The Loschwitz Church is a baroque church in the Loschwitz district of Dresden. It was the first church built by the architect of the Dresden Frauenkirche, George Bähr. The churchyard, which was used as a cemetery until 1907, is one of the few 18th-century churchyards in Saxony that is still in its original state and is the smallest cemetery in the city at about 400 square meters. The Loschwitz church and cemetery are under monument protection.

Loschwitz was first documented in 1315 as Loscuicz. With the expansion of the originally Slavic rundling, the lands were already subject to the Materni Hospital in Dresden in the 14th century. Together with 25 other villages, Loschwitz belonged to the parish of the church "Zu unserer Lieben Frauen", the original parish of the later Frauenkirche, which was located near the Maternihospital between the present Dresden Frauenkirche and the Coselpalais. The inhabitants of Loschwitz always had to go to the parish, which was several kilometers away, for services, confessions, or weddings, which was especially difficult in winter. Baptisms took place in the Kreuzkirche. The dead of the village of Loschwitz were buried in the Frauenkirchhof and, from 1571, in the old Johanniskirchhof.

After the end of the Thirty Years' War in the Electorate of Saxony following the armistice of Kötzschenbroda in 1645, Saxony experienced an economic and cultural boom. As the population of Dresden and the villages belonging to the Dresden Frauenkirche parish grew steadily, services in the medieval Frauenkirche became almost impossible due to overcrowding. It was not uncommon for Loschwitz parishioners to be "forced out of the Kirche zur lieben Frauen and directed to the nave of the small old Frauenkirche" when church attendance was unusually high. At the same time, the pastor of the Frauenkirche parish could only visit the surrounding villages for a limited time because Dresden, as a fortress city, kept its gates closed in the evenings. "It was often impossible to reach the pastor late or early in the day or at night to administer Holy Communion to the sick or dying, to perform emergency baptisms, to bring comfort to the seriously ill, and the like.

In December 1702, the villages of Loschwitz and Wachwitz requested to the Dresden Council, and again in 1703 the Superior Papal consistory and the Elector to be parished away from the Frauenkirche. After a "reading service" in a schoolhouse in Loschwitz had been approved, which a schoolmaster had been holding on Sundays and holidays in the school building in Loschwitz since 1702, Augustus the Strong in 1704, agreed to the congregation and thus the founding of a Loschwitz parish. In addition to Loschwitz, the nearby village of Wachwitz and the inn and property "Zum Weißen Hirsch" also belonged to the municipality.

The Dresden City Council was granted the right of patronage over the parish and was therefore responsible for financing and building a church. It also appointed the pastor. On April 4, 1704, Johann Arnold was appointed as the first pastor of the new parish and confirmed on September 21, 1704. As a parish, the construction of a church could now begin.

In 1704, the carpenter George Bähr was commissioned to design the church. He carried out the project together with the master mason Johann Christian Fehre, and the ground plan of the church underwent several changes. As early as March 3, 1704, the congregation had the first stones for the church unloaded at the "Bachhorn" in Pirna and stored over the winter in the schoolhouse in Loschwitz. The schoolhouse was located at the crossing of Körnerplatz and Pillnitzer Landstraße, right in the center of the village where the Loschwitz congregation wanted the church to be built. Against the wishes of the community, the Dresden City Council chose the "Materni vineyard" of the Materni Hospital, about 150 meters away and owned by the City Council, as the site for the church. Unlike the village center, the site on the eastern edge of the village on the road to Wachwitz was safe from flooding, and the vineyard was deliberately chosen as a Christian motif. "The actual construction work did not begin until April 27, 1705, when the master mason Fehre from Dresden sent 6 masons to cut and set the stones, including his son Johann Gottfried.

On May 14, 1705, the first church fathers of the new parish and men from the city parish, the district parish, and Wachwitz, ceremoniously surrounded the site of the new church and sang three hymns ("I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ", "In Thee, Lord, have I put my trust", "May God be gracious to us"). Then the grapevine poles were pulled up, the grapevines were dug out, and the foundation of the church was dug. On June 29, 1705, the foundation stone of the Loschwitz Church was laid in the presence of the Princely Commissioner, Count Friedrich von Schönberg, accompanied by the Dresdner Kreuzchor. The foundation stone was accompanied by a copper box containing the Augsburg Confession, Luther's catechism, a sketch of the building to be constructed, and the history of the town written on parchment. The building itself was carried out in the following years by the Dresden councilman and master builder Johann Siegmund Küffner, who was also responsible for hiring the workers.

In 1706 the construction of the church, whose foundation walls were already standing, was interrupted when the Swedish army invaded Saxony during the Great Northern War. As a result, the inhabitants of Loschwitz and the builders fled. The Dresden City Council instructed Johann Arnold, who had been appointed parish priest of Loschwitz in 1704, to petition the King of Sweden to spare the church building. Together with the church fathers of Loschwitz and Wachwitz, Arnold went to Radeberg, where Charles XII was encamped with his army, and had the petition of the parish delivered to him. Count Carl Piper, the king's advisor, finally told the small delegation: