Church of the Resurrection (Essen)

Church of the Resurrection in Essen

The Church of the Resurrection in Essen is a Protestant church building from 1929. It is located in the Southeast Quarter and is considered a leading building in modern church construction in Europe.

Building history

The construction was carried out according to plans by Otto Bartning in 1929/30 at the time of the global economic crisis . The cheapest provider for the construction, a Dortmund company, was only allowed to start construction after the establishment of a branch in Essen, which means that it was possible to prove that people in Essen could find work.

Otto Bartning implemented his vision of the expressionist star church here , which had caused a sensation in 1922. It is a simple central building on a circular floor plan in skeleton construction made of Krupp steel and with a diameter and a height of a good 30 meters, which is coated with concrete for corrosion protection reasons. The free areas between the pillars were filled in with brickwork on the outside. With the materials steel , concrete and clinker , Bartning committed himself to both modernism and the region in which the church is located. The building holds around 700 people.

Inside, dark gray plaster dominates, from which the pillars and gallery balustrades as well as the area around the pulpit and altar are set off in light gray-beige. The colored ribbon windows are part of the wall, which provide a calm frame for those.

The architect wanted to avoid the pseudo-mood that he saw as a result of resorting to outdated, but no longer up-to-date designs and building materials.

The building was badly damaged and partially destroyed in the Second World War . A simplified reconstruction took place in 1948. On February 14, 1985, the building of the church was entered in the monuments list of the city of Essen.

Renovations 2013/2014

Between 2013 and 2014 the church building was renovated with the help of around 400,000 euros made available by the presbytery. First the copper cross and roof were repaired. Most of the work took place on the facade, with stones already flaking off the weather-exposed west side. The old reinforced concrete had become brittle, so that water that penetrated it damaged the steel. In the basement rooms filled with rubble were cleared, after which further water damage was discovered. The bell structure, standing on thirty feet, was also in need of renovation. Nevertheless, services could continue to take place. During the construction period, the bell was made by the neighboring church of St. Michael am Wasserturm .

Furnishing

According to theology professor Horst Schwebel , the Church of the Resurrection is groundbreaking under the heading of the liturgy as the client . Bartning understood the Protestant service as a sermon service for the assembled congregation. That is why the hearing community (following the tradition of the Lutheran sermon churches of the Baroque era ) is grouped around the preacher, who stands opposite it with the word on the pulpit, which is offset to the south, but on the other hand, because on an arc with it, this is not of higher rank.

The idea of community, which finds its deepest expression in the Lord's Supper , is reinforced by the round shape. In this respect, the building does what Bartning programmatically demanded of architecture: that the building should reflect the spirit of what happens in it.

In the middle of the church, as the center of the floor plan, is Professor Wissel's copper baptismal font . This symbolically expresses that the church develops out of baptism.

The command to baptize is stamped around the bowl of water . This makes the sentence from Martin Luther's Little Catechism clear: Baptism is not just water, but it is the water in God's commandment .

Stained glass

Interior view of the dome with Thorn-Prikker windows

The original glazing of the three superimposed window rings of around 170 square meters and in the adjoining rooms of the bridal corridor, sacristy, sexton's room and toilets - a creation of the modern glass painter Johan Thorn Prikker - was destroyed, like parts of the church, during the war. It was reconstructed purely from donations between 1999 and 2007 based on the original documents from the glass painting workshop Hein Derix Kevelaer .

The geometrically designed gray, which brightens up towards the top and is offset with Christian symbols and original words in the middle ring, flows into a golden yellow embossed surface. The way the light and eye are guided symbolically reflects the event of the resurrection that gives the church its name .

In the so-called celebration church , under the choir and organ gallery in the west of the church, there are three figuratively particularly elaborately designed grisaille windows on the subject of I am the bread of life .

organ

The third organ comes from the workshop of Karl Schuke , Berlin, dated 1987. It has 21 clearly contoured registers and mechanical action that correspond to the sound type of the organ movement .

Bells

The four bells in the roof turret were made of cast steel by the Bochum Association in 1929 and are at the beginning of the chorale Wachet, the voice calls us tuned; their striking notes are h ⁰ , d flat ¹ , f sharp ¹ and g sharp ¹ .

Music at the Church of the Resurrection

Since the time after the Second World War, choir work has been cultivated at the Church of the Resurrection - as one of the three main musical churches of the Evangelical Church in Essen. A total of five choirs with over 170 members are based here. The church offers good conditions for this due to its excellent acoustics. In the adjoining parish hall, numerous rooms equipped with pianos allow rehearsals and theater performances with a stage, technology and props. The brass group of the Neue Pauluskirche, the consortium paulinum and the old town music school are also located here. The former cantor is Ursula von den Busch, the current cantor is Stefanie Westerteicher.

sculpture

Stainless steel sculpture by Friedrich Gräsel

In front of the community center on Manteuffelstrasse, a stainless steel sculpture by Friedrich Gräsel has stood since 1974 , about which the artist says: “… the sculpture has become a pioneering and meaningful symbol. Volumes and modules rise in a circling manner from the horizontal and end in the last form skyward. The sculpture is integrated into the parish: first of all through its external sequence of movements, which is similar to the central building. - In addition, it makes a propaedeutic reference from the outside of the church to the inside: under the highest point in space, the lunette, is the baptismal font surrounded by numerous Christian symbols. Baptism and resurrection complete the theological meaning. Architecture and sculpture are the media that make this message legible. "

meaning

According to the architect Wolfgang Jean Stock (* 1948), the Church of the Resurrection is one of the four main buildings of modern church architecture in Europe. Your model is exhibited as an outstanding Protestant church building in the German Historical Museum in Berlin .

The community had an ambivalent relationship to the building, the round church in the work of Otto Bartning. While it was originally ironically christened the circus thanks to its unusual shape , children later gave it the affectionate name of the Church of the Cake because of its resemblance to a wedding cake . It is now valued as a diverse and creative space for worship, discussion and communication of high spiritual quality.

literature

Walter Buschmann : The Evangelical Resurrection Church in Essen. In: Yearbook of the Rheinische Denkmalpflege 1985 , ISBN 3-7927-0825-6 .
Michael Heering: Church of the Resurrection Essen. Kunstverlag Fink, Lindenberg 1998, ISBN 3-931820-80-7 .
Wolfgang Jean Stock: European Church Buildings 1950–2000. Prestel, Munich 2002.