St. Nicholas Church

Nikolaikirche is a Gothic church in Germany, where architecture and religious history remain visible in stone. A Latin inscription records its chapel’s beginning in 1358. Carved outside the choir, it also names 25 May, Saint Urban’s day. A nearby wall niche holds Saint Nicholas’s statue. Since 1914, the figure has worn simple apostolic clothing and carried a book topped with loaves.

The Reformation changed the chapel’s religious role in the sixteenth century. A seventeenth-century chronicle describes a church without bells or spire, used mainly for funerals and later as a storehouse. In 1823, it became a Catholic parish church until Saint Wolfgang opened in 1910, then became a Protestant preaching church in 1913. French forces occupied the building in April 1945, and fire left only its outer walls. Restoration finished by the early 1960s, adding Christian Oehler’s choir windows and Ulrich Henn’s west portal tympanum. Since 2005, the open City Church welcomes people across confessions, while Vesperkirche has served winter meals since 1998.