Loschwitz Church

It was not uncommon for Loschwitz parishioners to be "forced out of the Kirche zur lieben Frauen and directed to the nave of the small old Frauenkirche" when church attendance was unusually high.

"It was often impossible to reach the pastor late or early in the day or at night to administer Holy Communion to the sick or dying, to perform emergency baptisms, to bring comfort to the seriously ill, and the like.

[3] In December 1702, the villages of Loschwitz and Wachwitz requested to the Dresden Council, and again in 1703 the Superior Papal consistory and the Elector to be parished away from the Frauenkirche.

The schoolhouse was located at the crossing of Körnerplatz and Pillnitzer Landstraße, right in the center of the village where the Loschwitz congregation wanted the church to be built.

On June 29, 1705, the foundation stone of the Loschwitz Church was laid[8] in the presence of the Princely Commissioner, Count Friedrich von Schönberg, accompanied by the Dresdner Kreuzchor.

The foundation stone was accompanied by a copper box containing the Augsburg Confession, Luther's catechism, a sketch of the building to be constructed, and the history of the town written on parchment.

[9] The building itself was carried out in the following years by the Dresden councilman and master builder Johann Siegmund Küffner, who was also responsible for hiring the workers.

[10] In 1706 the construction of the church, whose foundation walls were already standing, was interrupted when the Swedish army invaded Saxony during the Great Northern War.

[11] The Dresden City Council instructed Johann Arnold, who had been appointed parish priest of Loschwitz in 1704, to petition the King of Sweden to spare the church building.

Together with the church fathers of Loschwitz and Wachwitz, Arnold went to Radeberg, where Charles XII was encamped with his army, and had the petition of the parish delivered to him.

After much deliberation, the congregation "finally decided to combine all the needs into one large and thorough renovation, excluding all repair work for many decades, and complete it all at once.

[15] Since the masonry had been damaged by the effects of weather over the years, discussions about rebuilding the Loschwitz Church resumed in the 1980s under the auspices of the "Reconstruction Committee" founded in 1984.

In 1989, the Regional Church Office in Saxony approved the reconstruction under certain conditions: the construction work and costs were to be borne by the parish; "donations in convertible currency" were strictly prohibited.

[16] In Munich, on July 29, 1989, Pastor Ullrich Wagner founded the "Association for the Reconstruction of the Evangelical Church in Dresden-Loschwitz e. V.", which collected donations.

From 2004 to 2009, the Loschwitz Church was part of the Dresden Elbe Valley cultural landscape between the castles of Übigau and Pillnitz and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A surviving design shows that the Loschwitz Church was originally shorter and wider and would therefore have corresponded more to the regular octagon of a typical Baroque central building.

Between the keystone of the door frame, which bears the inscription DEO REDDITUM (Surrender to God), and the canopy, there are two typical Baroque unfilled cartouches surmounted by a simple crown.

Based on an idea by Leonhardi, the Loschwitz painter Georg Schwenk designed biblical motifs for both windows: "Trust in God was to be represented by Christ's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, and charity is represented by the Samaritan carrying out his merciful deed, and how this task was performed, worthily and effectively, brought joy not only to the Lord who commissioned it but also to the congregation who rejoiced in it.

Urban & Goller created ecclesiastical emblems in a simple matte color in the upper part of the window and a Bible verse below each.

[26] The tetragram on the flaming heart was replaced by the monogram of Christ, and the life-size statues of John and Paul of Tarsus,[27] created by Robert Ockelmann, were placed on two pedestals on the altar, which had been unused since 1708.

The altar was also severely damaged by the church fire in 1945 and weathered over the following years to the point that it was partially removed in 1969 due to the risk of collapse.

In his 1904 inventory of art and architectural monuments in Saxony, Cornelius Gurlitt mentioned two sandstone plaques, still in place behind the altar, which describe in Latin the events surrounding the construction of the church.

Gurlitt makes no mention of a bust of Martin Luther that the parish had received from vineyard owner Gottlob Reintanz in 1846 and that had been on the north wall of the church[33] since then, so it may have been removed during the renovation.

[14] In 1969, the "young congregation" erected a temporary belfry in the ruins of the church, which was equipped with three new bronze bells from the Schilling foundry in Apolda.

In the northwest corner of the property is a lapidarium that contains a restored reproduction of the gravestone of composer Johann Gottlieb Naumann, who received his first musical training as a child in the Loschwitz church, as well as decaying grave sculptures and a memorial plaque to soldiers who died in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.

Important Loschwitz personalities buried in the western cemetery include Friedrich Wilhelm Seebe (1791–1867), owner of the Eckberg vineyard, Carl Gottfried Fischer (1783–1802), owner of the "Weißer Hirsch" inn, and numerous members of the Modes ferry master family, who owned the Loschwitz ferry for more than 100 years.Five gravestones are still preserved on the smaller cemetery to the southeast, including the burial place of Lord Jacob Graf von Findlater and his lover Johann Georg Christian Fischer.

The grave of a daughter of the Dresden goldsmith Johann Melchior Dinglinger, who owned a vineyard property with a summer house in Loschwitz, has not survived.

Since 1920, a memorial stone by the sculptor Heinrich Wedemeyer (1867–1941) has stood in front of the south portal of the church, commemorating the painter Gerhard von Kügelgen, who was murdered in Loschwitz, and his son Wilhelm von Kügelgen, who created a literary monument to Loschwitz in his autobiography, Jugenderinnerungen eines alten Mannes.

Behind three crosses and stars on a floor slab in the central nave, Pohle suspected "burial places of parish children in Loschwitz.

During the inventory of art and architectural monuments in Saxony in 1904, Cornelius Gurlitt described in detail the five bronze plaques of the known tombs that fell victim to the Reich Metal Donation during the Second World War.