Church of the Catholic University Community Cologne - St. Johannes XXIII.
The Church of the Catholic University Community of Cologne - St. Johannes XXIII. is a church built in 1968/1969 and a listed church since 2016 in the Sülz district by Josef Rikus and Heinz Buchmann († 2004). With its brutalist , sculptural architecture, it occupies a special position among Cologne's church buildings. After the canonization of Pope John XXIII. in 2014 he was accepted as the church patron in the official name of the church.
Design and construction history
In 1964, the Catholic university community in Cologne planned the construction of a student dormitory, a community building and a church with space for around 300 people and announced an architecture competition for this, which Heinz Buchmann won for the entire ensemble. A “small, but hauntingly evocative church building” was probably a bit controversial among the students, as the architect's widow recalled in 2014.
The then university pastor Wilhelm Nyssen had been in conversation for a long time - and probably also befriended - with the sculptor Josef Rikus, who was so decisive for the design of the church building. This should be designed in terms of the interior, the community and the liturgy and not as a “monument that can only be seen from the outside”. The cave and the tree, the Jesse root , which can be seen as a “ metaphor of the earthly”, were chosen as architectural symbols for the interior . The architecture should emerge from the latter and only be encased by thin side walls made of glass or concrete palisades.
Individual parties involved remember differently about the authorship of the building: While college pastor Nyssen describes the concept almost exclusively as a brainstorming between himself and Rikus in his 1983 brochure, the architect's widow tried to straighten the picture in a 2014 interview in favor of her deceased husband . On the one hand, this would have had to implement the sculptural ideas in space and statics, but was also involved in the idea of the tree as a symbolic and constructive element. The building was created in close cooperation with Rikus, who later always claimed to be the author. Buchmann would never have straightened this out out of respect for those involved who have since died.
In publications, the conception of the overall design is assigned to Rikus, while Buchmann is primarily held responsible for the architectural realization of the design. All in all, the church is considered to be an extremely successful overall work of several heads, whereby "it is thanks to the extremely constructive cooperation of Messrs. Buchmann, Rikus and Nissen (sic!) That the form could not only be conceived, but also constructed and realized" .
The church was built between 1968 and 1969. Only a few contemporary documents on the actual implementation have survived; the community itself has no documents, the sculptor's estate cannot be found, and the architect's estate is in the archive for architecture and engineering in North Rhine-Westphalia at TU Dortmund University . In the Historical Archives of the Archdiocese of Cologne itself are still 2014 records found.
In 2016, the Cologne architectural office 3pass, which had implemented the Archbishop's Vocational College in the immediate vicinity, carried out a renovation of the church building, during which mainly the concrete outer skin was restored. In 2016 the church was added to the list of monuments of the city of Cologne under number 8792 .
Building description
The church building is almost rectangular and is held in place by three "tree pillars" so that the central design elements are also constructive elements.
The middle tree, consisting of four mighty concrete pillars, grows with its "roots" out of the lower church - slightly offset - into the main church area and through the ceiling, with the breakthroughs being filled with glass blocks (= water). While the place of baptism is below in the “cave” of the crypt, the tree trunk in the main church room hides the tabernacle in the center - the place where the consecrated hosts are kept and thus the holiest place in a Catholic church. The altar, made of heavy oak cubes, is at ground level - at eye level with the community - positioned under the "branches" of the middle tree, the sacristy halfway between the crypt and the upper church.
The other two tree pillars, visible from the outside, serve as anchors for the western and eastern walls. The “branches” of the tree are continued in the outer roof structure: Here, massive, upright concrete slabs that are positioned perpendicular to the central axis dominate, rising from the east and west towards the middle and intersecting with other slices to form a cross. The shapes of the roof landscape are completely asymmetrical and vary over the entire building. Large window areas in turn dissolve the weight of the concrete elements.
There is no bell tower, but the two slightly raised “trunks” on the side could be interpreted as a visual suggestion of this missing structural element.
