Evangelical parish church Gosau

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Evangelical parish church AB Gosau

The Evangelical Parish Church of Gosau is located in the Gosau parish in the Gmunden district . Today's sacred building dates from 1864 to 1869 and replaced the Tolerance Church from 1784. The church is a parish church of the Evangelical Church AB in Austria and belongs to the Evangelical Superintendentur Upper Austria . The Protestant church in Gosau is a listed building .

The Protestant parish church

The tolerance prayer house was built in 1784 and the inauguration took place on the last Sunday after Trinity . Due to the building regulations at the time, the prayer house was not allowed to have a tower, bells or sacred decorations.

From 1864 the prayer house was demolished and the stones used for the new building of the Protestant elementary school. The construction of the new Protestant church lasted until 1869. After the state restrictions were removed, the sacred building could also be built with a church tower. The new consecration took place in September 1869.

The Protestant parish church in Gosau is designed in the neo-Gothic style. The tower in the southern choir corner has a pointed helmet . The architect of the Gosau church was Hermann Wehrenfennig , who also planned the Protestant churches in Gmunden and Vöcklabruck. With the exception of the altar crucifix by Erler, all the carvings were made by Hager, a senior teacher in Gosau. The carved Trinity altar has the motif "I am the vine, you are the branches" and the apostles Peter and Paul. Hager was a teacher at the Hallstatt Wood School .

All stones for the church building were obtained from Gosau quarries. The marble for the altar steps and the font is also from the municipality (from the Dachstein). The organ from 1902 comes from the Steinmayer organ building company. The church has three bells.

History of the Protestant Parish

16th to 18th century

Evangelical teaching appeared for the first time in Gosau as early as 1525. Protestant refugees from the first German Peasants' War had found refuge and new homes in the remote Gosau Valley. In the course of a generation the Roman Catholic faith disappeared among the Gosau population, around 1550 the Catholic priest was also replaced by Lutheran preachers.

From 1597 Emperor Rudolf II tried to introduce the Counter-Reformation in the Salzkammergut, which was directly subordinate to the Hofkammer zu Vienna . On June 1, 1601, the people of Gosau showed their protest against the ongoing imperial measures by breaking up the Corpus Christi procession leading from Abtenau to Gosau. The approximately 1,000 Catholic Abtenauer met 300 armed Protestant lumberjacks at the Gschütt Pass and were therefore forced to return to Lammertal .

From autumn 1601 to spring 1602 there were revolts against the authorities in several places in the course of the Salzkammergut uprising. For example, the imperial keeper responsible for the Ischl and Gosau valleys was besieged by the rebels for around three months at his official residence, Wildenstein Castle above Bad Ischl. The prince-archbishop and sovereign of Salzburg Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau intervened on the side of the Habsburgs and sent armed forces to the Salzkammergut in various ways. 1,000 infantry and 200 horsemen marched along Lake Wolfgang to Ischl, another 200 archiepiscopal soldiers from Hohenwerfen Fortress marched towards Gosau. From February 23, 1602, the company faced around 500 Gosauers at Pass Gschütt for three days, who then surrendered their weapons. After the rebellion was put down, two Protestant leaders were executed in Gosau alone. Andre Hager (the Leutgeb farmer) was hanged and Michael Baader was quartered .

In 1624, Emperor Ferdinand II, under threat of sanctions through the so-called General Reformation patent, demanded that the population of his empire should become Catholic again within a year. Some people left the Gosau valley, but the majority of them externally returned to Catholicism and began to live their secret Protestantism in the "cave churches" (rock caves), on lonely alpine huts or remote farms. The Gosau Valley continued to be supplied with smuggled Evangelical literature, especially from Nuremberg (see Weg des Buch ). The Upper Austrian Peasants' War , which broke out shortly thereafter , left the Salzkammergut largely untouched, but there was a bloody battle against Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim on the northern edge of the Kammergut, in Pinsdorf .

In the 1730s, under the reign of Maria Theresa , in addition to the residents of Bad Ischl, Bad Goisern and Hallstatt, Gosau residents as so-called countrymen were forced to transmigrate to the Crown Land of Transylvania for reasons of faith .

Since the tolerance patent in 1781

In October 1781, Emperor Joseph II proclaimed the patent of tolerance , thus ending the time of crypto-Protestantism in Austria. The prerequisite for a prayer house was at least 100 families or 500 individuals who declared themselves to be Evangelicals. The public announcement in Gosau took place on December 26th, 1781, in the following weeks 1,053 people reported to the Protestant faith, i.e. practically the entire population of the place. Brigitte Wallner was the first person in town to register with the authorities as "Evangelical".

The Evangelical Parish Church of Bad Goisern acted as the Protestant mother parish for the Inner Salzkammergut . In Goisern, a community of tolerance was established as early as 1782. Gosau belonged to the Goisern pastorate for around two years, the approval for the establishment of its own tolerance congregation was granted in 1784. In the period up to 1795, 48 “tolerance congregations” were established in Austria.

