The oldest wooden church in Germany is getting a new organ. Because the old instrument was dilapidated, the new organ has been installed in the Marktkirche zum Heiligen Geist in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Lower Saxony, since Pentecost, as the chairwoman of the church council, Dorothee Austen, announced. It is to be inaugurated on the first Sunday of Advent.
The 380-year-old church was renovated for several years starting in 2018. In this context, the previous organ was expanded in 2019 and sold to Slovenia. Parts of the old instrument are ailing, and the organ was not “strong enough for the acoustics in the market church”. The new organ has 5,643 pipes, around 2,000 more than its predecessor. “It’s a lot closer to the original,” Church Councilor Austen said. That was an organ from the Baroque period in 1758.
Because of the partly parallel renovation of the church, the installation of the organ in the narrow church was challenging, said Austen. Before the inauguration, the last pipes of the organ made in Lucerne, Switzerland, have to be installed. Then the large instrument had to be tuned.