Exterior and interior walls have a special surface structure in which the wall surfaces are loosened up with filigree fluting - an appearance that is familiar from ancient columns. They can be interpreted as the negative form of juxtaposed tree trunks - the conceptually imagined palisades. The connecting element between “inside” and “outside” is the tiled floor, which runs inwards from the courtyard at ground level. Only the central liturgical places are highlighted by a contrasting granite paving.
The sculptural Betonarchikektur the church building can be a relationship with the work of Le Corbusier recognizable, as the only shortly before arising new pilgrimage church of St. Mary in Velbert-Neviges by Gottfried Böhm .
“The views of this church are disturbing, they are illegible, brutal and alien. As a blatant counter-image of the Gothic striving for the sky, she does not dissolve the earthly, but holds it tight and crouches heavily loaded by her own construction, between the high-rise buildings that set the standards here. This is not about style, but about images as transmitters of the spiritual content that the church means. "
Furnishing
Josef Rikus also played an important part in the design as part of the overall concept. Altar, ambo , tabernacle and the seats reserved for the liturgy come from him. These pieces of equipment, made from heavy oak blocks, correspond to the central architectural motif - the tree - thanks to their natural material.
The windows, made of blue and deep red antique glass based on designs by Will Thonett , form the transition between the walls and the roof structure.
A Pietà from 2002 is by Egbert Verbeek , and the Way of the Cross was designed by Karl Kaspers. The triptych in the crypt opposite the altar is also by Egbert Verbeek ; the 262 cm × 500 cm mural from 1975–1976 was brought to Cologne in 2008. The picture received a detailed appreciation by the art historian Heinrich Lützeler .
In the absence of a bell tower, there is no bell . The organ with six registers on one manual was made by Orgelbau Romanus Seifert & Sohn in Kevelaer.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Uta Winterhager: Church stories: St. Johannes XXIII. In: koelnarchitektur.de. May 21, 2014, accessed April 5, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d e Helmut Fußbroich, Dierk Holthausen: Architectural Guide Cologne: Sacred Buildings after 1900 . 1st edition. Bachem, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-7616-1683-X , p. 234-235 .
- ^ A b Wilhelm Nyssen: The church of the sculptor Josef Rikus in the university community in Cologne (= series of publications by the Center for Patristic Spirituality KOINONIA in the Archdiocese of Cologne . Volume VI ). Luthe, 1983, p. 8–10 ( archive.org [PDF]).
- ↑ a b c d e f g Church of St. John XXIII. In: baukunst-nrw.de. January 23, 2019, accessed April 5, 2020 .
- ^ Hendrik Bohle: Concrete divas and holy wooden houses. Sacred buildings on the Rhine and Ruhr, part 2/2. In: thelink.berlin. October 5, 2017, accessed April 5, 2020 .
- ↑ Bettina Janecek: Roher Beton and Geisterstraße: These objects in Cologne are considered a monument. In: ksta.de. May 2, 2017, accessed April 5, 2020 .
- ^ Churches according to the Second Vatican Council | Monuments online. Retrieved April 5, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Barbara Schlei, Uta Winterhager, Tobias Gross, Katja Hasche: Architecture Guide Cologne: 103 contemporary and modern buildings and quarters . Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-86335-720-7 , p. 73 (no page numbers, but sequential numbers).
- ^ Carsten Schmalstieg: Church of the Catholic university community . In: Manfred Becker-Huberti, Günter A. Menne (Ed.): Churches in Cologne. The churches of the Catholic and Protestant communities in Cologne. Bachem, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-7616-1731-3 , p. 91-92 .
Remarks
- ↑ The related description of the widow in Winterhager that Nyssen died, and then Rikus too, cannot be entirely correct - Rikus died in 1989, Nyssen died in 1994.
Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 19.3 " N , 6 ° 55 ′ 50.3" E