Stadtkirche Balingen: A Late Gothic Evangelical Parish Church in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Very 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 page14 sections
History
Stadtkirche Balingen is a late Gothic Evangelical parish church in Germany, standing in the central market square within the former town walls. Its congregation belongs to the Balingen church district of the Evangelical State Church in Württemberg, the regional Protestant church for the historic territory of Württemberg. The building grew from a medieval chapel established inside the town and became Balingen’s parish church before the Reformation.
From cemetery church to town chapel
Balingen’s eleventh-century cemetery church stood outside the town walls and formerly served as the parish church. A chapel was therefore built within the settlement soon after the town’s foundation. Known as the Nikolaus and Liebfrauen Chapel, it later served as the Liebfrauen Church until the Reformation. The chapel appears in records in 1342.
The chapel was enlarged extensively from 1443 onward. The choir and choir tower formed part of this large Gothic rebuilding, which continued through the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Building work began under the Jörg master-builders’ family and was later continued by Master Franz of Tübingen. The church was probably raised to parish-church status around 1516. A preaching endowment had already been established in 1501, before the building was fully completed.
In 1403, the only son of Count Friedrich of Zollern-Schalksburg was buried in the chapel. His early death is traditionally linked with the sale of the lordship and town of Balingen to Württemberg. This association gives the church a place in the political history of the town as well as in its religious development.
The late Gothic rebuilding
The first rebuilt church had a narrower, single-aisled nave that extended approximately to the length of the present building. Between 1510 and 1516, Master Franz of Tübingen transformed it into a three-aisled church with side chapels between recessed buttresses. This created the present late Gothic staggered hall, in which the central nave rises above the side aisles without forming the separate upper window zone of a basilica.
The tower remained unfinished in 1490 after the death of Hänslin Jörg the Younger. Master Stephan, a stonemason, gave it its characteristic form in 1541. A watchman’s house with a tiled roof was added, and the spire received a copper roof. The surviving fifteenth-century roof structure was later dated by comparing its annual growth rings with established tree-ring sequences. This places its construction around 1455.
Reformation and later changes
Balingen adopted the Reformation in 1534, when Württemberg officially became Protestant. The church consequently changed from Catholic worship to Evangelical use. In 1612, Duke Johann Friedrich ordered the interior to be decorated. Melchior Drescher of Rottweil painted biblical scenes, although most of these paintings are now almost entirely covered by whitewash. A Württemberg ducal heraldic panel was also made at this time and is now preserved in Balingen’s tithe barn.
The Great Town Fire of 1809 damaged the church interior, particularly the organ. The building was renovated inside and outside in 1913–1914 under Heinrich Dolmetsch, an architect associated with church restorations. The work inserted the missing vaults, moved the pulpit, and replaced the Reformation-era transverse arrangement with an altar-oriented longitudinal arrangement. The central nave received its vault during the major renovation of 1913–1919, using concrete above the surviving medieval beginnings of the ribs.
During the renovation around 1900, the choir windows were reglazed through a donation from Commercial Councillor Karl Behr, owner of Balingen’s oldest and largest knitted-goods factory. From 1978, work proceeded on the tower and nave, beginning with the tower roof. The church was rededicated in 1990.
The organ and bells
The first organ mentioned in the church’s history was built in 1661 by Hans Georg Ehemann of Ulm. By 1765 it had deteriorated so severely that either a new instrument or an extensive repair was considered necessary. Johann Sigmund Haussdörffer of Tübingen was commissioned to build a replacement, but he died shortly before the work was finished. His assistant and son-in-law Hans Rüdiger, also written Rudigier, completed the instrument, which was inaugurated on 24 December 1767.
The organ underwent repairs in 1786, 1803, 1811, 1833, and 1865. In 1833, its attached console was replaced by a detached one. During the 1913–1914 church renovation, Gebrüder Link of Giengen installed a new organ behind the preserved Baroque case. Alterations in 1934, 1942, and 1948, carried out under the direction of Balingen organist Hermann Rehm, shifted its tonal character toward the Baroque and enlarged it to 48 stops on three manuals.
Friedrich Weigle rebuilt the organ extensively in 1973. In 1987, Diethelm Berner of Stuttgart-Botnang rebuilt the third and fourth manuals and equipped them with mechanical actions. He also restored the Baroque marbling of the organ and gallery, adapted the new gallery works to the Haussdörffer-Silbermann-style case, and restored the original finish of the gallery figures. The present instrument has 54 stops and 3,952 pipes distributed across four manual divisions and the pedal. Its key action is mechanical, while its stop action is electrical. It includes normal and sub-octave couplers, a 10,000-setting combination system, free and pedal combinations, tutti, piano pedal, reed cancel, a crescendo roller, and a Zimbelstern, an effect in which small bells sound from a rotating star mechanism.
The 61-metre tower holds an eight-voice bronze peal regarded as one of the largest in Württemberg. A five-bell peal was cast by the Kurtz foundry in Stuttgart in 1948 and enlarged in 1955 with the bell called “Gloriosa.” The present deepest-toned bell, the Peace Bell, was cast by the Bachert foundry of Karlsruhe in 2009. The peal also includes a historic fourteenth-century Blessing Bell. Helmuth Uhrig made the decorations on the 1948 and 1955 bells.
