Church from Kohlgrund

Built: 1613
Dismantled: 1971
Reassembled: 1998

This ecclesiastical edifice was built in 1613. It is a Protestant church designed entirely with the sermon in mind. The baroque altar superstructure has remained in the original location and was integrated into the new church there. The altar was created by the baroque sculptor Josias Wolrat Brützel from Waldeck. To give visitors an impression of how the original space might have come across, a photograph of the old altar was printed on a textile banner at a ratio of 1:1. The altar rail, likewise carved by Brützel, was reconstructed for the museum. The baptismal font is placed on the left turned column. In 1853, the organ had been replaced with a new instrument built by the Korbach master organ builder Jakob Vogt and fitted with a late classicist organ case. The whereabouts of this organ are unclear; its last traces disappear with the church’s disassembly. Here too, a fabric banner represents the past condition of the church’s interior.Today, a mid-19th century organ is installed on the gallery that is played on special occasions.

Due to lack of funds, the original pulpit was not replaced in the 19th century. In 1921, the Waldeck Historical Society donated a panel bearing the name of those Kohlgrund villagers who had died in the First World War. The church was renovated one last time in the 1930s, when it was painted in the style it appears to visitors today in the museum.

By the 1960s, a renovation of the church in Kohlgrund had become necessary. This renovation would have cost 70,000 Deutsche Marks, which is why the parish opted for a new construction, which was started in 1970. The old church remained in place at first, enabling the faithful to hold their services (the last taking place on 28 February 1971) while construction work went on. As the Open Air Museum did not exist at the time, the LWL Open Air Museum Detmold took over the old church.

In the final analysis, the Westphalian Open Air Museum was not a suitable location to exhibit a church from Hesse, so that the Kohlgrund church moved a second time, this time to Hessenpark Open Air Museum, which had been founded in 1974. Here, it was first reassembled as a shell.

From 2011 onwards, the building was completed including the interior and the furnishings. Since the church comes from Northern Hesse and all buildings in the Northern Hesse Ensemble have been reconstructed to show their condition in the 1950s, this edifice of worship has also been restored to the state of that era.