Loschwitz Church
The Loschwitz Church is a baroque church in the Loschwitz district of Dresden. It was the first church built by the architect of the Dresden Frauenkirche, George Bähr. The churchyard, which was used as a cemetery until 1907, is one of the few 18th-century churchyards in Saxony that is still in its original state and is the smallest cemetery in the city at about 400 square meters. The Loschwitz church and cemetery are under monument protection.
History
The situation before the Loschwitz church was built
Loschwitz was first documented in 1315 as Loscuicz. With the expansion of the originally Slavic rundling, the lands were already subject to the Materni Hospital in Dresden in the 14th century. Together with 25 other villages, Loschwitz belonged to the parish of the church "Zu unserer Lieben Frauen", the original parish of the later Frauenkirche, which was located near the Maternihospital between the present Dresden Frauenkirche and the Coselpalais. The inhabitants of Loschwitz always had to go to the parish, which was several kilometers away, for services, confessions, or weddings, which was especially difficult in winter. Baptisms took place in the Kreuzkirche. The dead of the village of Loschwitz were buried in the Frauenkirchhof and, from 1571, in the old Johanniskirchhof.After the end of the Thirty Years' War in the Electorate of Saxony following the armistice of Kötzschenbroda in 1645, Saxony experienced an economic and cultural boom. As the population of Dresden and the villages belonging to the Dresden Frauenkirche parish grew steadily, services in the medieval Frauenkirche became almost impossible due to overcrowding. It was not uncommon for Loschwitz parishioners to be "forced out of the Kirche zur lieben Frauen and directed to the nave of the small old Frauenkirche" when church attendance was unusually high. At the same time, the pastor of the Frauenkirche parish could only visit the surrounding villages for a limited time because Dresden, as a fortress city, kept its gates closed in the evenings. "It was often impossible to reach the pastor late or early in the day or at night to administer Holy Communion to the sick or dying, to perform emergency baptisms, to bring comfort to the seriously ill, and the like.
In December 1702, the villages of Loschwitz and Wachwitz requested to the Dresden Council, and again in 1703 the Superior Papal consistory and the Elector to be parished away from the Frauenkirche. After a "reading service" in a schoolhouse in Loschwitz had been approved, which a schoolmaster had been holding on Sundays and holidays in the school building in Loschwitz since 1702, Augustus the Strong in 1704, agreed to the congregation and thus the founding of a Loschwitz parish. In addition to Loschwitz, the nearby village of Wachwitz and the inn and property "Zum Weißen Hirsch" also belonged to the municipality.
The Dresden City Council was granted the right of patronage over the parish and was therefore responsible for financing and building a church. It also appointed the pastor. On April 4, 1704, Johann Arnold was appointed as the first pastor of the new parish and confirmed on September 21, 1704. As a parish, the construction of a church could now begin.
The construction of the Loschwitz church
In 1704, the carpenter George Bähr was commissioned to design the church. He carried out the project together with the master mason Johann Christian Fehre, and the ground plan of the church underwent several changes. As early as March 3, 1704, the congregation had the first stones for the church unloaded at the "Bachhorn" in Pirna and stored over the winter in the schoolhouse in Loschwitz. The schoolhouse was located at the crossing of Körnerplatz and Pillnitzer Landstraße, right in the center of the village where the Loschwitz congregation wanted the church to be built. Against the wishes of the community, the Dresden City Council chose the "Materni vineyard" of the Materni Hospital, about 150 meters away and owned by the City Council, as the site for the church. Unlike the village center, the site on the eastern edge of the village on the road to Wachwitz was safe from flooding, and the vineyard was deliberately chosen as a Christian motif. "The actual construction work did not begin until April 27, 1705, when the master mason Fehre from Dresden sent 6 masons to cut and set the stones, including his son Johann Gottfried.On May 14, 1705, the first church fathers of the new parish and men from the city parish, the district parish, and Wachwitz, ceremoniously surrounded the site of the new church and sang three hymns. Then the grapevine poles were pulled up, the grapevines were dug out, and the foundation of the church was dug. On June 29, 1705, the foundation stone of the Loschwitz Church was laid in the presence of the Princely Commissioner, Count Friedrich von Schönberg, accompanied by the Dresdner Kreuzchor. The foundation stone was accompanied by a copper box containing the Augsburg Confession, Luther's catechism, a sketch of the building to be constructed, and the history of the town written on parchment. The building itself was carried out in the following years by the Dresden councilman and master builder Johann Siegmund Küffner, who was also responsible for hiring the workers.
