Mennonite Church Neuwied

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Mennonite Church Neuwied

The Mennonite Church in Neuwied was built in 1768. It was a meeting place for the local Mennonite community until the 20th century . Today the city gallery is located inside .

history

Mennonites settled in the region as early as 1600 . When the residential town of Neuwied was founded, many of them came to the new town and soon formed their first small community here. Many of them came from the Palatinate and Lower Rhine . In 1680 the Anabaptist community was recognized with a privilege of the Counts of Wied . The Neuwied Mennonites worked primarily as weavers and craftsmen .

In 1766 the construction of a church at the end of the Schloßstraße began. The Mennonite Church was conceived as a towerless church and built in the late baroque style according to its time . Just two years later, it was inaugurated in the presence of the von Wied family. In 1775 the church was expanded and got its own pastorate. In 1826 the organ was installed. In 1860 Hermann zu Wied financed the construction of a church tower . Ten years later the church bell was donated. The occasion was the marriage of Wilhelm zu Wieds.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the number of Mennonites in Neuwied continued to decrease. Nevertheless, the church was still used as a meeting place. The Seventh-day Adventist Church , the Neuwied Adventist Church , celebrated its services in the Mennonite Church with short interruptions from 1923 until the fire in 1984. With the influx of displaced Mennonites after the Second World War , the community was able to stabilize again. Many of them settled outside the city on the Torney , where a Mennonite meetinghouse was also built.

In 1968 the 200th anniversary of the church was celebrated. A short time later the Mennonite congregation sold the church to the zu Wied family and concentrated their work entirely on the activities in Torney. Most of the church burned down on the night of July 30, 1984. It was rebuilt from 1986 and has been used as the gallery of the city of Neuwied ever since . In 2003 exhibits from the Bründl collection were exhibited under the title “The noble wild one” . At the beginning of January 2012, the city of Neuwied announced that it wanted to rename the gallery "Galerie am Deich", which, however, met with some protests within the city.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elsbeth Fenner: Forty-year celebration of the Advent church in Neuwied . Ed .: Adventbote, year 50: http://www.thh-friedensau.de/wissenschaftliche-publikationen/historisches-archiv/inhalt May 1, 1950.
  2. ^ After a storm of protest: Neuwieder Galerie will probably get its name back. Rhein-Zeitung, accessed on January 20, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Christians appalled: City of Neuwied removes “Mennonite Church” from gallery names. Rhein-Zeitung, accessed on January 20, 2013 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 25 ′ 42.1 ″  N , 7 ° 27 ′ 17.3 ″  E