Matits Ferenc: Protestant Churches - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

upon which to build its church. The 3000-square-yard plot lying outside the city wall (i.e. the line of today's Little Boulevard), where the former Turkish cemetery had been, was conferred on the Calvinist church by János Boráros, Magistrate of Pest, in 1801 with the following recommendation. "I hereby confer this plot ot) land, unencumbered with any mortgage and to be freely held for ever, on the Calvinist congregation ofi Pest. I truit that the congregation will raise an edifice upon it which will be well-iuited to divine service and will be to the glory of the city and the contentment of its neighbours."

The church was designed by the Vienna-trained architect József Hofrichter (1779-1835). Every diocese earmarked an annual sum of 200 forints, with the most immediately concerned community, the Danube-valley diocese, setting aside as much as 300 forints per annum. The wealthier members of the convocation also made bids in various sums, such as Count József Teleki, who promised 200 forints or Count Gedeon Ráday who ordered 100 forints to be imbursed every year. A nation-wide campaign was also launched to raise the required funds. A copper-plate replica of Hofrichter’s design was made by Ferenc Karacs to be attached to the letters requesting contributions. In 1803 a temporary parish and a hall of worship were raised. Nobody knew at the time that thirty years would pass before the permanent church was completed. (The construction was hindered mainly by the war but the Debrecen conflagration also slowed it down. As the predecessor of the Calvinist Great Church, St. Andrew's Church, was burnt down in the fire of 1802, the construction of the Great Church and College of Debrecen fully exhausted the financial capabilities of the people living east of the Tisza for 14 years.)

With the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars, the foundation stone of what was to become the Haymarket Square (today’s Kálvin tér) Church was laid by the spouse of Palatine Joseph, Hermina Duchess of Anhalt, on 12 June 1816. It was mainly for her sake that a German pastor, Károly Cleymann, was employed by the diocese. Cleymann remained in service alongside Bishop Gábor Báthory (1796-1839) from 1816 to 1832. (Having died in childbed when giving birth to twins at the age of twenty in 1817, the young bride of the Palatine was buried in the crypt of the church, which was under construction at the time.)

An ellipsoid dome embellished with coffered stuccos and gilded ornaments was put on the neo-Classical church in 1824. The rectangular ground plan consists of three sections—the presbytery, the pews for the congregation and the porch. The larch-wood pews were ordered in 1826. Beneath the dome were placed the rows of presbyterial seats, the Lord’s table and the pulpit. In 1831,

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