Christ Church (Bochum)

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Bell tower of the Christ Church
Historic bell tower and modern nave

The Christ Church in Bochum is a Protestant church in Bochum , which is also a memorial against the war . It is in the immediate vicinity of the Bochum town hall . There are other churches with this name in Bochum, for example in the districts of Langendreer , Linden , Gerthe and Günnigfeld .

history

1877-1932

The plans for the neo-Gothic building came from the Krefeld architects Hartel and Quester . The construction work was entrusted to the Bochum master builder Heinrich Schwenger (1840–1906). The foundation stone of the church was laid on May 15, 1877, and the 72 m high tower was completed around October 24, 1878. The Obernkirchen sandstone was used as the material . The tower hall was decorated with imperial eagles , which were only removed in 1929.

In 1931, the Bochum architect Heinrich Schmiedeknecht designed a memorial hall for heroes in the base of the tower. The names of 30 soldiers killed in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), 1,362 soldiers killed in the First World War (1914–1918) and the 25 states against which Germany was at war are entered in gold mosaic . The artistic design came from the church painter Heinrich Rüter (* 1877 in Bergedorf near Hamburg ; † 1955) from Düsseldorf , the glass painting and mosaics by Wilhelm Hallermann from Essen . It was inaugurated in March 1931.

1933-1945

In the church, the Protestant pastor Hans Ehrenberg , who had been a pastor in the Bochum city center community since 1925, preached against National Socialism in 1933 : "We say no" and "... the people of the people want heroism and comradeship, we mission and brotherhood." was a converted Jew, co-founder of the Confessing Church and, together with four other Westphalian pastors, participated in the “Bochum Confessions”. According to Ehrenberg, Christians and Jews shared their fate and doom with one another.

During the November pogrom , Ehrenberg was arrested on November 9, 1938 and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Through the intervention of the Bishop of Chichester , he was exiled in Britain in 1939 .

The Second World War began on September 1, 1939 . The church was destroyed on May 14, 1943 during the first of the major bombing raids on the city of Bochum. Almost the entire inner city of Bochum was destroyed by the air raids in the following months; several thousand people were killed, many more injured and tens of thousands left homeless.

1945-2008

The nave was rebuilt from 1956 to 1959 by the architect Dieter Oesterlen with the advice of Schmiedeknecht. The church has a staggered floor plan with brick walls. The wall-high side concrete glass windows were designed by the Darmstadt sculptor Helmut Lander . The integration of old and new has received international praise.

Around 1993, thought was given to the repair of the listed tower, but it had been poorly maintained in the last few decades. When the first appraisal estimated renovation costs of 8 million  DM , the Protestant parish wanted to have the tower torn down.

In order to preserve the tower as a memorial against the war, the “Monument Against Violence” initiative was launched. Donations were collected for the renovation, and the donation receipts, measured on a single building block, were called Kuxe, based on the regional mining tradition . On February 19, 2002, the Jewish klezmer musician Giora Feidman gave a benefit concert in the church to contribute to this initiative.

Although a course at the Bochum Goethe School under the direction of Pastor Martin Röttger dealt with the memorial in the tower hall for the first time in 1994 , it continued to serve as a chair and podium store until 1999. The Turmbauverein under Fred Bastan and the Kortum-Gesellschaft Bochum with Hans H. Hanke opened the hall to the public for the first time on the Open Monument Day in 1999.

In the summer of 2003, the Bochum art historian Hans H. Hanke - active as a monument curator at the LWL monument preservation, landscape and building culture in Westphalia and as a lecturer at the Ruhr University Bochum - organized a larger exhibition with art history students on the history of the Christ Church in the tower that drew attention to the memorial.

The renovation has now been completed.

With reference to the memorial hall, the square in front of the tower is one of the main projects of the 2010 Ruhr Area Capital of Culture . The artist Jochen Gerz created the place of the European promise here.

In autumn 2008 the album "Von Zaubererbrüdern - Live & Unplugged" by the band ASP was recorded in the church.

The church is known today as the "Church of Cultures".

organ

The organ was built in 1964 by the Berlin organ building workshop Karl Schuke . The slider chests -instrument has 38 registers on three manuals and pedal . The actions are mechanical.

I Rückpositiv C–
Quintadena 8th'
Coupling flute 8th'
Principal 4 ′
Dumped 8th'
Forest flute 2 ′
octave 2 ′
Sesquialtera II
Dulcian 8th'
Scharff V-VI
Fifth 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Tremulant
II main work C–
Quintadena 16 ′
Coupling flute 8th'
recorder 4 ′
Principal 8th'
octave 4 ′
Nassat 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
Hollow flute 2 ′
Rauschpfeife II
Mixture VI-VIII
Scharff III-IV
Trumpet 8th'
II breastwork C–
Gemshorn 2 ′
Flute 4 ′
Darling Dumped 8th'
Vox humana 8th'
Terzcymbel III
Sif flute 1'
Tremulant
Pedal C–
Sub-bass 16 ′
Gedacktpommer 8th'
Metal flute 4 ′
Night horn 2 ′
Principal 16 ′
octave 8th'
Rauschpfeife III
Mixture IV-VI
trombone 16 ′
Trumpet 8th'
Schalmey 4 ′
  • Coupling : I / II, III / II, I / P, II / P

Bells

In the tower of the Christ Church hang five cast steel bells from 1958, tuned to the tone sequence a ° -d′-e′-f sharp′-a ′. The bell is actually too heavy for the tower and can therefore only ring to a limited extent. More recently, all bells ring once a year on September 11th from 2:46 p.m. to 3:03 p.m. in memory of the attacks in the United States.

literature

  • Construction Commission of the Ev. Kirchengemeinde (ed.): Report on the construction of the Christ Church. Bochum 1879.
  • Bauwelt , 50th year 1959, No. 48 (from November 30, 1959), p. 1410 ff.
  • Bernhard Kerber: Bochum's Buildings 1860–1940. Studienverlag Brockmeyer, Bochum 1982, ISBN 3-88339-261-8 , pp. 103-107.
  • Christel Darmstadt (ed.): Sacred architecture in Bochum. Schürmann & Klagges, Bochum 2003, ISBN 3-920612-94-9 , pp. 16-19 (on the history of the community), pp. 26f. (to the church building).

Web links

Commons : Christ Church (Bochum)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Brakelmann : Evangelical Church in Bochum 1933: Approval and Resistance (=  Evangelical Perspectives, Issue 5). Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2013, ISBN 978-3-7322-4504-8 , p. 100 ( reading sample ).
  2. ↑ christuskirche-bochum.de: Church of Cultures.
  3. ^ Stephan Pollok: Organ Movement and Neo-Baroque in the Ruhr Area between 1948 and 1965. Dissertation, Ruhr University Bochum, 2007, p. 236 ( online as a PDF document with approx. 8 MB ).

Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 55 "  N , 7 ° 12 ′ 49"  E