first mentioned in a document in 1327. It initially had a branch relationship with Kirchberg and became independent in 1353 at the latest. In the second half of the 14th century the chapel was replaced by a single-nave Gothic church. The rectangular hall building was about 23 meters long and 9 meters wide and had a central roof turret . The patronage right was owned by the noble Schabe family in 1440, who exercised it until they died out around 1619. With the introduction of the Reformation , Wißmar switched to the evangelical creed.

In 1773/1774 the church tower was renewed, which fell victim to a storm in 1828 and collapsed. When the medieval church became dilapidated and too small at the beginning of the 19th century, the community decided to build a new one. In 1827 the master bricklayer Joseph Röhner from Gießen tore down the old church and discovered the foundations of the two previous buildings from the Romanesque and Gothic times. The tower was initially to be retained, but partially collapsed in the night of May 6th to 7th, 1828 and was therefore also demolished.

The foundation stone for the new church was laid on June 15, 1828, the inauguration on October 3, 1830. The cost was 18,000 Reichstaler , which the community raised from its own resources. The tower was initially given a flat four-sided roof. Behind the pulpit, a large arched window was broken into the tower in 1863. In 1865/1866 the municipality had the flat pyramid roof of the tower replaced by the current tower structure with a pointed helmet. In 1908 a low-pressure steam heating system was installed, electrification in 1916 and interior renovation in 1930. After being hit by tank shells on March 28, 1945, the war damage on the west side of the church was temporarily repaired by 1946.

In 1962/1963 the war damage was repaired and an interior renovation was carried out during which the altar was moved back. In 1992/93 an extensive restoration and redesign of the interior took place, in which the duality of the pulpit in the west and the altar in the east was abandoned. The benches were replaced by chairs and the congregation was fully aligned with the altar area with a lectern. Some original benches with carved bulges on the wagons are on the gallery. In 2008, a glass vestibule was installed on the north side and additional glass panes on the windows.

The parish belongs to the Evangelical Church District on Lahn and Dill in the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland .

architecture

View of the concave organ gallery

The transversely aligned hall building is raised in the center of the village on a spur in the middle of a formerly defensive wall. A late classical iron grating extends from the southeast corner to the rectory. The white-plastered church made of rubble masonry has a flat, sloped roof . The completely symmetrical construction is characterized by the base, the corner pilasters and the tooth cut under the cornice made of red sandstone. Nine eight-pointed stars are attached to the corners below, with an iron cross in the middle . The eastern face side facing the street is a triaxial means risalit highlighted its entrance as a porch serves. The risalit is 10.10 meters wide and 2.50 meters deep and is closed by a flat, windowless triangular gable. The risalit and the west tower create a cross-shaped floor plan.

High, three-lane arched windows with triple-stepped walls made of red sandstone illuminate the interior: three in the central projection, two each on the left and right, two each on the narrow side and on both sides of the tower. A surrounding sandstone cornice formed the lower window closure. The nave is accessed through the main entrance on the north-east corner on the side of the central projection and the southern side entrance on the opposite side, as well as through another side entrance in the middle of the north wall. All portals are rectangular in shape with profiled sandstone walls and protruding consoles. The two-winged doors have three coffered fields that (apart from the sacristy door) are each decorated with a palmette . It is unusual that the main entrance leads past the altar into the interior of the church and first of all draws the eye to the elaborately designed pulpit .

The two-storey bricked-up tower substructure on a square floor plan is in front of the ship to the west and extends beyond the ship on the upper floor. It is 8.90 meters wide and 8.20 meters deep. Several horizontal strips of cornice structure the tower. It has a completely shingled helmet structure consisting of three half-timbered floors with a pointed helmet that reaches a height of 35 meters. The cuboid bell storey is divided by two cornices and merges into the octagonal pointed helmet, which is crowned by a tower knob and a cross. The tower hall serves as a sacristy , the rectangular west entrance of which also leads to the tower staircase. A large semicircular arched window with the original fan-like bars made of cast iron is attached above the tower entrance.

