Dreifaltigkeitskirche, Speyer

In 1689, the town of Speyer was destroyed by order of Louis XIV of France in the Nine Years' War.

The inhabitants fled via the Rhine, many of them to Frankfurt, as the whole Electoral Palatinate was also destroyed between Speyer and Heidelberg.

[1] The foundation of the Trinity Church was laid in 1701 by the master builder Johann Peter Graber.

However, the construction work inside the church continued until 1717 due to lack of money.

[2] On 31 October 1717, the day of the 200th anniversary of the Reformation, the Trinity Church was solemnly inaugurated.

In the Palatinate, a general synod of Lutheran and Reformed congregations met in Kaiserslautern from 16 August 1818 to determine a common creed.

On 1 Advent 1818 (29 November 1818) a union was formed, which was celebrated with a solemn joint divine service.

[8] The Dreifaltigkeitskirche in Speyer is a baroque building and goes back directly to the St. Catherine's Church in Frankfurt, which was built between 1678 and 1680 by Melchior Heßler.

The current façade gable was redesigned in 1891 according to the plans of the Speyer architect Heinrich Jester.

The illustrations of the church scenes serve the understanding and the spreading of the word of God, completely in the sense of the Lutheran faith.

[11] The so-called Läutturm (bell tower) belonged to the medieval St. Georgen Church, of which nothing has survived.

In 1818, the Sprinkhorn et Schrader foundry in Frankenthal cast a three-voiced bell that proved to be too large for the ridge turret of the Trinity Church built in 1717.

[12] Since 1951, the Vaterunserglocke (Lord's Prayer bell) has hung in clay b1 in the ridge turret of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche itself; it was cast by Friedrich Wilhelm Schilling.