The Dreifaltigkeitskirche (English: Trinity Church) is a late

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

parish church in

Speyer Speyer (, older spelling ''Speier'', French: ''Spire,'' historical English: ''Spires''; pfl, Schbaija) is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located on the left bank of the river Rhine, Speyer li ...

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...

, Germany. Since 1988 it has been a cultural asset worthy of protection within the meaning of Article 1 of the

Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict is the first international treaty that focuses exclusively on the protection of cultural property in armed conflict. It was signed at The Hague, Nethe ...

History

Historical background of the church building and its sister church Heiliggeistkirche

In 1689, the town of Speyer was destroyed by order of

Louis XIV of France , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Versa ...

in the

Nine Years' War The Nine Years' War (1688–1697), often called the War of the Grand Alliance or the War of the League of Augsburg, was a conflict between France and a European coalition which mainly included the Holy Roman Empire (led by the Habsburg monarch ...

. Since the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

, its citizens had been predominantly Lutherans and, to a lesser extent, Reformed Christians. The inhabitants fled via the Rhine, many of them to

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

, as the whole Electoral Palatinate was also destroyed between Speyer and

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

. Only ten years later, in 1698, did some of the inhabitants return. The small Reformed congregation began the first new church building, the Heiliggeistkirche (Church of the Holy Spirit), in 1700–1702. In the winter of 1700/01, the Lutheran congregation cleared away the ruins of the 1689 destruction. The foundation work began in April, so that the foundation stone for the Trinity Church was laid on 22 April 1701. A few days later, the city council laid a second foundation stone, which was accompanied by the Lutheran Church Order of 1700 and the

Augsburg Confession The Augsburg Confession, also known as the Augustan Confession or the Augustana from its Latin name, ''Confessio Augustana'', is the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church and one of the most important documents of the Protestant Re ...

of 1530, as well as a pewter tablet stating that ''"after the barbaric destruction of the city by Gallic hands, this church was built for the glory of God and to adorn the city"''.

Construction Period

The foundation of the Trinity Church was laid in 1701 by the master builder Johann Peter Graber. The brickwork was built between 1701 and 1703 by the Italian master bricklayer Paul Bagnato, who in German called himself "Paul Naß". In autumn 1703 the

War of the Spanish Succession The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict that took place from 1701 to 1714. The death of childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700 led to a struggle for control of the Spanish Empire between his heirs, Phil ...

threatened the city of Speyer. Therefore, it was decided on 17 October 1703 to move the services of the Lutheran congregation from the Gottesackerkirche (cemetery church) in front of the town gates to the still unfinished Dreifaltigkeitskirche within the town walls. From 1704 the construction of wooden galleries began. However, the construction work inside the church continued until 1717 due to lack of money. The organ was commissioned from the Mainz organ builder Johann Anton Ignaz Will in 1715 and was installed at the beginning of 1717. On 31 October 1717, the day of the 200th anniversary of the Reformation, the Trinity Church was solemnly inaugurated.

French Revolution

In 1792 Speyer was conquered by

French revolutionary The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are consider ...

troops. On the second day of Christmas 1793 the last service took place in the Trinity Church. Then the church was plundered, the church vessels had to be delivered, the bells and organ pipes were removed, so that the building finally no longer contained any metal. In the final phase of

Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...

ic military campaigns, the church was used as a military hospital for wounded soldiers, and only from 1814 did church services resume.

Church union

Already in the second half of the 18th century the first rapprochements between Reformed and Lutherans took place. Experiences during the French Revolution reinforced the rapprochement. On 31 October 1817 the Reformed congregation in Speyer decided to rename its church "Church of the Holy Spirit". From then on the church served the united Protestant community. This happened one year before the actual Union of Churches in the Palatinate. In a survey of about 130,000 Reformed and 108,000 Lutheran Protestants in the parishes of the Palatinate, 40,167 voted for the Union, only 539 against. In the Palatinate, a general synod of Lutheran and Reformed congregations met in Kaiserslautern from 16 August 1818 to determine a common creed. On 1 Advent 1818 (29 November 1818) a union was formed, which was celebrated with a solemn joint divine service. Until the completion of the Gedächtniskirche (''Memorial Church'') in 1904, the Trinity Church remained the main Protestant church in Speyer. From 1904 the church services took place only during the winter half-year in the Trinity Church, because the Gedächtniskirche was not heated in winter until 1965 and therefore served only as a summer church. In 1979 regular church services were stopped in the Heiliggeistkirche. The church services regularly take place only in the Trinity Church.

