Friedenskirche (Mainz)
The Evangelical Peace Church is located on Pestalozziplatz in the heart of Mainz-Mombach . The listed church was built from 1910 to 1911 in the neo - classical style Art Nouveau . The Friedenskirche was built with the help of Gustav-Adolf-Werk in a series of churches of this foundation; it survived the destruction of the war.
History of the Protestant parish
Mainz was largely Catholic because of its position as a metropolitan city . At the end of the electoral state , only a few hundred Protestants were registered. It was only through the " articles organiques " of 1802 that Napoleon guaranteed freedom of religion and the Protestant church was recognized. In 1832 Rheinhessen became part of the Protestant church in the Grand Duchy of Hesse , where Rheinhessen formed its own superintendent. On October 15, 1885, the first Protestant community was founded in Mombach. Thanks to the industrial boom in the middle of the 19th century, which was accompanied by an influx of foreign workers, the population in the largest village in the Grand Duchy consisted of 2,822 people that year, including 485 Protestant Christians. A Protestant church tax was levied by the administration for the first time as early as 1876.
Mayor Heim made the hall of the mayor's office available to the new community, which the local community had acquired from widow Heim in 1873 and rebuilt. The solemn inauguration was attended by 153 churchgoers. The parish belonged to the rural community of Mainz, which also included Gonsenheim, Budenheim, Drais and Finthen; their pastor was Karl Wilhelm Lynker. The space in the mayor's office was insufficient from the start and the community continued to grow. For this reason, next to the "Gastellschen Hospiz" in the Emrichruhstrasse, land was acquired and the Mainz architect J. Meyer was commissioned to build a prayer room. This building was already funded by the Gustav Adolf Foundation. This prayer room was a red brick building with four windows each on the ground floor and ground floor. Two rooms on the ground floor were intended for the church servant, another room was used for teaching and administration purposes. The actual prayer room was upstairs. It was inaugurated on November 24, 1891 with a festive procession by Superintendent Köhler and Dean Walther.
The pastors of the rural community lived in Mainz until 1892. In 1895 Heinrich Bechtolsheimer was parish administrator, and in 1899 he was ordained pastor. He lived in a rented apartment until 1903, before the rectory on Backmuhlstrasse was completed.
To round off their hospice grounds, the Gastell brothers acquired an expansion area, including the prayer hall, intended for a later church building by the community, and thus enabled the Protestant community to plan and build a new community center. In 1908 the congregation already had 2200 members and the church council decided to build a new building.
Location and surroundings
At the time of its construction, the building was on the outskirts of what was then the secular community. As early as 1908–1909, the Pestalozzi School, a three-storey two-wing building with an extended mansard and hipped mansard roof and an integrated public pool, was built by the Mainz Building Department on Pestalozziplatz. Together with the school, the Friedenskirche forms an ensemble that defines the townscape. It is built in the middle of a hill and has access from the north and west. The square, striking 25 meter high church tower towers over the town and can be seen from afar from the north and west. It is covered with slate, like the rest of the roof. The rectory adjoins directly to the south. Due to its hillside location, the area is traffic-calmed despite its current central location.
architecture
The Mainz architect Reinhold Weisse , a student of the well-known Darmstadt regional church builder Friedrich Pützer , was commissioned to design a building according to the specifications of the Wiesbaden program . The ceremonial laying of the cornerstone took place on 10 April 1910th As is often the case with churches, it is not a foundation stone built into the interior of the building or in the area of the foundations, but a corner stone visible in the facade , in this case on the northwest corner of the tower. With this corner stone the saving work of God should be praised:
“I thank you for hearing me; you have become my savior. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. "
The time capsule contains bread and wine. The inauguration took place after twenty months of construction on October 22, 1911 in the presence of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig and Grand Duchess Eleonore .
Exterior design
The result is a functional central building with an integrated kindergarten, community rooms, as well as a parsonage and a parish office. The simple hall structure and the rectory are provided with a hipped roof. The former nurses' house with a half-hipped roof, which is now used as a residential and community area, is an extension of the east-west axis, but half a storey lower. It offers space for two apartments, one of which is intended for the sexton . The church space is on the first floor, but due to the hillside location, it can be entered from a large forecourt via a few stairs through three double-leaf doors on the west side. The portals are decorated with walls and tympana made of yellow sandstone.
Interior design
The building concept follows the Wiesbaden program , which regards the church building as a meeting place for the celebrating community and which has been consistently implemented here. Although community and neighboring buildings are attached to the tower on two sides, the interior has two rows of windows each. On the long sides there are two wooden galleries inside , which offer space for further church visitors. There is no separation between ship and choir . The focus is on the altar, which includes both places of annunciation as a pulpit altar in the Protestant sense. Weisse combined this pulpit altar with the organ above and the singing stage to create a visual and meaningful unit, which also corresponds to the interplay of the acts of worship and is typical for churches according to the Wiesbaden program .
The central wooden pulpit , accessible via two symmetrical staircases, dominated the raised altar. Behind the pulpit was an impressive, regular organ prospect . The church, which is brightly plastered from the outside, made an overall gloomy, mysterious impression on the inside. The church hall, the surrounding galleries, the gallery parapets and the rear walls of the galleries are paneled in dark wood and were painted with dark brown, ocher, dark red and green ornaments. The use of dark wood, high pews and a floor covering made of dark green linoleum reinforced this mysticism.
Redesign of the church and the paintings
Similar to the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council , the church was redesigned in the 1960s on the basis of a new understanding of theology. The municipality commissioned the architect Rolf Romero to carefully implement this new way of thinking in the building. The previous central pulpit and organ position were dismantled, the altar replaced by a simple wooden table. The linoleum was replaced by solid parquet paving. The walls of the interior were painted lightly instead of dark tones.
The original painting of the organ niche, the gallery parapet and the distinctive ornaments of the ceiling painting have been preserved . The original five painted church windows have been preserved. They show Christ and the four evangelists. The now relatively bare wall behind the altar is decorated with a tapestry and a number of crosses. The communion implements from 1911, a gift from the grand ducal couple, and some Art Nouveau candlesticks from the original equipment are kept in a showcase for all to see.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ see also : Denomination distribution of the inhabitants of the city of Mainz
- ^ Heinz Schier: Mombach local history 1641 to 1896 . Mainz 1999 (self-published).
- ^ Heinrich Bechtolsheimer: Memories of a Diaspora Pastor , 1928
- ↑ The history of Protestantism in Mainz. Festschrift for the 200th anniversary of the Evangelical Church Community in Mainz. November 20, 2002, archived from the original on April 19, 2006 ; Retrieved July 3, 2016 .
- ↑ On the history of the Friedenskirche ( Memento of the original from February 17, 2010 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.
- ↑ Charm of Art Nouveau preserves article from the Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz from April 8, 2010
Coordinates: 50 ° 1 ′ 8 ″ N , 8 ° 13 ′ 25.3 ″ E