Martin Luther Church (St. Ingbert)
The Martin Luther Church has been the only Protestant church in the Saarland city of St. Ingbert for over a hundred years . Two parishes have been taking care of the city since July 1, 1995: The Martin Luther Church is responsible for the part north of Kaiserstraße, the southern part is looked after by the Christ Church.
Church history
The church building was consecrated on September 8, 1859, the organ could only be put into operation a good seven years later. The construction costs (excluding bells and organ) amounted to 30,356 guilders . After the currency conversion in 1875 that would have been around 73,000 marks. The Martin Luther Church belongs to the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate , based in Speyer, and was the first church in the Saar diaspora that could not have been built without the financial help of the Gustav Adolf Works . The aid organization, founded in 1832, provided over half of the money that was necessary for the construction. The community itself was able to raise more than 4,000 guilders, but other potent donors such as the President of the State Parliament Philipp Heinrich Krämer donated 2,000 guilders, the government of the Palatinate gave 3,000 guilders. The building site and the interior furnishings were donated by various private donors. Ernst Krieger (1853–1883) became the first pastor.
At that time the community consisted of about a thousand Protestants, after only 238 souls lived in the community area in 1837. The development of the evangelical citizens began in 1788 with the iron and steel works tenant Philipp Krämer from Saarbrücken , who according to the lease was free to employ workers of all religions. In the following years, many Christians of Protestant faith settled in St. Ingbert, but were initially looked after by the neighboring towns of Fechingen and Ensheim . A pastor came from Kirkel- Neuhäusel a few times a year and celebrated services in the storage room of the Sulzbacher Glashütte in Schnappach . In the following years there were 4,000 (1923) and 6,000 (1959 and 1971) Protestant church members.
Building
The neo-Romanesque church is kept simple and consists of a hall with no interior columns. Only the organ gallery in the back of the church is supported by columns. The choir is unusually oriented to the west. It is elevated on Josefstaler Straße and has a striking, slim tower and a vestibule. After the last exterior renovation in 2006, it was painted white, after having shaped the cityscape for years with its old yellow color. The master builder was Ludwig Weyland, who was born in St. Ingbert and was the court builder of the Hessian court. In 1933 a side gallery was added, and in 1966 an organ with 24 registers was installed. The building is under monument protection and is entered in the list of architectural monuments in St. Ingbert .
Since 1949, by order of the American military administration, the synagogue on the opposite side of the street, which was independent until 1936, has also been part of the community complex. In 1927 there were 88 citizens of the Jewish faith in the city. The building lost much of its identity as a result of extensive renovations in the 1950s. Today the building is used for training purposes.
Since 1962 there has been a kindergarten in Albert-Weisgerber-Allee, which is looked after by the community; since 1971, in preparation for the division of the community area in Wolfshohlstrasse, a community center has been built that was provisionally completed with the construction of the Christ Church in 1994.
organ
The first organ of the church, with mechanical sliding chests - like today's instrument, was built in 1865 by Friedrich Ladegast ( Weißenfels ) as opus 41 and had 16 registers , distributed over 2 manuals . In 1933, the company EF Walcker ( Ludwigsburg ) built a new three-manual organ with 36 registers as opus 2402. The Oberlinger Brothers ( Windesheim ) organ building company built a new organ in 1966, which initially had 14 registers distributed over 2 manuals and a pedal , but in the years 1971–1976, also by Gebr. Oberlinger, was successively expanded by 8 registers.
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- Coupling : II / I, I / P, II / P
Bells
In 1954, the Saarlouiser bell foundry in Saarlouis-Fraulautern, which was founded by Karl (III) Otto from the Otto bell foundry in Bremen-Hemelingen and Aloys Riewer from Saarland in 1953, cast for five St. Ingbert churches, including the Martin Luther Church, bronze bells. The Martin Luther Church received five bells. The five bells in the tower give the Westminster motif with lower ore. The technical data can be found in the following table:
| No. | volume | Casting year | Foundry, casting location |
diameter
(in mm) |
Weight (kg) |
| 1 | cis 1 | 1954 | Otto, Saarlouis | 1470 | 1930 |
| 2 | e 1 | 1223 | 1116 | ||
| 3 | a 1 | 947 | 580 | ||
| 4th | h 1 | 840 | 406 | ||
| 5 | c sharp 2 | 749 | 290 |
The bells were hung on steel yokes in a steel bell cage. The full bell rings on Saturdays at 6:00 p.m. together with all the inner city bells to ring in the Sunday, as well as for Sunday services.
Web links
- Martin Luther Church St. Ingbert
- Tower recording with full bell of the Protestant Martin Luther Church in St. Ingbert
Individual evidence
- ^ Wolfgang Krämer: History of the City of St. Ingbert , Volume 2, St. Ingbert 1955, pp. 146–148
- ↑ List of monuments of the Saarland, sub-monuments list Saarpfalz-Kreis (PDF; 1.2 MB), accessed on August 4, 2012
- ↑ Organ of the Martin Luther Church (prot.) ( Memento of the original from October 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Info page of the Orgeln im Saarland website , accessed on August 4, 2012
- ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells - family and company history of the bell foundry dynasty Otto . Self-published, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063109-2 , p. 588, here in particular pp. 87 to 95, 450, 465, 566 .
- ↑ Gerhard Reinhold: Church bells - Christian world cultural heritage, illustrated using the example of the bell founder Otto, Hemelingen / Bremen . Nijmegen / NL 2019, p. 556, here in particular 105 to 112, 517 , urn : nbn: nl: ui: 22-2066 / 204770 (dissertation at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen).
Coordinates: 49 ° 16 '55.13 " N , 7 ° 6' 50.47" E