St-Louis (Neuf-Brisach)
St-Louis (Eng .: St. Ludwig ) is a Roman Catholic church in Neuf-Brisach, Alsace . The church building is listed as a monument historique .
history
The city of Saint-Louis, built after the Peace of Westphalia , was laid down after the Peace of Rijswijk . It was replaced by the Neu-Breisach fortress, founded in 1699. Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban designed the plan for this . The streets are laid out strictly at right angles. A church was to be built in one of the "islands of houses" that were created directly at the Waffenplatz in the center of the citadel . Vauban commissioned his colleague Jacques Tarade with plans for this church, but due to the lack of funding, the project was not implemented. 20 years later, Louis de Cormontaigne was to design a church, but it was also never realized. Instead, they made do with a wooden church. After Louis XV. Having approved the levying of a special tax, the city asked the director of Alsace for plans for a church. In May 1731, François Chevalier , an assistant to Joseph Massol , presented his designs to the city. Only a few months later, the laying of the foundation stone was celebrated and the church was built between 1732 and 1736.
Once again, the project threatened to fail due to funding gaps. The church was still opened in 1736, but the decor and furniture were not purchased until 1746/47. In 1736 Andreas Silbermann was commissioned to build an organ, but the designs were never realized. It was not until 1767 that Weinbert Bussy moved the Jesuit organ from Ensisheim , which Jean-Baptiste Waltrin had built in 1743.
After repair work on the roof and painting inside between 1768 and 1767, the church was finally consecrated to St. Louis on October 12, 1777 .
The interior of the church was devastated during the French Revolution. Only the organ and pulpit survived the revolutionaries' fury. It was not until 1802 that the church was used again as a place of worship. A lightning strike led to a devastating fire in St. Ludwig in 1848 and caused severe damage to the building and the organ. While the organ was renewed in the same year, the restoration of the building lasted until 1861. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 also left its mark on the church building.
The church survived the Second World War largely unscathed until the bombing of Neuf-Brisach on February 6, 1945. On that day, bombs hit the building and completely destroyed it. In the years 1954 to 1965 the reconstruction was carried out by Bertrand Monnet. The interior was restored between 1965 and 1975.
architecture
The two-storey, slightly stepped west facade is richly structured by pilasters , pilasters , corner blocks and cornices. The ground floor has no windows, the window openings above with round and segment arches are walled up as niches. A high arched portal forms the entrance to the church. The building is dominated by a triangular gable with a coat of arms and foliage. Behind it rises a tail gable, in the center of which a mighty façade tower has been erected over a square floor plan. A drawn-in nave continues behind this westwork-like facade. Two chapels, similar to a lower transept, adjoin, followed by a slightly drawn-in choir with a three-sided end. There is an oculus in the broad front of the choir . The flat ceiling of the hall merges into the walls via a wide hollow. Ceilings and walls are decorated with flat stuccoed fields.
Furnishing
The baroque high altar comes from Gambsheim in Lower Alsace and was created in the 18th century. His painting shows the birth of Christ. The church also has a crucifixion group from the 18th century.
literature
- Walter Hotz: Handbook of the art monuments in Alsace and Lorraine. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1976, p. 169
- Dominique Toursel-Harster, Jean-Pierre Beck, Guy Bronner: Dictionnaire des Monuments historiques d'Alsace . La Nuée Bleue, Strasbourg 1995, pp. 265-267
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry no. PA00085557 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
Coordinates: 48 ° 1 ′ 7.2 ″ N , 7 ° 31 ′ 44.2 ″ E