Heiligkreuz (Bern)

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Heiligkreuz Church, Bern
patio
View from the Tiefenaustrasse

The Heiligkreuz church on Kastellweg 7 is located in the Tiefenau district of Bern in the Länggasse-Felsenau district . Because of its expressionistic design language and because of the exposed concrete material used, it is an important testimony to the cultural history of concrete. The church was built in 1969 as a Roman Catholic parish church and was handed over to the Romanian Orthodox parish of St. George in 2018 .

Building history

The parish of Heiligkreuz emerged from the parish of St. Marien . After a building boom set in in Tiefenau in the 1940s and 1950s, the residents of the quarter and the region wanted their own church to be built. From August 1956, the residents of the Engeh peninsula and von Worblaufen celebrated the Sunday service in the hall of the Tiefenauspital , which was attended by 180 to 250 people. On June 11, 1959, the parish of Bern bought a first piece of land on Kastellweg , a second purchase took place in 1964. After the expansion of the nearby Tiefenauspital had been completed, the Bishop of Basel , Franziskus von Streng , issued a decree in 1962 to found the parish Heiligkreuz, which should be responsible for the Engehalbinsel, Bremgarten , Stuckishaus , the Halensiedlung, Worblaufen , Uettlingen, Weissenstein , Ortschwaben, Meikirch and Wahlendorf .

On July 5, 1963, an architecture competition was announced, which the jury decided on March 19, 1964 in favor of the project by architect Walter M. Förderer . For structural reasons, the building project had to be revised so that the completed church turned out to be less monumental than Förderer originally planned. In particular, the highly conceived bell tower was given up in favor of a bell bearer, so that instead of three bells only one rings for the service. Between November 1965 and November 1966, the various decision-makers approved the construction of the church, so that on March 18, 1967, the first groundbreaking for the construction of the church took place. On May 17, 1969, Dean Johann Stalder consecrated the corner stone instead of a foundation stone . On June 1, 1969, Bishop Anton Hänggi consecrated the church. In 2011 the interior of the church was renovated.

Handover of the church to the Romanian Orthodox community

Since the Church of the Holy Cross was used less and less by Catholics after the turn of the millennium and the concrete building also caused a lot of maintenance and renovation work, the Catholic Church was looking for a way to transfer the listed church to another Christian denomination. On Sunday, January 21, 2018, the Holy Cross was divorced by the Catholic side during a service and given to the Romanian Orthodox parish of St. George. This makes Heiligkreuz the ecclesiastical center for its believers, who come from all over the region. On April 21, the Romanian Orthodox parish of St. Georg Bern took over the former Catholic Heiligkreuz Church with an inauguration ceremony and rededicated it to Orthodox.

Development of the Catholic parishes

The Catholic parish of Heiligkreuz includes around 2,300 believers from a catchment area from Worblaufen via the Engeh peninsula, Bremgarten, Meikirch to Wahlendorf. Together with the parish of St. Franziskus Zollikofen , it formed the pastoral area of ​​Bern North. After the handover of the Heiligkreuz church, the parish has its home in the Johanneszentrum Bremgarten from 2018 , where the parish offices of the Protestant Reformed parish of Matthäus Bern and Bremgarten are now also rented.

The Croatian Catholics, who enjoyed hospitality in Heiligkreuz for around 30 years, found a new home in the Reformed Church of Bern-Bethlehem from 2018.

Building description

Church tower and exterior

The Heiligkreuz Church is located next to the Tiefenau Spital in the middle of the quarter of the same name on Kastellweg 7. The jury of Walter M. Förderer's project had already convinced the jury at the architectural competition that he planned a fundamentally restrained ensemble of church, rectory and parish center that visitors could see through a forecourt leads into “a clearly identifiable, self-contained church complex” and thus prepares the visitor for the sacred space of the Church of the Holy Cross. The church can hardly be recognized as such from the street, as the rectory is at the crossroads and obscures the view of the church behind. The low height of the church and the lack of a steeple mean that the Holy Cross does not appear monumental, but is geared towards functionality for parish life, as is the case with other church buildings built in those years in German-speaking Switzerland, such as St. Ulrich Winterthur-Rosenberg (1971) and Heilig Geist Zürich-Höngg (1973).

