Your guide to Heidelberg Gauteng
#Lutheran Church
Heritage Blue Plaque #Nr 29
LUTHERAN CHURCH - 26 Spruyt Street
What is the story here?
After the town of Heidelberg was proclaimed in 1866 a request was made to the Berlin Mission in Pretoria for them to establish a Mission in Heidelberg. Missionary During was sent to Heidelberg and the mission station was officially founded on the 25th of September 1875.
THE HISTORY OF THE BERLIN MISSION SOCIETY AND THE GERMAN LUTHERAN CHURCH
FOUNDING AND LOCAL OPPOSITION IN HEIDELBERG (1869 - 1880)
Hermann Albin During (1 March 1841 - 5 September 1922) arrived in South Africa in 1869 to serve as an ordained missionary. He initially directed mission stations in Lydenburg and Botshabelo until 1875, when he was reassigned to Heidelberg. Upon his arrival, During could find no local accommodation, forcing his family to live out of an ox-wagon until the Magistrate of Heidelberg, Mr Maré, intervened and provided them with a modest temporary dwelling.
During soon purchased a parcel of land on behalf of the Berlin Missionary Society. The estate was strategically located, extending uninterrupted all the way to the banks of the Blesbok River. On this site, he constructed a primary residence and initiated religious services and vocational training for the Black domestic servants of Heidelberg. His early ministry flourished; within a few weeks of his arrival, he had baptized 22 people, and 20 local children were actively attending his mission school.
In 1877, During commenced construction on a permanent mission church building. A qualified master carpenter by trade, he hand-crafted the entirety of the church's interior woodwork himself, including the ornate pulpit, the baptismal font, and the heavy congregation benches. The sanctuary was formally inaugurated on 10 February 1878, by which time regular church attendance had grown to 200 congregants. By 1879, the integrated mission school documented a daily attendance of 63 children.
The rapid expansion of the mission station provoked sharp opposition from the white inhabitants of Heidelberg, who formally petitioned the authorities to complain about the large influx of Black laborers into the town center. To defuse the local hostility, Missionary During adapted his strategy; in 1881, he purchased the farm Rietspruit, situated approximately 20 kilometres outside the town boundaries.
THE FOUNDING AND DESTRUCTION OF WOYENTHIN (1881 - 1902)
During established a brand-new, remote mission station on the Rietspruit farm, naming the outpost "Woyenthin." The name was chosen in honour of the family estate of the Holtz family in Germany, who had generously donated the liquid capital required to purchase the underlying land.
In 1884, Missionary During permanently relocated his family from Heidelberg to Woyenthin to oversee the rural outpost. He constructed a permanent stone church on the farm in 1892, a structure that survives today as an abandoned roofless ruin.
The prospering rural mission suffered a catastrophic setback during the scorched-earth campaigns of the Second Anglo-Boer War. Advancing British columns completely razed the Woyenthin settlement; half of the missionary’s private residence was incinerated, and the farm church was burned to the ground.
British authorities arrested Hermann During on military intelligence charges, alleging that he had delivered inflammatory anti-British speeches and smuggled food supplies to active Boer commandos in the field. He was transported to Pretoria and incarcerated inside the central prison for several days, while his family was placed under strict house arrest back in Heidelberg. His son, Carl During, enlisted to fight directly alongside the Boer commandos and was killed in action during the hostilities; his remains were returned and buried on the Woyenthin farm grounds.
ECCLESIASTICAL SUCCESSIONS AND THE EXILE OF MULLER (1887 - 1921)
Following During's focus on the rural outpost, the Heidelberg town church passed through a succession of Berlin Society missionaries:
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Missionary Johannes Walter (1887 - 1897): Transferred from the major station at Botshabelo to assume control of the Heidelberg urban parish in 1887. He directed the church for a decade before being reassigned to Ermelo in 1897 to establish a new eastern mission network.
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Missionary Hermann Muller (1897 - 1921): Succeeded Walter in 1897. At the sudden outbreak of the war in October 1899, the local German Lutheran congregation in Heidelberg comprised 11 primary families.
During the conflict, the Boer military command requested Missionary Muller to travel directly to the battlefields to provide spiritual counsel and preach to the German-speaking burghers serving on commando. Upon his eventual return to Heidelberg following his field chaplaincy, the occupying British military forces barred him from accessing his property or sanctuary.
The imperial administration officially exiled Muller to Germany, where he remained until he was legally permitted to return to South Africa in 1904. He successfully rebuilt his local ministry and was ultimately promoted to the prestigious position of Missionary Superintendent of the Orange Free State in 1921.