In 1706 the construction of the church, whose foundation walls were already standing, was interrupted when the Swedish army invaded Saxony during the Great Northern War. As a result, the inhabitants of Loschwitz and the builders fled. The Dresden City Council instructed Johann Arnold, who had been appointed parish priest of Loschwitz in 1704, to petition the King of Sweden to spare the church building. Together with the church fathers of Loschwitz and Wachwitz, Arnold went to Radeberg, where Charles XII was encamped with his army, and had the petition of the parish delivered to him. Count Carl Piper, the king's advisor, finally told the small delegation:
In September 1706, the King of Sweden promised safety to the craftsmen, and construction resumed. Another break followed on May 1, 1707, when there was no money for further construction due to Swedish raids. Again, construction was resumed the same month after Arnold's intervention. On August 3, 1708, the name day of Augustus the Strong, the Loschwitz church was consecrated. The result was an octagonal, baroque hall building with a striking dusky pink plaster on the outside, but rather plain on the inside. Two years later the builders completed the exterior of the churchyard.
The renovation of 1898/99
In the years that followed, the church underwent several minor renovations, with the Leibner organ, built in 1753, requiring repeated maintenance. At the end of the 19th century, the equipment and the basic standard of the church, which largely corresponded to the original building from 1708, were no longer up to date. There was no indoor plumbing, nor was there a gas line that could have been used to light candlesticks, for example. After much deliberation, the congregation "finally decided to combine all the needs into one large and thorough renovation, excluding all repair work for many decades, and complete it all at once. The Loschwitz architect Karl Emil Scherz supervised the renovation of the church in 1898 and 1899. The rather plain interior was adorned with gold decorations and ornaments. Stained glass was added to the long windows, and new pews and altar additions were made. While the interior was painted olive green, the facade was painted gray instead of the original dusky pink. The reconsecration of the Loschwitz church took place on March 12, 1899. Apart from minor renovations - for example, two bells melted down during World War I and had to be replaced - the Loschwitz church remained unchanged until 1945.Destruction of the church in 1945 and reconstruction
During the air raids on Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945, several bombs hit the Loschwitz Church. As a result, it burned down to the surrounding walls. By 1946, the ruins had been cleared of rubble, and in 1947, security measures were taken on the remaining surrounding walls. Already in 1946, and again in 1950, a "Committee for the Reconstruction of the Church" was formed to make the necessary preparations. Its members chose Oskar Menzel and Herbert Burkhardt as architects, but there was a lack of funds and building materials. "The wood donated by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland in 1963 could not be imported until a building permit was issued. But this was denied because the necessary building materials were not available." For the city of Dresden, the reconstruction of the Dreikönigskirche and the Matthäuskirche took priority at that time.In 1967 the preserved sacristy was repaired and transformed into a functional church hall. The first services were held in the ruins. The "young congregation" also erected a temporary bell tower and in 1969 had it equipped with three new bells from Apolda. On May 31, 1978, the church ruins and the church cemetery were placed under monumental protection by the district council.
Since the masonry had been damaged by the effects of weather over the years, discussions about rebuilding the Loschwitz Church resumed in the 1980s under the auspices of the "Reconstruction Committee" founded in 1984. In 1989, the Regional Church Office in Saxony approved the reconstruction under certain conditions: the construction work and costs were to be borne by the parish; "donations in convertible currency" were strictly prohibited. In Munich, on July 29, 1989, Pastor Ullrich Wagner founded the "Association for the Reconstruction of the Evangelical Church in Dresden-Loschwitz e. V.", which collected donations. In November 1989 the beginning of the reconstruction was officially announced. The symbolic laying of the foundation stone took place on June 29, 1991. In the following years, the reconstruction was financed mainly by donations: In addition to the funds of the Munich Association, the German Foundation for Monument Protection, the Körber Foundation, the Dresdner Bank, the Regional Council, and numerous private individuals supported the reconstruction. Dresden artists such as Theo Adam, Peter Schreier, and Udo Zimmermann also contributed with benefit concerts. The topping-out ceremony took place on October 3, 1992. The architects based the exterior design on the original building from 1708, for example, the plaster of the church building is once again a dusky pink. At the same time, they corrected George Bähr's structural mistakes in the roof structure. The exterior renovation of the church was completed on October 2, 1994, with the reconsecration of the Loschwitz Church.
The interior work followed. Shortly before the church was consecrated in 1994, the Hanover parish of St. Johannis donated the old pews from the renovated Neustädter Kirche to the Loschwitz Church. In addition to a temporary altar, the two galleries were built by 1997 so that the new Wegscheider organ could be consecrated on October 5, 1997. The new baptismal font and lectern were created by the Dresden artist Peter Makolies. The old pulpit altar was too damaged to be restored. In 2002, the Nosseni Altar from the Dresden Sophienkirche, which was destroyed in 1945 and demolished in 1963, found a new home in the Loschwitz Church. To match the colors of the altar, the interior of the church was painted yellow with white highlights in 2004. From 2004 to 2009, the Loschwitz Church was part of the Dresden Elbe Valley cultural landscape between the castles of Übigau and Pillnitz and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.