Förthaer Church
The Protestant Förthaer Church is the village church in the center of Förtha in the Thuringian Wartburg district .
This oldest surviving structure in the town was built around 1413. The building, erected as a fortified church or fortified church , was probably originally surrounded by a high defensive wall . The entrance to the tower was probably five to seven meters high and only accessible through a ladder that had to be pulled up. The church not only served the citizens as a place of worship, but also as a place of refuge against roaming robbers and soldiers. Additional floors were built in above the ground floor choir of the tower, where the people who had fled could stay, but where there was also space for necessary food supplies. Narrow windows, which can still be seen today, served as loopholes and protected the occupants of the tower against the enemy arrows. However , the tower was not able to withstand the strains of the Thirty Years' War : in October 1634, plundering Croatian hordes attacked the village. The Förthaer fled into the nearby and dense forests and had to watch as the Soldateska ransacked their church. The church was rebuilt after the war. As can be seen from an inscription in a beam in the nave, it was rebuilt in 1674. The inscription reads "16HM74". A special feature of the church is the barred sacrament niche from the pre-Reformation period, when the sacraments, as is customary in the Catholic Church, had to be housed in a safe place.
The niche is from 1430. The font in the church is from the 17th century with a brass bowl from 1982.
The church tower has a crippled hipped roof covered with red tiles , crowned by a tower ball with an attached cross. The top floor of the tower houses the belfry with three bronze bells and is clad with dark wood. The three bronze bells can each send their sound through two sound hatches in all four directions . Between the two sound hatches on the east side, a white tower clock shows the Förthaern the time. At the foot of the east side of the tower is a small one. five-sided sacristy extension, presumably on the site of a previously much higher extension, which can still be seen today without difficulty at the wall connection points. On this side of the church, the Anger, there is a war memorial. The nave is built on the west of the tower and is slightly wider than the tower. This type of construction, in which the chancel with the altar is in the east, is called the easted church . A covered with red roof tiles, gable roof with one straight shed dormer over five irregularly attached windows on both sides of the roof covering the ship. The church can be entered through two doors on the north or south side. There, the church visitor will find a separate, separately heated room in which community events take place and services are celebrated in the cold season. On the north side of the church in the direction of the Elte stream, the former churchyard can still be seen as a terrace, while there is now a parking lot on the south side of the former churchyard. Congregational festivals take place in the open spaces at the church.
The Förthaer parish belongs to the parish of Evang.-Luth. Parish office of Oberellen in the parish of Eisenach-Gerstungen. The pastor is Ernst Gottfried Phieler.
assumptions
The church shows a very striking resemblance to the Kieselbach church . Since the local church in its current appearance was built as a restored church in 1674, obviously much later than the one in Kieselbach from 14 ?? or 15 ??, it can only be assumed that the Kieselbach church served as a model for the Förthaer building, unless the Förthaer building from 1674, which was a new building, was built on the model of its predecessor church from 1430. If the latter is true, one could speculate that both churches originally had the same builder.
War memorial and Anger, on the right the sacristy, in the background the parish hall
East side of the church with an annexed sacristy and a war memorial
Entrance portal and window on the north side of the ship
swell
- Information board at the church
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 19.9 ″ N , 10 ° 14 ′ 5.5 ″ E