Konkordienkirche (Mannheim)
The Konkordienkirche (also CityKirche Konkordien ) is a Protestant church in Mannheim city center . It was built between 1706 and 1717 and redesigned several times over the years. The steeple, the tallest in the city, was built in 1893.
history
In 1556, Elector Ottheinrich introduced the Reformation to the Electoral Palatinate . After that, with almost every new ruler, the faith alternated between Reformed and Lutheran . During the Thirty Years' War , the Palatinate was re-Catholicized until, after the peace treaty, the pre-war status and thus the Reformed faith was established. In order to promote the reconstruction of Mannheim and the immigration, however, extended city privileges were issued in 1652, which guaranteed comprehensive religious freedom. As a result, there was a French-Reformed, a German-Reformed, a small Dutch-Reformed and a Lutheran congregation in the city.
In the years 1677 to 1680 the first Concordienkirche, from the Latin word "concordia" (= harmony), was built by the Palatinate chief building director Johann Peter Wachter as a court church in the citadel of Friedrichsburg , which was to be used by all Christian denominations. The medal added to the foundation stone on March 29, 1677 with the inscription "Divae hoc condordiae monumentum" gives its name to the Concordienkirche. At the inauguration in 1680 a German Reformed, a Lutheran and a Catholic priest preached. With the death of Elector Karl Ludwig in the same year, however, the plans for a church union in the Palatinate came to an end. Only nine years later, during the Palatinate War of Succession in 1689, when Mannheim was destroyed, the church was blown up. The Mannheim Castle is now located on the site of the former citadel .
The current location of the Konkordienkirche, the square R 2, was planned for the construction of a church as early as the city planning in the 17th century. 1664–66 the French Reformed community built a wooden provisional church at this point. In 1684 it was demolished and the construction of a symmetrical double church began. It was again based on a design by Johann Peter Wachter, which was simplified by city architect Greuter for reasons of cost. One wing was intended for the German Reformed community, the other for the French Reformed community. The central tower belonged to both communities together. The first service was celebrated in the German Reformed part in 1688. Just five months later, the church was blown up by French soldiers in the Palatinate War of Succession.
In 1699 a wooden church was built on the property, which was used by Reformed, Lutherans and Catholics simultaneously. A quick new building failed initially due to a dispute between the communities. Only when square R2 in the Palatinate church division was awarded to the Reformed in 1705 did the Lutherans decide to build the Trinity Church and the Catholics to build the St. Sebastian Church .
The reconstruction of the Reformed Church began in 1706, but was delayed for a long time due to a lack of financial resources and was more modest than the building from the 17th century. The German Reformed part was inaugurated on August 25, 1717. But even after that there was still construction. The portals were finished in 1722 and the church tower, which had previously only consisted of a stump, was raised to three floors by 1729 and completed with a temporary roof. The French Reformed part did not begin until 1736, although the foundation stone had already been laid in 1706. The inauguration could be celebrated on March 1, 1739. However, the building was two axes shorter than the German-Reformed one, which meant that the symmetry of the building was lost.
During the First Coalition War , the church burned down in 1795 and only the wing of the German Reformed congregation was rebuilt and consecrated in 1800. The ruins of the French Reformed Church initially remained because the increasingly smaller congregation failed to rebuild. Until the rededication of the German Reformed Church, the Reformed congregations had the right to host the Lutheran Trinity Church. From this experience, the Mannheim congregations became pacemakers for the Baden Church Union. In 1817, 600 Mannheim families signed a resolution in which the unification of the two Protestant churches was desired. Other Baden cities joined the initiative. This ultimately led to the Baden Church Union. In 1821 the Reformed joined forces with the Lutherans to form the " United Evangelical Protestant Church in the Grand Duchy of Baden ". In this context, the church was given the name Konkordienkirche and thus linked to the name of the first Concordienkirche. With the unification, a French Reformed church building had also become obsolete, which is why the ruins were demolished in 1822 and the Protestant schoolhouse, today 's Mozart School , was built in its place - rotated by 90 degrees - in the classicist style.
