Nieder-Wiesen - Culture and Sightseeing - Buildings - Evangelical Church

Evangelical Church

The Evangelical church is a Baroque one-room structure built in 1723 as the then resident church of the Barons of Hunolstein on the spot where once had stood another church built in 1462. Remains of the nobles’ seat are still recognizable inside. The church is equipped with the oldest and smallest Stumm organ in Rhenish Hesse (from about 1725) with a stylish character (eight stops). On one side wall are found the family Hunolstein’s graves, and on the other the Reverend Johann Wilhelm Fresenius’s (died 1727), whose son Johann Philipp not only served as a clergyman in Nieder-Wiesen, but also later, as a senior clergyman in Frankfurt am Main, ministered to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s parents and even christened the poet himself shortly after his birth. Furthermore, the clerical family Fresenius’s descendants founded a healthcare business that today is active worldwide, and also a well known chemical analysis institute.

Baroque pastoral paintings adorn the pulpit with the Four Evangelists, and along the gallery balustrade’s whole breadth, a painting of the Twelve Apostles with Jesus in the middle can be seen. From early Lutheran times come the Eucharist chests, which are scattered about the altar area. Since 1822, the parish has been Evangelical-United.

The font comes from 1971 and was originally in the Immanuel-Kirche in Königstein im Taunus, but did not arrive in Nieder-Wiesen without a sojourn first in Ringleben in the Kyffhäuserkreis in Thuringia, finally coming back to western Germany and its new home in Nieder-Wiesen in 1996.

Artistically valuable are the altar antependia, among others a work in appliqué after a concept by Darmstadt artist Thomas Duttenhöfer from 1989 called “Jesus’s Entry into Jerusalem”. Upon close inspection, though, it turns out that the place depicted in the work, far from being the Holy City, is in fact Nieder-Wiesen, with its former synagogue on fire.

The church’s loft is used for a bat and barn owl project as a measure to safeguard Creation.

In 2000, the church’s outside was given an extensive renovation, and in 2008, the inside was also done.

The entrance portal is furnished with the clerical family Fresenius’s heraldic motto from Psalm 92: Die gepflanzt sind im Hause des Herrn, werden in den Vorhöfen unseres Gottes grünen (“Planted in the Lord’s house, they grow in the courts of our God”), and above is found the Hunolstein family’s former coat of arms with the noble crown.

The coat of arms – albeit now without the noble crown – with the marking “NW” to make it Nieder-Wiesen’s civic arms was set into the street paving in 2000 in the square before the church. Across from the church, on the bank of the Wiesbach, stands a “Resista” elm as a measure to fight Dutch elm disease in Rhenish Hesse. (“Resista” cultivars are supposed to have very high resistance to this fungal affliction).

A few metres farther is found the stylishly shaped memorial to victims of the First and Second World Wars.