Rittersgrün Church

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Church and rectory at the foot of the Vogelberg

The Evangelical Lutheran parish church of Rittersgrün is a hall church in the Saxon Ore Mountains that was built in the late 17th century .

History and architecture

After Paul Escher's hammer mill , located above Arnoldshammer , was badly damaged by water and fire in 1617 and completely destroyed in 1633 by Holk's troops, who moved north over the Rittersgrüner Pass , it lay desolate for decades and came into electoral possession. Johann Georg III. donated the ruins of the Escher manor house to the Rittersgrüner community in 1685 . After a local building commission had been formed the following year, construction of the church began on the foundations of the manor house. The character of the former Hammerherrenhaus was preserved by the strong walls and the high slate roof , hewn down on the west side . In 1693 the work was completed after five years of construction and the church was consecrated. The former hammer mill still functions as a rectory today and is one of the oldest buildings in Rittersgrün.

In 1755 a tower with an octagonal bell storey and a squat Baroque dome was built into the adjacent mountain on the side of the altar . The year of construction 1755 is noted on the simply designed portal. Ten years later, the church received its first organ in 1863 by an organ of Werdauer organ builder Johann Gotthilf Bärmig was replaced, the 1852 already the Breitenbrunner organ was built. After the big bell broke on August 9, 1854, when the mourning bells for the Saxon king , the royal court in Dresden granted a new, three-part bronze bell that was consecrated on Reformation Day 1856. After the two big bells were withdrawn in 1917 during the First World War , the church received new steel bells in 1919 with the help of donations.

In 1890 the morgue in the tower was expanded, and in 1893 the church tower received a new clock. In the course of the restoration of the tower in 1992, a new weather vane was put on and documents were added to the sphere. The weather vane bears the dates 1755 and 1992 and is provided with the coat of arms of Electoral Saxony.

In 2005, a funeral hall was built on the site of the church, which made the use of a small room in the church tower unnecessary for this purpose.

Interior design

The bright hall with a flat plastered ceiling has single-storey galleries on three sides . An earlier upper gallery was removed in 1931. While the glass parlor to the left and right of the altar is still there, the glazing of the gallery on the south side, which some factory owners had recently rented, was also removed. Behind the altar is the choir gallery, under which the sacristy is located. Their groin vault probably comes from the previous building.

The pulpit altar was put together in 1692 from a late Gothic winged altar , possibly from the property of the Grünhain monastery . It shows Saints Erasmus and Jacobus the Elder . The master with the initials AH is unknown. The octagonal baptismal font in the shape of a chalice is wooden and, like the altar, was created in 1692. The life-size carved crucifix was created at the same time .

Cemetery and commemoration

Memorial plaque with the coat of arms of the von Elterlein family

The cemetery was initially only on the north side of the church until it was expanded in the 1860s by a room on the other side, above the rectory. Both parts of the cemetery are connected by a passage in the church tower. In front of the main portal of the church there is a small green area with an obelisk in honor of the Rittersgrüner soldiers who died in the Franco-Prussian War . Opposite is a memorial in memory of the victims of the two world wars. on a wall between the two marks there are three plaques with the names of the Rittersgrüner soldiers who fell in World War I. In the anteroom behind the main portal there is a baroque tombstone for the Rittersgrüner Pastor Merker, who died in 1755. A gate on the west side of the church, which is now walled up, led to the hereditary burial of the knightly green hammermen of Elterlein , who is remembered with a plaque in the passage to the cemetery.

Exterior views and construction details

  • Cenotaph in memory of those who fell in the two world wars

  • Main portal on the south side

  • Carved year on the main portal: 1851

  • southern portal at the church tower: passage to the cemetery on the north side

  • Keystone above the northern portal on the church tower: 1755

  • North side of the church tower: Baroque hood with a weather vane that was renewed in 1992

  • Cemetery on the north side of the church

  • Church and cemetery from the south

literature

Web links

Commons : Kirche Rittersgrün  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 28 ′ 48.15 ″  N , 12 ° 47 ′ 38.3 ″  E