Cemetery Church (Wuppertal)
The cemetery church (originally 3rd church ) in Elberfeld is one of the largest churches in Wuppertal and the third oldest church built for the Reformed Church in Elberfeld. Important Reformed pastors held their office there, such as the moderator of the Reformed Federation Hermann Albert Hesse or the church historian Hermann Klugkist Hesse . With 1,020 seats, it is the second largest Protestant church in the Rhineland after the Konstantinbasilika Trier .
background
The inauguration of the Catholic Laurentius Church in 1835 had set a clear urban development accent and documented the dwindling supremacy of the Reformed Church in Elberfeld. The New Reformed Church for the west of Elberfeld, inaugurated in 1858, could not overtake it as the main church building. Elberfeld grew to the north, up the mountain, so that a third church seemed necessary for the then new residential area in the north of the city . The planned location on the Dorrenberg, which dominates the cityscape, as well as a certain monumentality (especially a monumental tower was desired) were the declared goals of the church building commission of the community. In addition, there were various requirements for the interior, which among other things led to the theatrical arrangement of the altar, pulpit, presbytery and organ in front of the congregation and to the orientation of the church to the north. The renowned Johannes Otzen was chosen as the architect , who received the building contract immediately after the Wiesbaden program was published , displacing older plans by the Elberfeld architects Plange and Hagenberg , some of which were later implemented in the Elberfeld Lutheran Christ Church . Otzen designed a central building with a 'long-distance effect', which was also presented as such on the outside than the Wiesbaden Ringkirche . For the exterior, he used late Romanesque building elements. The massive tower above the crossing is also based on Romanesque models (see, for example, Great St. Martin in Cologne). Otto Berg , who mostly worked with Otzen, was responsible for painting the interior walls .
history
The community met the planned magnificent building with mixed feelings: Some members rejected the building and instead pleaded for four small prayer houses at the corners of the city. However, the local council prevailed, and construction began in May 1894. The construction manager for the building, which cost a total of 472,883.72 marks, was the Elberfeld architect Adolf Cornehls ; the inauguration took place on March 1, 1898.
architecture
The cemetery church is built on the plan of a Greek cross . The mighty central octagonal tower (64 meters) rises behind the roofs of the four short cross arms, in their corners there are four little articulated, square stair towers, which complement the cross to an almost square floor plan and give the overall building something block-like. Four small, also octagonal tabernacle turrets mediate between them and the central tower. The south-east cross arm, which functions as the main entrance with four portals, and the conche of the north-west arm, in which the organ gallery is located, protrude from the overall square floor plan . It shows a dwarf gallery over three round windows, the facades of the other three arms each have two large rose windows. The exterior is largely walled up with greywacke , the articulated and plastic elements are made of light sandstone . Above the basement level, which is illuminated by small arched windows, a horizontal band of five overlapping rectangular layers surrounds the entire building at the level of the galleries. The area sloping to the north towards the cemetery was raised to street level by a terrace; funeral tombs are set into the basement on the north side.
Furnishing
The interior of the building, clad with yellowish bricks, identifies the church as a sermon church : the pulpit is located behind the altar in the middle in front of the organ gallery in an apse in the wall, which also served as a sound niche. In the organ gallery there were also places for the presbytery . On the ground floor, the benches are aligned in concentric circular segments around the pulpit and altar, above there are three interconnected galleries, the middle of which was used for the choir, as the organ gallery opposite was too small for the parish choir. The church has 1,020 seats. The sacristy and the choir are located under the organ gallery. Today the cemetery church is one of five places of worship of the Evangelical Parish Elberfeld-Nord.
The ornate original glazing made by the Ferdinand Müller stained glass factory in Quedlinburg was destroyed, except for the windows behind the organ and a few small windows in adjoining rooms, during air raids by British bomber groups in June 1943. In 1946 all affected window openings were closed with temporary fixtures made of weakly colored cathedral glass with rectangular lead, which became damaged over the years. As a result of a design competition, the window concept designed by the artist Günter Grohs was gradually and completely implemented by the F. Schneemelcher glass workshop in Quedlinburg from 2008 to 2017 . The written quotations in the center of the large rose windows correspond in a special way to the required "image-free" tradition in evangelical reformed churches.
organ
Since the cemetery church remained undamaged except for the windows in World War II, the furnishings largely correspond to the original condition. This also includes the romantic organ by Wilhelm Sauer (Frankfurt / Oder), which was installed as Opus 731 in 1898. The architect Otzen also designed the broad, nine-axis prospectus , which is characterized by three raised round towers. The two side towers are flanked by two prospect supports with triangular gables. Between the towers there are three small flat fields that end with a triangular gable. The instrument with mechanical cone chests has 30 registers , which are divided into two manuals and pedal . It was restored in 1994/1995 by Orgelbau Kreienbrink , who reconstructed six lost registers and restored them to their original state. Another restoration was carried out by the Berlin organ building workshop Karl Schuke in 2010 after mold had developed. It included a complete cleaning of all individual parts as well as maintenance work. The disposition is as follows:
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- R = 1994/1995 reconstructed
- Coupling : II / I, I / P, II / P
- Playing aids : 2 free combinations , tutti, roller
See also
literature
- Hermann-Peter Eberlein (Ed.): Album ministrorum of the Reformed Community of Elberfeld. Preachers and pastors since 1552 , Bonn 2003. ISBN 3-7749-3225-5 .
- Hermann-Peter Eberlein: Corrections. Sermons from the cemetery church in Wuppertal-Elberfeld , Wuppertal 2012.
- Werner Franzen: Places of worship in change: Protestant church building in the Rhineland 1860–1914. Dissertation. Duisburg 2002. ( online ( Memento from December 11, 2005 in the Internet Archive ))
- Klaus Goebel , Andreas Knorr (Ed.): Churches and places of worship in Elberfeld. Düsseldorf 1999, ISBN 3-930250-35-7 .
- Heinz-Helmut Majewski: The cemetery church in Elberfeld. Wuppertal 1978, ISBN 3-8130-0007-9 .
- Klaus Pfeffer: The church buildings in Wuppertal-Elberfeld. Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-88094-301-X .
- Evangelical Church Community Elberfeld-Nord, District Friedhofskirche (Ed.): A light on my way. The new overall glazing of the Wuppertal-Elberfeld cemetery church. Wuppertal 2018.
Web links
- Entry in the Wuppertal monument list
- Data and photos on historical-daten.de
- Internet presence of the Evangelical Congregation Elberfeld-Nord
- Historic organ in danger Westdeutsche Zeitung (online) from August 17, 2009
Individual evidence
- ↑ Renovation work on the Westdeutsche Zeitung cemetery church (online) from July 2, 2014
- ↑ Restoration of the Wilhelm Sauer organ ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 2, 2013.
- ^ Organ in Wuppertal, Friedhofskirche ( Memento from January 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 30, 2015
Coordinates: 51 ° 15 ′ 45.6 ″ N , 7 ° 8 ′ 13.7 ″ E