Category:Auferstehungskirche (Ludwigshafen-Oppau)

English: The Church of the Resurrection in Oppau (a locality of Ludwigshafen upon Rhine). A first wooden church in the location was consecrated to St. Martin of Tours, as recorded in 808 in the Lorsch Codex. This church building was destroyed by a flood in 1243, succeeded by a new church building from stone. In 1556 the Palatine Prince-Elector Otto Henry introduced the Augsburg Confession in his realm, thus the church became Lutheran. His succesor again, Elector Palatine Frederick III, converted to Calvinism by 1560 and thus the church became Calvinist too. The church building was destroyed again by flood in 1707. The succeeding new building was erected wider but with the same length, however, several times damaged by floods. So in 1827 the dilapidated church was demolished and replaced by a new building on an L-formed ground plan. Following a referendum among the Palatine Calvinist and Lutheran patres familias in 1818, voting by majority for a union, the Palatine general synod (general church assembly) of the same year voted in for the union of the two Protestant denominations in effect in the same year for the Palatinate, thus the Oppau church is United Protestant since. In 1842 the tower in the L-tip extension was reshaped and the nave extended. In 1921 an explosion in the neighbouring Oppau Nitrogen factory blew away the church. A new bigger church was built by plans of government construction master Schrade from Mannheim, carried out by architect Kullmann from Ludwigshafen, and inaugurated on 24 June 1923. In 1943 an Allied air raid destroyed the church. In 1951/52 Walter Blessing built the present church on the 1923-ground plan following altered designs.