The Evangelical Parish Church Bad Goisern is located in the center of the market town of Bad Goisern on Lake Hallstatt in the Gmunden district. The current sacred building dates from 1813 to 1816 and replaced the Tolerance Church from 1782. The church is a parish church of the Evangelical Church in Austria and belongs to the Evangelical Superintendent of Upper Austria. The Protestant church in Bad Goisern is, together with the Protestant rectory, a listed building.
In 1782 the evangelical Christians of Bad Goisern were
allowed to build a tolerance prayer house made of wood. A stone
church was built between 1813 and 1816. Due to an official order at
the time, the building was not allowed to be recognizable as a
sacred building from the outside. Sacred decorations and a tower
were therefore prohibited. Nevertheless - contrary to the express
prohibition - the windows and doors were decorated with round arches
even then, creating at least some of the church architecture. The
construction of a church tower was only possible in 1857, the
consecration of bells took place in December 1858.
Furnishing
The evangelical church of Bad Goisern is designed as a simple,
spacious hall church for 1000 church visitors. Due to the building
regulations at the time, the apse cannot be seen from the outside.
The altar is decorated with an image of Christ. The pulpit and
baptismal font are near the altar. The organ has its place on the
gallery, but not in the rear part, but on a side part above the
chancel. The organ dates from the 17th century and was purchased by
the first Protestant pastor from his Franconian homeland. Below the
pulpit and the organ there are several marble plaques, the text of
which reminds of the deceased pastors and teachers of the community.
The church tower is built on the north-west side and at its base
also includes the main portal of the sacred building. The tower has
a pointed helmet, four bells and a clock. The exterior walls of the
facade are plastered, and there are two rows of arched windows on
each of the long sides, with seven arches per floor. The large
wooden gallery encompasses three sides of the room and is decorated
with folk painting. The altar, pulpit and organ case have baroque
and classicist features. In the 1970s, the interior of the church
(altar, benches, galleries, organ) was restored.
History of
the Protestant Parish
16th and 17th centuries
From 1552 to
1597 there is a complete list of evangelical pastors for Bad
Goisern, who held the Lutheran church service in St. Martin Church,
today's Catholic parish church. With a decree by Emperor Rudolf II,
the Counter Reformation was also introduced in the Salzkammergut.
The riots that began in the Inner Salzkammergut in July 1601 because
of the ban on religion were bloodily suppressed in February 1602 by
the heavily armed troops of the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg Wolf
Dietrich von Raitenau. Around 100 years later, estimates by the
responsible salt office in Gmunden assumed that, despite the ban and
regular house searches for Protestant documents, around 3/4 of the
population were Protestant.
18th and 19th centuries
In the
1730s, under the reign of Maria Theresa, residents from the
Salzkammergut were forced to transmigrate to the Crown Land of
Transylvania as so-called countrymen because of their Protestant
belief. For 1733 alone, 624 Protestant Upper Austrians are recorded,
62 percent of them (387 people) from Goisern, who found their
deportation in Neppendorf near Sibiu.
In October 1781,
Emperor Joseph II proclaimed the patent of tolerance, thus ending
the time of secret Protestantism in Austria. The prerequisite for a
prayer house was at least 100 families or 500 individuals who
declared themselves to be evangelicals. After around 180 years of
secret Protestantism, 1,645 people registered for the Augsburg
denomination in Bad Goisern.
As a result, a Protestant
community was able to form in Bad Goisern as early as 1782, almost a
year after the imperial patent came into effect. Bad Goisern was
thus one of the very first “tolerance communities”. In today's
Austria a total of 48 tolerance communities were created by 1795. On
July 28, 1782 (9th Sunday after Trinity) around 4,000 people came to
Goisern for the dedication of the prayer house, Christian Friedrich
Salomon Kästner, who was trained in Erlangen, was the first pastor.
At the beginning the parish of Bad Goisern was responsible for
large parts of the Salzkammergut. Gosau was raised to an independent
tolerance community of Gosau as early as 1784. Hallstatt, at that
time still politically united with Obertraun, was constituted in
1785 as a branch community of Goisern and built its own prayer
house. In Bad Ischl the number of souls was still too low, the
people of Ischl had to go to St. Arrive at the Last Supper in Bad
Goisern.
