Marienkirche Hanau: Gothic Parish and Burial Church in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page20 sections
History
Marienkirche Hanau is a predominantly Gothic church in Hanau, Germany, whose origins reach back to a Romanesque chapel already standing when the settlement received city status in 1303. Originally dedicated to Mary Magdalene, it is now the parish church of the Protestant Marienkirche congregation. The church stands in Hanau’s old town beside the German Goldsmiths’ House, the former town hall, and near the Old Town Market.
From subsidiary chapel to parish church
The chapel was first mentioned in 1316 as a subsidiary church of the parish church of Our Lady at Kinzdorf. Kinzdorf lay south of the medieval town and was later abandoned. Its parish priest was responsible for several religious buildings in Hanau, including the chapel, the Martinskapelle in Hanau Castle, and the Elisabeth Chapel at the hospital in Hanau’s first suburb. Together with their chaplains, these clergy formed the priestly community serving Hanau parish. Five chaplains are recorded in 1364.
A decisive change came in 1434, when Count Reinhard II secured parish rights for the Mary Magdalene Chapel and transferred the ecclesiastical focus from Kinzdorf to Hanau. He established rules requiring daily masses and vespers at the church’s many altars, strengthened the clergy’s endowments, and created a system of payment for priests who regularly fulfilled their assigned duties. The associated endowment, known as the Präsenz, still exists. It owns properties derived from the former benefice estates and uses their income to maintain Marienkirche.
Reinhard II enlarged and embellished the church as the principal church of his residence town. He also chose it as the new burial place of the Hanau comital family, whose members had previously been buried at Arnsburg Abbey. Reinhard II was buried at Marienkirche in 1451, beginning a sequence of family burials in the choir that continued until 1612.
Late medieval expansion
During Reinhard II’s building campaign, the nave was enlarged from a single-aisled building into a three-aisled church. The work is stated to have begun in 1449 and to have been completed in 1454, although an inscription above a blocked pointed-arch doorway on the south wall refers to 1446. The apse was enlarged as well. Construction of the present bell tower began in 1448, and a large bell made in Schweinfurt was installed in 1480. It weighed 36 German hundredweights and cost 360 gulden.
After returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1485, Count Philipp I “the Younger” commissioned the monumental late Gothic choir. Completed in 1492, it may have been intended as the first part of a more extensive enlargement of the nave, but the Reformation prevented that plan from being completed. By 1492 the choir held five altars, while the church as a whole contained nine. The high altar was dedicated to Mary Magdalene and carried a panel by the painter Sebald Fyoll, which has since been lost. Choir stalls were added in 1496.
In the late fifteenth century, Marienkirche became a collegiate church, served by twelve clerics under a dean. A collegiate church is administered by a formal chapter of clergy attached to the church rather than by a monastic community. Philipp I died in 1500, and 214 clergy are said to have attended his funeral there. The church had been enlarged and renewed under his supervision.
Reformation and Protestant remodeling
The collegiate foundation soon began to decline. In 1523, Pastor Adolf Arborgast entered the chapter and declared that he intended to devote himself chiefly to evangelical preaching rather than to the daily mass and vespers. Under his successor, Magister Philipp Neunheller, Reformation ideas gained increasing influence among both the canons and the congregation. The Catholic collegiate service was never formally abolished, but vacant posts reduced the number of altar priests from eight in 1537 to four in 1548. Mass ceased in 1550.
The Reformation was the sixteenth-century religious movement that divided Western Christianity and produced Protestant churches. In 1558, Count Philipp III ordered the nave to be remodeled for Protestant worship, where preaching to the gathered congregation held a central place. The three-aisled division was removed, the outer walls were raised, and the nave roof was brought up to the level of the choir roof. The work was completed in 1561.
The tower reached its present height in 1568. A watch room was installed there, with a permanent observer who reported urban fires by flag during the day and by lantern at night. The bells sounded an alarm. The watch room remained staffed until 1896.
Hanau’s first Lutheran Reformation was followed by a further confessional change under Count Philipp Ludwig II, who adopted the Reformed branch of Protestantism and imposed it throughout the County of Hanau-Münzenberg. This policy followed the principle cuius regio, eius religio, meaning that the ruler determined the officially permitted confession within his territory.
Changes to furnishings and burial practice
In 1595, the medieval altars were dismantled, and pictures, sculptures, furnishings, and other works of art were removed. Some were sold. The Wörth Altar survived and is now in the Catholic parish church of St Nicholas in Wörth am Main. Parts of the medieval choir stalls, funerary monuments, and several choir windows remained at Marienkirche.
