Cathedral forum
The Domforum (own name: DOMFORUM) in Cologne is located on the Domplatte opposite the west portal of Cologne Cathedral and is an institution of the General Association of Catholic Churches in the City of Cologne. It sees itself as a meeting center for the Catholic Church in Cologne and as the visitor center for Cologne Cathedral.
Building
In the new building with atrium , completed by Fritz Schaller in 1953 , the former bank for the community first moved in . The counter room was partially transparent with chain curtains and protected from view. Schaller created such a building with architectural elements that removed the classic "delimitation" of the room. The four upper floors are combined by a concrete grid facade, the steel support pillars of which also support the roof over the recessed last floor. The same year as the new building which was created pigeons fountain of Ewald Mataré on the north side; it was donated by the bank. The Archdiocese of Cologne acquired the office building with the address Domkloster No. 3 , which has been a listed building since January 3, 1990, in 1991 for 79 million DM and had it converted accordingly. Since October 1995, the cathedral forum has been housed here for church public relations work and since June 2000 also the cathedral radio .
The former counter room is now used as an event room. Outwardly, it looks rather inconspicuous during the day, from the inside offers a panoramic view of the Domplatte with the cathedral, Cologne main station and replica of the finial . In the interior, a square, internally glazed atrium extends over the entire five floors up to the glass roof, which is delimited on the first floor by a circular incision. The large glass surfaces on the ground floor extend to the floor. They separate the foyer of the cathedral forum from the cathedral plate and are tightly structured by a diamond-shaped network. The glass surfaces do not form any demarcation, but act like a membrane . The aim is to create the impression of permeability and the extension of the cathedral plate into the house.
In 2010 the foyer of the Domforum was fundamentally redesigned after an architecture competition by the architects Martini Architekten from Bonn and handed over in September 2010. Renovation of the building began in June 2019. In the meantime, the office of the Domforum will be relocated to a church building on Roncalliplatz (Roncalliplatz 2), and the public events will take place in various locations in the center of Cologne.
tasks
The Domforum acts as:
- Visitor center of Cologne Cathedral. Around 8,000 guided tours for the approximately six million visitors to the cathedral are organized in the Domforum every year. The Domforum itself has 300,000 visitors a year. Films about the cathedral are shown regularly in a cinema room in the basement.
- City pastoral information and meeting center. Visitors to the Domforum receive information about the Catholic Church in Cologne, discussions and advice on religious questions and help in psychological and physical emergencies and spiritual impulses. The Domforum has a meditation room ( room of silence ).
- Event center of the Catholic Church in Cologne. In over 400 events annually, topics of the Catholic faith, urban life and political education are taken up, and numerous cultural events are carried out.
To this end, the Domforum offers the following event formats - partly in cooperation with social and church groups:
- Culture: music, book presentations and readings, exhibitions, film forum
- City talk : Talk at the cathedral , city points (lectures on art, the city and church, architecture), Kölsch music and Klön
- Time for God / invitation to faith: enjoy the Bible , spirituality in conversation , meditation in the room of silence
- Faith, Theology and Religion: Theological Lectures and Series on Ecumenism, Dialogue with Religions, Theological-Literary Quartet , Pax Christi Forum
- “God and the World”: DOMFORUM series - the topic - on current social and church issues, people - environment - church, intercultural encounters, science and faith, fair market
Other facilities in the house are the Catholic city dean of Cologne, the Catholic educational institute in the city of Cologne (branch of the educational institute of the Archdiocese of Cologne ), the Cologne Catholic Committee, the cathedral parish office, the cathedral radio and the Catholic faith information FIDES.
ladder
- Karl Heinz Paulus (1995-2007)
- Peter Scharr (2008-2010)
- Rainer Tüschenbönner (since 2011)
All in one person also head of the Catholic Education Center in the city of Cologne.
literature
- Paulus, Karl Heinz: An open house of the church. The Cologne Cathedral Forum. In: Diakonia , 32.2001, pp. 322-325
- Paulus, Karl Heinz: City and passer-by pastoral care using the example of the Cologne Cathedral Forum. In: Lebendige Seelsorge, 51. 2000, pp. 44–47
- Felzmann, Gerda: Pastoral care and spirituality in the Domforum Cologne. In: Pastoralblatt for the dioceses of Aachen, Berlin, Essen, Hildesheim, Cologne and Osnabrück , 51.1999, pp. 173–177
- Wiegand, Markus, Merz, Martin: Experience the Church - Ten Years of the Domforum. Encounter, culture and information in the heart of Cologne. Wienand Verlag, Cologne 2005
Web links
- Official website of the Domforum
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfram Hagspiel (ed.), Cologne - An Architecture Guide , 1999, p. 7
- ↑ domforum.de , accessed on June 26, 2019.
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 27.5 ″ N , 6 ° 57 ′ 22.9 ″ E