Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The church of Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur, located in Gundershoffen in the north of Alsace, is a Roman Catholic building built in 1908. It succeeds a mixed church (simultaneum) shared between Catholics and Protestants since 1685, then officially from 1715 to 1908. The first stone of the current building was laid on August 9, 1908, a date engraved in the choir, marking the end of the cultural division imposed after the Reformation of 1570.

The neo-Roman architecture is characterized by a five-span nave, a steeple-porch in cut stone, and a vaulted cul-de-four choir preceded by a triumphal arch. The furniture includes baptismal fonts, a statue of the Immaculate Conception, and a large organ of 1860, restored in 1999 by Gaston Kern. This instrument, originally built by Joseph Stiehr, bears witness to the Alsatian musical heritage.

Local religious history was marked by tensions, especially during the French Revolution. Pastor Sébastien Krummeich (1788–98), hostile to the Civil Constitution of the clergy of 1790, embodied the resistance of the Alsatian clergy: only a quarter of them took an oath. This context reflects the divisions between refractory clergy and revolutionary authorities.

Today, the Church of St. James the Majeur symbolizes both the heritage of Alsatian simultaneum and the reconstruction of Catholic identity at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its organ, classified among the remarkable instruments, and its neo-Roman architecture make it an emblematic monument of the religious heritage of the Great East.

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