Katharinenkirche (Dillingen an der Donau)

Katharinenkirche in Dillingen

Interior with a view of the choir

Window depicting Philipp Melanchthon and Martin Luther

The Katharinenkirche in Dillingen on the Danube in the Bavarian administrative district of Swabia is the parish church of the Evangelical Lutheran parish of the city of Dillingen and the administrative community of Holzheim . The church was built in the neo-Gothic style at the end of the 19th century . On the occasion of its centenary, the church was named in 1992 in honor of Katharina von Bora , the wife of Martin Luther .

history

As the royal seat of the prince-bishops of the Augsburg bishopric , Dillingen was hostile to the Reformation . It was only with the secularization and the granting of religious freedom by Maximilian I Joseph that Protestants were able to acquire citizenship in Catholic Dillingen . The number of Protestants remained small, however, until the relocation of cavalry regiments to Dillingen increased the proportion of Protestants in the population to just under 300 people (including 220 officers and soldiers, 18 citizens and 20 servants). Initially, these were looked after by the evangelical parish of Haunsheim . Since the Haunsheim church was quite a distance, two and a half hours on foot, the Protestants in Dillingen asked King Maximilian II in 1848 for permission to hold church services in Dillingen. They also tried to get the former castle chapel for this purpose . This was used as a magazine by the Royal Building Inspectorate since 1832. The request was rejected, however, probably due to the intervention of the Dillingen Catholics and the Episcopal Ordinariate in Augsburg. Finally, the city of Dillingen made the so-called Little Golden Hall of the former Jesuit college available to the Protestant community . The first public Protestant church service took place there in Dillingen at Easter 1850 and a permanent vicariate was set up on November 30, 1850 .

In 1864 the Protestant community purchased a piece of land in Konviktstrasse to build a church there. A church building fund was set up in 1876 and a few years later a lottery was held in which half of the total church building costs were raised. It was decided to build a church in the neo-Gothic style according to the taste of the time. Since the proximity to the baroque Catholic church buildings was viewed as problematic, the property in Konviktstrasse was exchanged for a larger one on Oberdillinger Strasse in the west of the city gates.

The foundation stone was laid in 1891 and on September 25, 1892 the church, which had been built according to plans by the building department assistant Förster and under the supervision of Richard Greiner, was inaugurated. It was built of brick and had 370 seats for a congregation that in 1890 had 542 members. In 1908 the vicariate was elevated to a parish.

architecture

The building is made of exposed brick. On the east side of the nave rises the 47 meter high, square tower, which is covered with a pointed helmet . The tower is provided with an ornamental gable, to a finial crowns. The portal is covered by a pointed arch. A relief depicting the Last Supper is carved on the tympanum .

The interior has a single nave and is covered with a neo-Gothic ribbed vault. In the west it opens into the retracted, three-sided closed choir , which, like the nave, is pierced by large pointed arched windows.

Philipp Melanchthon and Martin Luther are depicted on a window in the nave .

Crucifixion group in the choir

organ

The church originally received an organ from the organ building company GF Steinmeyer & Co. in Oettingen . The listed organ was in need of renovation in the 1990s and was left to the Steinmeyer company for installation in its old organ hall. Today's organ was installed in 1990 by Ekkehard Simon from Landshut .

Furnishing

• There is a wood-carved crucifixion group in the choir .

List of vicars and pastors

literature

• Georg Dehio : Handbook of German Art Monuments - Bavaria III - Swabia (arr.: Bruno Bushart, Georg Paula). 2nd Edition. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1989, ISBN 978-3-422-03116-6 , p. 252 .
• Festschrift 100 years of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Dillingen . Ed. Evangelical Lutheran Parish Office Dillingen.
• Georg Wörishofer, Alfred Sigg, Reinhard H. Seitz: Cities, Markets and Communities . In: The district of Dillingen ad Donau in the past and present . Ed. Landkreis Dillingen an der Donau, 3rd revised edition, Dillingen an der Donau 2005, pp. 505–506.

Web links

Commons : Katharinenkirche  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Evangelical Luth. Parish of Dillingen

Coordinates: 48 ° 34 ′ 35.4 ″  N , 10 ° 29 ′ 15.6 ″  E