St. Catherine’s Church, Oppenheim: A Gothic Church on the Rhine
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page15 sections
History
St. Catherine’s Church in Oppenheim, Germany, is a major medieval church on the Rhine, built in successive phases from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries in a combination of late Romanesque and Gothic forms. Its construction probably began around 1225 or 1226, when Oppenheim received town privileges. Pope Gregory IX granted an indulgence for the new church in 1234, and the building became a parish church in 1258.
A divided medieval town
The church was erected in Oppenheim’s Neustadt, an area associated with the Archdiocese of Mainz. The older part of the town and St. Sebastian’s Church belonged to the Diocese of Worms. In 1258, King Richard of Cornwall, a thirteenth-century King of the Romans, separated the two churches and established the Mainz-Worms diocesan boundary through Oppenheim. St. Catherine’s then served as the parish church of the Mainz Neustadt, while St. Sebastian’s remained the parish church of the Worms Old Town.
A collegiate foundation was established at St. Catherine’s in 1317. This was a religious institution served by canons who were required to conduct regular worship, rather than a monastery governed by a monastic order. After 1400, the canons built their own western choir, which was consecrated in 1439.
Reformation and shared Protestant use
The church became Oppenheim’s Lutheran parish church in 1556 and its Reformed parish church in 1565. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the building was definitively transferred to the Reformed congregation. Since 1822, it has been used jointly by united Lutherans and Reformed Protestants as a United Protestant church within the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau.
In 1632, the entrails of Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate were buried in the western choir after his death in exile in Mainz. This use of the choir as a dynastic memorial formed part of the church’s later historical associations.
Destruction and restoration
French forces destroyed the church on 31 May 1689 during the War of the Palatine Succession, a late-seventeenth-century European conflict arising from French claims involving the Palatinate. The roofs and nearly all the windows were destroyed, and most of the vaults later collapsed. Provisional repairs began in 1697, but the western choir remained in ruins for a long period. Because Oppenheim could not afford a complete rebuilding, early efforts focused on repairing and preserving the surviving structure. The principal tower received a Baroque cap.
A major renovation took place from 1834 to 1845 under district architect Ignaz Opfermann. A second restoration began in 1879 after notary Lippold promoted the formation of a building association. Friedrich von Schmidt and his son Heinrich von Schmidt directed the work, which was completed in 1889. Archaeological excavations carried out between 1878 and 1889 also clarified the character of an earlier church beneath the surviving building.
The western choir was re-vaulted under Paul Meißner, with the work completed in 1937. Further extensive renovation followed in 1959, including the renewal of architectural sculpture, while the north front and the gallery of the crossing tower were renovated in 1965. Since 1978, extensive conservation has continued on the architecture and stained glass. During the Second World War, the medieval windows were dismantled and stored for protection, while the nineteenth-century neo-Gothic windows were damaged. The church also continues to serve as a venue for church music.
Remains
St. Catherine’s Church stands on a plateau of a vine-covered hill and is built chiefly of red sandstone. Its physical form combines an older eastern complex with a later western choir. The church has a three-aisled basilica layout, meaning that a high central nave rises above lower side aisles, and its crossing tower stands where the transept crosses the main axis.
The church fabric
Eastern complex
The older part consists of a four-bay nave, a transept, two western towers, low chapels beside the side aisles, and a high octagonal crossing tower. The Gothic eastern elements include the choir, diagonal chapels, transept, and crossing tower, whose design was influenced by Strasbourg Cathedral. The chronology of the nave remains debated. One reconstruction assigns the north side to a Cologne master working from 1305, the south side to a richer Cologne-influenced phase beginning in 1317, and the northern side aisle to work completed by about 1340. More recent interpretations place that side aisle within an earlier nave phase strongly influenced by Strasbourg. Cologne influence is more pronounced in the clerestory, the upper window zone of the nave, while the south show facade also reflects Freiburg Minster.
Late-Romanesque western towers survive from an earlier arrangement. Together with the excavations of 1878 to 1889, they indicate that the predecessor church was an empore basilica, a church with an elevated gallery. The nave, eastern parts, and western choir are covered by rib vaults, which are vaults carried by masonry ribs. These ribs rest on slender wall shafts and diamond-sectioned piers with capitals. Large windows occupy much of the facade walls, especially in the nave, and contain elaborate patterned stone tracery. Raised profiling emphasizes the exterior tracery. Buttresses support the nave and chancel walls, while flying buttresses transfer the outward pressure of the nave vaults to monumental side-aisle supports with tall aedicules and polygonal finials.