The choice of exposed concrete as the only building material for all parts of the building, on the other hand, sets the Church of the Holy Cross apart from all surrounding buildings. In addition, Walter M. Förderer designed the church as an accessible sculpture , a typical feature of all his sacred buildings. The building has three storeys staggered upwards: the parish center is built into the lower area, and the church with its bell bearer and the rectory rise above it. Access to the church is from the fort path under the bell carrier, which is designed as a kind of vestibule , initially into an inner courtyard . This can also be reached from the Tiefenaustrasse via stairs. In the inner courtyard a polygonal concrete block is set up, which is used for liturgical celebrations, such as B. start the Easter vigil in front of the church. Two different entrances lead into the interior of the church from the inner courtyard. The floor plan of the entire building ensemble is designed in such a way that visitors are guided in a circular movement from the outside into the interior of the church in front of the altar.

Due to the redimensioning of the original project, the bell carrier only contains a single bell, which was made in 1968 by the H. Rüetschi foundry , Aarau. The bell has a weight of 520 kg and has the strike note a '. The inscriptions read: + IN CRUCE SALUS + IN CRUCE SALUS (IN THE CROSS IS HEALING) In the middle: HEILIGKREUZ BERN 1968. On the opposite side there is a cross. At the lower edge, on the side of the inscription: BELLENGIESSEREI H. RÜETSCHI AG AARAU, the tower is crowned by a concrete cross, which both refers to the Christian purpose of the building and symbolically represents the patronage of the church.

Altar area
inside view

Interior and artistic equipment

The church is designed as a polygonal transverse space, so that the faithful gather on the benches in a semicircle close to the popular altar . This is how the requirements of the liturgy constitution of the Second Vatican Council are implemented. The interior, like the outer shell, consists of unprocessed exposed concrete. The daylight penetrates only sparsely through square window openings in the walls and in the flat roof into the church interior. Further openings in the wall allow light to enter the church only indirectly through a shaft. The ceiling of the church interior was designed in a staggered manner so that it lowers towards the center of the church. In return, the floor rises one step towards the altar area, which underlines its importance. As with the church tower, a large cross has been carved out of the concrete on the choir wall . A wooden body is attached to this. The cross also forms one of the pillars of the room which, together with the other 12 pillars, supports the church ceiling. While the other 12 pillars stand for the apostles , which is made clear by the apostle crosses on the pillars in the church, the differently designed pillar with the cross symbolizes Jesus Christ himself. In the altar area above the cross the eternal light is attached, the tabernacle is on Pillar to the right of the cross. To the left of the altar is the ambo , next to it the baptismal font , which, like the altar, takes up the polygonal design of the church interior. Finally, in the church aisle, square stations of the cross in the form of picture panels are set in on the outer wall, which were made by Förderer's student Rick from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe . Another special feature of the church buildings by Walter M. Förderer is the design of the singing gallery as a delimited area in which the organ is embedded in a wall niche. The corner stone is located at the entrance to this gallery. Its surface is covered with a relief of squares, which in turn takes up the design of the window openings. The attached statue of the crowned Madonna and Child is in the style of the South German Baroque and was given to the community on the occasion of the church consecration in 1969.

Graf organ from 1971

organ

In 1971 the Heiligkreuzkirche received its organ . It is an instrument with 21 registers on two manuals and a pedal , built by Graf AG, Sursee.

I Hauptwerk C – g 3
Principal 8th'
Tube bare 8th'
octave 4 ′
Gemshorn 4 ′
Forest flute 2 ′
Sesquialter 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′ and 1 3 ⁄ 5  ′
mixture 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Trumpet 8th'
II Swell C – g 3
Harp pipe 8th'
Wooden dacked 8th'
Principal 4 ′
Reed flute 4 ′
octave 2 ′
Fifth 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Cymbel 1'
Krummhorn 8th'
Pedal C – f 1
Sub bass 16 ′
Octave bass 8th'
Capstan flute 8th'
Piffaro 4 ′ and 2 ′
bassoon 16 ′

