Christ the King Cross
The Christkönigkreuz is a wooden cemetery cross by Josef Picker in Füchtorf that was in the Füchtorf cemetery from 1925 to 1952. The cross is now in private hands.
description
The cross was erected on a brick-walled base and had a total height of approx. 4 meters; the Christ corpus was life-size. The artist has depicted Christ as King and as the conqueror of death. He is not so much the crucified one, but the risen one and does not hang as a corpse on the trunk of the cross, but stands by his own strength. Also he no longer wears the crown of thorns, but a royal crown and thus the symbol of rule of the kingdom of God ; his face reveals the traits of submission and perfection. So the cross stands out from the earthly gravity of the graves in the background and strives towards heaven, thus anticipating Christ's Ascension, as it were.
history
After being poisoned by gas during World War I, the artist vowed that if he survived the war, he would devote himself to creating religious works.
"He wanted - also based on his war experiences - to set a sign for the living Christ King ."
When the artist returned to his native Füchtorf in 1925 after completing his training and his wandering years, he won the Thumann family as a donor. Since Picker had participated in a pilgrimage to Rome in the jubilee year for the establishment of the Christ the King festival, he orientated himself on Romanesque crosses, which were created by the Christ the King festival of Pius XI. was introduced. The neo-Romanesque cross was erected in the Füchtorfer Friedhof until a severe storm laid it down in 1952.
The cross was not put up again and was on the organ floor of the St. Mary's Assumption Church until 1977 ; eventually it became the property of the Potthoff family, who restored it. The Potthoff family had to remove their holy house because it was in disrepair. Since then, mother Josefa Potthoff in particular has been looking for a new religious sculpture for her property. One remembered the body of Christ, which was discovered on the occasion of a parish festival in the tower of the Füchtorf parish church. Pastor Hagedorn and the parish council had no objection to the fact that the Jesus figure, which had to give way to a stone cross in the Füchtorf cemetery, was again publicly honored. They made the picture available to the Potthoff family. At that time, however, there was nothing to be seen of an oak Christ: he was treated with tar-colored paint and was pitch black. In painstaking detail work and with the help of neighbors, the layer of paint was removed until the work of art showed itself again in the friendly tone of natural oak. To protect against weather damage, the Jesus head was covered with lead, and the horizontal surfaces of the cross beam were coated with aluminum. The Christ corpus, measuring two by two meters, was placed on a massive oak cross in the Potthoff farm.
Finally, on the occasion of the opening of the picker exhibition on August 10, 2014 in Füchtorf, the corpus was displayed on a new, much smaller cross on the gable of the Heimathaus.
Then it was restored again by the sculptor Willi Potthoff from Clarholz and erected in the tower of the St. Mary's Assumption Church .
The artist took up the motif of the Christ the King Cross several times. The idea of the life-size depiction of the crucifixion was later taken up by his teacher Franz Guntermann , who chose the same dimensions (height 4.2 m) and the same statement, but without the crown, for his depiction of the altar cross from 1937 in the Liebfrauenkirche in Bielefeld .
literature
- Bernhard Riese and Bernd Riese: Crosses and pictures in the parish of Füchtorf . Verlag Krimphoff, Sassenberg 1992.
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the footsteps of an artist's soul , Westfälische Nachrichten, Sassenberg edition, from August 15, 2014.
- ^ Refurbished cross adorns Heimathaus , Die Glocke, August 5, 2014.
- ↑ Heimatverein shows works by Josef Picker , Westfälische Nachrichten, Sassenberg edition, from December 6, 2014.
- ↑ Christ-König-Kreuz adorns the church , Westfälische Nachrichten, Sassenberg edition, from April 20, 2016.
- ↑ Artworks in Liebfrauen ( Memento of the original from January 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the Liebfrauenkirche Bielefeld, accessed on June 23, 2016.
