Evangelical Church Mühlbach

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Evangelical church and rectory in Mühlbach

The Evangelical Church in Mühlbach , a district of Eppingen in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg , dates back to the 13th century and was the monastery church of the Mühlbacher Wilhelmitenkloster before the Reformation . The nave and the tower were renewed in 1871/72.

history

Choir with five Romanesque arches

Monastery church of the Wilhelmites

The oldest parts of the church, namely a part of the choir and the side-mounted sacristy , date from the second half of the 13th century according to structural findings. The first documented mention of the place and the church comes from the same time, when Heinrich von Brettach founded the chapel in Mühlbach, a branch chapel of the Eppingen parish , with the goods belonging to the Wilhelmite monastery in Marienthal near Hagenau in Alsace to found a new monastery donated. Presumably it was a choir band. The church remained a branch of Eppingen, but had its own pastor.

In the 15th century the choir was structurally changed and a nave was added. The nave and choir were spatially separated by a rood screen. There were pilgrimages to the church.

Evangelical Church after the Reformation

After the end of the Wilhelmitenkloster, which the city of Eppingen acquired in 1546, the church was initially empty. Belonging to the Electoral Palatinate , Mühlbach was reformed with Eppingen in 1559. Soon afterwards there seems to have been another pastor in Mühlbach, namely the reformed Elias Marbach from Schaffhausen, whose name was emblazoned on the ceiling of the church until 1792. The church remained in the possession of the Reformed congregation, whereas the Lutheran believers attended church services in Eppingen until the 19th century.

Between 1583 and 1608 the nave was extended and a tower and a small entrance hall were added to the side at the transition from the nave to the choir.

During the Thirty Years' War in Mühlbach, as in the entire Electoral Palatinate, efforts to re-Catholicize the city, which failed, however. After the end of the war, the church in Mühlbach was initially looked after from Eppingen. From 1666 there were permanent pastors in Mühlbach again, but they changed in quick succession because the pastor's position was very poorly paid. From 1709 there was a better, but still meager salary, which at least kept the pastors at the place longer.

In the early 18th century the church had become too small for the number of believers, so a gallery was built in, which, however, took away a lot of light from inside the church. Over the still scarce places in the church, which were permanently allocated to certain people, who then also had to pay for their maintenance, so-called chair dispute over the rights and duties broke out again and again.

There were probably two bells in the tower, one of which was very old and broke in 1773. It is said to have been a bell from 1338, which may have come from the monastery church or came from Eppingen to Mühlbach. The bell was cast over it. The second historic bell fell from a rotten girder in 1799 and was also cast around in 1800 at Speck in Heidelberg. When one of the two bells broke in 1822, the community, which had become Protestant after the unification of Reformed and Lutherans, received the old Lutheran bell from Eppingen as a replacement.

In the course of the 19th century the church no longer met the demands of contemporary Protestant worship. Bright churches and a clear view of the pastor were preferred, which was not the case in the narrow, dark Mühlbach church. The church building inspection in Bruchsal issued a damning verdict on the condition of the church in 1834. There was talk of a very neglected, bad condition , the church was unsuitable and inappropriate for holding the service and the choir was built with a pathetic gallery [...] . The inspection recommended a new building for which a church building fund was established. In 1840 the church was closed because the roof was leaking. The congregation moved to a rented room in Johann Jakob Gebhard's house with their church services, and later to the school.

In 1852 the smaller of the two bells in the church broke, and it is no longer clear from the records whether and how a replacement or repair was taken care of.

In the course of the tithe redemption around 1850, negotiations were carried out on the building load on the church, which fell to the parish of Mühlbach, whereupon the later Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden gave a grant of 1500 guilders in 1854. However, since the community did not yet have the full amount needed for a new building, it was decided to renovate the old church again. It then served its purpose for another 15 years before the planning and financing of a new building was finally completed.

New building in 1871/72

In February 1869, the building inspection estimated the construction costs for a new building at 25,000 guilders. This was offset by funds of around 22,850 guilders in May 1870, so that the congregation could begin with the new building according to the plans of the Church Building Inspectorate Bruchsal in the neo-Gothic style while retaining the sacristy and the choir.

The old nave and the old tower were demolished. The foundation stone for the new building was laid in May 1871, and the topping-out ceremony was celebrated on September 7, 1871. The church was finally rededicated on September 8, 1872.

At the inauguration of Grand Duke Friedrich I, the church received a bronze cannon, which was cast into the Friedrichs bell at the Bachert bell foundry in Dallau and supplemented the two-part ringing, whereby one of the previous bells was also cast to harmonize the sound.

The first renovation took place in 1905. During the First World War , two bells had to be delivered for armament purposes. In 1921 two new bronze bells were cast by Bachert in Kochendorf , but they were lost again due to delivery about 20 years later in World War II . In 1949 the church received its current cast steel bell from the Bochum Association .

