Hospital Church (Wetzlar)

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Hospital Church Wetzlar from the north (2010)
View from the south (2018)

The Hospital Church in Wetzlar in the Lahn-Dill district is an Evangelical Lutheran preaching church . It was built in the Rococo style between 1762 and 1764 and is considered a rare and high quality example of this architectural style among Lutheran sermon churches. The five-axis hall building with a five-eighth end and a western hooded ridge is a Hessian cultural monument with a rich interior.

location

The Hospital Church is located in the former medieval Langgässer suburb. The Lahn flows in the immediate vicinity and the Langgasse leads over the stone Alte Lahnbrücke directly into the old town. The location for the hospital was specifically chosen because the running water was expected to have a healing effect.

Historically, the hospital was outside the city wall in the Langgässer suburb, directly on the Cologne High Heer and Geleitstrasse , which led from Antwerp via Cologne to Frankfurt am Main.

history

In 1262, a hospital for the Holy Spirit with a chapel made of rubble stone is mentioned for the first time. She was dedicated to St. Nicholas and St. Consecrated to Catherine . With the introduction of the Reformation , the parish changed to the evangelical confession in 1555 or 1563. Due to the edict of restitution of 1629, the Lutheran congregation was forbidden to hold services in the collegiate church, so that they moved to the Walpurgius chapel and the hospital chapel until 1632.

The Gothic hospital chapel was closed in February 1752 due to dilapidation and demolished in 1755. The evangelical staff of the city court chamber pushed ahead with a new building of the church and made a decisive contribution to the financing, so that the foundation stone was laid on June 20, 1755 . A collection from all Protestant imperial estates resulted in donations amounting to 13,500 guilders. When the Seven Years' War broke out and Lahnwasser penetrated into the tombs under the choir and the ship, this led to a construction interruption and a change of plan. It was not until six years later that the tombs were filled and construction continued. The shell was built from spring to autumn 1762. The interior work and the construction of the roof ridge followed in 1763. On June 12, 1764, the hospital church was inaugurated as an Evangelical Lutheran preaching church. The designs presumably came from Johann Ludwig Splittdorff , the senior construction director of Hessen-Kassel .

When Wetzlar was a Prussian garrison town , the church served as a garrison church until 1877 .

In 1921 the church was electrified and renovated in 1922/1923. The adjoining hospital from 1748 and the stained glass windows of the church were destroyed in 1944. It was replaced by a community hall after World War II.

In 1964 the interior of the church was inspected by Karl Faulstich and then restored. He exposed the original colored painting again. Further structural damage was repaired by 1995. On the occasion of the 250th anniversary in 2014, the church was given a new paint job.

architecture

East portal

The baroque hall building is built to the west of the Lahn directly on the adjacent Langgasse and oriented to the southeast in accordance with the course of the street. The church with a five-eighth end and a canopy ridge is three axes wide and five axes long. It was built from plastered quarry stone masonry that was painted apricot in 2014. A community center has been built in the south-west, giving direct access to the church.

The church is accessed through four centrally mounted portals. The red painted walls have flat segmental arches with keystones , which are marked in the east and north with the year 1764. The skylight also has segment arches with a keystone. The windows divide the walls into two zones. The narrow sides are exposed at the bottom through two and the long sides through four segmented arched windows. In the upper area, three oval ox eyes on the narrow sides and five on the long sides serve to illuminate the galleries.

The double-lying roof structure is from the construction period. The slated gable roof is equipped with eleven round dormers. In the west there is an eight-sided roof turret, the shaft of which is divided by a cornice. Round-arched sound openings for the bells are let into the upper half. Four dials of the tower clock are attached to each side at eaves level. The small open lantern with a hood is crowned by a tower knob and a gilded cross.

Furnishing

Marbled, painted circular columns with pictures of the apostles support two longitudinal beams and enclose the four-sided gallery with basket arches . Only the middle area between the galleries is closed off by a mirrored ceiling with coves , which gives the impression of a three-aisled complex. The upper row of columns is painted on the ceiling. A beam support with a round arch in the east takes on the function of a triumphal arch . The two ceiling paintings by Georg Friedrich Repp (1764) show the baptism of Christ in the east and the Pentecost event in the west. The sculptor Hochstader from Limburg created the plastic dove with a large halo in the middle of the ceiling. The Eye of Providence is depicted in a golden halo above the altar area . An altar painting on the north gallery shows the veneration of the Trinity by Ignatius von Loyola and Franz Xaver and a painting on the south pore shows the resurrection of Christ, both created by E. von Bresler in 1865.