Bibiena had already drawn up a plan for the expansion of the tower in 1748 . For reasons of cost, however, it was just as unrealized as a design by Nicolas de Pigage from 1754. It was not until 1892/93 that the tower was expanded to its present height. With the rebuilding of the school by Richard Perrey from 1914 to 1917, the double building finally regained the symmetry it had lost in 1689.
During the Second World War , the church burned down completely in 1943. Only the badly damaged enclosing walls remained. However, the tower survived the nights of bombing almost unscathed. Between 1949 and 1952, the Mannheim architect Max Schmechel rebuilt the church. For reasons of monument protection, the exterior was almost restored to its condition from 1800, the interior was redesigned in the style of the 1950s.
A Vespers Church was organized for the first time in January 1998 and has been repeated every year since then. Due to the decreasing number of evangelicals in the city center, the congregation merged with Trinitatis and the Hafenkirche in 2009 to form the “Citygemeinde Hafen Konkordien”.
description
architecture
The Konkordienkirche forms a double building with the Mozart School and the tower placed in between. This type of building went down in architectural history under the name Mannheim symmetry and was the model for two other buildings in Mannheim in the 18th century: the St. Sebastian Church with the town hall on the market square and the department store on Paradeplatz . The Konkordienkirche has a rectangular floor plan with five axes with high arched windows on the long sides and three axes on the narrow side and each with a central portal . The ridge turrets on the hipped roof were not restored after the Second World War, nor were the balustrade on the roof, which was added in 1893. It is still preserved at the Mozart School .
The interior was completely redesigned by Max Schmechel after the war . The clear, sober style served as a model for the other Protestant churches in Mannheim, which had to be rebuilt. At 86.93 meters, the neo-baroque tower is the tallest church tower in Mannheim and one of its landmarks.
art
The church windows were designed by the Mannheim artist Karl Rödel after the Second World War . Depending on the incidence of sunlight, he chose red tones for the east side and blue tones for the west side.
In the central aisle of the church, patterns similar to a barcode are applied to the floor. They were created by the Korean artist Minah Son. In alienated script they contain words from the Revelation of John . However, they only become legible when you bend down and are far enough away from them.
At the back of the chancel hang two so-called counterparts by the Munich artist Gregor Cuerten . The principal pieces of the church were created in 2010 by the Mannheim artist Madeleine Dietz from steel and baked earth. In addition to the altar , ambo and baptismal font , Dietz's fourth work was the installation “Now build my house”.
organ
Today's organ is the fourth instrument in the Konkordienkirche.
The first organ dates from 1722. It was replaced in 1761 by an instrument made by the brothers Johann Philipp and Johann Heinrich Stumm . It went down with the fire in the church in 1795.
After the church was rebuilt, the organ built by Johann Andreas Silbermann for St. Johann in Strasbourg in 1763 was purchased and installed in 1800. Like the previous organ, it was arranged above the altar and pulpit. This organ was destroyed in World War II.
After the church was rebuilt, today's instrument was built in several stages between 1952 and 1959. As Opus 1000 it is the anniversary organ of the Weigle organ building company from Echterdingen. It has 51 registers , distributed over four manuals and pedal , with an electro-pneumatic cone drawer (in the Rückpositiv pocket drawer ) and 3,926 pipes . It is arranged on the gallery opposite the altar. The organ has the following disposition :
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- Coupling : I / II, III / II, IV / II, IV / III, I / P, II / P, II / P, IV / P.
