Oberhofenkirche: A Late Gothic Church in Göppingen, Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Württemberg, German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page17 sections
History
The Oberhofenkirche is a late Gothic church in Göppingen, Germany, built between 1436 and 1490 for Count Ulrich V of Württemberg. Ulrich also established a collegiate foundation there, a religious institution served by a community of canons rather than monks. The church became an important religious site outside the town walls and remains one of Göppingen’s two Protestant inner-city churches.
Roman and early medieval beginnings
Archaeological excavations in 1980 and 1981 revealed that the church stands on a much older site. A Roman villa rustica, a rural estate or farm complex with residential and agricultural buildings, occupied the location during the second or third century AD. A few prehistoric objects were also recovered.
The Roman remains were followed by an early medieval timber church built with posts. Its builders retained the orientation of the earlier Roman structures. Several timber churches succeeded this first building, and stone construction began in the ninth century. A rebuilding in the tenth century turned the church toward the east, establishing a new orientation for the developing Christian complex.
The first medieval church has sometimes been described as an “original church” from which the systematic Christianization of the Filstal was directed. That interpretation is a modern missionary construction and probably does not reflect the character of the early building. The archaeological sequence instead shows repeated rebuilding and adaptation over several centuries.
Medieval parish church and collegiate foundation
A larger Romanesque basilica was erected in the twelfth or thirteenth century, probably under aristocratic patronage. A Romanesque basilica is a longitudinal church with a central nave and lower side aisles. This building was recorded as Göppingen’s parish church in 1275, when the settlement was developing into a town. Although it stood beyond the town walls, it continued to serve the parish.
The present late Gothic church arose under Count Ulrich V between 1436 and 1490. Its foundation formed part of the count’s religious and institutional plans for the site. A reliquary inventory probably dating from around 1400 survives in Schwäbisch Gmünd and offers evidence for religious practice at the church in the late Middle Ages.
A preaching office, a formally endowed position for delivering sermons, was established at the church in 1514. When Württemberg adopted the Reformation, the Oberhofenkirche initially remained Catholic because the canons of its collegiate foundation continued to serve there.
Reformation, war, and changing use
The collegiate foundation was dissolved at the beginning of 1535. Because the church stood outside the town and within a cemetery, it was then used mainly for funerals. It also served occasionally as an alternative church while work was being carried out on the Renaissance town church. Unlike many medieval churches affected by the Reformation, it was not converted into a transverse Protestant preaching church.
From 1636 to 1649, Jesuits temporarily revived the Catholic foundation while the Göppingen district was under Austrian control through Archduchess Claudia of Tyrol. This restoration took place during the Thirty Years’ War, a major European conflict that combined political struggles with disputes between Catholic and Protestant powers. The Restitution Edict of 1629 had sought to return Catholic ecclesiastical property transferred to Protestant institutions. The temporary revival ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which concluded the major phases of the war in 1648 and reshaped political and confessional arrangements within the Holy Roman Empire.
The church was considered at risk of collapse after the war. Restoration continued until 1687 and included complete renewal of the choir and nave roof structures. Safety work in 1686 also brought a Baroque stucco ceiling to the nave. In 1650, despite the building’s dangerous condition, a thanksgiving festival and service was held there by ducal order after the end of the war. This event is regarded as the origin of Göppingen’s continuing Maientag tradition.
The church’s restricted role also affected its bells. After the town church was built, the end of the Thirty Years’ War, and the reduction of the Oberhofenkirche’s liturgical use, its largest bell was transferred to the town church in 1653. Two later sets of bells were requisitioned for the German war economy as “metal donations.”
Secular use and restoration
During the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century, the church was used for secular purposes, including as a military hospital, a hay store, and a horse stable. The south tower was also used as a telegraph station. Earlier, severe lightning damage in 1561 to 1563 had left the towers with temporary roofs for more than three centuries.
Civic initiatives brought restoration and neo-Gothic remodeling from 1854 onward. The work was completed around 1900 under Heinrich Dolmetsch, a Württemberg architect known for church restoration and neo-Gothic projects. Since 1902, the Oberhofenkirche has again served as a congregational church and as Göppingen’s second parish church.
The interior was renovated in 1938, 1983, and during work completed by 2013. The exterior was renovated between 2001 and 2008, and further archaeological investigation took place at the sacristy in 2006. The church now belongs to the Evangelical Parish of Göppingen within the Geislingen-Göppingen church district of the Evangelical Church in Württemberg.
