Luther Church (Lutherkirche)

An Impressive Jugendstil Church

On 10 November 1912, Luther Church was opened with the Hessian Grand Duke and his wife attending. The first minister was Otto Pabst (1912—1925). The church is right down to the detail designed in the Darmstadt Jugendstil (cf the Ernst Ludwig House and the Wedding Tower in Darmstadt). Its architect was Friedrich Pützer (1871—1922), private lecturer since 1898 and full professor for architecture since 1902 at the Darmstadt University of Technology. Although Catholic, he had also been the master builder of the Protestant Church of the (former) Grand Duchy of Hesse. Sculptors involved were Ludwig Habich (1872—1949) and Augusto Varnesi (1866—1944), both of them also exponents of the late Darmstadt-style Jugendstil.

Luther Church is situated north of Eleonoren Gymnasium on Karlsplatz near Friedrich-Ebert-Straße to the west of the city centre. For the tower up to the cupola vertex, the eastern portal façade, and the terrace in front of it, Pützer used the same red sandstone as was used for the Cathedral, deliberately following the tradition of Mediaeval church architecture in Worms. The sandstone is a reference to the Cathedral, the towers’ bricked domes to St Paul’s church. The tower is 140ft tall. The dark roughcast of the other wall areas gives the building a homogenous look.

Tribute to a Famous Hymn

On the portal side, there is a Ionic-like portico with two detached and six attached columns. The monumental golden lettering above the main entrance Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’) quotes the first line from most famous of Luther’s hymns. The four large copper doors, two of them facing the nave, two leading towards the gallery staircases at the sides, were created by the metalsmith Philipp Jung.

The hip roof of the church is harmonised with the transeptal parish house and was originally covered with silvery-blackish clay pantiles, who were ruined in the second world war. The tower cross and clock, the window and lamp gratings of the portico and the inscription on the architrave were—and are again—gold-plated.

The interior design strictly follows the requirements of the so-called Wiesbaden Programme of 1891 claiming for Protestant churches the character of an assembly hall and the unity of altar, pulpit and organ. Thus nave and choir are not separated. The visitor enters the church from the east through two portals leading into a narrow transeptal vestibule. From there two wooden doors open into the actual nave, a rectangular room 58ft broad and 69ft long. The room is spanned by a mighty stuckoed barrel ceiling painted with geometrical and floral ornaments in ochre, bronze and blue. The western wall features a pulpit altar made of polished shell limestone, uniting these two places of preaching. Over it there are a choir loft and the organ. The room is rounded off by stepped galleries to the sides and above the entrance.

The City’s Second Largest Organ

When, during a redesign in the 1960s, a crucifix created by Fritz Schwarzbeck was installed above the pulpit, the evangelists’ statues created exclusively for the church by Augusto Varnesi in 1912, were at first removed. A few years ago, they were placed on the gallery above the entrance.

Ernst Riegel, a goldsmith from Darmstadt, created the altar crucifix set with amethysts, but also the latticework of the altar and the baptismal font. Ludwig Habich made the bronze relief of Luther above the door leading to the tower staircase.

The church seats 900 people and houses the city’s second largest organ, an instrument constructed by Link Brothers (Giengen) with 40 registers that has undergone several painstaking renovations in the recent years.

text source: regionalgeschichte.net | amendments: parish of Luther church

Address of the church

Luther church
Karlsplatz 5
67549 Worms

Luther Church on the … city map (German).

Address of the parish

Evangelische Luthergemeinde
Friedrich-Ebert-Straße 45
67549 Worms
phone +49 6241 594190
e-mail info@luthergemeinde-worms.de