St. Georg (Hattingen)

St. Georg am Steinhagen

The twisted tower

Floor plan 1909

The Protestant Church of St. Georg is a church building in Hattingen . It is located in the historic city center on the church square.

Building history

The church was rebuilt around 1200 from Ruhr sandstone . Remains of a Romanesque pillar base and two pillar bases from the period after 820 were discovered in 1972 during excavations inside the church. The church was the center of local development.

Wars in 1424 and 1429 led to the destruction of Hattingen and the church. From the reconstruction, Gothic vaulted pillars, bricked-up pointed arch windows , ribs and the keystone above and behind the organ case are still preserved. It was probably a flat groin vault with three naves supported by six stone pillars. The rebuilding was completed around 1450.

When in 1804 a stone came loose from the vault due to the dilapidation, the services had to be postponed. In the years 1807 to 1810 another renovation was carried out in which the vault was replaced by a wooden ceiling. The baroque furnishings were removed. Some niches, windows and passages were bricked up. The church was originally plastered and whitewashed. The last plaster was removed in 1932, so that these areas can be seen today.

The church tower was slated in 1976. It has a height of 56.73 m including the weathercock, the tower is said to have been even higher before 1807. The Gothic pointed helmet is strongly inclined to the southwest. The purpose of the tilt could be that if it were to burn from a lightning strike , it would not fall on the nave. The vernacular also speaks of the revenge of a poorly paid carpenter. The church with its twisted tower has therefore been included in the “Association of Twisted Spiers in Europe”. There are 90 towers registered in Europe.

The church is named after Sankt Georg († 303), who also depicts the motif of the Hattingen city arms . After the Reformation , however, the name was no longer used until the early 20th century.

Furnishing

Nave with pulpit altar

organ

Old tombstone

The organ was installed in 1830 and comes from the organ builder Christian Roetzel from Alpe in the Bergisches Land.

I work C–
1.	Drone	16 ′	R.
2.	Principal	8th'	H
3.	Gemshorn	8th'	H
4th	Drone	8th'	R.
5.	Dumped	8th'	R.
6th	Viola di gamba	8th'	H
7th	Cornet IV		H
8th.	octave	4 ′	R.
9.	Flauto dolce	4 ′	R.
10.	Fifth	2 ² ⁄ ₃  ′	R.
11.	octave	2 ′	R.
12.	Mixture V
13.	bassoon	16 ′
14th	Trumpet	8th'

II upper structure C–
15th	Principal	8th'	H
16.	Viola d'amour	8th'	R.
17th	Dumped	8th'	R.
18th	octave	4 ′	H
19th	Flute	4 ′	R.
20th	Flauto traverse	4 ′	R.
21st	Fifth	2 ² ⁄ ₃  ′	H
22nd	octave	2 ′	H
23.	Mixture III		H
24.	oboe	8th'
	Tremulant

Pedal C–
25th	Sub-bass	16 ′	R.
26th	Violon	16 ′	R.
27.	Principal	8th'	H
28.	octave	4 ′
29	Back set IV		H
30th	trombone	16 ′	H
31.	Trumpet	4 ′

Coupling : II / I, I / P , II / P
Remarks:

R = original register from Roetzel

H = historical, but changed or expanded.

Unlabeled registers are new (1960s)

The ten church windows with their twenty biblical motifs were designed by Prof. E. Bischoff from Gelsenkirchen and installed from 1950.

The 26 gravestones on the green area around the church as part of the former churchyard are worth seeing . The oldest stone dates from 1617. From the 9th century to March 31, 1813, the parish of Hattingen buried its dead in the churchyard. The last graves were leveled in 1848.

A memorial commemorates those who fell in the Franco-German War .

The Heilig-Geist-Spital was located outside the churchyard to the east . Since family care for the sick and the elderly was not as good in the medieval towns as in the country, the Hospital Order of the Holy Spirit built a hospital and inn in 1474 on a donation basis , which was managed by two innkeepers. These checked the neediness and encouraged those who were fit to work to cooperate. In 1780 the building was renovated and operated as a poor and orphanage until 1919. People who lived there as orphans still live in Hattingen.

Bells

The four bells in the tower were hung in 1950 after they had rung in the Evangelical Church Congress in Essen . The bells are made of cast steel and have the following inscriptions:

I. (Ton a °, 2.800 kg): "O country, country, country, hear the word of the Lord."
II. (Clay c ', 1,900 kg): "A solid castle is our God."
III. (Ton d ', 1,350 kg): "Be faithful until death, so I will give you the crown of life"
IV. (Ton f ', 780 kg): “I am called John the Baptist. I cry out across the land that our Savior Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. "

The quarter strike of the clock occurs on bells III and IV (first III, then IV), the hour strike on bell I.

Individual evidence

↑ The historic Roetzel organ. (No longer available online.) Ev. St. Georgs-Kirchengemeinde Hattingen, archived from the original on January 3, 2016 ; Retrieved January 3, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2