Church life under National Socialism
Eugen Jäckh served as the church’s Protestant pastor from 1926 until 1938. Before 1 May 1933, he opposed decorating the church with a swastika flag and portraits of Hindenburg and Hitler. Local Nazi pressure and insufficient support from church leaders forced him to leave his post in Göppingen in 1938. His experience forms part of the church’s modern history and reflects the pressures placed on Protestant clergy during the Nazi period.
Remains
The Oberhofenkirche is largely the late Gothic hall church commissioned by Ulrich V. It is 49.50 meters long and was designed with a three-aisled, flat-roofed nave, a transept with a net vault, a raised polygonal choir, and two towers flanking the choir. A hall church gives its interior a more unified character because the aisles approach the height of the nave. The choir towers reached their architectural completion only after 1884, when August von Beyer added their stone helmets. Together, the towers rise to 50 meters.
Archaeological remains and church fabric
Earlier buildings beneath the church
The excavations of 1980 and 1981 exposed remains of the Roman villa rustica, the post-built early medieval timber church, successive timber buildings, and later stone churches. These phases are no longer visible in the present structure, but they establish a long sequence of occupation and rebuilding beneath the late Gothic church. The archaeological work also produced finds connected with the later history of the building, including an early dental prosthesis made from hippopotamus tooth.
Choir towers and roof structures
The two towers beside the choir belong to the church’s late Gothic design, although their stone helmets were added after 1884. Their present height is 50 meters. The roof structures of both the choir and nave were completely renewed during the restoration carried out after the Thirty Years’ War, while the nave later received its Baroque stucco ceiling in 1686.
Choir, chapels, and historic furnishings
Choir stalls and wall paintings
The choir contains late Gothic choir stalls and richly decorated Baroque epitaphs. Some of the epitaphs were transferred from the town church around 1770. Wall paintings from the period of the church’s construction survive on the choir’s north wall. Near the south portal, a foundation scene created around 1470 shows two noblewomen presenting a model of the church. The painting also preserves the only surviving image of Hohenstaufen Castle before its destruction. It was uncovered in 1938.
Zillenhardt Chapel
The Zillenhardt Chapel contains funerary monuments belonging to the von der Zillenhart family, whose castle stood near Schlat. A wooden crucifix in the choir dates from 1510.
Pulpit and organ
Jakob Grünenwald decorated the pulpit in 1883 with six canvas paintings showing Moses, Christ, and the four Evangelists. In 1938, Helmuth Uhrig added three wooden reliefs depicting the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the Crucifixion, and the Crowning with Thorns. The paintings and reliefs were removed during the interior renovation completed by 2013 and replaced with modern liturgical furnishings.
Kurt Oesterle built the organ in 1971. It has 41 stops on three manuals and pedal and replaced an earlier pneumatic organ by Weigle. During the 1980s it was restored and enlarged by four stops, and an electronic combination system was later installed.
Stained glass and bells
Kohler windows
Walter Kohler created the central choir window in 1938 and the tracery glazing in the north and south transepts. After the completion of archaeological excavations inside the church, his son Wolf-Dieter Kohler extended the ensemble to the left and right in 1983. The three choir windows form a connected artistic and biblical work by the father and son.
The central window was removed for protection in 1940 and reinstalled in 1947. Its imagery follows Christ from suffering to cosmic rule and includes themes of resistance to evil and the abuse of state power. Three circular sections show Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and the Last Supper, the betrayal by Judas and Jesus before Pilate, and the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
The surrounding imagery includes the wolf in sheep’s clothing, nard, the spring willow, the cock, bread and chalice, the vine, Judas’s silver pieces, the stag as a symbol of Christ, thorns, the state authority striking a set of scales, the Lamb bearing a cross, wormwood, the defeated dragon, the palm-bearing angel, hops, death as a skeleton with a scythe, the crowned angel, and laurel. The spaces between the circles contain the four Evangelists. Above them are angels carrying scales, a cross, a flaming sword, and a trumpet. The upper trefoils contain Alpha and Omega, while the upper five-lobed panel presents the Majestas Domini, the enthroned image of Christ as cosmic ruler within an almond-shaped halo.
North tower bells
Three bells cast by the Heinrich Kurtz foundry in Stuttgart were installed in the north tower in 1950. Their notes, F, G, and B-flat, form the older Gloria motif, “Glory to God in the highest.” The F bell weighs 950 kilograms and carries the inscription “Lord God, you are our refuge for ever.” The 680-kilogram G bell commemorates Johann Georg Boehringer, founder of the Göppingen firm Gebrüder Boehringer. The 400-kilogram B-flat bell commemorates Dr. Albert Schuler.