- Playing aids : 4 free combinations , 1 free pedal combination, individual tongue storage, roller
- Remarks:
- * = acoustic from Pommer 16 '
- ** = Transmission from Hauptwerk Gedecktpommer 16 '
Crypt
Raugräfin Luise von Degenfeld , the morganatically wedded wife of Elector Karl Ludwig , was buried in 1677 in a hastily built crypt in the Concordienkirche in Friedrichsburg, which was under construction. After the destruction of the church, around 1700 her bones were transferred to a crypt of the French Reformed Church, which was still in the planning stage. After the ruin of the church was torn down, a deep crypt was found during excavation work in 1823, with a tin coffin artfully decorated with ten lion heads. The skeleton belonged to a female body aged 40 to 50 years. Since no other high-ranking personality comes into question, it is assumed that it is the coffin of the rogue countess. It was brought to the Konkordienkirche and after the church was rebuilt after the Second World War, a new crypt was created under the organ gallery.
Bells
After the church burned down in 1795, four bells were recovered in 1802 . The community acquired a bell from Holland and three bells from the secularized Oggersheim monastery. The sonorous Wallon bell was cast in 1663 for the Reformed Church in the Dutch Berltsum (Frisian marshland). After the church was rebuilt in 1779, it could no longer be accommodated in the bell room, which was now designed as a dome lantern, and was sold. The German-Walloon parish of the Konkordienkirche was able to bid for this bell. One of the three bells from Oggersheim was taken over unchanged. The other two were cast into two new bells along with the metal of the broken bells. During the Second World War these four bells had to be delivered. Yet they all survived the chaos of war. The large Wallon bell was found in Frankfurt after the war, the other three in the bell cemetery in Hamburg and brought back to the Konkordienkirche.
In 1996, the Karlsruhe bell and art foundry added a small bell in tone c 2 to complete the ringing in the tone sequence "upwards" and to enable several tonal combinations (motifs). In terms of sound, the three bacon bells fall behind the Walloon bell, which is the oldest bell in Mannheim, and do not hit the originally planned tone sequence. However, the unmistakable sound character of the bells is due to these unevenness. Today there is a soundly and historically interesting bell in the bell house of the tower.
| No. | Surname | Casting year | Foundry, casting location | Ø (mm) | kg | volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wallon bell | 1663 | Jurjen Balthasar, Leeuwarden | 1440 | 1900 | des¹ |
| 2 | Harmony bell | 1802 | Joh. Michael Alois Speck, Mannheim | 1245 | 1350 | d¹ |
| 3 | Reformation bell | 1802 | Joh. Michael Alois Speck, Mannheim | 1050 | 800 | f¹ |
| 4th | Our Father Bell | 1794 | Anselm Franz Speck , Heidelberg | 870 | 450 | as¹ |
| 5 | Baptismal bell | 1996 | Karlsruhe bell and art foundry | 730 | 300 | c 2 |
Others
The Konkordienkirche has served as a nesting place for a population of peregrine falcons for several years .
literature
- Hansjörg Probst , Inga Gesche: Evang. Konkordienkirche Mannheim . Munich 1985.
- Udo Wennemuth: History of the Protestant Church in Mannheim . Sigmaringen 1996, ISBN 3-7995-0930-5 .
- Hans Huth: The historical monuments of the city circle Mannheim I . Munich 1982, ISBN 3-422-00556-0 .
- Andreas Schenk: Architectural Guide Mannheim . Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-496-01201-3 .
Web links
- CityKirche Concordia
- Viewpoints, Mannheim history on site, Konkordienkirche (PDF; 569 kB)
- Viewpoints, Mannheim history on site, church union (PDF; 740 kB)
- Mozart School Mannheim, history of the square R2
- Historical peal of the Konkordienkirche
Individual evidence
- ↑ Notation on the parish homepage
- ^ Evangelical Church in Mannheim
- ^ Walter Born: The high German church towers . Hildesheim 1979, ISBN 3-7848-7010-4 .
- ^ Untitled Document . In: archive.is . August 3, 2012 ( archive.is [accessed August 28, 2017]).
- ↑ Peregrine falcon in Konkordienkirche ( memento of the original from November 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Two females share one male: falcons breed in packs of three
Coordinates: 49 ° 29 ′ 19.7 ″ N , 8 ° 28 ′ 8.6 ″ E