Luther Church (Ludwigshafen am Rhein)

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Luther Church in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine
In the foreground the Luther Fountain on the site of the destroyed nave

The Luther Church was the oldest Protestant church building in Ludwigshafen am Rhein . Its 61 meter high, preserved tower is characteristic of the Ludwigshafen city skyline. The nave was destroyed in World War II, the preserved tower is now used for gastronomy.

history

Luther Church around 1880

After the services had been celebrated together with the Catholics in a simultaneous church (the later Ludwigshafen synagogue ) from 1854 , the presbytery of the Protestant parish bought a building site on Maxstrasse for 3000 guilders. Against the plans of the consistory in Speyer and the parish, the Bavarian government commissioned the architect August von Voit (Munich) to carry out the construction. Its design was approved on April 8, 1858. Work began in August of that year, carried out by Ludwigshafen builders Joseph and Wendelin Hoffmann. The church was consecrated on November 27, 1864 after the permanent vicariate of Ludwigshafen, which was established in 1855, had already been separated from the association with the Protestant parish of Oggersheim in June 1862 and made an independent parish.

The neo-Gothic nave consisted of red sandstone carved on the outside and plastered on the inside from the quarries of the Palatinate Railways . The three-aisled interior with a length of 38.65 meters and a width of 20.45 meters had 1000 seats and around 600 standing places.

The church remained a torso for nearly twenty years. In 1863/1864 the rectory was built. For the time being, there was no financial means for further construction work. It was not until 1872/1873 that interior plastering and stucco work was carried out and the organ gallery was completed. The organ itself came from the organ builder Wilhelm Sauer from Frankfurt an der Oder and was inaugurated on June 28, 1874.

A collection and lottery income raised the necessary funds in 1878 for the construction of the still missing tower, which was completed in 1880 according to plans by the building councilor Voit, a son of the church's architect, who has since died. In place of the originally planned slate cladding, at the request of the presbytery, the government approved the still existing openwork Gothic sandstone as a spire. The construction of the church came to an end in 1883 with the erection of four evangelist figures by the Karlsruhe sculptor Karl Friedrich Moest . Just a few years later, it turned out to be too small for the growing community. In 1887 a second parish office was established and in 1895 it was separated as a separate parish for the northern part of the city. The Apostle Church was built here between 1892 and 1894 .

It was not until the anniversary of the Reformation in 1917 that the church was given the name Luther Church . The nave fell victim to the bombing raids on Ludwigshafen during World War II , and the tower was preserved as a memorial. The area of ​​the former nave was redesigned in the 1990s and supplemented by the Luther fountain . There is a café in the tower itself.

The Melanchthon Church, which was built in the immediate vicinity after the war as Bartning's emergency church, is used for church services today .

Bells

Upper part of the Luther church tower with tower clock and sound windows

The old chime in the chime sequence es 1 –g 1 –b 1 –c 2 was destroyed down to the smallest bell . At the request of the community, the tower should have a new bell. However, a vibrational analysis revealed that the tower, which had been weakened after the church was destroyed, was unable to carry the same bells as the previous one.

This problem was circumvented by the then bell expert Theo Fehn, after a long period of reflection, planned a musically remarkable peal of two basic and four cymbal bells; the remaining small bell was no longer used. The large pitch gap between the smaller basic bell and the largest cymbal bell (gb 1 –as 2  = interval of a major ninth ) had to be left out in advance, since bells in this area would have excited the natural frequency of the tower and would have damaged it by rocking. So that the much smaller cymbal bells can hold their own against the two large bells, they had to be cast in an extremely heavy rib construction. If the relative severity of a bell increases with the pitch of the bells, it is called rib progression . In consideration of the partial tone structure of the respective bells, apart from the deliberately planned, hidden tritone gb 1 –c 3, there is no friction or dissonance . None of the individual bells has a standard design (medium-weight minor octave rib).

In 1971, Karl Stumpf from the Karlsruhe bell and art foundry cast the six bells. The sound of the Luther church tower in Ludwigshafen is unique in Germany.

Bell
(no.)
designation
 
Diameter
(mm)
Mass
(kg)
Percussive
( HT - 1 / 16 )
Rib construction
(musical, technical)
1 Basic bells 1262 1185 it 1 0 +4 Minor octave rib, easy
2 1105 841 ges 1 +6 Major octave rib, medium weight
3 Cymbal bells 585 156 as 2 0 +6 Dur -Oktav rib, on hard
4th 497 111 b 2 +500 Minor octave rib, oversized
5 443 86 c 3 +400 Minor octave rib, oversized
6th 370 52 it 3 0 +6 Minor octave rib, oversized

Luther Fountain

The Luther Fountain is a monument by Gernot and Barbara Rumpf from 1992, which is located on the site of the former Luther Church.

The fountain was inaugurated on June 26, 1992 after the Protestant parish of Ludwigshafen-Mitte had previously taken the initiative through its own funds and fundraising. The total cost was 600,000 DM. 200,000 DM were raised through donations. The Evangelical Church of the Palatinate and the city of Ludwigshafen each contributed 200,000 marks.

The fountain is the only monument that Martin Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora show. At the same time the fountain plays on Luther's conflict with the Pope Leo X on.

Individual evidence

  1. Theo Fehn : The bell expert. About the reconstruction of the German bell system from the point of view of Theo Fehn. Badenia, Karlsruhe 1991, Vol. 1, pp. 388-396, ISBN 3-7617-0284-1 .

literature

  • Hans-Joachim Belitz: Evangelical Church in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine. A chronicle. Ludwigshafen a. Rh. 1981.

Web links

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

Coordinates: 49 ° 28 ′ 52 "  N , 8 ° 26 ′ 41.3"  E