Thalkirche Sonnenberg

In 1429 Werner Hut, Lord of the Castle in Sonnenberg, donated the chapel of St Mary in the Valley and supplied the church with gifts to pay for an altarist (an altarist was a lay person who saw to what was necessary for an altar) and for the upkeep of the building. About a hundred years later the chapel of St Mary, which had become too small, was extended. The Gothic date 1535 can be seen above the entrance to this day. From 1540 the Valley church became Protestant. Because the congregation was growing, in 1733 a gallery and in 1766 new bells were added. The oldest bell, dated 1690, stands today on the grave of Pastor Rohr in the Sonnenberg cemetery, after it had cracked while being rung at his funeral in 1934. In 1883 there was a thorough renovation of the church. The pulpit was moved to its present position in the centre above the altar. At the same time an organ was installed. This arrangement realises the idea of a Protestant "preaching church" which had been conceived in the "Wiesbaden Programme" in the second half of the 19th century.

From 1991 to 1994 a thorough renovation inside the Valley church was carried out in close co-operation with the office for the preservation of historical monuments. The church received a new altar cross in the shape of a T. The order of notes of the present bells rung from bottom to top results in the "Te deum" motif.

• Font of Lahn marble, donated in 1711 by Fräulein Eleonore von Lindau
• Tomb of Pastor's wife Anna Catharina Poths (died 1755) and her two year old granddaughter
• Rassmann organ from 1883, preserved as far as possible in the original
• Altar cross in the shape of a T, created by Bernhard Meyer from fragments of old wooden beams from the Valley church