Church of Peace to the Holy Angels
The Friedenskirche zu den heiligen Engeln is a Roman Catholic church in the district of Fusternberg , a district of Wesel . The former parish church has been a branch church within the parish of St. Nikolaus since 2013 .
Location
The church built on Fort Fusternberg is east of Wesel city center and the train station near the Niederrheinhalle .
history
Wesel was an important arms hub in the 19th century. In times of war there was room for up to 500 soldiers in the fortress. After 1890 the fort was abandoned. In 1908 the city of Wesel took over the site.
The fort served to secure the railway lines leading from the city to the south and east, the Oberhausen-Arnheim railway and the Haltern-Venlo railway , and the train station. It was built between 1856 and 1858 and then expanded more and more.
The fort was demolished from 1915 to 1922. The trenches were filled in and the site was designated as building land. The rooms of the fort served as storage.
The dry trench around the fort was 15 m wide. The reduit is three-story. The deepest floor was in the area of the trench floor and was built for defense with rifles. Light guns were fired from the middle story. The gun slots are still visible today. From the fort itself, after the razing in the 1920s, only the reduit and the right caponier remain, the shape of which dictated the floor plan of the church above, which uses the basement of the fort with its curve.
From 1939 the fort served as an air raid shelter . There was a medical room on the upper floor. In the cellar vaults with their three meter thick walls, people survived numerous bomb attacks between 1941 and 1945.
In 1949 the former Fort Fusternberg became the property of the parish of St. Maria Himmelfahrt. The upper floor of the Reduit was redesigned into a church room. An emergency church was set up in the basement as early as 1947 . In 1958, the new building of the Church of Peace “To the Holy Angels” on the foundations of the fort was completed.
architecture
The church was built from brick in 1958 according to plans by the Cologne architect Hans Schilling . It shows similarities with the churches of Neu St. Alban in Cologne and St. Stephanus in Münster .
The choir rises like the bow of a ship with the wreath of windows under the roof and with a side, grid window wall in matching brickwork.
The church rises on the reduit ("refuge") of the former fort , the crypt of which forms the upper floor of the reduit. In the basement there is an exhibition on the history of the church.
Furnishing
The "Engelkirche" is equipped with colored glass windows by Helmut Kaldenhoff . The cross and the Madonna , the trumpeting angel at the foot of the cross above the choir gable and the bronze reliefs on the side entrances leading to the upper floor of the church are works of the sculptor Toni Zenz .
Individual evidence
- ↑ www.rp-online.de, Engelkirche pilgrimage site from February 11, 2008
- ^ Research center for glass painting of the 20th century, Wesel-Fusternberg, Catholic Church to the Holy Angels
Web links
- Catholic parish Sankt Nikolaus Wesel (sanktnikolaus-wesel.de)
- Article SeitenSchiff - Story of a Salvation (sanktnikolaus-wesel.de)
- Inauguration of the Friedenskirche To the Holy Angels in Fusternberg (wesel.de)
- Fort Fusternberg and Engelkirche (zeitreise-wesel.de)
literature
- Silke Noltenhans: Church of Peace 'To the Holy Angels' in Wesel , diploma thesis 1998 ( reading sample )
Coordinates: 51 ° 39 ′ 14 " N , 6 ° 37 ′ 55" E