Reformed Church (Celle)

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Celle, Evangelical Reformed Church
Condition in the early 18th century
Wooden panel (found and restored in 1999) with French inscription: Ps 147.7  EU in the version of the Huguenot Bible translator David Martin (1639–1721)

The Reformed Church , the church building of the Evangelical Reformed parish in Celle , Lower Saxony , belongs to the Evangelical Reformed Church . It was built in 1700 for the Huguenot community in the royal seat and is the only surviving Huguenot church building in northwest Germany.

History and structure

After the Edict of Fontainebleau , with which Louis XIV in 1685 abrogated all tolerance of Protestantism in the Kingdom of France , a stream of Calvinist French ("Huguenots") began to flee . Several German Protestant princes specifically invited them to their territories and promised privileges. As early as 1684, Georg Wilhelm von Braunschweig-Lüneburg was one of the first to reside in Celle Castle. His “morganatic” wife Eleonore d'Olbreuse was herself a Huguenot. As early as 1686, a French Reformed community was established in Celle, which has been Lutheran since the Reformation .

Around 300 Huguenots lived in Celle at the turn of the 18th century, 90 of whom were employed at the court. They were given a hall in the castle for their services. The joint use of a Lutheran church was not possible because of the violent rejection of the Lutheran orthodoxy at the time , but also because of the strict Calvinist view of the Old Testament ban on images . When the political development in France destroyed any hope of returning home, the Celle Huguenot community tried to build its own church. It was given a plot of land southwest of the old Celle city wall in the new part of the city, which was mainly created by and for Huguenots. The ensemble of church, rectory and sexton's house was financed by numerous donors, including Lutherans and Catholics, and above all by Eleonore d'Olbreuse. It has been preserved to this day.

The new Celler temple  - this is how the French Reformed called their church building in contrast to the Catholic église  - did not have a “sacred” appearance outside or inside. That had to do not only with the required considerations in the Lutheran city, but also with the Calvinist beliefs. The new church, a half-timbered building , had no tower, no choir , no altar , no stained glass windows and initially no organ either. In the rectangular hall church , the entrance is in the middle of the eastern (city-side) long side, in front of it the prince's chair and opposite the dominant pulpit as the place where the word of God is proclaimed . Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach summarized his impression as follows: “It is not like a church, but like a house, consisting of a large hall; there is nothing to be seen in it either. "

Against the strict Calvinist tradition, which rejected any instrumental music in worship and only provided for the unaccompanied singing of the Geneva Psalms , a gallery and an organ were installed in 1744 . The single manual and pedalless instrument was the work of Christian Vater . In 1762 there was a fire which made extensive renovation work on the interior of the church and on the organ necessary.

During the 18th century, the number of members in the French community steadily decreased through assimilation . At the same time, a small German Reformed community was established in Celle, which the French church shared in exchange for a share of the costs. In 1805 the two communities were finally united.

In 1847 the church was given an external cladding on the city side with imitation stone blocks made of wood and front window cladding in the arched style . A cross was placed on the new gable. The interior was redesigned in 1961.

literature

  • Andreas Flick : 300 years of the Evangelical Reformed Church in Celle - the last Huguenot temple in Lower Saxony . In: Huguenots 4/2000 , pp. 107–122

Web links

Commons : Evangelical Reformed Church (Celle)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Network presence of the parish
  2. ↑ Illustration of the state before 1961 in Flick, p. 117
  3. ^ Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach: Strange journeys through Lower Saxony, Holland and Engelland . Part 1, Ulm / Memmingen 1753 (posthumously); P. 455

Coordinates: 52 ° 37 '17.3 "  N , 10 ° 4' 32.9"  E