Reformed parish of Oberwart

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Reformed parish church Oberwart
Old rectory

The Reformed Parish of Oberwart is the oldest existing Protestant parish in present-day Austria and, tolerated as an articulate parish , the only one that has existed without interruption since the Reformation .

history

During the Reformation Oberwart was almost completely reformed . In the course of the Counter Reformation , the church building was occupied and re-Catholicized in 1673. However, the population of Oberwart consisted largely of Gyepű guards from the Hungarian crown , who, comparable to imperial immediacy , were protected from access by the sovereigns and were allowed to practice their faith in an articulated church from 1681 with the express toleration of the Ödenburger Landtag .

After the acquiescence, the services were first held in a rented barn. In 1697, 1013 Reformed and 126 Catholics were raised in Oberwart. At the beginning of the 18th century a wooden house of prayer was built. It was thatched, but at least had a painted coffered ceiling.

1771–1773, before the Josephine tolerance patent was issued , the Reformed Parish Church in Oberwart was built and in 1784 the old rectory was built in the classicistic style . The necessary capital had already been accumulated around 1750, but because of the prevailing legal uncertainty for Protestant communities, the decision was made to postpone the undertaking and to put the funds in the care of the Reformed community in Debrezin .

With the transition from Burgenland to Austria, community work, which until then had been Hungarian , became bilingual.

In 1938, the community school, which had existed since the seventeenth century, was nationalized.

1973–1975, a new parsonage was built with the help of the German Gustav-Adolf-Werk and the aid organization of the Evangelical Churches in Switzerland .

Today the congregation has about 1400 members. It is the only Reformed community in Burgenland.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History - Reformed parish of Oberwart. In: ref-kirche-oberwart.com. Retrieved April 4, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b Imre Gyenge: The Hungarian Landtag of Ödenburg 1681 and the articulated communities. In: Peter F. Barton (Ed.): In the light of tolerance. Vienna 1981, p. 55f.