Bad Rappenau town church
The town church Bad Rappenau is a Protestant church in Bad Rappenau . The church goes back to a late medieval predecessor and was rebuilt in 1887.
history
Church history
The area of the city of Bad Rappenau originally belonged to the diocese of Worms . In 1343 the Bishop of Worms allowed Konrad von Helmstatt to equip the Rappenau branch chapel of the Wimpfen parish church as his own parish church. The church patronage lay with the local rulers, the lords of Helmstatt. The church was dedicated to John the Baptist . In 1501 a new church was built on the site of the first church. The church formed the center of the upper village, the historical settlement core of the city , with a manor house that was once located here , later with the neighboring old town hall and the surrounding buildings. The Reformation was introduced by the local lords from 1530 , as a result of which Rappenau was a predominantly Protestant community for centuries.
In 1609 the church was enlarged. The structure was 22 meters long and nine meters wide. In the course of this expansion, the cemetery originally located around the church was abandoned and a new cemetery was set up on the outskirts. During the Thirty Years War the place was devastated by Tilly's troops in 1622 . In 1634 it is reported that the citizens of Rappenau “faithfully helped to plunder the church and rectory and to sell the inventory”. From 1640 to 1654 the pastor's position was vacant, and the pastoral service was carried out by pastors from nearby towns. In 1655 the church was still damaged. The neighboring mansion was also destroyed in the Thirty Years War, its stones were used to rebuild the also destroyed band house, which was in the vicinity of the church until 1970. The church itself was not completely restored until 1686, when a new pulpit was donated. The local lord Uriel von Gemmingen and his wife Ursula donated two bronze bells in 1698.
In 1708 the church was extensively renovated and a sacristy was added. In the period from 1761 to 1854 various repairs and alterations were carried out, and in the middle of the 18th century the front sides of the galleries were painted. In 1776 the church received a sundial. However, the church gradually became too small with its seats for 380 adults and 80 students after the community, now part of the Evangelical Church in Baden after the transition to Baden in 1806 , had also grown with the growth of Rappenau. On February 27, 1887, the demolition work began after a solemn closing service to make room for a more spacious new building.
City church from 1887
In order to create space for the church, which is much larger than the previous building, the once gently sloping church hump was heaped up and the high-lying building site facing the market square was secured by a three-meter-high retaining wall. The construction of the new church lasted from the laying of the foundation stone on May 20, 1887 to the inauguration of the building on November 14, 1888. The year of completion is carved next to the west portal. During the construction work, the services took place in a railway hall that had been converted into an emergency church.
The town church was built in neo -Gothic style according to plans by the Heidelberg building officer Hermann Behaghel . The building is 27 meters long and 20 meters wide and is continuously structured by buttresses and pinnacles . The main portal is on the south side of the church . The slender tower on the west side of the church is 47 meters high. The tower clock is a foundation of the Bad Dürkheim saltworks director Heinrich Ott. Opposite the tower is the choir with altar and baptismal font taken from the previous building in front of a six meter high tracery window with the motif of the resurrection of Christ from the Heidelberg glass painting workshop Beiler. To the left of the choir is the sacristy, to the right of the choir is a seat for the patron saint and his family. The interior is covered by an approximately 10 meter high wooden cap vault . The new church building was designed for a total of 650 visitors, 250 of whom found space on the surrounding gallery . On the gallery of the main building was located on the north side originally the organ before it was placed elsewhere in the church building at a rehabilitation 1988th
In 1980 the Martin Luther House was built as a community center next to the church . In 1988 the church was extensively renovated for more than DM 1 million, whereby the shape of the church, which had gradually changed through various smaller renovations since its construction, was returned to its original form.
The parish Bad Rappenau originally belonged to the parish of Sinsheim, from 1975 to the parish of Eppingen-Bad Rappenau, which merged with the parish of Sinsheim to form the new parish of Kraichgau on January 1, 2005 .
Bells
The old bells that came from the previous building were originally hung in the bell tower of the town church. These were two bells cast from the old bronze bells from 1698 at the Bachert bell foundry in Kochendorf in 1841 and 1851, as well as a third bronze bell that was newly acquired in 1845 on a donation from the Koder couple and cast at Riedel in Wiesenthal. In 1917 the two old Bachert bells were delivered for armament purposes, the remaining bell from 1845 broke shortly after the end of the war and was cast in 1920 by Bachert in Karlsruhe. In 1921 two bronze bells cast by Bachert in Kochendorf were added, but in 1942 the two heaviest bells had to be delivered again, so that only the bronze bell cast by Bachert in 1921 with the strike tone h ', a diameter of 78.5 kg and a weight of 250 kg remained in the tower. In 1950 there were four steel bells cast by the Bochumer Verein , for which a new bell cage was built. The bells strike c sharp ', e', f sharp 'and a', a diameter of 98 to 160 cm and a weight of 339 to 1586 kg each. The older small bronze bell from 1921 was sold to the Evangelical Church Community in Siegelsbach .
Individual evidence
literature
- Gustav Neuwirth: History of the City of Bad Rappenau . City of Bad Rappenau, Bad Rappenau 1978
- Michael Konnerth: Bad Rappenau - A guide to things worth seeing with the history of the city, salt works and spa , Bad Rappenau 1990, pp. 60–65
- 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. 4–9.
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 14 '24.3 " N , 9 ° 6' 6.9" E