Church of the Redeemer (Essen)

Evangelical Church of the Redeemer in Essen

The Evangelical Church of the Redeemer ( listen ^?^/^I ) in Essen's southern district is a neo-Romanesque church building that has been a listed building since 1986. Today it not only offers a space for church services, but also various events for people interested in art and culture throughout the year. The concerts of the Essen Bach Choir , which are an integral part of the Essen cultural scene, deserve mention here.

Chronicle of the Erlöserkirche Essen

year	event
1896	The church construction is necessary because of the size of the old town.
1897	The parish acquires the property on the southern corner of the intersection of Bismarck- and Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse for around 90,000 marks (actual value: around 250,000 marks).
1899	The first construction plans are presented. The church council decides in favor of August Orth's design .
May 11, 1901	August Orth dies, the presbytery is looking for a new architect.
1904	Franz Schwechten (Berlin), builder of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, the Erlöserkirche in Jerusalem and other Protestant churches, presents his plans. The shell construction sum of 400,000 marks is provided.
October 31, 1906	Superintendent Klingemann laid the foundation stone on Reformation Day .
1907	Three bells with a total weight of 10,900 kilograms are cast and hung by the Apoldaer bell foundry Schilling .
November 29, 1909	The church is handed over to its destination by General Superintendent D. (= Dr. theol. Hc) Valentin Umbeck . Construction costs: 929,314.00 marks. Many donations are used for dignified furnishings (e.g. bells by Carl Funke ; organ by Margarethe Krupp ).
1937	The artistic decoration of the church is completed with the precious mosaics in the chancel, a gift from the Krupp family.
March 5, 1943	The church is badly damaged by an air raid and completely unusable for church services. Subsequent air strikes continue the work of destruction.
1945	The Church of the Redeemer is without a roof. Remnants of the vault threaten to collapse. Stalls that are still preserved are damaged by rain. The tower no longer has a helmet, only a bell remains from the peal. The rectory and the parish hall have also been destroyed. Services are held on the 2nd floor of the tower on about 20 m², later in the sacristy.
1948/1949	The rebuilding of the church begins. Pastor Reinhardt founds the church building association Erlöserkirche and has “building blocks” sold. The roof over the main nave of the church is being built, the vaults inside the church are being renewed. The window openings are closed with cathedral glass. The old stained glass windows are lost forever.
May 6, 1951	The interior will be used again with a festive service.
1952	A positive organ can be purchased.
October 30, 1955	The church peals with three bells again. A third was added to two bells taken from the market church.
1957	The old town community is divided. Four new congregations arise: Old Town North, East, Middle, South (later: Church of the Redeemer). Hugo Kükelhaus is commissioned to redesign the interior of the Erlöserkirche.
1962	Two new bells are drawn up into the tower. The bells are now five-part with a total weight of around 7,000 kilograms.
1966	The new part of the community center with a large hall, meeting room and adjoining rooms is completed.
1984	Big festival week on the occasion of the 75th anniversary with festschrift and festival service.
1999	The interior of the Erlöserkirche is being renovated and restored. The rose window above the main portal is exposed again. The interior is partly given a new color scheme. The dome receives a ring of light seven meters in diameter.
2004	The Erlöserkirchengemeinde Essen-Altstadt is renamed to "Evangelical Erlöserkirchengemeinde Essen".
October 31, 2005	The Reformation Festival of all parishes in Essen is celebrated in the Church of the Redeemer under the motto "Living from freedom - the creative in church and culture".
2007	The presbyteries of the Redeemer parish and the parish of Holsterhausen decide to merge the two parishes for 2008.
2008	The merger was completed in November 2008 with the closure of St. Luke's Church.
2008	The children's church service in the former St. Luke's Church starts its work on the 2nd Advent in the Church of the Redeemer. The chapel attached to the Church of the Redeemer was specially chosen for this purpose and is named "Lukaskapelle".
2009	The Erlöserkirche celebrates its centenary with many events.

Building history

The construction of the Erlöserkirche in Essen took an unusually long time from the first planning in 1896 to the inauguration in 1909. The assembly consists of the church, the rectory and confirmation hall and the bell tower, which braces both parts together and sets the main accent of the building, which is visible from afar.