From 1802 Johann Georg Overbeck took over the
pastorate in Bad Goisern. Under his direction, the new parish church
(1813-1816) could also be built. In 1820 his son-in-law Johann
Theodor Wehrenfennig was elected pastor. In 1837 the Hallstatt
branch church, which had previously been assigned to Goisern, was
raised to the status of an independent parish of Hallstatt. Princess
Therese von Thurn und Taxis provided support here. In 1856 Ernst
Moritz Wehrenfennig was appointed Goiserer pastor, and in the
following year he was able to initiate the construction of a church
tower for the parish church.
After the neighboring Bad Ischl
rose from the 1850s as the summer residence of the Austrian emperor
to one of the most famous seaside resorts in the monarchy, many
Protestant spa guests and aristocrats also attended the service in
Bad Goisern, such as the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Friedrich Franz II his wife Marie. Not least thanks to the financial
donations from the Grand Duke, a branch community of Goisern was
established in Bad Ischl from 1872. This was the legal requirement
to be able to celebrate evangelical services in Bad Ischl. Gustav
Adolf Kotschy had been the Protestant pastor of Bad Goisern since
1897.
20th century
In 1902, the previous Goiserer daughter
community of Bad Ischl was raised to an independent parish and the
branch church became the Evangelical Parish Church of Bad Ischl.
During the First World War, the Goiserer parish church had to
deliver some bells and the copper roof. In 1926 Hans Neumayer took
over the pastorate. After the annexation of Austria, the subsidy for
the pastor's salary, which had existed since Emperor Joseph II and
which the saltworks administration had to pay, and the servitude of
the wood delivery were canceled. In 1969 Pastor Gerhard Richter took
office. At this point, the renovation of the church and rectory
began, which lasted until the early 1980s. In 1973 Dietmar Wurm
joined the parish as vicar, and from 1980 he was pastor.
Protestant institutions in Bad Goisern
From 1784 there was a
Protestant school in the center of Bad Goisern (Goisern No. 100) and
in the Goiserer district of St. Agatha (St. Agatha No. 19). In a
chronicle from 1828 189 school children are named for the first and
198 children for the second school building. On the basis of the
Reich Primary School Act of 1869, the Protestant private schools
were closed in November 1872 and the Catholic private schools were
transferred to public primary schools.
The Protestant rectory
was built in 1783, i.e. immediately after the first church. The
parsonage and the second church built from 1813 are under monument
protection. The Protestant cemetery was laid out in 1800, extensions
are documented for 1902 and 1982.
The Protestant kindergarten
opened its doors in 1863. Its foundation goes back to the pastor's
wife Luise Wehrenfennig. The current building was inaugurated in
1976.
The evangelical old people's and nursing home Bad
Goisern has had this name since 1911, but goes back to a previous
facility from 1899. In 2007 a completely new building took place.
The home can accommodate around 100 elderly people.
The
evangelical student home Bad Goisern has existed in this form since
1950. Currently around 50 school children between 6 and 15 years of
age are looked after. The predecessor institution was the
evangelical orphanage Bad Goisern, which opened in 1906 and was
closed after the annexation of Austria.
The
Luise-Wehrenfennig-Haus is Bad Goisern's Protestant guest house with
a capacity of around 80 beds and two seminar rooms. This youth and
education home has existed since 1960, before the property served
the Protestant children's home built in 1876. The building has been
completely restored several times.
In Bad Goisern, the
Catholic parish, which is smaller in number, maintains a certain
parallel structure to the Protestant institutions in that there is
also a separate Catholic kindergarten and its own Catholic cemetery.
The catholic retirement home (Kreuzschwestern) and the catholic
secondary school “Stephaneum” (school brothers) were closed at the
beginning of the 21st century.
Demographic peculiarity
The judicial district of Bad Ischl,
with a Protestant share of over 20 percent of the total population,
has a relatively high presence of the Lutheran faith compared to
other Austrian areas. In the Gmunden district, the Protestant church
is represented with the largest area coverage in relation to Upper
Austria, as more than half of the 20 political communities have a
Protestant parish or branch church.
The majority of the
population of Bad Goisern is Protestant (53 percent).