A choir gallery was installed in 1570. Its enclosed lower level divided the eastern part of the choir and held the church library and archival material. More than a century later, the Hanau organ builder Valentin Markart placed a Baroque organ on the gallery. Its richly carved case dominated the choir until the church was destroyed in 1945.
A crypt, a subterranean burial chamber, was created for the Hanau comital family in 1602 and enlarged in 1642. It later received members of the House of Hesse-Kassel, including Landgravine Maria, the wife of Landgrave Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel, and Elector William II of Hesse. New bells were installed in 1709.
From Reformed church to wartime ruins
After the Reformation, the church was known as the High German Reformed Church. It regained the name Marienkirche in 1818, when Hanau’s Reformed and Lutheran congregations were united. Elector William I of Hesse rejected the proposed name Paulskirche and ordered the church to be named in memory of his mother, Princess Maria of Hanover. The former Lutheran Johanneskirche was renamed in memory of Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony.
A major restoration from 1847 to 1849 disregarded the church’s earlier appearance. Elector William II of Hesse-Kassel was buried in the church in 1847, the last burial inside the building. Another renovation followed in 1929.
Air raids during the Second World War, particularly the attack of 19 March 1945, destroyed much of Hanau and left Marienkirche in ruins. The nave and tower burned out, while the bells melted and fell from the tower. The choir vault survived the collapse of the burning roof. Before the destruction, Pastor Georg Göckel had removed the works of art and most of the old church books dating from 1593 onward, saving them from the fire.
Excavation and reconstruction
Hugo Birkner conducted archaeological excavations in the ruined church in 1946. The work recovered grave slabs, most of which were later inserted into the nave walls. Reconstruction followed plans by Professor Karl Gruber. The choir was restored in 1951, the tower in 1954, and the nave in 1956. The steep choir roof was rebuilt in 1961, and a porch was added over the western entrance in 1963. Surviving works of art, stained-glass windows, choir-stall panels, and funerary monuments were returned or restored.
A postwar renovation took place in 1975. In 2002 and 2003, the church was remodeled because the organ installed in 1956 and 1957, and enlarged in 1964, was no longer satisfactory. Since 1 January 2014, the congregation has belonged to the Evangelical City Church Congregation of Hanau as a district. In 2025, the medieval stained-glass windows underwent further restoration, including new protective glazing and a rearrangement within the five-eighths termination. The original medieval arrangement of the windows remains unknown.
Remains
Marienkirche is a predominantly Gothic building whose medieval church and tower once stood visibly above Hanau. Its form records several changes in worship and construction. The nave began as a single-aisled structure, became three-aisled during the fifteenth century, and was converted into a hall church during the sixteenth-century Protestant remodeling. The late Gothic choir projects well above the adjoining nave and remains the principal medieval architectural element.
Late Gothic choir
Structure and vault
The choir measures 22 metres in length, 10 metres in width, and 16.4 metres in height. It has four bays and a five-eighths termination, a polygonal eastern end formed from five sides of an implied octagon. Exterior buttresses correspond to the supports inside. Their bases and consoles once carried richly carved elements, while sections reconstructed after their partial destruction in 1945 use rough, bossed stonework.
Ten rising pilasters support the web-like pattern of the vault ribs. At the eastern end, the ribs meet in a star around a central boss showing Mary Magdalene kneeling before the resurrected Christ in the Noli me tangere scene. This image represents Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene in the guise of a gardener. Other carved and painted bosses display the arms of Philipp I, his wife Adriana of Nassau-Dillenburg, his father Reinhard III, his grandfather Reinhard II, and his mother Margaret of Palatinate-Mosbach.
Smaller coats of arms in the side fields of the vault ribs represent members of the Hanau family’s aristocratic connections, including the counts of Wertheim, Rieneck, and Solms. Painted foliage, flowers, and rays fill the spaces between the ribs. The overall design was probably by Siegfried Ribsche. Master Martin directed its execution, and at least part of the sculptural work was undertaken by the Babenhausen stonecutter Hans Merckel.
Medieval stained glass
Twenty-four panels of late medieval stained glass survive. They probably date from 1497 to 1499 and never occupied the entire window openings. After the first Reformation, the outer and lower panels were replaced with white glass to improve the interior lighting. The image of Saint George was added by Alexander Linnemann in 1910.
