Christ Church (Speyer)
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The Christ Church is a church with a parish center and rectory for the Protestant Christians of the Speyer-Nord district ("settlement") of the city of Speyer .
The community maintains close ecumenical relationships with the neighboring Catholic community of St. Konrad and maintains a partnership in Spalding , a twin town of Speyer.
A pair of kestrels have been nesting on the church tower for years .
Architect and building history
The architect of the building complex was Egon Freyer, who emerged as the winner of a competition. Construction began with the rectory in 1961, the first groundbreaking for the actual church took place in 1962, the foundation stone was laid in May 1963, the topping-out ceremony was celebrated in December 1963 and the commissioning ceremony on the 4th Advent 1964. The slow completion was triggered by the fact that the church should also serve as a garrison church for the soldiers and their families in a new pioneer barracks in the north. The commitment of the Federal Ministry of Defense for loans for part of the costs was withdrawn because of the political dangers at the time, yes, the assumed danger of war in the wake of the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis . Only after the regional church council had promised a special loan could further construction be continued. In addition to the architect, the pastor Hans Bähr shaped the building and construction activities.
Shape and material
The sight of the church is characterized by a star-shaped, slender, tapering 45-meter-high concrete tower, the copper-clad top of which is crowned by a gold-plated weathercock .
The appearance of the walls is determined by clinker bricks, which the architects used on a trip to Holland . The individual stones were poured into a bed of straw that burned when the bricks were burned, but left an interesting and lively structure in the surface. The construction company had to relearn how to work with clinker bricks. Originally the tower was also planned to be made of clinker brick, but the static problems could not be solved, so it was decided to build it in concrete. A building material that Freyer otherwise rejected the trend at the time for church construction because he did not want a "concrete fortress", but a warm clinker brick building.
inner space
Inside, in the irregularly arranged ribbon windows of the gable wall, the colored windows by Erich Schug determine the look as well as the raised wood-clad roof, a slightly raised pulpit, the altar on a slightly raised three-quarters round and a very large wooden cross next to the pulpit. After a long search, Freyer found the material for the wooden cross in a factory for railway sleepers made of oak, the Richtberg KG, known in Speyer as "Schwellebeez". For the vertical, Freyer chose a bar with a crack from the base to the tip, which, according to him, should symbolize the most elementary suffering. This monumental cross was initially criticized by many for being too raw and brutal.
In retrospect, Egon Freyer considers the Christ Church to be one of his best works and the congregation also values its church extremely, as does z. B. became clear on the occasion of the donation campaigns for the organ.
Solar roof
Very early in 1993, the community used the south-facing church roof to install 375 solar cells on 250 square meters.
organ
After decades only a small positive was available for music, an organ was built by the Speyer organ builder Scherpf and then by organ builder Peter Ohlert from Kirkel , based on old plans by the architect Freyer , which spirals up the right concrete pillar. The organ, which was completed in May 2000, is unique in this design.
Previous construction
Before the Christ Church was built, the Protestants of the young, newly founded district had a community center built in 1935 in Eichenweg opposite the settler community center, which was used as a kindergarten on weekdays and turned into a church service room on Sundays. After the Christ Church was built, a daycare center was housed in Eichenweg. After a fire in the 1990s, the after-school care center was relocated to the settlement school complex and the old parish hall was converted for residential purposes.
literature
- Martin Hussong: The Christ Church in Speyer-Nord . In: Erich Kölble (Ed.): Speyerer Siedlerfest 2005 . Siedlergemeinschaft, Speyer 2005, pp. 37–41.
Web links
- www.christuskirche-speyer.de Website of the parish
- www.posaunenchor-speyer.de Evangelical Trombone Choir Speyer
Coordinates: 49 ° 20 ′ 58.2 " N , 8 ° 25 ′ 45.1" E