Johannes van Acken

Grave of Johannes van Acken in the crypt of the St. Elisabeth Hospital Church in Cologne-Hohenlind

Rütger Johannes van Acken (born December 19, 1879 in Goch ; † May 17, 1937 in Berlin ) was a German Catholic clergyman and in the 1920s and 1930s "one of the most prominent personalities of the German Caritas Association ". His writing on Christocentric Church Art “became the most influential spatial program in Catholic church construction at that time. Johannes van Acken is therefore to be understood as a spiritual father of the spiritual idea of ​​modern church building ”.

Origin and education

Johannes van Acken was one of eleven children from a long-established family in Goch on the Lower Rhine. After graduating from the episcopal boys' seminar in Gaesdonck , the Collegium Augustinianum , he entered the Collegium Borromaeum in Münster to study theology at the Catholic Royal Academy . After graduating in August 1902, he moved into the seminary and received on 6 June 1903 along with 56 other young men in the high cathedral by Bishop Hermann Jakob Dingelstad the sacrament of Holy Orders . His consecration course also included the later auxiliary bishop Heinrich Roleff and Joseph Lodde , who was tortured to death in 1943 in Dachau concentration camp .

Act

On July 29, 1903, the bishop appointed him chaplain at the parish of St. Nikolaus in Brüggen on the Lower Rhine and on December 1, 1904 as chaplain at the parish of St. Lamberti in Gladbeck . Particular focus of his work lay in the pastoral care of workers and sick people. Even before he was appointed rector of the St. Barbara Hospital on August 6, 1910, he and the Cologne master builder Otto Müller-Jena built the hospital into a modern 300-bed building in 1908 and 1909. Clinic expanded.

In 1911 van Acken was one of the founders of the Gladbeck Association for Local and Local History, for whose publication organ, the Gladbecker Blätter für Orts- und Heimatkunde , he wrote almost two dozen articles and research contributions over the next two decades. Some of them have been reprinted several times to this day. In addition, he brought his artistic understanding to various Gladbeck construction projects. The large stained glass windows in the wedding room and in the meeting rooms of the new office building were based on suggestions from Van Acken; he also wrote the verses for the window pictures. When it was decided in 1910 to build new churches in the districts of Butendorf and Zweckel , van Acken was the leading person in the two building committees. For the Holy Cross Church in Butendorf, he again relied on the proven collaboration with the evangelical (sic!) Architect Otto Müller-Jena.

Van Acken first laid out his groundbreaking thoughts on the modern parish church building in a text that he wrote to complete the two churches. In particular, the design of the Butendorfer church corresponded to his demand for an "expansion of the main room of the church", without "too many tower and pillar niches" and without disturbing pillars, so that everyone can see the altar and thus a real participation in the Eucharistic sacrifice is guaranteed. Eight years after the completion of the two churches mentioned, Johannes van Acken expanded and concretized his ideas of a modern church building and the art and church music associated with it in the text Christocentric Church Art . A draft for the liturgical total work of art that was so well received throughout Germany that a second edition was published within a year. Important church builders such as Dominikus Böhm , Josef Franke and Carl Moritz contributed their own designs to this font. Van Acken's approach was controversially discussed, but it was undisputed merit "for the first time in a quarter of a century to have written down concrete architectural ideas about parish church building". To this day "his text [...] is considered to be one of the most important source texts for the entire modern church building of the 20th century".

Two times, on March 2, 1919 and May 4, 1924, Johannes van Acken was elected to the Gladbeck city council for the center . There he worked with men like Hermann Buschmann , Heinrich Dieckmann , Mathias Jakobs , Franz Riesener and Georg Stieler .

By December 1919 at the latest, Johannes van Acken had been active in the German Caritas Association (DCV) beyond Gladbeck, and in November 1920 he was appointed to the central board of the DCV. Its president (since 1921), Benedikt Kreutz , who was almost the same age , had found one of his most important employees in the rector of the Gladbeck hospital. In August 1924, van Acken was then called to Berlin, where he was to head the DCV's main agency alongside Heinrich Wienken , who later became Bishop of Meissen . For the DCV, he had to maintain contact with other welfare organizations, but above all with politics and state institutions. At the end of August 1925, van Acken first met the apostolic nuncio , Eugenio Pacelli , who would later become Pope Pius XII, who had asked him to speak to the nunciature. From Berlin, from 1926, in close coordination with Benedikt Kreutz, van Acken developed the plan for a central training institute in the field of Catholic health care, combined with a hospital that was to serve as a model and teaching institution. During this time he began to contact Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer , whose concern was to have the institute and teaching hospital located in Cologne.

