The Lutheran Church on Deák Square will celebrate the 210th anniversary of its consecration as a national memorial site ical monument.  Supported by the government, the National Memorial and Remembrance Committee and the Institute of National Heritage, the site was listed as a memorial on 22 May 2021, with the Sütő Street Grammar School and museum. 

The Lutheran Church on Deák Square in its original form (Source: Lutheran National Collection)

The church was built according to the plans of Mihály Pollack and consecrated at Pentecost in 1811.

The buildign was the first Lutheran church built in Buda and Pest after religious freedom was granted to protestants and a place where Hungarian, German and Slovak-speaking faithful visited to hear the word of God in their mother tongue.

The main façade with columns and tympanums, visible today, was designed by József Hild in 1856. The small bell tower on the church's roof above the main entrance was demolished in 1875 due to static instability.

  The Lutheran Church on Deák Square in the 1890s by György Klösz (Source: FSZEK Budapest Collection)  

The Lutheran Church on Deák Square and the adjacent National Lutheran Museum, as well as the grammar school, are memorial sites (Photo: Lívia Blázsovics/pestbuda.hu) 

The construction of the rectory, the prayer hall and the elementary school began first. János Krausz designed these for the wood storage courtyard of the former Garnet Barracks. Today, the National Lutheran Museum is located in this section of the building.

After the construction of the church, the development of the school gained new impetus. With the expansion and construction of the Insula Lutherana by 1823, a complete grammar school was established. It was only the second grammar school in Pest. Another expansion was completed in 1865, when today's school building was built on the site next to the Insula Lutherana, on the site of the army bakery.

The Lutheran grammar school was built on the site of the army bakery, today's Sütő Street. Picture taken in 1896 (Source: Lutheran National Collection)  

The grammar school moved from the Insula Lutherána complex in 1904 to what was Vilma Királyné Street and is today Városligeti Avenue. The church still runs the school.

Mór Erdélyi photographed the school building in 1910 (Source: FSZEK Budapest Collection)  

The school building on Sütő Street housed a primary school, then a girls' civic school, and finally a girls' grammar school until 1952, when the Lutheran Church “donated” it to the state. It took forty years for the building to once again function as an eight-grade Lutheran grammar school. Since 1992, the school building has been an integral part of the Insula Lutherana again.

The Deák Square Lutheran Grammar School has been operating on Sütő Street, in the Insula Lutherana building complex, since 1992. (Source: Lutheran National Collection)

Cover photo: Detail of the Lutheran Church on Deák Square, next to the Lutheran National Museum, the Insula Lutherana building complex (Photo: Lívia Blázsovics / pestbuda.hu)