The Erlöserkirche is a hall structure with a transept and a surrounding gallery. The polygonal apse is framed by two round towers. The fronts of the transept are also broken in a polygonal manner, while the galleries that flank the facade end with a round end. A wide staircase rises to a group of three portals that open the way into the vestibule. They are set very high in relation to the facade and cut deep. Above it opens a row of arcades of seven arched windows, across the middle of which a Romanesque arched window is cut. The gable is accompanied by an ascending group of three arcades. In the top arch is the statue of the Savior.

The total length of the church is 50 meters, it offers space for 1200 people, of which 500 can be found in the galleries. The exterior consists of Ohlsbrücker sandstone, the base of Niedermendinger basalt lava.

The apparatus of forms that we encounter here is quoted from the Romanesque. Characteristic of this style are thick-walled walls into which deep openings are cut. In contrast, the wall templates are laid flat.

Building quotes in the Erlöserkirche Essen

Church of the Redeemer around 1910, on the right in the background the building of the Association for Mining Interests

The neo-Romanesque style used for the Church of the Redeemer is characterized by the fact that the building is composed of explicitly identifiable quotations. It emerged from monument preservation impulses that sprouted in the 19th century as part of the romantic enthusiasm for the Middle Ages. For example, the western building of the cathedral in Speyer was rebuilt in Romanesque forms that were transported into the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century, Wilhelm II in particular promoted neo-Romanesque architecture as an art-loving monarch. He saw in it the resumption of Friedrich Barbarossa's idea of the “renovatio imperii” and used the Hohenstaufen architectural forms as an indication of the succession and inheritance of the medieval empire.

You can find a quote from Worms Cathedral in the apse zone of the Erlöserkirche Essen. Its west choir and the west towers (1171–1181) form a characteristic assembly. The polygonal choir with a 5/8 end is framed by round towers. However, a closer comparison reveals some differences. In Essen, the towers are only divided into three segments. The continuous dwarf gallery in the apse has been removed. The vertical structure of the buttresses makes it appear massive and compact. This is also a result of the horizontal structure and the simultaneous bracing with the towers and transept arms by means of continuous cornices. The arrangement of the windows also shows differences.

The architect of the Erlöserkirche in Essen, Franz Schwechten , takes over an archetypical Romanesque building group and transforms it in his own way that reveals the model.

Other quotations are, for example, the portals, which have their origins in the Saxon Romanesque, the staircases are quotations from the apse of the Speyer Cathedral, the shape of the round window can be derived from the Limburg Cathedral.

The bell tower

The most striking characteristic of the entire building is without a doubt the mighty bell tower, which rises like an Italian campanile next to the church. Its square floor plan and the only slightly divided wall surface on the first two floors give it a massive impression. Above this, the arcades of the sound storey open, over which another row of arched arcades rises, which is bordered by polygonal corner turrets. A tent roof completes the building over the gables of the clock floor. The vertical structure of the building with strong corner pilasters that end in the corner turrets is striking. The individual walls are also divided into rectangular fields by pilaster strips and arched friezes. The walls are only broken through in the upper part of the tower. A direct quote does not seem recognizable here, but the massive mass of the tower is reminiscent of the abbey churches in Murbach or Maursmünster in Alsace.

The bells

Since October 30, 1955, three bells have been ringing from the tower of the Church of the Redeemer. Of these, the two large former bells of the Evangelical Market Church in Essen are.

The oldest bell of the current peal in terms of size, weight and pitch is the oldest. It was cast in the PC Sartorius bell foundry in 1812, it has a diameter of 1.15 meters, weighs 920 kilograms and has the strike tone f ¹ . This bell used to ring every evening at 9 p.m. from the tower of the market church .

The largest bell was cast in 1842 in the bell foundry Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock in Gescher . It has a diameter of 1.51 meters at the lower edge of the bell and weighs 2,310 kg. Their strike tone is d ¹ . The inscription on this bell marks the time in which it was written: “ To the temple, I call, wallet united. I rejoice when you are united on a festival day. Loudly I ask for help in fears of need and dully, ah! and sad when I die “This bell used to be used by the municipality as a fire bell.

