Kirche Gottscheina

Kirche Gottscheina stands slightly above the old village green in Gottscheina, a Leipzig district. A cemetery and rammed-earth wall surround the plastered rubble-stone hall church. Three flat-arched windows line each long side, beneath a gabled roof with a bat dormer on each slope. The western tower rises with buttresses, four ball-topped gables, wrought-iron gargoyles, and a tall pyramid roof.

A small eastern window suggests Romanesque origins, although the exact construction date remains unknown. Written references to the parish reach back to the early fifteenth century. Gottscheina became a University of Leipzig village in 1438, and the Thirty Years’ War destroyed the church twice. Richard Füssel designed the western tower in 1854, while its present form followed an enlargement in 1892. Inside, a three-sided gallery, rocaille furnishings from the 1860s, and a pulpit altar fill the nave.

Nicolaus Schrickel built the five-stop organ in 1853, and Georg Wünning restored it in 1995. Three bells hang above, including examples from 1745 and 1809. The tower weather vane bears the year 1892, while its axis misses the main building by about three degrees. Local residents saved the tower from demolition in 1969 through donations and voluntary work.