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The Margrave Church (“Markgrafenkirche”)
In 1757 the protestant Margrave Church was erected in the place of the early mass chapel Beatea Mariae Virginis. The church was designed by Johann David Steingruber who was personal architect of Ansbach’s Margrave Carl Wilhelm Friedrich. The uniform design of both his ecclesiastical and secular buildings were common throughout Franconia and are representative of the so-called Margrave style. Margrave comes from the term Markgraf, a German noble title.
One of the main features of the church is the rectangular nave with its vertical wall stripes on the external wall, called “lisene” as is common in Romanesque architecture.
The church interior is typical of the Margrave style and according to the Protestant understanding of that time it is kept deliberately simple. Above the plain altar the pulpit protrudes from the front wall of the spire, above which a round arch gives way to the organ loft.