Appreciation

The Heiligkreuz Church is the first Roman Catholic church in the Bern area to spatially implement the requirements of the Second Vatican Council. The floor plan of the church and the central positioning of the altar make it possible for the congregation to be gathered close to the sanctuary in a semicircle, which benefits the active participation of the faithful . With the arrangement of the ambo, altar and baptismal font, the Church of the Holy Cross also contributed to the discourse on liturgical reform in the diocese of Basel when it was built. As in the churches of St. Josef Schlieren (1960) and Allerheiligen Zürich-Neuaffoltern (1964) by Karl Higi , patrons finally integrated the baptismal font into the choir in his church Heiligkreuz Bern, a new concept for the design of Catholic church buildings that usually prevailed in the churches built later.

Thanks to the consistent use of exposed concrete, the Heiligkreuz Church in Bern is an exemplary example of the béton brut . In contrast to the first exposed concrete church in Switzerland, the Church of St. Anton Basel (1925–1927) by Karl Moser , in which concrete was used as a building material for monumentality and clear proportions, Walter M. Förderer leads the Le Corbusier trend in his work fort, who valued concrete as particularly suitable for three-dimensional, sculptural building, a view that Gottfried Böhm (e.g. when building the pilgrimage church in Neviges (1963–1973)) and Fritz Wotruba (when building the Church of the Holy Trinity in Vienna (1974–1976)) shared.

The Heiligkreuz church is the fourth of a total of ten sacred buildings that architect Walter M. Förderer realized; Heiligkreuz is his only church building in the canton of Bern.

literature

  • Fabrizio Brentini: Building for the Church. Catholic church building of the 20th century in Switzerland. Lucerne 1994.
  • Tilo Richter: Universe vs. Individual / illusion of the material. Presentation on October 1, 2011 (PDF; 56 kB).
  • Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. Society for Swiss Art History (GSK), Bern 2017.

Web links

Commons : Heiligkreuz (Bern)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. P. 25.
  2. ↑ Heiligkreuz is no longer Catholic. In: Pfarrblatt. January 22, 2018 (article on de-dedication), accessed February 15, 2018.
  3. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. Pp. 2-3.
  4. ^ Archives of the parish Heiligkreuz.
  5. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. Pp. 2-3.
  6. ^ Fabrizio Brentini: Building for the Church. Catholic church building of the 20th century in Switzerland. Pp. 164 and 283.
  7. ↑ YouTube Retrieved on February 14 2018th
  8. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. P. 26.
  9. ^ Archives of the parish Heiligkreuz.
  10. ↑ YouTube Retrieved on February 14 2018th
  11. ↑ Heiligkreuz Tiefenau BE. Organ directory Switzerland and Liechtenstein, accessed on February 14, 2018.
  12. ↑ Stefan Künzi: How the established churches are losing ground. BZ Berner Zeitung of January 22, 2018. Accessed October 2, 2019.
  13. ↑ Parish gazette report on the inauguration ceremony. Accessed on April 28, 2018
  14. ↑ Website of the parish Heiligkreuz Bern ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2017 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. Retrieved February 14, 2018. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kathbern.ch
  15. ^ Website of the Roman Catholic Church in the Canton of Bern, section Pastoral Rooms. Retrieved February 14, 2018.
  16. ^ Croatian Mission in Bern. Bethlehem Reformed Congregation, accessed February 15, 2018
  17. ↑ Quote Ann-Kathrin Seyffer, in: Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: Die Heiligkreuzkirche in Bern. P. 5.
  18. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. Pp. 5 and 11-12.
  19. ^ Fabrizio Brentini: Building for the Church. Catholic church building of the 20th century in Switzerland. Pp. 162 and 174.
  20. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. P. 13.
  21. ↑ YouTube. Retrieved February 14, 2018.
  22. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. Pp. 18-23.
  23. ↑ Heiligkreuz Tiefenau BE. Organ directory Switzerland and Liechtenstein, accessed on February 14, 2018.
  24. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. Pp. 24-25.
  25. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Seyffer: The Holy Cross Church in Bern. Pp. 25-26.

Coordinates: 46 ° 58 '26.4 "  N , 7 ° 27' 3.2"  E ; CH1903:  600 933  /  202549