Western choir
The western choir rises higher than the eastern part of the church. Its original design survives in a medieval architectural drawing, and its later high net vault, a late Gothic vault whose ribs form an intersecting network, was probably built by Jodok Dotzinger, a Strasbourg Minster master builder from Worms. The vault was reconstructed between 1934 and 1937.
The choir’s main portal has a pointed arch, two jambs, and archivolts decorated with vine-leaf motifs. Flanking pillars and the upper tracery incorporate a relief of the Annunciation, with Mary and the Archangel Gabriel represented at the corners. The western choir is less richly decorated than the nave, as are the chancel and the transept end facades, which have stepped gables and window tracery.
Decoration and stained glass
The nave facade has particularly elaborate decoration, including tracery, richly profiled mullions, and windows crowned by tall pointed gables. Capitals, corbels, and vault bosses carry architectural sculpture. Plant ornament, especially vine leaves and grapes, refers to Oppenheim’s viticultural tradition. Other bosses show carved masks and naturalistic heads of young and old men, some arranged in quatrefoil forms. Four gable sculptures on the south side represent growth and decline through the heads of a child, a young man, an old man, and a figure given the facial features of Federal President Theodor Heuss.
The south facade contains the Lilies Window, reglazed in 1937, and the Oppenheim Rose. Most of the rose’s fourteenth-century glass is original and dates to 1332 or 1333. Its tracery follows the form of a wild hedge rose. At the center is Oppenheim’s coat of arms with the imperial eagle, surrounded by the coats of arms of the town councillors of 1332 and 1333.
Memorials and furnishings
Funerary monuments
The church originally held more than 100 funerary monuments, many of which were destroyed in 1689. Surviving examples include the joint tomb monument of Johann XI Kämmerer von Worms and his wife Anna von Bickenbach, who both died in 1415, and the monument of Anna von Helmstatt, widow of Johann XVII von Dalberg, who died in 1410. Other monuments commemorate Wolfgang III Kämmerer von Worms, known as von Dalberg, and Gertrud von Greiffenclau zu Vollrads, as well as Friedrich VI von Dalberg and Katharina von Gemmingen, and Wolfgang VI von Dalberg and Agnes von Sickingen.
The surviving memorials also include the epitaph of the imperial officer Conrad von Hanstein, who died in 1553, and monuments to Thana Knebel von Katzenelnbogen, Johann von Dalberg and Anna von Bickenbach, Johannes von Drock, and Philipp von Wannenberg. Anna von Dalberg appears as a full-length praying figure beneath an architectural canopy with heraldic pillars and pinnacles. Johann von Dalberg and Anna are shown in courtly dress, standing on lions beneath a heraldic canopy. The flat-relief monument of Johannes von Drock depicts Saint John the Evangelist and carries a minuscule inscription around its border, while Philipp von Wannenberg is represented in armour.
Font and organs
The baptismal font was designed by Paul Wallot, the architect born in Oppenheim who designed the Reichstag building in Berlin. His father, Johann Wilhelm Wallot, donated the font in 1888. Its form echoes the Reichstag’s contemporary dome construction.
The main organ was built between 2004 and 2006 by Gerald Woehl of Marburg. It incorporates historical pipework from Eberhard Friedrich Walcker’s 1871 organ, including 17 reused stops. The instrument has mechanical key actions and couplers, an electrically operated stop action, a setter system, and a crescendo roller. A swellable Polyphon made by Debierre of Nantes serves as the choir organ in the transept of the eastern choir. This prototype dates from 1885 and has a super-octave coupler, a divided wind chest, mechanical transposition through all twelve semitones, and a mechanical bellows system with an electric blower. A positive organ built by Zimnol in 1981 stands in the Michaelskapelle.
Michaelskapelle and the ossuary
Mortuary chapel
The Michaelskapelle stands immediately north of the church. It is a mortuary chapel with an ossuary, probably built before 1424, and is dedicated to the Archangel Michael, who is traditionally associated with the protection and guidance of souls.
Ossuary
Below the chapel, the ossuary contains the bones of approximately 20,000 Oppenheim residents who died between about 1400 and 1750. The bones were transferred there after the cemetery ran out of burial space. The arrangement was reportedly disturbed by American soldiers during the final stages of the Second World War, when they searched for a nonexistent treasure believed to be hidden behind the carefully arranged bones. It was later restored with the assistance of Pastor Blümle and confirmation students.
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