The surviving scenes include the Holy Kinship; a two-light composition of Saint George and the Pietà with the arms of Hanau and the Palatinate; and a three-light central scene showing the resurrected Christ as gardener, Mary Magdalene, and Saint Nicholas. Other panels depict the Virgin and Child between John the Baptist and Saint Catherine, together with the Mater Dolorosa and the Man of Sorrows. The scene of Christ and Mary Magdalene probably originally occupied the position corresponding to the central boss of the choir vault.
The windows were restored in 1740, 1848 and 1849, 1910, 1951, 1975 and 1976, and 2025. During the Second World War, they were removed from the church in 1941 for safekeeping.
Saint Lawrence Chapel and wall paintings
Chapel of Saint Lawrence
The small Chapel of Saint Lawrence was built on the south side at the same time as the late Gothic choir. Its keystone depicts Saint Lawrence, a third-century Roman deacon traditionally associated with martyrdom by burning. The chapel originally served as a chapter house for the collegiate clergy and now functions as the sacristy.
The chapel may have been intended to house relics connected with Philipp I’s attempt to purchase the relic collection of Seligenstadt Abbey, including the head of Saint Lawrence. The Archbishop of Mainz objected and forced Philipp I to return the relics. The count was compensated with the abbey’s revenues from Nauheim, Eschersheim, and Ginnheim.
Frescoes
Frescoes uncovered beneath peeling whitewash after the destruction of 1945 depict the martyrdoms of Saint Lawrence and the twin physicians Cosmas and Damian. Another fresco shows the Adoration of the Magi together with two holy deacons. Cosmas and Damian were Christian brothers traditionally remembered as physicians and martyrs.
Nave, galleries, and organ
Reformed interior arrangement
The sixteenth-century remodeling inserted galleries on several levels along the long sides of the nave. Men occupied these galleries, while women sat in the nave. Professors, officials, and councillors had ground-level seats enclosed by grilles, and the ruler’s pew stood at the front of the first gallery. Columns supported the flat ceiling and also carried the load of the roof loft, where natural and monetary endowments from the benefices were stored.
After the war, the continuous galleries were removed so that the nave’s original three-aisled character could again be perceived. A flat ceiling supported by concrete columns disguised as sandstone was installed. During the remodeling of 2002 and 2003, that ceiling was replaced by a Gothic-vaulted ceiling, described as probably the first Gothic ceiling constructed in the twenty-first century.
Organ and galleries
The present organ was built in 2004 by the Gerhard Grenzing organ-building company of El Papiol, Montserrat. It has 48 stops on three manuals and pedals, with mechanical key action and mechanical and electric stop action. The organ gallery was enlarged, and two new galleries were built for a choir or orchestra. The organ was placed at the west end so that the choir could again be seen without obstruction.
The altar is designed as a table rather than as a single massive stone block. Its form reflects the building’s use as a Reformed church from the late sixteenth century into the early nineteenth century, when the traditional altar was replaced by the “Lord’s Table” for the communal celebration of the Eucharist.
Monuments and bells
Comital memorials
An epitaph for Adriana of Nassau-Dillenburg stands on the right side of the chancel arch. An epitaph is a monument or inscription honoring a deceased person. The painted late Gothic sculpture shows Adriana praying toward the lost high altar.
Funerary monuments on the north wall of the choir commemorate Reinhard III of Hanau, Reinhard II of Hanau, Adriana of Nassau-Dillenburg, Philipp I “the Younger” of Hanau-Münzenberg, and Engelbert Halber of Hegern with his second wife, Dorothea of Oberkirch. The last monument was probably made by Hans Rodlein. Two Renaissance tomb monuments on the south wall commemorate Count Philipp III and his wife, Helena of Palatinate-Simmern; they were made by Johann von Trarbach.
Four empty consoles west of these monuments once supported the High Renaissance epitaph of Philipp Ludwig I. The epitaph was destroyed during the Second World War and survives only in fragments preserved at the Historical Museum Hanau. Beside the monument to Engelbert Halber and Dorothea stands the choir’s foundation stone, dated 1585. Its inscription is now too damaged to read.
Bell peal
Marienkirche possesses Hanau’s largest and lowest-pitched peal of bells. Its overall ringing follows the motif “Wachet auf.” The 1709 bell known as the Caller is one of the oldest and largest bells in the Hanau region. In 1945, it returned through Hanau harbor from the Hamburg bell cemetery.