On October 7, 1784, the first evangelical pastor destined for Gosau arrived. Julius Theodor Wehrenfennig was born in Regensburg. He became the progenitor of the widespread pastor family. Julius Theodor, his son Bernhard Friedrich and his nephew Adolf Wilhelm Wehrenfenng provided the Protestant pastors of Gosau between 1784 and 1882. After Friedrich Novak (from a Moravian family of theologians), Hans Eder took over the pastoral position from 1917 to 1944. From 1937 he was also superintendent of Upper Austria. Other pastors were Leopold Temmel (1940–1953), Werner Koch (1953–1966), Josef Schramm (1966–1970), Eckhard Meding (1970–1980), Gebhard Dopplinger (1981–1995), Gerhard Höberth (1996–2005) , Carsten Marx (2005-2006), Dirk Fiedler (2007-2011). Pastor Günther Scheutz and parish candidate Esther Scheuchl have looked after the parish since 2014, and Esther Scheuchl was finally elected to her post as pastor of Gosau on May 31, 2015.

  • Evangelical Church Gosau, chancel

  • Evangelical Church Gosau, gallery

  • Brigitta memorial plaque

  • Evangelical Church Gosau with rectory

Evangelical institutions in Gosau

  • From 1783 to 1938, in addition to the (one-class) state elementary school, there was also a (multi-class) Protestant elementary school .
  • The Protestant kindergarten has existed since 1908, the current building has stood since 1978.
  • The Protestant nursing home "Brigitta" was opened in 1925. It can accommodate around 40 elderly people.
  • The youth home, built in 1930, has served as an evangelical family rest home since 1964.
  • The "Haus Wehrenfennig" is the Protestant guesthouse in Gosau. It is one of the oldest wooden houses in the municipality.
  • The Protestant rectory was built in 1786. The rectory building ( list entry ), like the church ( list entry ), is a listed building .

All buildings: church, rectory, old and new kindergarten, former elementary school, Brigittaheim and Wehrenfennig house are in close proximity to each other and form a “church district”, so to speak.

Demographic peculiarity

Gosau is the only political municipality in the federal state of Upper Austria (of over 440 municipalities) in which the Protestant part of the population has about a three-quarters majority. In the 1900 census there were 1,164 Evangelicals and 164 Catholics, and in the 1981 census there were 1,540 Evangelicals and 287 Catholics.

The judicial district of Bad Ischl has a Protestant share of more than 20 percent of the total population, which is relatively high in an Austrian comparison. For this reason, each of the seven political communities in the judicial district has its own Protestant church building.

literature

  • Association for the publication of a district book Gmunden (ed.): The district of Gmunden and its communities. From the beginning to the present . Upper Austrian Provincial Publishing House , Linz 1991.
  • Bundesdenkmalamt (Ed.): Dehio-Handbuch Oberösterreich . 3. Edition. Anton Schroll & Co, Vienna 1958.
  • Peter F. Barton: Evangelical in Austria . Böhlau Verlag , Vienna Cologne Graz 1987, ISBN 3-205-05096-7 .

Web links

Commons : Evangelische Pfarrkirche Gosau  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Leopold Temmel: The Evangelical Church in the Gmunden district . In: Association for the publication of a district book Gmunden (Hrsg.): The district of Gmunden and its communities . From the beginning to the present. Upper Austria. Landesverlag. Linz. 1991. pp. 523-539.
  2. ↑ a b Bundesdenkmalamt (Ed.): Dehio-Handbuch Oberösterreich . 3. Edition. Anton Schroll & Co, Vienna 1958, p. 95 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Heinrich Marchetti, Paul Gamsjäger: Gosau. Community mirror and community history . In: Association for the publication of a district book Gmunden (Hrsg.): The district of Gmunden and its communities . From the beginning to the present. Upper Austria. Landesverlag. Linz. 1991. pp. 965-976.
  4. ^ Ischler Heimatverein (ed.): Bad Ischl Heimatbuch 2004 . Wimmer Verlag, Bad Ischl 2004, ISBN 3-900998-70-1 , p. 552, 588, 622 .
  5. ^ Peter F. Barton: Evangelical in Austria . 1st edition. Böhlau, Vienna Cologne Graz 1987, ISBN 3-205-05096-7 , p. 52 .
  6. ^ A b Peter F. Barton: Evangelical in Austria . 1st edition. Böhlau , Vienna Cologne Graz 1987, ISBN 3-205-05096-7 , p. 129, 203 .
  7. ^ Ischler Heimatverein (ed.): Bad Ischl Heimatbuch 2004 . Wimmer Verlag, Bad Ischl 2004, ISBN 3-900998-70-1 , p. 587-604 .
  8. ↑ Contacts of the Evangelical Parish. (No longer available online.) Evangelische Pfarrgemeinde AB Gosau, December 1, 2014, archived from the original on April 14, 2015 ; Retrieved April 8, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.evangelisch-in-gosau.at
  9. ↑ Gosau retirement home. Dachstein Salzkammergut Tourismus, August 1, 2010, accessed on April 8, 2015 .
  10. ^ House Wehrenfennig. (No longer available online.) Association for the Administration and Maintenance of the Evangelical Recreation Home Gosau, December 1, 2014, archived from the original on September 22, 2013 ; Retrieved April 8, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hausderbegegnung.at

Coordinates: 47 ° 34 ′ 57.3 "  N , 13 ° 31 ′ 29.7"  E