Luther Church

Art Nouveau building featuring a notable Jehmlich organ

The Luther Church in Zwickau is a brick hall church clad in sandstone both inside and out. In keeping with its asymmetrical floor plan, the octagonal church tower with a copper spire rises in the northwest, while the significantly lower stair tower stands on the south side. The nave, situated between them, is enclosed by a three-sided chancel. A steel truss structure supports the church’s roof. Although initially planned in the Neo-Renaissance style, the building was ultimately constructed in the Art Nouveau style—a stylistic era spanning from 1896 to the outbreak of World War I, which, with its flat, two-dimensional ornamentation and stylized natural forms, deliberately set itself apart from 19th-century historicism. 

Through its architectural and artistic unity both inside and out, the church—completed with all elements in the Art Nouveau style—fulfills the aspiration of the time to be a total work of art. The tower measures 65 meters, including the six-meter-high cross; the tower gallery is located at a height of 35 meters. 

The interior of the church is deliberately kept simple. On the north side is a large gallery; until the end of World War II, it also provided space for the soldiers of the garrison stationed in the nearby barracks. 

Today, however, the church is increasingly used by young people. The church building now houses groups involved in open youth work and other diaconal institutions. To accommodate a variety of uses, three rectangular rooms were integrated beneath the northern arcades. Notable features inside the church include Fritz von Uhde’s monumental altarpiece and one of the largest and most melodious Romantic organs in the region: a Jehmlich organ from 1906 with 40 stops and 3,700 pipes. 

The church is named after the Reformer Martin Luther, depicted as a statue above the main portal next to the Apostle Paul (with the sword). Between the two figures is a broad relief showing Luther speaking to some 14,000 people from the balcony of Zwickau’s town hall. At the invitation of the city council, the reformer stayed in Zwickau from April 28 to May 3, 1522. 

Historically, the Luther Congregation emerged from the two downtown congregations of St. Mary’s (now Nicolai) and St. Catherine’s. Based on a design by the Dresden architects Rudolf Schilling and Julius Gräbner, the Zwickau master builder Franz Wolf constructed the new church, which was consecrated on January 29, 1906.