Except for the delivered bells, the church survived the Second World War unscathed. In 1948 the old organ built by Schäfer in Heilbronn in 1871 was replaced by a new one from Walcker in Ludwigsburg.

In 1956 a thorough renovation of the church was necessary. The facade and roof were sealed, the masonry drained, heating and an electrical bell system were installed, and a new tower clock and a previously missing fourth clock face were procured. During the interior renovation, some previously walled or plastered details in the choir were exposed, and the subsequently raised floor level in the choir was lowered back to its original depth. During the necessary floor work in the choir, one came across various skeletons, but not the hoped-for grave of the founder Heinrich von Brettach. In addition, the remains of the foundations of the first altar of the church were found, along with shards, bones, metal parts and other small finds. During the other interior work, remains of frescoes were uncovered on various walls of the older parts of the church, but most of them were not worth preserving because no main motif could be recognized. After all the work was completed, the church was rededicated on December 22, 1957.

In May 1958 the church received two stained glass windows for the sacristy from Valentin Saile as a foundation . Three more colored windows for the choir were made in 1988 by the Freiburg art glass factory E. Böcherer.

description

Keystone in the choir depicting the angel of the Last Judgment
Lamb with cross flag from the portal tympanum of the previous building

The Protestant church in Mühlbach is a single-nave church with an elongated, drawn-in, roughly east-facing choir with a 5/8 end. A church tower is attached to the western gable.

In the choir five are Romanesque arches obtained by the former chapel of Wilhelmitenklosters come. The sacristy attached to the side also dates from this early period . The choir received its present form and its late Gothic windows in the middle of the 15th century. In contrast to these more recent findings, Oechelhäuser declared the entire choir to be a late Gothic complex in 1909. Two keystones adorn the rib arches of the choir. One shows two faces and the other represents an angel . This Last Judgment angel has set a trumpet to his mouth and is holding the book of prophecy in his left hand (cf. Revelation of John 10: 1–11) .

Several relics of the previous building have been preserved inside the church. In addition to the historical grave slab of Heinrich von Brettach († 1295), there is a wayside shrine by Hans Wunderer (around 1500, renewed in 1771) and the portal tympanum of the previous building, which is now walled up and shows the Lamb of God as a relief work. The lamb is framed by an oak wreath and the head bears a halo . The lamb, symbol of innocence and willingness to make sacrifices, points to Christ who bears the sins of the world (cf. John 1:29 and Isaiah 53: 7).

The church's painted glass windows were all procured after the Second World War. In the sacristy there are two windows designed by Werner Oberle from Schorndorf, which were made by Valentin Saile in Stuttgart in 1958 . They show a Pentecostal motif on the south window and Jesus as the good shepherd to the east, surrounded by scenes from the Gospel of John. The three-part painted east window in the choir was made by E. Böcherer in Freiburg in 1988 and shows the Ascension of Christ .

The wall below the church goes back to the Wilhelmite monastery complex from the late 13th century.

literature

  • Adolf von Oechelhäuser : The art monuments of the Grand Duchy of Baden (Volume 8.1): The art monuments of the districts of Sinsheim, Eppingen and Wiesloch (Heidelberg district) , Tübingen 1909, p. 186/87.
  • Franz Gehrig : The tomb of Heinrich von Brettach and the oldest document . In: Mühlbacher Jahrbuch '77. Heimat- und Verkehrsverein Mühlbach eV, Eppingen-Mühlbach 1977, pp. 11-14.
  • Karl Dettling: 700 years of Mühlbach. 1290-1990. The history of the stone carving village Mühlbach from the beginning up to the 20th century ( Eppinger Stadtgeschichtliche publications. Volume 2). City of Eppingen, Eppingen 1990.
  • Julius Fekete : Art and cultural monuments in the city and district of Heilbronn. Theiss, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-8062-1662-2 , p. 155.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dettling 1990, p. 78.
  2. ↑ Dettling 1990, p. 79.
  3. ↑ Dettling 1990, p. 184.
  4. ↑ Dettling 1990, p. 185.
  5. ↑ Dettling 1990, p. 186.
  6. ↑ a b Dettling 1990, p. 250.
  7. ↑ Dettling 1990, p. 199.
  8. ↑ Dettling 1990, p. 200. Accordingly, the service took place in temporary rooms for about 15 years. In contradiction to this, he writes on p. 345 that, from 1840 onwards, the service took place in a community center or school for over 30 years. The founding of the rectory fund is also only dated to 1853 on p. 345. From the context of the longer explanations on p. 200, the contradicting statements on p. 345 appear incorrect.
  9. ↑ a b Oechelhäuser 1909, p. 186.
  10. ↑ Dettling 1990, pp. 78-80.
  11. ^ Fekete 2002, p. 155.

Web links

Commons : Evangelische Kirche Mühlbach  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 49 ° 6 '2.5 "  N , 8 ° 54' 4.8"  E