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Key figures

Origin and history

The Protestant church of Gerstheim, also known as the Church of St.Guillaume, finds its origins in a first Merovingian foundation attested in 1277. Rebuilt in 1410, she became a Protestant in 1545 under the leadership of Louis von Bock and his wife Agnes Zorn, local lords who introduced the Reformation. Their will states that they wish to be buried there. At the end of the seventeenth century, under Louis XIV, the building was submitted to the simultaneous: Protestants and Catholics jointly occupied it, the first in the nave, the second in the choir.

In the mid-19th century, the decision was made to end the simultaneous. In 1852, the town hall acquired land to build a new Protestant church, whose construction, entrusted to architect Antoine Ringeisen, lasted from 1868 to 1872. The tombstones of the von Bock lords, as well as those of Jacob Marx von Eckwersheim and his wife Margareta, were transferred there and classified as historical monuments in 1935. The church underwent renovations in 1903 (luminosity, floor, painting) and saw its bell, requisitioned in 1917, replaced in 1922 by a new fondue in Annecy.

The building still plays a major community role in the 21st century: after the fire of Saint Denis Church in 2011, it temporarily welcomed Catholic parishioners until 2014. Its architecture and historic tombs, witness to the Alsatian religious tensions, make it a remarkable heritage of the Bas-Rhin.

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