Franz Rothermel

Laurentiuskirche , south view

Franz Rothermel (* 1690/91 in the Prince Abbey of Kempten ; † 1759 in Dirmstein ) was a building contractor who, in connection with the construction of buildings in the Baroque and Rococo styles, found entry into the municipal archive and the local history of Dirmstein (see  literature ).

family

On February 2, 1723, Rothermel married the daughter of the builder Balthasar Nick (1678–1749) and his wife Katharina geb. König (~ 1680–1749), Anna Christina Nick . After 25 years of marriage, she died on April 2nd, 1748 and was buried in the old cemetery , where her gravestone has been preserved.

Rothermel's great-granddaughter Anna Margaretha married Ludwig Bihn in Dirmstein in 1806 and became the mother of the Catholic priest Joseph Bihn (1822-1893), who founded the sister order of the "Franciscan Sisters of Tiffin" in 1867 in Tiffin (Ohio, USA) .

Works

Franz Rothermel's house north of Schlossplatz

Final floor plan (1741/42) for the Laurentiuskirche

Together with his father-in-law Balthasar Nick, Rothermel played a key role in the rebuilding of Dirmstein in the first half of the 18th century after the village was burned down by French troops in the Palatinate War of Succession in 1689 . In the sources Rothermel is called "bricklayer"; This job title applied to a building contractor and architect according to the language used at the time.

His most important achievement is that he planned and carried out the construction of the Laurentiuskirche between 1742 and 1746 . For cost reasons, he modified and simplified the second construction plan, which the well-known church builder Balthasar Neumann had made in 1741 for the client, Prince-Bishop of Worms, Franz Georg von Schönborn .

Rothermel is also credited with building his own house, which is now called Franz Rothermel's house after him . Due to the poorly legible handwriting on the map from 1746 , the property, which was probably built in the 1730s, was initially incorrectly named Franz Roth Domels Haus . It is a listed building and was restored in the years after 2000.

literature

• Michael Martin (ed.): Dirmstein - nobility, farmers and citizens . Chronicle of the Dirmstein community. Self-published by the Foundation for the Promotion of Palatinate Historical Research , Neustadt an der Weinstrasse 2005, ISBN 3-9808304-6-2 .
• Georg Peter Karn, Ulrike Weber (arrangement): Bad Dürkheim district. City of Grünstadt, Union communities Freinsheim, Grünstadt-Land and Hettenleidelheim (=  cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate. Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . Volume 13.2 ). Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2006, ISBN 3-88462-215-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Inscription on the tombstone of Anna Christina Nick.
2. ↑ Anna Margaretha Rothermel. (No longer available online.) Www.familysearch.org, formerly in the original ; Retrieved August 18, 2011 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Franz Rothermel: floor plan from 1741/42 . Original in the central archive of the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate . Speyer, Dept. 170, No. 698.
4. ↑ Bird chart from 1746 . Original in the Hessian State Archives . Darmstadt , P. 1, 418.
5. ^ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - Bad Dürkheim district. Mainz 2020, p. 29 (PDF; 5.1 MB).