Furnishing

Pulpit in the west gallery
Coffered ceiling with star motif; the old coloring with the iron cross is only preserved inside the organ case.

The interior is 25.26 meters long and 13.25 meters, in the area of ​​the risalit 16 meters wide. It is closed by a flat coffered ceiling , which is painted with 666 gold-plated stars on a blue background. Each cassette contains nine eight-pointed stars that were likely drawn with a stencil. The discreetly integrated iron crosses in the center of the stars were later painted over and are only preserved above the organ. The floor is covered with red sandstone slabs. Most of the church furnishings date from the 1830s. Its white color with gilding gives the room an elegant look. The spacious interior is designed on two floors thanks to the four-sided gallery . It rests on 20 Tuscan columns that merge into 18 fluted Corinthian wooden columns above the gallery and support the beams . Two pillars are missing where the organ is placed. The gallery jumps back concave at this point, comparable to an apse , and emphasizes the altar area.

The pulpit, which is built into the west gallery, is opposite the altar and organ on the central axis. The semicircular pulpit has five simple panels over an ornate frieze with gilded volutes , shells and acanthus leaves . The sound cover rests on two round and two square columns of Corinthian order and is decorated with a wreath of gilded leaves. A gold-plated dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit , is attached to its underside . A halo surrounding the pigeon was later painted over. The concave organ front is divided into five fields by pilasters. The block altar with a black marble top is raised by two steps below the organ. The altar cross and the two candlesticks are made of cast iron and are believed to date from 1830.

The wooden baptismal font comes from Collmen by Johann Christian Hentschel senior. and dated 1836. A fluted column on a square plate merges into a capital with an octagonal plate that houses a round baptismal bowl. A few missing acanthus leaves on the capital and the gilded pine cone on the round lid were added during the restoration by the carpenter Marcus Stroh from Wissmar, before the font was put back into use in 2011. The church pews were replaced in 1993 by loose individual chairs that are aligned diagonally to the altar. Today the pulpit is no longer used, but, contrary to the architectural concept, preached from the altar area.

organ

Organ in the historic case from 1830

The previous church received its first organ in 1726. On January 6, 1828, the community signed a contract with Johann Georg Bürgy for a new organ . When delivery was delayed, a comparison was made in 1831 with Bürgy, who had supplied the case and the bellows in 1830 and only a third of the organ in 1831. Including the existing parts, Johann Hartmann Bernhard completed the organ with 17 registers in the existing Corinthian case. In 1836 it was referred to as a “good new organ”.

Günter Hardt from Möttau created a new organ behind the historic case in 1967. The instrument has 19 registers on mechanical slide drawers . The three reed registers have an electrical register action . The disposition is as follows:

I Hauptwerk C – g 3
Principal 8th'
Reed flute 8th'
octave 4 ′
Dumped 4 ′
Fifth 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
Forest flute 2 ′
Mixture IV 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Trumpet 8th'
II subsidiary work C – g 3
Dumped 8th'
Principal 4 ′
octave 2 ′
Sif flute 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Zimbel III 1'
Krummhorn 8th'
Tremulant
Pedal C – f 1
Sub-bass 16 ′
Octave bass 8th'
Choral bass II 4 ′ + 2 ′
Mixture V 2 ′
trombone 16 ′

Bells

The bell cage houses a triple bell. The previous Gothic church already had three bells, which were hung in the stone church tower in 1773. After this collapsed, three new bells were cast by Rincker in Leun and Otto in Gießen in 1782, 1784 and 1818 . The Rincker bell from 1782 and the Otto bell from 1784 had to be handed in as a metal donation from the German people during the First World War . The third bell (Rincker, 1818) broke in the winter of 1921/1922. In 1922, FW Rincker cast three new bronze bells to replace them. During the Second World War, two bells were again delivered, which were replaced by new ones in 1951.

