Ignatius College (Valkenburg)
The former Ignatius College of the Society of Jesus is located in Valkenburg aan de Geul , Limburg province in the Netherlands . Construction began in 1893 and was gradually expanded until around 1920.
prehistory
As part of the Kulturkampf , the Jesuit Law was enacted in the Kingdom of Prussia in 1872 . As a result, the branches in Cologne, Essen, Bonn-Kreuzberg, Bonn-Stadt, Aachen, Koblenz and Maria Laach had to be closed in the Prussian Rhine Province . A large number of the displaced Jesuits were housed in palaces belonging to the landed gentry in the border area of the Netherlands in the province of Limburg, for example in Bleijenbeek, Wijnandsrade, Exaten (near Baexem). Count Franz Egon von Hoensbroech provided the Jesuits with a castle in Bleijenbeek , in which the philosophy studies were carried out from 1873 to 1885 and which subsequently housed the novitiate of the German religious province. In 1903 there was a fire in the new building and in 1904 the castle was returned to the family. Baron Ludwig von Bongart offered the Jesuits Castle Wijnandsrade, which took up the juniorate until 1894 and from 1894 to 1910 the tertiary of the German order province. This castle was also returned to the owners in 1910. Furthermore, an estate in Aalbeek was leased to the Jesuits and sold in 1886. In Exaten, Count Theodor de Geloes made a castle available and then sold it to the Jesuits. They added a large new building, the Canisius College, and handed everything over to the Franciscans of the Saxon Order Province in 1927 . All of these alternative solutions quickly became too small and so the order decided to buy a large piece of land in Valkenburg.
History of the college
Brother Wipfler and Father August Sträter create the first concepts for the planned construction. The overall planning was then transferred to the architect Hermann Joseph Hürth from Aachen. The first draft was revised several times, in particular reduced, but the plan, which was originally considered to be too large, soon turned out to be too small and further plots had to be purchased. The foundation stone was laid on May 1st, 1893. Father August Sträter supervised the construction. A new wing had to be started as early as April 1924 and Father Rudolph Fischer took over the supervision. A first group moved in in the summer of 1894, the chapel was consecrated in December and the second wing was moved into in August 1895. Around 1895/96, 268 people lived in the Ignatius College.
Further expansions followed: an observatory was built, another wing was added according to a plan by HJ Hürth and the library established a connection between the Philosopher's wing and the middle wing.
After the Netherlands was invaded and occupied by the German Wehrmacht in 1940, Seyß-Inquart confiscated the entire complex and set up a Reich School for the SS . The chapel and the observatory were demolished. After the liberation of the Netherlands, the building served as a military hospital for the American army and then stood empty for a long time.
In April 1961, the Franciscan Sisters of St. Josef (FSJ) took over the complex and had A. Swinkels and B. Salemanns from Maastricht create conversion plans for a parent house with an old people's home. They sold the monastery located in the city and moved into "Huize Boslust" in October 1964. The new chapel was completed in 1965. 20 years later this branch had to be closed and no buyer was found. When the demolition permit had already been granted in autumn 1984, the “ transcendental meditation center , stichting onderwijs wetenschapen der creative intelligentie nederland” bought land and buildings.
The monastery building
The Jesuit building consisted of a main wing with the front facing south-west, two side wings and a central wing with the chapel protruding from the main front. Originally a purely southern orientation was planned in 1892/93, but could not be realized due to a property that was not for sale. HJ Hürth designed a neo-Gothic brick complex with the sparing use of natural stone for window frames. Only the front of the building was clad with yellow facing brick.
The three-aisled chapel with four bays, a transept and a five-eight choir emerged from this main front. The central nave and choir were built with cross ribbed vaults with keystones. Two yokes of the transept arms had galleries so that the rooms below could be closed by doors and used as sacristies. In the side aisles, the yokes were separated from each other by transverse walls to make room for side altars. A high, hexagonal roof turret rose above the crossing. The windows of the choir were created by Oidtmann in Linnich. Friedrich Wilhelm Mengelberg wins a competition for the high altar, and the chapel is also painted by August Rosenthal from Cologne based on his designs. In 1914 a chapel crypt was built in order to be able to set up more elders.
A special feature of the building was the equipment with modern technology from the beginning. There was a steam central heating according to the low pressure system with coke ovens in the basement. There was a well in the Philosophenhof, from which a piston pump with a 2 HP petrol engine filled water from a depth of 22 m into water containers on the reservoir of the two corner towers. In 1911 the building was electrified.
literature
- Rita Müllejans: Klöster im Kulturkampf, Einhard aachen, 1992 (publications of the Episcopal Diocesan Archive Aachen, vol. 44), ISBN 3-920284-63-1
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 52 ′ 23.8 " N , 5 ° 49 ′ 57.4" E