Old St. Alban

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Restored street front, April 2010
Old St. Alban, May 2009
Gothic facade detail
Sculpture "Mourning Parents" (1954)
Floor plan from 1916
Prisoner of War memorial. Inscription: "Prisoners of war are still waiting to return home"

Alt St. Alban is the preserved ruin of a former parish church on Cologne's Quatermarkt . It is one of the oldest Romanesque church buildings in Cologne .

history

St. Alban was first mentioned in documents in 1172. It was rebuilt several times in the Middle Ages and redesigned as a hall church in 1668–72 by the builder Arnold Gülich . The tower dates from 1494, the facade from 1896. The St. Brother Conrad chapel is on the ground floor .

Except for the tower, the church was badly damaged during the Second World War. After that it was only secured, but not rebuilt. The pillars and yokes of the hall and apses with the window openings are still visible; Windows and roofs are missing. The only bronze bell dedicated to St. Alban by Johann von Andernach from 1507 of the originally four-part bells was spared the confiscation in 1943 and has been preserved. After various uses in Cologne churches, it has been serving as an angelus bell in St. Gereon since 2008 .

On December 23, 1954, Cardinal Frings granted permission for profanation for profane but not dirty purposes , so that a memorial to the dead of the world wars could be built in the ruins.

The St. Brother Konrad Chapel on the first floor of the tower was completed in October 1960 and consecrated in 1964; the paintings are by Peter Hecker , the glass windows by Will Thonett . The crescent moon Madonna from the 1st half of the 16th century, which was in the meantime in the cathedral, has had its place again since 2007 in the chapel that was restored by the city with the help of the Imhoff Foundation and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia until 2007.

For a new parish church, the community was offered a plot of land in Cologne-Neustadt-Nord , on which New St. Alban was built from rubble bricks from the demolished opera from 1957-1959 according to plans by Hans Schilling .

Since no excavations have been carried out in and around St. Alban, not much can be said about the building history.

location

The entrance is to the west on Quatermarkt street. After the war, the stairwell and foyer of the Gürzenich were added to the ruins in the south and east . The Wallraf-Richartz-Museum has been adjacent to the north since 2001 , and its panorama window in the donor's hall includes the church.

The ruins are not open to the public, but the memorials are visible through lattice gates.

memorial

The memorial was inaugurated on May 21, 1959 in the presence of Federal President Theodor Heuss , Cologne Mayor Theo Burauen , Hans Kollwitz , Ewald Mataré , the builder Karl Band and many other dignitaries.

Inside is a copy of the sculpture Mourning Parents from 1954, which Ewald Mataré received as a commissioned work in 1953, but passed the commission on to his two master students Joseph Beuys and Erwin Heerich , with Heerich making the mother and Beuys the father. The original by Käthe Kollwitz was in the German war cemetery Esen-Roggeveld from 1932, since 1956 it has been in the German war cemetery in Vladslo in West Flanders , Belgium.

There is also a prisoner of war memorial in the front right area.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Colonia Romanica, Cologne churches and their furnishings in Renaissance and Baroque , Volume 2, page 107, Verlag Greven, Cologne
  2. ↑ Jörg Poettgen: 700 years bells cast in Cologne , p 255
  3. ↑ Glocke at stgereon.de ( Memento from December 17, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ a b c Hannelore Fischer (Ed.): VKäthe Kollwitz. The grieving parents. A memorial for peace . Dumont, Cologne 1999, p. 125-129 .
  5. ↑ Restored "Crescent Moon Madonna" returns. June 8, 2007, accessed July 16, 2020 .

literature

  • Hiltrud Kier: Churches in Cologne , Bachem Verlag 2000, ISBN 3-7616-1395-4
  • Jörg Poettgen: 700 years of bell casting in Cologne. Masters and workshops between 1100 and 1800 . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2005, ISBN 3-88462-206-4 .

Web links

Commons : Alt St. Alban  - Collection of images, videos and audio files


Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 12.7 "  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 29.7"  E