Wilhelmskirche (Bad Nauheim)
The Wilhelmskirche in Bad Nauheim in the Wetteraukreis in Hesse is the former Reformed church of the city.
Church political background
After the death of the last ( Lutheran ) Count of Hanau , Johann Reinhard III. , the county of Hanau-Münzenberg , to which (Bad) Nauheim belonged, fell to the (reformed) Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1736 . The Lutherans (Bad) Nauheims had received a new church of their own a few years earlier - still under the Lutheran count - the Reinhardskirche . After the new sovereign was now a Reformed denomination , the Reformed community promised help from him with their new building plans. The new sovereign, Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hesse-Kassel, was ready to help if a proper construction process was ensured. He saw this as guaranteed if the supervision of it lay with the Hanau master builder Christian Ludwig Hermann . This is what was done.
building
The construction was in the hands of Johann Philipp Wörrishöfer , who worked according to the specifications of Christian Ludwig Hermann. The church was built on the site of a previous medieval building in the years 1740–1742. Originally, the medieval church tower was to be preserved and used for the new church. During the demolition work on the old nave, however, it turned out that the structure of the tower was too bad and could not be maintained.
A rectangular building with bevelled corners and a bell tower in front of the narrow western side, which also emphasizes the main entrance, was erected. The interior was designed as a transverse church , the pulpit and altar were arranged in front of the southern longitudinal wall. In contrast to the other churches of Christian Ludwig Hermann, the Wilhelmskirche was provided with arched windows instead of round arched windows.
Another fate of the building
After the Hanauer Union had united the two denominational evangelical congregations in (Bad) Nauheim in 1818 , the denominational difference had ceased to exist and the former “ Reformed Church ” was renamed “ Wilhelmskirche ” (after the building sponsor, Landgrave Wilhelm VIII) . From 1824/25 the larger Wilhelmskirche was used solely as a place for church services, the Reinhardskirche was given up for this purpose. After the Dankeskirche was built in 1906 , the Wilhelmskirche was abandoned for regular services.
The Wilhelmskirche building has been a Protestant community center since 1926 and has been rebuilt several times for this purpose.
The premises of the building were temporarily used as classrooms for the nearby Ernst Ludwig School .
literature
- Folkhard Cremer, Tobias Michael Wolf (arrangement): Dehio manual of German art monuments, Hesse II, administrative district Darmstadt. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03117-3 , p. 43.
- Leonhard Kraft: Wetterau village churches. Contributions to the history of church building in the Friedberg district. (Dissertation, Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, 1919) Historical association for the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Darmstadt 1919.
- Inge Wolf: Christian Ludwig Hermann. Construction director at Hanauer Hof. In: Hanauer Geschichtsblätter , Volume 30 (1988), pp. 445 ff., Pp. 494-497.
Web links
Remarks
- ^ The information in Gerhard Bott : Castles and public buildings in the county of Hanau-Lichtenberg in the 17th and 18th centuries . In: Neues Magazin für Hanauische Geschichte (Mitteilungen des Hanauer Geschichtsverein 1844 eV) 2015, pp. 35–80 (64) that the building was already under the government of Count Johann Reinhard III. has been carried out does not apply.
Coordinates: 50 ° 21 ′ 45.4 " N , 8 ° 44 ′ 14.2" E
- ↑ Kathrin Ellwardt: Church building between evangelical ideals and absolutist rule. The cross churches in the Hessian area from the Reformation century to the Seven Years War . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2004, ISBN 3-937251-34-0