In the spring of 1930, Johannes van Acken moved from Berlin to Cologne-Hohenlind to lead construction there as a representative of the DCV. After almost two years, the inauguration of the institute and the start-up of the St. Elisabeth Hospital were celebrated at the end of October. As part of the takeover of the Nazis Konrad Adenauer brought, already an SA guard was drawn up before his house, at the last local elections on March 12, 1933 his children out of concern for their personal well for several days at van Acken, "his friend, director of the Karitashaus ”, in Hohenlind under.

Johannes van Acken died completely unexpectedly on Whit Monday, May 17, 1937, on a business trip to the Hildegardis Hospital in Berlin. He was buried on May 22nd with great honors in the crypt of the St. Elisabeth Hospital Church in Cologne-Hohenlind, which he founded. Konrad Adenauer confessed in one of his two letters of condolence: "He was one of the most distinguished and venerable men I have met."

Awards (selection)

• 1917: Cross of Merit for War Aid
• 1932: Papal secret chamberlain
• 1935: Papal house prelate

Fonts (selection)

• Festschrift for the dedication of the churches to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Cross in Gladbeck . Alfons Theben, Gladbeck 1914.
• together with Hermann Wolters: Gladbeck and Horst. The opinion of the Gladbeck center group on the question of incorporation of Horst into Gladbeck . Gladbeck 1921.
• Festschrift for the golden jubilee of the cath. Miners and workers' association St. Lambert zu Gladbeck i. W. Gladbeck 1921.
• Christocentric church art. A draft for the liturgy. Total work of art . 2nd edition, Gladbeck 1923.
• German Caritas Association Freiburg. 2. Implementation report for the construction of the German Caritas Institute for Health Care u. St. Elisabeth Hospital in Cologne-Hohenlind . Cologne 1932.
• Prayers from Hohenlind. Celebrations for the times and festivals of the church year . Caritasverlag, Freiburg 1936.
• Germanic piety in liturgical hymns . Caritasverlag, Freiburg 1937.

Honors (selection)

• 1982: Prälat-van-Acken-Strasse in Cologne
• 1994: Van-Acken-Strasse in Goch
• 2008: Johannes van Acken House in Gladbeck (Caritas senior center)

literature

• Heinrich Spaemann : Acken, Johannes van . In: Josef Höfer , Karl Rahner (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 2nd Edition. tape 1 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1957, Sp. 112 .
• Karl Borgmann: Johannes van Acken . In: Up to the task - On the development and work of the German Caritas Association. On the occasion of its 60th anniversary, published by the Central Association in 1957 . Lambertus, Freiburg 1957, p. 210 f.
• Franz-Ludwig Nottenkämper: Hohenlind was his life's work. Life and work of the Goch prelate Rüttger Johannes van Acken (born 1879 in Goch, died 1937 in Berlin) . In: To Niers and Kendel. Historical magazine for the city of Goch and the surrounding area. No. 33, 1997, pp. 12-18.
• Peter Reinicke : Acken, Johannes van . In: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Lambertus-Verlag, Freiburg 1998, ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 29 f.
• Ralph Eberhard Brachthäuser: With passion for our city. The women and men of the first Gladbeck city council . Verlag Mainz, Aachen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8107-0308-8 , pp. 78-87.

Web links

• Literature by and about Johannes van Acken in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Borgmann: Johannes van Acken . In: Up to the task - On the development and work of the German Caritas Association. On the occasion of its 60th anniversary, published by the Central Association in 1957 . Lambertus, Freiburg 1957, p. 210.
2. ↑ Manuela Klauser: Iconic churches. Parish church building on the Rhine and Ruhr between historicism and modernity . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-7954-3413-7 , p. 107.
3. ↑ Manuela Klauser: Iconic churches. Parish church building on the Rhine and Ruhr between historicism and modernity . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-7954-3413-7 , p. 404.
4. ↑ Manuela Klauser: Iconic churches. Parish church building on the Rhine and Ruhr between historicism and modernity . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-7954-3413-7 , p. 405, note 1394.
5. ^ Paul Weymar: Konrad Adenauer. The authorized biography . Kindler, Munich 1955, p. 151.
6. ↑ Ralph Eberhard Brachthäuser: With passion for our city. The women and men of the first Gladbeck city council . Verlag Mainz, Aachen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8107-0308-8 , p. 87.