EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF THE SAVIOR
Jáchymov was once one of the important centres of Lutheranism in Bohemia, but after the Battle of White Mountain it underwent thorough re-Catholicisation, which was not altered even by Joseph II’s Patent of Toleration. A Protestant community began to reappear here only at the end of the 19th century in connection with the movement inspired by the German Chancellor Bismarck’s call “Away from Rome”. In 1901, a station of the Augsburg confession congregation was established in Karlovy Vary, and Protestants gradually appeared in Jáchymov as well.
As the local believers had no prayer house of their own, the Augsburg congregation commissioned the construction of a new church with a parish house in 1904 below the Josef II mine, based on a design by the Leipzig architect Paul Langer. The building combines elements of late Art Nouveau with Neo-Renaissance forms. In 1906 the church was equipped with an organ built by the Dresden company Jahn & Son. Although modest in size, the Church of the Saviour stands prominently above the valley thanks to its position on a terrace of stone blocks and forms one of the local landmarks.
After 1945 the building was taken over by the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. After 1948 the property gradually deteriorated and by the early 1970s it was almost a ruin. A comprehensive renovation of the buildings was not undertaken until the beginning of the 1980s. At that time, the original parish house was converted into a recreational facility for the church and friendly organisations, such as the Scouts. The north side of the church was supplemented with Neo-Renaissance medallions of Martin Luther and Johann Mathesius, and a commemorative plaque marking the four-hundredth anniversary of Mathesius’s birth was placed on the western façade of the prayer hall.
At the beginning of the 1990s, Samuel and Milada Palán took care of the site and established a Mathesius memorial room in the space beneath the gallery.
Today the church serves as a preaching station of the parish in Nejdek, and regular services are held here.
Photo gallery: https://mipalfi.rajce.idnes.cz/Evangelicky_kostel_Spasitele
