Church work Alpirsbach
The Church Work Alpirsbach is an evangelical foundation under ecclesiastical law based in Düsseldorf , which was named after the place where it was founded, the former Alpirsbach monastery in the Black Forest .
history
1933-1945
The Kirchliche Arbeit Alpirsbach (KAA) was founded in 1933 by the Tübingen church music director Richard Gölz . It can be understood as part of the liturgical movement (or the singing movement ) that emerged in both Christian churches in the 1920s and 1930s, which addressed the pressing theological, church and social problems of the time, including the confrontation with National Socialism , through an internal church Tried to work on reform out of the worship service . As a first and fundamental step on this way, the renewal of the divine service with the help of the latest historical and liturgical scientific knowledge was sought.
As early as 1933, the art historian Friedrich Buchholz (1902–1967) joined the group as a leading figure, who brought his knowledge of Gregorian chant as a determining element into the work. Gölz and Buchholz discovered a treasure that had been lost to the Protestant church in the monks' hour prayer and a great musical world of forms in Gregorian chant , which should be regained for the Protestant liturgy as "German Gregorian chant". The melody of the original Latin chant was changed in some places in favor of the new (German) text.
Very soon the leading figures of the Württemberg Society , a group of pastors and university theologians close to the Confessing Church , gathered in Alpirsbach . Gölz himself hid Jews in his parsonage and was therefore arrested in 1944 and interned in the Welzheim protective custody camp. In 1979 he and his wife Hilde received the Federal Cross of Merit and in 1992 they were included in the list of the righteous in the world at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial . The well-known dictum of Dietrich Bonhoeffer “Only those who shout for the Jews are also allowed to sing in Gregorian” is thus aimed at the KAA and its spirit.
1945-1999
In 1945/46 Gölz tried to convince the Protestant upper church council in Stuttgart to institutionalize church work as a regional church work. In the former monastery of Bebenhausen he began an attempt at a communitarian life, which failed after a few months because neither the regional church nor the other members of the KAA wanted to follow this path. Gölz asked for unlimited, unpaid leave from parish ministry and began to deal with Orthodox theology and liturgy. With this, Buchholz also formally took over the management of the KAA, which he headed as "President" until his death. Formally, the KAA was an association ; Theologically one resisted any form of institutionalization. The KAA neither set up a permanent house (as, for example, the Evangelical Michael Brotherhood did at Kirchberg Monastery ), nor do its members wear special liturgical clothing. Buchholz was also the leading figure in German Gregorian chant and brought out the revisions of the Alpirsbacher Antiphonale in the 1950s and 1960s. After his unexpected death, the Stuttgart pastor Eberhard Weismann, then the Old Testament scholar Diethelm Michel from Mainz, became chairman of the KAA.
Musically, besides and after Gölz and Buchholz, some of the leading German Protestant church musicians were involved in the KAA, so u. a. the Saarbrücken church music director Karl Rahner (1903-1970) and also Gerd Zacher . Since the 1990s, the KAA has been increasingly seeking connection to newer semiological research; u. a. were Godehard Joppich and John Berchmans Göschl invited to joint seminars.
Since 1999
Provided by the unexpected death of her Präses Diethelm Michel 1999 again before the issue of organizational anchor that KAA was transformed into a foundation to. Rüdiger Schloz , the senior church councilor emeritus of the EKD, became president .
German Gregorian chant
The Gregorian Weeks
The church work Alpirsbach organizes Gregorian weeks in Alpirsbach and in other places such as Heiligkreuztal , Gernrode , Blaubeuren , Jerichow , Loccum , Fürstenwalde at the festive times of Epiphany , Easter and Pentecost as well as summer and autumn weeks. These usually extend over five to eight days and maintain their spiritual direction
- the traditional Liturgy of the Hours and the Evangelical Mass ;
- the study of questions of faith, the Bible , worship , the church .
Renowned theologians from Germany and abroad are invited to the latter as guest lecturers.
The Alpirsbacher Antiphonale
To celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours and the mass in German, the KAA has been publishing the booklets and volumes of the Alpirsbacher Antiphonale in continuous succession since 1935 . A first series appeared in the years 1935-1939. After the Second World War, F. Buchholz began a revision with the help of very precise semiological studies; this work was interrupted by his unexpected death in 1967. New editions of the Alpirsbacher Antiphonale have been in progress since 2004, and these volumes have been published in bound form since 2013.
The German texts of the Psalms and other biblical texts follow the Luther Bible : Buchholz used the revision from 1912 until his death , since 2004 the current edition in the version from 1984 has been used as the basis. Buchholz was able to win over Rudolf Alexander Schröder to translate the Latin hymns and sequences .
The Alpirsbacher Antiphonale currently consists of the following individual volumes:
Older series
- The Travel Blessing (1937)
- Chants for mass (so-called "Altes Messheft", 1950)
- The Complet (1950)
- The Laudes (1953)
- The Sext (1955)
- Vespers (1962)
- Order and chants of the mass (so-called "New Messheft", 1966)
- The Matutin (1969)
- Epiphany (1972)
- Easter Sunday (1952, reprint 1974)
- Christmas (1937, reprinted 1977)
- Pentecost Sunday (1953, reprint 1981)
New episode
- The Complet - Edition for the Church (2013)
- Christmas and Epiphany (2013)
- Easter (2014)
- Pentecost (2014)
- Hourly prayers on Sunday (2015)
- Hourly prayers on Monday and Tuesday (2016)
literature
- Joachim Conrad: Liturgy as art and game. The church work Alpirsbach 1933–2003 ; Heidelberg Studies in Practical Theology, 8; Lit, Hamburg Munster London 2003; ISBN 3-8258-6792-7
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Bertold Höcker: Latin Gregorian chant in Lutheran worship? St. Ottilien: EOS-Verl. 1994; Dissertations: Theological Series; Vol. 69; ISBN 3-88096-732-6 ; P. 78.