On September 15, 1955, a new bell with the tone g ^{1 was} cast in Gescher . It weighs 749 kg with a diameter of 1.05 meters. In memory of the old bell of the Church of the Redeemer, the inscription: “ Oh, stay with us, my Lord and God, with your faithfulness ”.

In 1962 two new bells are pulled up the church tower and complement the three previous bells. They are tuned in c ¹ and a ¹ and, together with the three other bells, again form the full sound of the ringing of the Redeemer.

Tower of the Church of the Redeemer
Bells in the tower
Tower room
Tower stairs

The interior

The interior of the church offers a completely different picture than the exterior would lead one to expect. A spacious hall offers a view of the altar, pulpit and baptismal font. Only four round pillars support the pendentives on which the dome rests. Four further pillars support the three yokes of the groin vault, which span the southern part of the nave and the choir gallery. In the north, a yoke each over the altar and organ loft forms the end of the room. The inner shell of the wall is spanned by a gallery that allows a view of the altar from everywhere. The use of space in the relatively modest interior of the church has been solved in a remarkable way.

inner space
dome
Baptismal font
altar

The renovation by Hugo Kükelhaus

Entrance portal

(Paul Vogt, from the Festschrift of the Erlöserkirchengemeinde from 1959; abridged) The effects of the Second World War made it necessary to start a redesign as early as the first post-war years. Until the late 1950s, the interior of the Church of the Redeemer remained a temporary solution. In 1957, after long deliberations by the presbytery at the time, the Soest artist, interior designer and teacher Hugo Kükelhaus was commissioned to redesign the interior.
The limits of the redesign remained strictly drawn through the old building, as nothing could and should not be changed in the architecture itself. Hugo Kükelhaus was only able to try to get a changed spatial impression corresponding to today's requirements by freeing the existing structural forms from the accessories of the old building, one with a pronounced architectural function and with the interior fittings.
The first thing you notice is the simplicity of the overall impression, which is achieved through a clear structure of the components that emphasizes their function. At the same time, the room optically gains greater width and height. The smooth plastering and the light paint of the pillars made the ashlar that had dominated the building invisible up to then, which once left the impression of massive weight. The pillars now rise brightly. Unadorned, yet emphasized in their architectural effect, the arches swing through the space spanned by the rebuilt dome, also now undecorated. This impression of restrained simplicity is reinforced by the room closure with a smooth and dark altar wall, in front of which the baptismal font and altar canteen stand out. The new three-part organ front, which towers above the gallery, looks like part of the building.
Hugo Kükelhaus also designed the grilles, doors and windows. The lower rows of windows repeat the same theme of the tree, they are more colorful than the larger ones in the gallery, in whose round arches reminiscences of heavenly bodies, sun and stars resonate. Only the seven windows above the gallery on the entrance side have a great power of colors. They shine in deep blue and flaming red, strong and festive. The light band of the windows harmonizes happily with the light, almost graceful-looking gallery grilles as well as with the entrance door, which emerged from the same design language.
Today's pulpit stands freely in the room. Made of wood, growing up almost vegetal, it rises above a stone substructure that seems to taper downwards despite the staircase. Today's baptismal font (by Gisela Schmidt-Reuther) is based on the basic idea of the baptismal bowl. A dark, flat and simple bowl rests on a round base made of stone, which is vaguely reminiscent of a supporting and holding hand, but without showing naturalistic shapes. Deepened by one step in the chancel, it is enclosed by a simple forged grille. A chain is attached to the entrances with the image of the pigeon on one side and that of the fish on the other.

Web links

Commons : Church of the Redeemer - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Excerpt from the list of monuments of the city of Essen ; accessed on November 12, 2016

51.444955555556 7.0053416666667Coordinates: 51 ° 26 ′ 41.8 ″ N , 7 ° 0 ′ 19.2 ″ E

[1] Excerpt from the list of monuments of the city of Essen ; accessed on November 12, 2016