St. Marien (Gauerstadt)
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The Evangelical Lutheran parish church of St. Marien is in Gauerstadt , a district of the Upper Franconian town of Bad Rodach in the Coburg district . A new nave was added to the medieval choir tower between 1797 and 1800. For a Franconian rural community, the church is unusually large.
history
Construction phases
The origins of the church are in the late Gothic period . The core of the 51 meter high east tower dates from this period and is the highest in the Coburg region . The tower room, which initially housed the altar and later the sacristy, has a Gothic cross vault with the head of Christ as the keystone. Initially, a low church room was added to the tower, which was replaced by a larger half-timbered building in 1597.
Around 200 years later the church space gave way to a larger new building, for which Duke Ernst Friedrich von Sachsen-Coburg-Saalfeld acted as the client. His initials "EF" with the Saxon diamond wreath are above the west entrance of the church. It was the only major new church in the duchy during his reign. A plaque with a Latin inscription attached to the outside above the north portal indicates the new building from 1797 to 1800.
inner space
The church interior, which is very light in the colors of white, beige and lime green in the late Rococo style , has two-storey galleries on three sides , the parapets of which are decorated with transverse panels and supported by marbled columns. Above the frontal altar is the richly carved organ on a further gallery. The instrument by the Coburg organ builders Haueis and Hofmann, built between 1797 and 1800, has 23 registers on two manuals with a pedal and still has the mechanical bellows. The richly decorated pulpit protrudes into the room between the altar and the organ gallery. The ceiling is decorated with a comprehensive cartouche with the eye of God in the middle .
It is noticeable that the chancel, contrary to the usual design in the Coburg region, is bricked up at the rear and only has two round-arched passages on the sides, which represents the church interior in its rectangular shape. The long sides of the building are pierced by two rows of flat-arched windows that let daylight into the room without colored glass. The bells of the church are from 1488, 1513 and 1923.
local community
Helmuth Johnsen became a ministerial candidate in the congregation in 1919 and then a pastor until 1929.
literature
- Monuments Region Coburg - Neustadt - Sonneberg; Places of contemplation and prayer - historical sacred buildings. Device Museum of the Coburg State, Ahorn 2007, ISBN 978-3-930531-04-2 . P. 18.
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 18 '25.3 " N , 10 ° 48' 14.1" E