Walloon-Dutch Church

No other building in Hanau shows as clearly how closely tolerance and terror, hope and destruction can lie together as the Walloon-Dutch Church. The church was built by Calvinist religious refugees who had been granted settlement and freedom of worship by Count Philipp Ludwig II of Hanau-Münzenberg at the end of the 16th century. As the new arrivals were both Dutch and French-speaking, it was decided to build a double church. The first service was celebrated here in 1609. The larger, Walloon church had a dodecagonal floor plan, while the smaller Dutch church was octagonal. During the Second World War, the building ensemble - the entire Hanau city center - was destroyed down to the outer walls on the night of the bombing on March 19, 1945.
In the post-war period, it was decided to merge the two congregations and the Dutch part of the church was rebuilt by 1960. The ruins of the Walloon church are now home to the Kathinka Platzhoff Foundation's Family Academy and memorial and remain a memorial against war and destruction to this day.