St. Salvator Church (Hermsdorf)
The St. Salvator Church in Hermsdorf , Thuringia, is the village's Protestant parish church. Today's house of worship was built on the site of a small church and consecrated in 1732.
history
From 1150
The previous church was built from stone around 1150. The upper section of the massive tower was as truss executed and his four half-timbered sides for protection against the weather wrong heritage beating and his roof with bricks covered, the church account book of 1588. This " reinforcement " was well equipped the tower against attacks. Its tip carried a weather vane . The nave was covered with clapboards . It had small, high set arched windows . Even then, the tower housed three bells, a new church clock was added in 1589, and the old clock was sold the following year. The church was of a by palisades fenced graveyard surrounded. The names of the pastors have been known since around 1529, when the Reformation also reached Hermsdorf. Before that, the parish was spiritually cared for by the Lausnitz monastery .
From 1600
According to old tax registers, it can be assumed that Hermsdorf had 90 inhabitants in 18 houses in 1521. The small village church was sufficient for this; but the place grew and by the end of the 16th century had almost 200 residents. In order to create more space for the growing parish, the church received a gallery during a renovation around 1600, which was presumably accessible via an outside staircase. Despite the losses caused by the Thirty Years War , a second gallery was built shortly afterwards. Already 50 years later the little church had become dilapidated and too small for all believers. From 1710 it was initially considered to renovate the dilapidated parts of the church, which seemed cheaper than a new bar. When the renovation of the tower was about to begin, however, experts feared that if the tower were to be torn down, the roof of the nave would collapse - sufficient reason to start a new building.
From 1720
When in 1720 the population of Hermsdorf numbered 491 people and the subsidiary communities of Oberndorf and Reichenbach , in which around 500 people also lived, were to come to the Hermsdorf Church every third Sunday and for the major festivals and penitential services, the pastor and the community made various applications on approval of a new church building to the sovereign. The reasons they stated were that there was neither enough standing room in the church and on the gallery stairs during festive services, nor would the space in the churchyard or in the “mortuary” be enough to accommodate all the faithful. In addition, there is the darkness in the church, which makes reading in the galleries and the “women’s places” impossible. Almost 2000 guilders were estimated. Half of it was to be raised from reserves and half through the reuse of the demolition material from the old church as well as through the use of wood from the church forest and through the sale of wood. Transport services and auxiliary works were largely Fronleistungen to provide the three municipalities. Despite all resistance - they each had their own church building and had to maintain it - the subsidiary congregations were forced to perform by court order.
Even before the consistory's final decision to finance the construction of the new church, the people of Hermsdorf tore down their old church on April 21, 1732 and cleared the building site. After the laying of the foundation stone 14 days later, on August 25, 1732, the judging began. The church was consecrated on the 1st of Advent 1732 after the interior was completed. The remaining structural work included the covering of the tower roof in the spring of 1733; the button was put on on March 30, 1733. The new church also got two galleries and a free stone altar in the lower tower area on the east side of the church. From the old church were taken over: the large crucifix, the three bells and probably also the tower clock from 1589.
A few years later, the gallery and ceiling of the nave were painted with pictures and sayings in blue and partly in brown, preferably using the grisaille technique, based on motifs from the Merian picture bible . The middle field of the ceiling shows Martin Luther with the open Bible in his hand.
The four sides of the barrel ceiling bear pictures of the birth of Jesus, resurrection, ascension and outpouring of the Holy Spirit in blue tones in large medallions. In the four corners the evangelists with their symbolic beings Luke ( bull ), Mark ( lion ), Matthew (winged person) and John (eagle) are shown in brownish tones.
Symbolic representations with instructive signatures contain the fields of the upper gallery, the lower gallery on the north side the prophets and St. Salvator (Christ in the garden of Gethsemane), on the south side the twelve apostles in bluish shades of color. Explanatory biblical sayings complete the gallery painting. With the increased fortune, the church was able to afford a small organ around 1750.
From 1832
New textile hangings ( paraments ) in the colors of the respective season adorned the pulpit and altar in the anniversary year 1832, and the stone altar was replaced by a wooden one with a sun and a cross on the back wall and adorned by two wooden pillars. News about this redesign of the chancel and the pulpit and reports on contemporary history were found in 1936 in one of the pillars that had since been removed from the church and placed in a garden.
At the end of the 19th century, as a result of the upswing due to industrialization , the church no longer met the growing requirements, so that a Gothic style porch was built on the west side for a larger organ and spacious staircases to the galleries. The chancel received a pointed arch window with colored lead glazing in the east wall as well as the altar, pulpit and organ front with carvings in this style. In keeping with this, but also for reasons of stability, the roof pitch of the nave was also made steeper. On January 21, 1885, the new organ built by the Poppe brothers from Roda was accepted.
For the purpose of heating, two iron stoves, each with an outer chimney, were installed on the north and south sides at the end of the 19th century. However, when the chimneys were cold, the church was polluted for decades by escaping smoke gases (insufficient draft ), which damaged the painting, soot the pictures on the ceiling and galleries and peeled off the paint. Other damage to the walls ( saltpeter efflorescence ) also led to the renovation of the sanctuary in 1922. Ultimately, however, it was decided to have the valuable painting of the entire church restored. In addition to other work, the altar, pulpit and organ prospect were attuned, and the walls of the chancel and nave were given wooden paneling in the lower area and memorial and votive tablets were placed in the chancel.