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. 975.
  • Carolin Eisenbach: The church in Wißmar and the contemporary sacral architecture in the early 19th century. Marburg.
  • Ernst-Günther Grünbaum u. a. (Text), Alexandra Hans (ed.): The Protestant Church in Wißmar. Evangelical Church Community Wißmar, Wettenberg-Wißmar 2015.
  • Günter Hans: Church development and church building. In: Günter Hans (Ed.): The history of a village on the Lahn. Wissmar. 778-2003. Bender, Wettenberg 2003, ISBN 3-9808830-2-7 , pp. 275-344.
  • Christian Kaufmann: A stage for the word. The Evangelical Church in Wißmar. In: Günter Hans (Ed.): The history of a village on the Lahn. Wissmar 778-2003. Bender, Wettenberg 2003, ISBN 3-9808830-2-7 , pp. 345-354.
  • 1200 years of Wissmar. Festschrift for the 1200th anniversary in Wissmar. Wissmar 1978.
  • State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.), Karlheinz Lang (edit.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. District of Giessen III. The communities Allendorf (Lumda), Biebertal, Heuchelheim, Lollar, Staufenberg and Wettenberg (= monument topography Federal Republic of Germany ). Theiss, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 3-8062-2179-0 , pp. 323-324.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.), Karlheinz Lang (arrangement): Cultural monuments in Hesse. 2010, p. 324.
  2. ↑ Grünbaum; Hans (ed.): The Protestant Church in Wißmar. 2015, p. 12.
  3. ^ A b c State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.), Karlheinz Lang (arrangement): Cultural monuments in Hesse. 2010, p. 323.
  4. ^ Hans: Church development and church building. 2003, p. 305.
  5. ^ Hans: Church development and church building. 2003, p. 285.
  6. ↑ 1200 years of Wissmar. 1978, p. 26.
  7. ^ Hans: Church development and church building. 2003, pp. 318, 322.
  8. ↑ Grünbaum; Hans (ed.): The Protestant Church in Wißmar. 2015, pp. 9-10.
  9. ↑ Grünbaum; Hans (ed.): The Protestant Church in Wißmar. 2015, p. 7.
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ A b Uta Barnikol-Lübeck: Under the starry sky. Signs of hope and orientation shine in the church in Wissmar . In: Wetzlarer Neue Zeitung from December 7, 2019, accessed on April 18, 2020.
  12. ↑ a b Dehio: Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Hessen I. 2008, p. 975.
  13. ↑ Grünbaum; Hans (ed.): The Protestant Church in Wißmar. 2015, p. 15.
  14. ↑ Grünbaum; Hans (ed.): The Protestant Church in Wißmar. 2015, p. 16.
  15. ^ Kaufmann: A stage for the word. 2003, pp. 350-352.
  16. ↑ Grünbaum; Hans (ed.): The Protestant Church in Wißmar. 2015, p. 13.
  17. ^ Kaufmann: A stage for the word. 2003, p. 349.
  18. ↑ Grünbaum; Hans (ed.): The Protestant Church in Wißmar. 2015, p. 19.
  19. ↑ Grünbaum; Hans (ed.): The Protestant Church in Wißmar. 2015, p. 21.
  20. ↑ Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung of August 29, 2011: Joy in Wißmar about the new baptismal font , accessed on April 18, 2020.
  21. ^ Kaufmann: A stage for the word. 2003, p. 353.
  22. ^ Hans: Church development and church building. 2003, p. 309.
  23. ↑ Friedrich Kilian Abicht: The district of Wetzlar, presented historically, statistically and topographically. Volume 2. Wetzlar 1836, p. 44 ( online ).
  24. ^ 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. 897 .
  25. ↑ 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. 142.
  26. ↑ 1200 years of Wissmar. 1978, p. 45.

Coordinates: 50 ° 38 ′ 8.4 "  N , 8 ° 40 ′ 24.4"  E