Protestant main church Rheydt
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The Evangelical Main Church Rheydt is a Protestant church building in Rheydt , a district of Mönchengladbach .
History of the previous building
In place of the landmark of the formerly independent city of Rheydt , built by the famous Berlin church builder Professor Johannes Otzen (1839-1911) in 1899–1902, the “Old Main Church” was located on the market square until 1899, whose origins date back to the Middle Ages. In the 16th century this village church, originally consecrated to St. Alexander, became Protestant with almost the entire population of the Jülich subordinate Rheydt and served the Reformed church service from 1587 (finally from 1633) . In 1741, an elongated transverse structure was added between the tower and the choir and it was transformed into a Protestant preaching church, in which the growing congregation could gather around the pulpit and the sacrament table in accordance with their confession .
With Rheydt's growth as a result of industrialization, the old main church proved to be too small in the early second half of the 19th century.
The new building (1899–1902)
When the Friedenskirche, which was put into service as a subsidiary church in 1866, was no longer sufficient to remedy the ever increasing need for space, the old church on the market was put down in order to build the “New Main Church”. Only the grave slab of the Otto von Bylandts family (now walled in at the entrance to the sacristy) and other memorabilia (three columns, lintel, tower cross, plaque for the Reformation Festival in 1817), which can be seen today on the ground floor of the main tower.
In contrast to the simple predecessor building, the stately new building was intended to signal Rheydt's change to an industrial city and also stood alongside the new town hall built in 1897. In spite of all the elaborate execution and the very splendid interior design, the evangelical reformed spatial planning of the previous building was taken up and continued by consciously opting for the architect Johannes Otzen and his Wiesbaden program published in 1891 . He describes his central area, which is oriented towards the needs of Protestant worship and has also been consistently implemented in Rheydt, as the "meeting house of the celebrating community". In terms of architectural history, the main church thus ties in with the tradition of Protestant parish and sermon churches of the 17th and 18th centuries. This is also underlined by the pulpit altar , which is specially designed in terms of figures and flowers , which enables the preacher to be heard and seen from all 1200 seats. Purely stylistically, this late historic building can hardly be classified. The neo-Gothic Otzen deliberately used a "combination style" by merging Romanesque and Gothic style elements. The individual form, as well as the figural and floral decoration in the early Art Nouveau, is always subordinate to the concentration of all worshipers on the pulpit and altar - both placed with the same rank.
The main church after World War II
During the Second World War, the building suffered severe damage to the roofs; the largest of the three side towers was not replaced with its originally pointed helmet when it was rebuilt as a reminder of the destruction in the Second World War . Except for the windows, the original furnishings including the late-romantic Sauer organ from 1902, which is very valuable today, have been preserved. However, penetrating water damaged large parts of the Art Nouveau painting. During the interior renovation in 1962, out of theological conviction and also for reasons of contemporary taste, the church leadership decided to renew the interior as soberly and without any picturesque decoration. This seriously disrupted the original impression of the Hauptkirche as a total work of art.
In 2001 the presbytery decided to restore the original colored interior from 1902. The two depictions of Christ on the triumphal arch are excluded from this. After the faithful restoration of the pulpit altar and the reconstruction of missing lighting fixtures had already been achieved since 1997 through the commitment of the "Förderkreis Hauptkirche" founded in 1995, it succeeded in 2004 with EU funding from the INTERREG IIIA project "People and Churches in Dialogue About Times and borders ”and through many donations from the parish and citizens of Mönchengladbach to reconstruct the spatial arrangement of the interior down to the areas under the galleries of the transept. As a basis for the restoration of the interior of the main church, in addition to exposed findings, primarily historical photos were used. In November 2011, the art glazing from 1962 in the area of the apse and below the organ gallery was replaced by designs by the glass artist Thomas Kuzio . In 2017, the painting of the vault cap under the organ and the side galleries was restored.
The Evangelical Main Church has been the Cross of Nails Center since November 2011 .
Data
| architect | Johannes Otzen |
| construction manager | Wilhelm Maack |
| start of building | November 20, 1899 |
| Commissioning date | December 2, 1902 |
| Estimated construction costs | 531,000.00 marks |
| Final construction costs | 603,888.13 marks |
| Original seat number | 1,294 |
| Today's number of seats | 1,200 |
| Height of the main tower | 72 m |
Monument description
In the exterior view, the church appears as a short, single-aisle structure of four bays with a steep gable roof , instead of a transept, expanded like a hall by two equally high aisle bays under hipped roofs. Retracted, two-thirds of a circle rounded apse with slender choir towers , narrow protruding west yoke, flanked in the south by the "Hahnenturm". In the north, set back in the angle between the nave and the transept, the oversized main tower, an urban counterweight to the town hall tower.
The building was entered under No. H 020 on May 14, 1985 in the monuments list of the city of Mönchengladbach .
organ
The large organ on the west gallery was built in 1902 by the organ builder Wilhelm Sauer (Frankfurt / Oder) in an organ prospect planned by the architect with 40 stops on three manuals and pedal . The instrument has been changed several times over the years. a. in the course of the organ movement, when the originally romantic character was removed by "lightening" the sound and replacing romantic registers with "baroque" ones. In the years 1985–1986 the instrument was extensively revised by the organ builder Karl Schuke (Berlin) and the organ was largely restored to its 1902 condition. The original pneumatic gaming table was replaced by a new electric one in the 1950s. In 1987 the organ got a new console, which is outwardly matched to the Sauer console. The actions remained electro-pneumatic: electric from the console to the relay, then originally pneumatic. In November / December 2012 the organ was completely re-voiced by the Dutch organ building company Verschueren, Heythuysen, based on the latest findings of the historical sound of the Sauer organs.
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Pairing :
- Normal coupling: II / I, III / I, III / II, I / P, II / P, III / P
- Sub-octave coupling: III / III
- Super octave coupling: I / I
- Playing aids : Register crescendo , fixed combinations (pp, p, mf, f, ff), 4000-fold typesetting system
Web links
- Parish website
- Website of the choir
- Photo album and information about the buildings on Rheydt market square
- The bell of the Ev. Main church Rheydt on wdr.de/Glockenpforte
Individual evidence
- ↑ Monuments list of the city of Mönchengladbach ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2014 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.
- ↑ More information on the history of the organ
- ↑ More information about the organ
Coordinates: 51 ° 10 ′ 5.4 " N , 6 ° 26 ′ 47" E