Assembly Hall Carolina
The Aula Carolina is a listed building that is available for both school gatherings and public cultural events. It is located at the southern end of Pontstrasse in the center of Aachen . The auditorium belonging to the eponymous Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium is the former church of St. Catherine of the former monastery of the Augustinian hermits .
history
The building is first mentioned in the 13th century. Around 1275 Augustinians came from Maastricht to Aachen, where they were given an already existing dilapidated chapel and a small house. They converted the chapel into a monastery church. In addition, they acquired other neighboring land between today's Pontstrasse and Kockerillstrasse in order to be able to build a new monastery on it. After all, it was Charles IV who, on the occasion of his coronation as King of the Holy Roman Empire in 1351, supported the construction of the monastery with a foundation. In the 15th century, shares in lands in the Aachener Heide were added to the monastery's possessions , including the Schellartshof and Gut Hebscheid in Lichtenbusch .
Except for necessary repairs and contemporary modernizations, the monastery and church remained intact until the great fire of Aachen in 1656, in the course of which the buildings were massively damaged. Although the city council initially contributed 100 Reichstaler and in 1666 another 600 Rhenish guilders as well as the provision of 25,000 bricks to the construction, more years passed until the foundation stone could not be laid until May 11, 1663 and the choir of the monastery church was ready in 1671 What was intact was that from 1671, provisional masses could again be held there. According to the Franciscan annals, the official consecration finally took place on July 30, 1687 by the auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Liège , Jean Antoine Blavier. At the end of the 17th century, the monastery buildings again suffered major damage caused by an earthquake on September 18, 1692, and some of the buildings had to be replaced by new buildings. The church tower lost its stability during this quake, broke up three months later and had to be replaced. In a second earthquake on August 19, 1730, the vault of the church collapsed and caused severe damage to the interior of the church. This was finally followed by a third earthquake on February 18, 1756, in which the tower, which had been dilapidated from the previous incident, finally broke and the stone figure of St. Katharina broke from the gable. Once again, donations from the city council ensured that all damage could be repaired as far as possible.
During the later French occupation from 1794 to 1814, all monasteries were abolished as part of the secularization by consular resolution of June 9, 1802, whereby the former St. Catherine's Church and the monastery complex were also used for other purposes. A year later, the French prefect Alexandre Méchin approved the founding of a secondary school based on the French model in the former monastery buildings, which was merged with the disbanded “Gymnasium Marianum des Jesuitenordens” of the disbanded Jesuit community of Aachen , which in 1888 became “Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium “Was renamed. The St. Katharina Church, which had been closed until then, was allowed to reopen on December 2, 1805 with a service as "Aula Carolina" for school celebrations and for this purpose received two bells from the Aachen Salvatorkirche and other furniture as a gift from Bishop Marc-Antoine Berdolet . However, it was not until 1827 that the church was finally released for joint regular school services for what is now the “Royal Prussian Gymnasium”. A church council was set up to maintain the auditorium, in which the high school classes also took part. Further structural changes to the auditorium initially took place in the 1850s, when an inner choir and new sacristy rooms were set up according to plans by Friedrich Joseph Ark , and in the 1880s when the Aachen painter Franz Wirth painted the inside area of the auditorium .
After the monastery buildings themselves had to be finally demolished at the beginning of the 20th century due to dilapidation, today's school building was built on the site of the demolished monastery square by 1906. During the Second World War, the auditorium was massively destroyed and it was not until 1980 that it was completely rebuilt according to the old model, but for today's purposes and placed under monument protection. Today the Augustinerbach street, named after the order, reminds of the Augustinian monastery in Aachen , although the Johannisbach flows through there, and the Augustinergasse in Aachen and the Augustinerwald with the Augustinerweg near Grüne Eiche.
The auditorium has an area of 570 m² and is used by the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium for teaching and sporting events until 5:00 pm on school days; it is also used for external events, especially for classical concerts, receptions, lectures, theater performances, readings and exhibitions. Every year on Anti-War Day , September 1st, the Aachen Peace Prize is awarded in the Aula Carolina .
literature
- Christian Quix : Contributions to the history of the city of Aachen and its surroundings. Vol. 2, Jacob Anton Mayer , Aachen 1838, p. 46
- Paul Clemen : Aachen city monasteries and their history , In: Karl Faimonville, among other things: The monuments of the city of Aachen . Bd. II .: The churches of the city of Aachen Düsseldorf 1922
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 37.3 " N , 6 ° 4 ′ 58.7" E