THE OU SKOM RESETTLEMENT AND URBAN DEMOLITIONS (1934 - 1949)
Following Muller's promotion, Missionary Johannes Baumbach was transferred from Bethanien in the Orange Free State to manage the Heidelberg pulpit, serving until 1934 when he received a permanent transfer to Pretoria. The vacancy was filled by Missionary Johannes Trümpelmann, who arrived from the Wallmannsthal mission station and whose direct descendants remain active members of the contemporary Heidelberg parish.
The spatial layout of the church underwent a dramatic shift in 1937. A dedicated auxiliary church was constructed inside the segregation-era location known as "Ou Skom," which occupied the low-lying terrain immediately west of the main road connecting Heidelberg and Rensburg.
To furnish the new location sanctuary, the congregation moved all the historical movable furniture out of the old town chapel—including the historic altar, the christening font, and the congregational pews. These items represented the original timber artifacts hand-carved by founder Hermann During in 1877.
In 1958, under apartheid state urbanization mandates, the residents of Ou Skom were forcibly relocated to the newly established township of Ratanda, and the entire vacant infrastructure of Ou Skom was systematically demolished by municipal bulldozers. Historical inspections of the modern Lutheran Church in Ratanda confirm that the original hand-carved During furniture was lost or destroyed during the displacement, as none of the 1877 artifacts remain on the site.
Concurrently in 1937, the underlying title deed of the original Spruyt Street Mission Station property was formally transferred to the custody of the Heidelberg Town Council, subject to a strict legal authorization ensuring the continuous, unhindered use of the sanctuary by the German Lutheran congregation.
Prior to 1948, municipal rezonings resulted in the demolition of the historic missionary house and all adjacent outbuildings, leaving only the primary church building standing. On 22 June 1948, Section 6 of Stand 234 on Spruyt Street, encompassing the surviving church, was formally transferred back into the permanent ownership of the German Lutheran Church. Missionary Johannes Trümpelmann officially entered retirement the following year, in 1949.
THE TWILIGHT OF THE MISSIONARIES AND CONTEMPORARY SERVICES (1950 - 2026)
The mid-20th-century era was managed by the final generation of European missionaries:
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Missionary Henning Renning Hagens (1950 - 1951): Assumed control of the district in 1950. Basing his household at the Woyenthin farm estate, he traveled into town to conduct exactly 14 formal German language services per year inside the Spruyt Street sanctuary until his transfer to Duiwelskloof in late 1951.
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Missionary Herbert Bahr (1951 - 1963): Relocated into the Woyenthin parsonage in late 1951, re-establishing a reliable liturgical calendar at the Spruyt Street Church by conducting formal services on the first Sunday of every calendar month. Under his direction, the interior of the town church underwent a comprehensive structural renovation in 1958.
In 1963, Missionary Bahr accepted a permanent pastoral calling to a congregation in Johannesburg. His departure marked the permanent conclusion of the historic European missionary era within the Heidelberg district; from that point forward, fully ordained Black ministers assumed independent administrative and spiritual control to serve their own localized community parishes.
Reverend Hermann Albin During spent his final retirement years residing in Heidelberg, passing away on 5 September 1922 at the age of 81. He was interred within the historic family plot at the Heidelberg Kloof Cemetery, resting a short distance away from his first wife, Louise Amalia Bertha During (née Salomon, 1838 - 1904), and his second wife, Anna Selma During (née Leuschner, 1872 - 1950).
The enduring legacy of the congregation achieved formal recognition on 21 November 2021 when the Heidelberg Heritage Association officially mounted a Blue Heritage Plaque to the exterior stone of the Spruyt Street church. The contemporary parish remains small but active, maintaining a highly traditional liturgical format.
Services continue to be conducted primarily in the German language, with specific English translations integrated to welcome external visitors. Music is provided by a fully operational, historic mechanical Pedal Organ that is well over a century old and remains in perfect mechanical condition.
Due to contemporary demographic shifts and dwindling numbers, the active local German Lutheran congregation has formally integrated with two adjacent regional parishes, systematically rotating their weekly services across three separate regional church buildings to preserve their deep pioneering heritage.
Sources: "Berlin Missionaries in South Africa and Their Descendants" by Linda Zöllner (BA, HOD) and J.A. Heese (DEd); and the centenary text "Lutherische Kirche: 100 Jahre (1878 - 1978)" compiled by Pastor Gerhard Eberle. Contemporary liturgy reports and blue plaque documentation curated by Tony Burisch.
