St. John the Baptist (Heinsheim)
The Catholic Church of St. John the Baptist in Heinsheim , a district of the large district town of Bad Rappenau in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg , was built in 1838/40.
history
Heinsheim, two thirds of which belonged to the Lords of Ehrenberg and one third to the Teutonic Order in the early 16th century , was reformed only hesitantly because of the proportion of the order , which remained Catholic during the Reformation . A first clergyman with a Reformation spirit worked in the mountain church as early as 1528, but was expelled from the order in 1529. Thereafter, mainly Reformation-minded clergy were active in the village, but from 1560 to 1570 there was also another Catholic clergyman in Martin Kuch. Starting with the village order of 1537, the local rulers agreed not to put any pressure on the residents in matters of faith. Although the Teutonic Order tried again around 1600 to appoint a Catholic pastor, the whole place became Protestant by 1624. During the Thirty Years' War there were efforts to recatholicize, but after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the religious status of 1624 was decisive, so that the mountain church came to the Protestant community.
After the Lords of Ehrenberg died out, the castle chapel of Ehrenberg Castle , built in 1602, fell back to the Bishop of Worms as a feudal lord. This enabled the numerically few Catholics to use the chapel for their services. There were no Catholic parish foundations on site, but occasionally a chaplain officiated at Ehrenberg Castle or the Wimpfen Dominican monks sent monks to perform church services. The Teutonic Order took over the costs.
During the redesign of the German south-west through the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss and the Rhine Federation Act , the Teutonic Order was dissolved and the castle chapel came to the barons of Racknitz as a private property . The Catholics could initially continue to use the castle chapel due to contractual obligations, but only one Protestant pastor was available in Heinsheim for baptisms, marriages and funerals. As a result, the Heinsheim Catholics mostly got married elsewhere and had their children baptized elsewhere.
A petition by the Catholic community in 1809 to the government of the Lower Rhine District with the aim of obtaining permanent use of the castle chapel and having its own Catholic priest was unsuccessful. In 1810 the Wimpfen Dominicans stopped sending monks to Heinsheim. The Catholic parish then obliged the Catholic pastor from Siegelsbach to hold church services for 200 guilders a year . It was intended to become a subsidiary of Siegelsbach. After two years, however, the Heinsheim Catholics, which had meanwhile grown to 400, were no longer able to raise the 200 guilders to pay the pastor, so that the incorporation plans came to a standstill and the church service was often canceled again. The incorporation into Siegelsbach also failed for the time being because the Siegelsbach church would have been too small for the entire community to be formed and Siegelsbach had no money for an expansion.
Finally, in 1832 the government of the Lower Rhine District promised funds for the establishment of a Catholic church in Heinsheim. The ecclesiastical conditions were then strengthened. In February 1835 the still valid care of marriages, baptisms and burials by the Protestant pastor was lifted. In May 1835, Heinsheim became a branch of the Catholic parish in Siegelsbach.
The foundation stone for the Heinsheim branch church was laid on August 16, 1838. The construction was carried out according to plans by the builder Lutz. The church was consecrated on April 26, 1840. In 1873 Heinsheim with Zimmerhof and Kohlhof was raised to the status of a parish curate, in 1876 a rectory was inaugurated in Heinsheim. From 1886 to 1895 the parish curatia was again looked after by the Siegelsbacher pastor, from 1896 a Catholic pastor was then permanently on site.
The church had to deliver bells for armament purposes in both world wars, but was otherwise spared war damage.
After the Second World War , the Catholic community grew rapidly due to the influx of around 300 displaced people, so that the pastoral care areas in the area were restructured. Zimmerhof came to the Catholic parish in Bad Rappenau .
Under the direction of the Archbishop's Building Department in Freiburg, the church was extensively renovated in the years after the Second World War.
description
architecture
The church is a simple one-nave church building with a saddle roof and turret , the retracted choir has a semicircular apse . Inside, the church is spanned by a flat coffered ceiling.
Furnishing
The most important piece of equipment in the church is a carved late Gothic Pietà from the school of Tilman Riemenschneider . The church also has a crucifix from the 15th century.
Bells
The church received three new bells in 1907, the two largest of which had to be delivered for armaments purposes as early as 1917 during the First World War. In 1922 the church received an old bell with the strike tone f '' and a weight of 109.5 kg from the old bell inventory from the Catholic Board of Trustees in Karlsruhe on loan from the Bachert bell foundry in Kochendorf ( Bad Friedrichshall ) . In 1923 a separate replacement bell , the Marienglocke , with the strike note c '' was procured. This new bell had to be delivered again in 1942 during World War II, so that initially only the remaining bell from 1907 with the strike tone d '' was available. After the Second World War, the church received a loan bell that had been cast by Johann Gottfried Taeubert in 1746 and had previously been in Neuen in Lower Silesia .
In 1964 it was decided to purchase a new three-part bell and in December 1964 the order was given to the Bachert bell foundry in Kochendorf. There, on June 4, 1965, three new bronze bells were cast. When their sound was checked after the casting, they had a tone combination that would have resulted in an unfavorable interaction with the bells of the Heinsheim mountain church . Therefore it was decided to pour the bells again and give them a different strike tone line. The second casting of the bells took place on December 10, 1965. The largest of these bells strikes h ', is 82.2 cm in diameter and weighs 312 kg. Its inscription reads CHRIST HEAD OF THE CHURCH , it is decorated with the motif of the Christ King on the rainbow. The middle bell strikes c sharp '', is 73.5 cm in diameter and weighs 213 kg. Its inscription reads MARIA MOTHER OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD , it is decorated with a Maria Immaculata . The smallest bell has the strike tone e '', a diameter of 61 cm and a weight of 122 kg. Its inscription reads JOHN THE VOICE OF THE CALLING and it is decorated with a depiction of John the Baptist. The bells were consecrated on the first Sunday of 1966.
After the new bells had been installed, the Silesian loan bell from 1746 was returned to the Friedrich Wilhelm Schilling bell foundry in Heidelberg. The bell was then to be given to a congregation in the Lake Constance area, but then came in 1986 as a permanent loan to the Museum of Sacred Art and Liturgy in Heidelberg. The old Heinsheim bell from 1907 was traded in at Bachert, where it was still on the foundry yard in Heilbronn in 1995.
literature
- Gustav Neuwirth: History of the village of Heinsheim a. N. , Heinsheim 1954 (and 2nd revised edition 1965)
- Norbert Jung: Immaculata - A contribution to the history of bells in Bad Rappenau , in connection with the Bad Rappenau town archive, ed. by Norbert Jung, Heilbronn 2010, pp. 49–53.
Coordinates: 49 ° 15 ′ 46.6 " N , 9 ° 8 ′ 53.3" E