Remains
Choir and tower
The church is a late Gothic hall church with the core of the former Nikolaus Chapel. Its choir-tower form incorporates the tower with the choir, the liturgical area at the eastern end of the building. The choir and tower belong to the rebuilding begun in 1443, a date carved in an inscription on the east wall at the head of the choir. The polygonal choir ending forms five sides of an approximately octagonal plan and continues consistently through the full height of the tower, producing the building’s distinctive exterior outline.
Medieval roof and windows
The roof structure contains surviving fifteenth-century timber dated to around 1455. The tracery of the three large choir windows dates from about 1470. Smaller high windows in the north and south choir walls and in the west gable probably belong to an earlier phase and are the only windows still fitted with bull’s-eye panes. The nave windows have tracery roughly half a century later than that of the choir.
Nave, vaults, and sculpture
The present nave is a three-aisled staggered hall created in 1510–1516. Its side chapels occupy the spaces between recessed buttresses. In the earlier single-aisled church, the Gothic ribs rested on busts of apostles, evangelists, and prophets, while the keystones carried figures of saints. The central nave was vaulted during the major twentieth-century renovation, with a concrete vault set above the medieval rib beginnings.
The vault keystones include the Apocalyptic Woman, Mary with the infant Jesus clothed with the sun and standing above the moon as a symbol of evil, Saint Nicholas, Saint Sebastian, and the arms of the County of Württemberg, the Diocese of Constance, and Balingen. Around 1510–1516, Master Franz of Tübingen produced a sculptural image of the Church Father Jerome and relief busts of Old Testament priest-kings, apostles, and evangelists. The Church Fathers were influential early Christian theologians whose writings shaped Western Christianity.
Windows and liturgical furnishings
Choir glazing
The three choir windows installed around 1900 show Mary and Martha, the Resurrection of Christ, and Doubting Thomas, all subjects from the New Testament. The Stuttgart artist Theodor Bauerle designed them, and the Ostermann and Hartwein workshop in Munich carried out the glazing.
Gallery windows and pulpit
The two gallery windows depict the Sermon on the Mount and the Prodigal Son. Rudolf Yelin the Elder designed them in 1913, and the L. and Th. Wilhelm workshop in Rottweil manufactured them. The stone pulpit dates from 1512 and shows the church’s patron saint, Mary, together with Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory the Great, and Augustine. It originally stood at the third northern arcade pier from the west and was moved to the fifth southern pier in 1914.
The church also contains a Renaissance crucifix, a late Gothic baptismal font, and a wrought-iron altar grille. The Balinger Madonna, attributed to Jörg Syrlin the Younger and dated 1502–1534, was formerly the central section of the high altar. It is now held in the Dursch Collection of the Dominikanermuseum in Rottweil.
Tombs, epitaphs, and church records
A stone tomb slab for Friedrich of Zollern-Schalksburg, who died in 1403, is set into the south wall. It shows the Zollern shield placed diagonally, a bracken as the helmet crest, and the maternal Kyburg arms. Other tomb slabs and epitaphs commemorate Katharina of Anweil, wife of senior bailiff Hans Caspar of Anweil, who died in 1551; Elisabeth Senfft of Sulburg, née von Karpffen, wife of Balingen’s senior bailiff, who died in 1565; Mayor Caspar Murschel, who died in 1595; Magdalena of Tegernau, wife of Senior Bailiff Friedrich of Tegernau, who died in 1609; Wolf Erasmus of Grüntal, son of Tübingen senior bailiff Hans Joachim of Grüntal, who died in 1636; Amalia Barbara, Countess of Candel, who died in 1668; her daughter Katharina Friederika, who died in 1650 before reaching one year of age; and Magister Georg Christoph Hoffmann.
Simon Schweizer of Balingen made the wooden epitaph of Mayor Caspar Murschel in 1595. The epitaph of Magdalena of Tegernau was installed in the choir in 1605. The title senior bailiff identifies a high-ranking territorial or administrative official in these commemorations. The church also preserves an archive chest made in 1598 for Balingen’s ecclesiastical property administration, the body responsible for managing church assets and records.
Organ case and bells
The 1767 organ originally had two manuals and 22 stops. Its preserved Baroque prospect follows a form associated with the school of Gottfried Silbermann, the prominent Baroque organ builder whose principles influenced instrument design in central Europe. The case survived the 1913–1914 renovation instead of being replaced by the then-fashionable neo-Gothic type. The present organ’s four manual divisions and pedal retain this historic visual setting while incorporating later mechanical and electrical systems.
The bronze bells occupy the continuously octagonal tower. Their present group combines the five-bell 1948 peal, the 1955 “Gloriosa,” the 2009 Peace Bell, and the fourteenth-century Blessing Bell. Together they preserve elements from several stages in the church’s history, from the late medieval town church to its modern restored form.
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