Heilige Ewalde (Wuppertal)
The Heilige Ewalde church is the Roman Catholic church for the Wuppertal district of Cronenberg .
history
The history of the Catholic community of Cronenberg goes back to the 14th century, according to a register from 1312 for the first time about Cronenberg as a separate parish . At the location of today's Reformed Church , a first church can be found since 1371 at the latest, which at that time was still a branch church of St. Laurentius in Elberfeld . It was dedicated to the Ewaldi brothers . In 1428 Lübbert von Galen, then pawnbroker of Elberfeld, gave his estate at Steinbeck to the Cronenberg Catholics on the condition that the Cronenberg chaplain should hold holy masses regularly . Since 1570 almost the entire Cronenberg community joined the Reformation . The remaining Catholics were since then part of the community of the monastery in Graefrath .
First Saint Joseph Church from 1843
Since the middle of the 18th century, the number of Catholics living in Cronenberg has risen sharply, and the majority of them are merchants from the flourishing tool industry . On May 24, 1791, Elector Karl Theodor ordered the re-establishment of a Catholic community in the economically important Cronenberg, whereupon Privy Councilor and Vice Chancellor von Knapp bought an inn on Cologne - Hitdorfer Landstrasse (later: Provinzialstrasse Elberfeld-Hitdorf ) and converted it into a community hall let. On March 19, 1792, for the first time since the Reformation, a Catholic mass could be held in Cronenberg. Due to the date of the re-establishment of the Catholic community at St. Joseph's , the community has since called St. Joseph .
In 1841 the first plans began for the construction of a separate church to replace the parish hall on today's main street, which was slowly becoming too small. The foundation stone of the new church was laid on April 6, 1842, after a cheap plot of land not far from the parish hall was acquired. The Ronsdorf architects, the Mathäi brothers, were entrusted with the planning of the building project. On November 24, 1843, the neoclassical church was consecrated at the same time as the Catholic school.
On the night of September 27th to 28th, 1856, the church building , known as the mission house , burned down completely, and the entire church archive was destroyed. It was rebuilt a little later and from then on used as a rectory , a new parish hall was built as an extension to the church. In 1867 its own cemetery was inaugurated, and since then the community has been completely independent of the mother parish in Elberfeld. In September 1901 several relics of the Ewaldi brothers were transferred to the church, the number of members of the parish at that time was about 1000.
On July 3, 1943, the church fell victim to a bomb fire caused by phosphorus or stick bombs, which severely attacked the building fabric. It was a mistake, the church remained largely unscathed during the actual air raid on Cronenberg on June 25, 1943. Despite the great damage, a Corpus Christi procession was able to move into the church again in 1945. However, it was not until 1952 that the church was solemnly newly consecrated . At the same time, the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the church, which was canceled due to the war, was made up for. In 1959 a new organ was inaugurated by the Johannes Klais Orgelbau company .
In 1964 a building survey came to the conclusion that the church was acutely dilapidated and in danger of collapsing. The strong heat generated by the fire had "pulverized" the mortar in the masonry almost completely; renovation was no longer possible due to its condition. The services had to be stopped immediately. Only two services could be celebrated in the church; 1971 on the occasion of the founding of the ecumenical working group and the last service on March 5, 1972. From then on, the weekend services were held in the Lutheran Emmaus Church.
On March 22, 1972, the old church was blown up, the demolition work continued until May.
Today's church
In 1965, planning began to build a new parish center to replace the old church. In 1968 the topping-out ceremony for the first phase of construction was celebrated; construction work lasted until November 1973. On Christmas Eve 1973 the first service could be celebrated in the church, which has now been built in a completely different form. The kindergarten was able to move into the building as early as April, and the community took the original name of Heilige Ewalde again. In 1983 the Klais organ that had been stored up until then was rebuilt from the old church. On March 29, 2000, Joachim Cardinal Meisner , Archbishop of Cologne , ordered the establishment of a new parish association of Wuppertaler Südhöhen , to which the church has belonged since then, together with the churches of Sankt Hedwig am Friedenshain, Sankt Christophorus auf Lichtscheid and Sankt Joseph in Ronsdorf.
In 2009 the community area behind the church, which had become too large due to the establishment of the parish association, was reduced in size in favor of the kindergarten, which has since implemented an integrative concept.
Building description
The hall church can be assigned to the directions of the New Building as well as partly also to the organic architecture . It consists of a 28 meter wide and 27 meter long angular cube, which roughly has the shape of an irregular octagon . The substructure of the church is made entirely of exposed concrete , while the pointed roof, the bell tower and the foyer skylight are covered with artificial slate. The church has only a few windows, the main part of the light falls through two windows on the west and east side of the roof into the church hall, which is also illuminated by two very narrow skylights on the north and south side of the roof. Similar to the older church Sankt Hedwig, the pews are rounded and allow a good view of the altar. The church hall is located below street level, which sinks to a lower level on the north side on Neukuchhausen street towards the east. The church is entered from the west via a staircase that leads into a small foyer, which in turn is illuminated by a skylight on the south side. In addition to the free-standing church tower, that skylight represents a structural dominant feature of the church's ensemble of buildings. The ten-meter-high tower, which is also tapered to a point similar to the roof, houses two bells with the striking tones dis and f .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cronenberg's landmark blown up Westdeutsche Zeitung from March 22, 1972 (website of the parish)
- ↑ On the history of the church - parish Heilige Ewalde, accessed on April 24, 2017
Coordinates: 51 ° 12 ′ 36 ″ N , 7 ° 8 ′ 23 ″ E