Hindenburg-Gedächtniskirche Stetten, Parish church in Stetten am kalten Markt, Germany
The Hindenburg-Gedächtniskirche is a light blue rendered Protestant church in Stetten am kalten Markt. Its lower gabled front section has a red-brown tiled roof, a round window with white trim and a projecting entrance porch with a flat metal canopy. Behind it rises a taller main block under a steep red-brown tiled roof, with a large white cross on its facade and two rectangular white-framed windows on the right side wall.
Stetten was almost entirely Catholic until the Heuberg training camp brought about 150 Protestants to the town in 1913; services were first held in the land registry office, then a schoolroom. The congregation became a full parish in 1934 and could levy a local church tax, which financed the building. The foundation stone was laid in 1937, the shell was topped out on 11 September 1937, and Berlin architect Otto Bartning's church was consecrated in mid-1938.
The church is called the "Blue Church of Stetten" because its exterior was painted blue in 1999, the year of the town's 1200th anniversary. The name Hindenburg Memorial Church refers to Paul von Hindenburg, whose ceramic relief at the entrance was walled up in 1948 and uncovered in 1999. In the garden, a steel structure with a bell shelters an altar used for the "einfach heiraten" wedding ceremony.
The entrance porch with its flat metal canopy opens under the round window of the gabled front; the large white cross marks the taller main block behind it. The church stands in Stetten am kalten Markt, in the Sigmaringen district of Baden-Württemberg. The parish belongs to the Überlingen-Stockach deanery of the Evangelical Church in Baden.
The 1940 organ was built by M. Welte & Söhne of Freiburg, a firm known for mechanical musical instruments that turned to church organs under wartime constraints. Its pipes are almost entirely of zinc, which spared them from wartime requisition. A 2020 restoration by Jäger & Brommer cleaned the eleven-register instrument and restored the original gold finish of the facade pipes.
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