Architecture

Speyer Dreifaltigkeitskirche Innenansicht

The Dreifaltigkeitskirche in Speyer is a baroque building and goes back directly to the St. Catherine's Church in Frankfurt, which was built between 1678 and 1680 by Melchior Heßler. It was built between 1701 and 1717. The master builder was the Mannheim architect Johann Peter Graber. The church is regarded as an ''"outstanding achievement of Protestant church architecture and a jewel of the Baroque"''. The church faces northeast. The roomy hall has a choir end with five sides of a decagon. The walls are unstructured because of the galleries. The wooden ceiling has a very flat cap vault over semicircular shield arches. The façade is no longer original, as under the French occupation in 1794 the five stone figures were overthrown from the gable of the façade. The current façade gable was redesigned in 1891 according to the plans of the Speyer architect Heinrich Jester. The interior of the church is entirely from the time of its construction. The ceiling paintings are based on medieval forms of representation. They are all conceived like panel paintings. There is evidence that 20 scenes date back to the picture bible of Matthew Merian. The illustrations of the church scenes serve the understanding and the spreading of the word of God, completely in the sense of the Lutheran faith. In contrast to the usual Baroque ceiling paintings, the paintings are not aligned with a line of sight.

Organ

The organ of the Trinity Church is located above the altar in the historical prospectus built by Christian Dathan around 1716 for the first organ of the church. The instrument was built in 1929 by the organ building company Steinmeyer (Oettingen), using pipe material from the predecessor organ from 1812, which had been built by Johann Georg Geib (Frankenthal). Today the organ has 41

stops Stop may refer to: Places *Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...

, divided into three manuals and pedal. The instrument has electropneumatic

tracker action Tracker action is a term used in reference to pipe organs and steam calliopes to indicate a mechanical linkage between keys or pedals pressed by the organist and the valve that allows air to flow into pipe(s) of the corresponding note. This is ...

Bell tower

The so-called ''Läutturm'' (bell tower) belonged to the medieval St. Georgen Church, of which nothing has survived. Between 1689 and 1822 the tower remained only as a stump. In 1818, the Sprinkhorn et Schrader foundry in Frankenthal cast a three-voiced bell that proved to be too large for the ridge turret of the Trinity Church built in 1717. Threfore, the bell tower was rebuilt to accommodate the new bell. On July 2, 1891, the tower burned including the clock and bells. In the same year Andreas Hamm poured a new bell from Frankenthal with the tones of the C minor triad (c1, es1 and g1), which were thus tuned to the bell of the

cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denomination ...

. They bore the inscriptions ''"God's Word Remains for Eternity"'', ''"There Is Still Rest in the People of God"'' and ''"Rejoice in the Lord All Ways"''. First they were hung up in a bell house on the church garden and after the reconstruction of the bell tower they had to be ringable; in 1917 the bells had to be collected for war purposes. This was followed in 1924 by three bells from the same foundry, this time in the tones c1 (''emergency bell''), es1 (''faith bell'') and f1 (''sky bell''). In the Second World War, this bell was destroyed.

Theo Fehn Theo is a given name and a hypocorism. Greek origin Many names beginning with the root "Theo-" derive from the Ancient Greek word ''theos'' (''θεός''), which means god, for example: *Feminine names: Thea, Theodora, Theodosia, Theophania, ...

: ''Der Glockenexperte. Vom Neuaufbau des deutschen Glockenwesens aus der Sicht von Theo Fehn.'' Badenia, Karlsruhe 1991, Bd. 1, S. 32+34, . Since 1951, the ''Vaterunserglocke'' (Lord's Prayer bell) has hung in clay b1 in the ridge turret of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche itself; it was cast by Friedrich Wilhelm Schilling. In 1964, the Karlsruher Glocken- und Kunstgießerei cast three bells for the bell tower with the same striking tones as the first bell (C minor triad).

Notes

External links

Homepage of Trinity Church Parish in Speyer
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Speyer) Protestant churches in Rhineland-Palatinate Churches in Speyer United Protestant church buildings in Germany