Extensive renovation in 1972
With the decrease in the number of people attending church services in the second half of the 20th century, the need for adjoining rooms for teaching children in Christian doctrine and for working with various community groups increased again. Since no permit was granted for construction work outside the church building, it was decided in 1972 to move the floor of the church service room to the same height as the floor of the first gallery. The ground floor now accommodated rooms for community service such as Christian teaching , meetings, choir work, Bible study, winter church and church office with cemetery administration. The valuable, heavily soiled parts of the old church have largely been preserved and restored. Unfortunately the captions of the lower gallery and the pictures of the organ gallery parapet could no longer be accommodated. A lectern replaced the pulpit, which previously stood at the level of the first gallery. What was left of the altar was a cafeteria in the tower room. The large crucifix from the first church was placed in the center of the chancel. The renovation also included the removal of the two outside chimneys, which were replaced by a chimney inside the left stairwell, which therefore had to be rebuilt. The installation of a handicapped accessible toilet under the stairs proved to be useful. A newly installed boiler room provided for the heating of the church hall with warm air, which is now done by electric underfloor heating. The lower rooms are heated by night storage heating. An external staircase on the upper floor acts as a second escape route on the north side, the main entrance has a protective roof. An extension of the windows downwards provided more light for the rooms in the basement.
The bells
A steel bell cage was installed for the three bells in 1888 because the whole building had been shaken by the bells, which had to be improved again in 1903 in order to divert the loads as far as possible into the tower base. If the proportions of the clapper do not match those of the bell, bells sometimes get cracked by the hard impact of the clapper, so that they have to be cast or replaced. After corresponding damage to two of the old bells in the 1890s, all three bronze bells had to "go to war" in 1917. As early as 1920 they were replaced by chilled cast iron bells from the bell foundry in Apolda in the tuning f ′, a ′ and c². In order to relieve the sexton and his assistants from the daily work of ringing bells, three ringing machines were installed in 1967 so that the bells can now be rung at the push of a button or on time by the clock. Winding the church tower clock with two weights for the clockwork and striking mechanism used to require daily personnel. A radio clock has been controlling the old hand movements and the striking mechanism since 1993.
Since 1990
The Second World War and the conditions after that until the fall of the Wall did not allow the tower and the church roof to be re-roofed due to a lack of manpower and materials; repairs were patchwork. Soon after the renovations in the 1970s, water damage was found on the painting. The slate covering of the porch was no longer airtight, and there was a risk of major storm damage to the church roof, since damaged areas in the roof area and on the roofs provided appropriate points of attack. In 1995 the slate roof of the porch and a small part of the church roof were renewed with public funds. From 2002 to 2004 it was possible through generous public funding to completely re-cover the tower and the roof of the nave in accordance with the requirements of the monument protection. The renovation of the roof structure turned out to be particularly difficult. The roof structure was severely damaged as a result of dry rot infestation . So it had to be replaced in large parts.
Today the exterior repair of the church building is completed by the renovation of the facade and a restoration of the painting in order to remove further water damage. A user-friendly design of the access to the church service room is also planned. The war memorial erected after the First World War for the fallen citizens of Hermsdorf between the church and the school, which was built around the turn of the century, was demolished in 1955 - initiated by the local administration at the time.
The redesign of the church in the 1970s changed the acoustics of the room, making it particularly suitable for chamber music performances. The commitment of the community and the partner communities made it possible in 1989 to install a new two-manual organ from W. Sauer Orgelbau from Frankfurt / Oder , which was adapted to the changed acoustic conditions . Every year the parish invites you to a series of concerts with excellent performers. A special highlight is the musical week at the beginning of Advent, during which a larger choral work is always played. The St. Salvator Church is a monument in the center of town. Thanks to the structural adaptation to the respective needs of the community, the characteristics of different stylistic epochs can be recognized.
Religious affiliation
The Reformation was introduced in Hermsdorf around 1530 and the place was predominantly evangelical-Lutheran in the period that followed. With the development of industry and the influx of workers and employees from other parts of Germany in the 19th century, believers of other denominations came to the town again. In the late 1920s, of around 3,500 inhabitants, around 3,000 were Evangelical Lutheran, around 40 were Roman Catholic , ten New Apostolic , around 40 belonged to the Free Evangelical Congregation and around 400 were free thinkers . The influx of refugees after the Second World War, the repeated immigration as a result of the rapid industrial development and numerous exits from the church caused a further shift in conditions.
In the Evangelical Salvator Church, festive services of the Roman Catholic community take place if there is not enough space in their own chapel.
The Evangelical Lutheran parish in Hermsdorf currently (as of 2011) has around 1700 parish members.
Web links
- Wolfram Göbel: History and description of the church on the website of the city of Hermsdorf.
Coordinates: 50 ° 53 ′ 38.5 ″ N , 11 ° 51 ′ 27.3 ″ E