Hessequa, Heidelberg, Congregational Church

Abstract

The Congregational Church in Heidelberg has a very impressive, detached tower. In a niche above a platform hangs a modest but beautiful bell cast by Collier. The crown consists of six carefully crafted angel heads. Immediately below the shoulder is a broad decorative band with plants and leaves in between two moulding wires. Then follows a smaller band with shell-like decorations. On one waist of the bell there is an inscription stating: GEGOSSEN VON GUSTAV COLLIER IN ZEHLENDORF BEI BERLIN 1883. On the reverse waist is the effigy of a dove, probably signifying the Holy Ghost. Above the sound bow, where the clapper hits the bell, there are two more doubled moulding wires and below them, a fine decorative band. Because of the difficult accessibility of the bell, the picture of the dove is somewhat vague. Fortunately, we found a similar decoration on a bell from the same founder and the same founding year in the Lutheran Church in Touwsrivier. Gustav Louis Guillaume Collier (1845-1908) was a bell founder working in the Berlin area in Zehlendorf and bells from the foundry can be found in a wide area around the German capitol. There still exists close to two dozen bells in German churches and they all date from the period 1875 till 1900. Apart from the bell in Touwsrivier, Collier has been the founder of a magnificent bell in the St Petri Lutheran Church in Paarl, made in 1897 on the occasion of the 60 years that Queen Victoria had been ruling the British Empire.