Evangelical Church, Bielsko-Biała

Dr. Martin Luther Church in Bielsko-Biała - a historic Evangelical-Augsburg church located in Bielsko-Biała, in the Biała Krakowska district, at Staszica Street. It is a parish church and belongs to Cieszyn diocese.

The Evangelical parish in Biala was established in 1782 after emperor Joseph II Habsburg issued a tolerance patent for evangelicals. The wooden church was built in place of the Evangelical cemetery that had existed from the beginning of the 18th century, which was replaced by a cemetery in Pilsudski Street.

A few months later construction of a new brick church began and was completed in 1788. It was built in classicist style according to plans of Breuning, a peripheral engineer from Myślenice, by Jan Feuerabend, a builder from Biala. It was the first protestant church in Galicia. From the beginning it had a tower with a bell, which was allowed in Galicia, but not in Austrian Silesia.

In the years 1832-1835 the interior was significantly rebuilt. Most of the church's white, classicist furnishings, which have survived very well to the present day, date from this reconstruction.

The ornament of the temple is a wooden altar from 1835 made by a Cracow sculptor Joachim Kornecki. It is a portico supported by four Corinthian columns with huge figures of the four evangelists. The sculptures are made of wood so polished that they look like porcelain. At the top of the altar is the Eye of Divine Providence, and in the middle section is the painting "Jesus in the Garden", painted in 1837 by the Viennese painter Dornhäuser.

In 1848 a Classicist organ with movable figures and 1550 pipes ranging in size from 1 cm to 5 m, made by the Kuttler company in Opava, was installed in the church. It is a monument of European class.

Other historic elements of the church include a crystal chandelier from 1833, a pulpit from 1833 decorated with figures of fishermen pulling out a net, a baptismal font from 1817 and stuccowork in the main nave from 1832 by Jan Friedel from Opava.

In the vicinity of the church are: an Art Nouveau tenement house under the Frogs from 1905, a rectory building built by Jan Feuerabend in 1782 and thoroughly rebuilt in the 1870s in Classicist-Baroque style, a building of the Primary School No. 10 built in 1870 in Neo-Renaissance style by the Biala architect Emanuel Rost