Below the east gallery, which serves as the installation site for the organ, a choir wall has been inserted, which separates the sacristy in the choir polygon. The richly designed pulpit altar is flanked on each side by two free columns with high bases and Corinthian capitals . On the protruding woodwork above the cornice of the sound cover, which extends to the column capitals, are the moving statues of the horned Moses with the tablets of the law, Paul with the open Bible, which shows the verse from Acts 16:31  LUT , and John the Baptist with the lamb of God set in silver and the victory flag with the banner "ECCE AGNUS DEI" ( see, the lamb of God ). They are also from Hochstader and are set in white with gilded hems. The sound cover is decorated with a garland and has a gilded dove in a halo on the underside and a wreath of honor on top. The painting on the pulpit door goes back to the painter Cramer and shows the resurrection of Christ. The pulpit fields of the polygonal pulpit carry decorated cartouches with depictions of Salvator mundi and the evangelists. On both sides of the pulpit there are three-sided boxes for the members of the Reich Chamber Court and the Magistrate.

organ

Walcker organ behind the historic prospectus from 1766

The new organ was built by Johann Andreas Heinemann from Laubach im Vogelsberg from 1764 to 1766. The seven-axis prospect has towers of different shapes and widths. The wide central tower is flanked by low round towers on which standing figures with trumpet players are placed. The medium-sized pointed towers are adjoined by large harp fields on the outside. The sculptor Saleck designed the figurative jewelry. In 1931, EF Walcker & Cie. a new organ with 27 registers and electro-pneumatic action behind the historic Heinemann case. The disposition is as follows:

I main work C – f 3
Pommer 16 ′
Principal 8th'
Reed flute 8th'
octave 4 ′
Open flute 4 ′
Fifth 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
octave 2 ′
third 1 3 ⁄ 5  ′
Mixture IV 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Trumpet 8th'
II Oberwerk C – f 3
Dumped 8th'
Quintatos 8th'
Prefix 4 ′
Night horn 4 ′
Principal 2 ′
Forest flute 2 ′
Fifth 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Sif flute 1'
Scharff IV 1'
Krummhorn 8th'
Pedal C – f 1
Principal 16 ′
Sub bass 16 ′
Octave bass 8th'
Bass flute 8th'
Choral bass 4 ′
Rauschpfeife IV 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
trombone 16 ′

Todays use

The Hospital Church belongs to the Heilig-Geist district of the Evangelical Community of Wetzlar, which is affiliated with the Evangelical Church District of Lahn and Dill in the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland . It is used regularly for church services and cultural events.

literature

  • Friedrich Kilian Abicht: The district of Wetzlar, presented historically, statistically and topographically. Volume 2. Wetzlar 1836, pp. 14-15 ( online ).
  • Folkhard Cremer (Red.): Dehio-Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Hessen I: Gießen and Kassel administrative districts. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03092-3 .
  • Irene Jung: Wetzlar. A little city history. Sutton Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86680-715-0 .
  • Oda Peter, Siegfried Meier: The Wetzlar hospital church for the Holy Spirit. Church leaders. Published by the Evangelical Church Community of Wetzlar, Wetzlar 2014.
  • Frank W. 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 .

Web links

Commons : Hospitalkirche Wetzlar  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolph: 200 years of evangelical life. 2009, p. 68.
  2. ↑ a b c d Dehio: Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Hessen I. 2008.
  3. ↑ a b Kirchenkreis Wetzlar - News from the Kirchenkreis 2003 ( Memento from January 16, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Rudolph: 200 years of evangelical life. 2009, p. 67.
  5. ↑ a b c d e State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Langgasse 9 In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hessen
  6. ^ Jung: Wetzlar. A little city history. Sutton Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86680-715-0 , p. 67.
  7. ↑ Abicht: The district of Wetzlar, presented historically, statistically and topographically. Volume 2. Wetzlar 1836, p. 15 ( online ).
  8. ^ Rudolph: 200 years of evangelical life. 2009, pp. 204, 320.
  9. ^ Jung: Wetzlar. A little city history. 2010, p. 68.
  10. ^ Franz Bösken : Sources and research on the organ history of the Middle Rhine. Vol. 1: Mainz and suburbs - Rheinhessen - Worms and suburbs . Schott, Mainz 1967, ISBN 978-3-7957-1306-5 , p. 841 (Contributions to the Middle Rhine Music History 6).
  11. ^ Organ of the Wetzlar Hospital Church , accessed on April 11, 2020.
  12. ↑ Evangelical Church District at Lahn and Dill , accessed on April 11, 2020.

Coordinates: 50 ° 33 ′ 21.8 "  N , 8 ° 29 ′ 52.2"  E