Martin Luther King Church (Hürth)
The Martin Luther King Church in the new city center of Hürth , planned since the beginning of the 1960s and realized from 1965 to the mid-1980s, is the last church building of the Evangelical Parish Hürth in the parish of Cologne-South . The construction costs of the community center without rectory amounted to 1.3 million DM.
Community development
The evangelicals in the area of the mayor's office in Hürth formed a vanishingly small minority up to the turn of the 20th century, whose number was 28 until 1885, still far below that of the Jewish-believing population. Only with the beginning of industrialization and especially the lignite industry in the Hürth area did the number of Protestant Christians increase to 2,781 people by 1939, about 9.4% of the total population of 29,574 (including Efferen and Stotzheim). The diaspora was looked after by Brühl , Frechen and Cologne-Lindenthal until 1937 . The municipality of Knapsack with (Alt-) Hürth and Alstädten (without Burbach) as well as Kendenich received a first church building in 1921 with the support of industry with a wooden structure on Bertrams-Jagdweg in Knapsack (destroyed in the war in 1943). On April 1, 1934, he was still connected to Brühl as a parish priest and enlarged by the addition of Berrenrath , which had been looked after by Frechen up to now , and looked after by his own assistant preacher, and became independent as the Evangelical Church Community of Knapsack . After the war, in 1948, Knapsack became completely independent, was given its own pastorate and in 1951 the first modern, simple church with the Dankeskirche . On January 1, 1957, all parish districts in Hürth with around 9,000 souls joined together to form the new Evangelical Church Community of Hürth. The parish districts of Efferen with Stotzheim and Hermülheim with Kalscheuren were taken over by a parish deacon / pastor who had previously looked after Lindenthal from Efferen. But there was still only one responsible pastor. In the 1960s, another parish office was set up for the Gleuel district. The district then became independent in 1966, but reunited from January 1, 2015 (until 2015 Johannes-Kirchengemeinde, Hürth, and Matthäuskirchengemeinde, Hürth). In 1972 the fourth parish office was set up for the Hermülheim district. When the Nathan Söderblom Church (Hürth) in Kendenich, built in 1972/73, was given up in 2008, the first Knapsack parish was given up.
Construction in the new city center
In the planning for the new city center, areas for a church center for both denominations were designated from the start. After completion of the compact residential development in the new center with almost 5,000 inhabitants, relocation of the Knapsack district , partly to the adjacent area of the Pescher Höfe , and after the Church of Thanksgiving was demolished in 1976 (last service October 5, 1975), the parish began planning a new parish center , together with the Cologne architects Wolfgang Lincke & Karl-Heinz Urmetzer and in coordination with the church bodies responsible for grants, at the same time with the Catholic community ( St. Josef ). The groundbreaking ceremony took place on Thanksgiving Day, October 2, 1977. Construction work began on April 6, 1978, and on October 1, 1978, on the harvest festival, the community celebrated the topping-out ceremony. The community center was inaugurated a year later. A stone relief designed by children of the community with the dates and the Ichthys symbol , which is attached to the wall in the anteroom, commemorates this date .
Pastor Dieter Steves, who was ordained in the parish of Hermülheim in 1971 and took over the newly established pastor's office there, accompanied the construction . He took early retirement in 2005 after 34 years.
Building description
The church has a hexagonal floor plan and a tent roof as a symbol for the "tent of God among men", which in the book of Exodus (40.1 EU ) accompanied the people of God wandering through the desert and which John believed he had seen in a vision, which he gave the literary form of an apocalypse (21.3 EU ). The north-west wall is completely closed and clad with tiles in a pattern, the community looks at it. The four walls adjoining to the right and left stand on a knee-high concrete base, each of which supports four narrow concrete pillars, between which the five wide windows are arranged. The corners are formed by strong concrete articulated pillars, clad with bricks on the outside, which support a continuous concrete ledge that is inclined on the inside towards the tent roof . He wears the slate-covered tent roof , which is crowned by a steel cross on the globe. The outside of the ledge is straight and covered with slate. The side opposite the front wall leads over to a narrow, brick-clad extension with a kitchenette and sanitary facilities as well as the vestibule , which can be opened with a folding door to the church space and connects the two structures , which can therefore be used for events and particularly heavily attended church services can be included. This is followed by the other community rooms at a right angle. The ensemble thus forms a small courtyard with the adjacent rectory (from 1979) separated by a narrow horticultural complex. In front of the church there has been an open carillon held by six steel rods from the company Eduard Korfhage and Sons from Melle since 1992 , which automatically plays pre-programmed hymns at certain times, but can also be played by hand with a keyboard . It also invites you to worship with melodies.
Furnishing
The interior of the roof is clad with light-colored, slightly darkened wooden boards, which are supported by six dark- stained wooden beams. The altar table, which is also hexagonal, designed by the architects, is set up towards the center, with seating for up to 300 people surrounding it in a semicircle. The wooden pulpit created by the Bielefeld sculptor Arnold Rickert for the Knapsack Church in 1952 is on the left behind the altar. Her basket stands a little raised on a sixteen-sided floor plan, of which twelve sides each show one of the apostles full-length and with his attributes in bas-relief. The baptismal font , also by Rickert and Knapsack, served in the meantime in the Nathan Söderblom Church, Kendenich, until it was disapproved in 2009 . He is also expected to be transferred here. The wrought-iron christening chandelier with baptismal bowl on the right was created by Horst and Ulrich Rußmann , Gevelsberg . The wall is dominated in the middle by a suspended wooden cross decorated with gold-colored panels sculpted by children of the community. The area behind the altar is raised by a podium about a hand's breadth high. The windows created by EO Köpke with muted blue and red in different colors in two continuous images let a lot of light into the room. Since the glass is not flat, it doesn't let your eyes wander outside. Artificial light is brought into the room by the hexagonal ring of light hanging from the ceiling and indirectly by subdued light from lamps that shine above the ledge against the wooden ceiling. According to an ecclesiastical tradition, the head of state was contacted and asked whether the altar Bible could be donated. The then Federal President , Walter Scheel from Cologne , was happy to comply.
organ
In 1983 a two-manual organ with 14 registers and a pedal with mechanical action could be obtained from the organ workshop of Klaus Becker , Tremsbüttel -Sattenfelde, Kupfermühle, which was set up on the ground floor on the right rear side next to the folding door.
Naming
The church did not get its name after Martin Luther King until 1989 - as an expression of the solidarity with worldwide Christianity and with the ecumenical triad of justice, peace and the integrity of creation of the conciliar process (1983). This is reminiscent of a picture embedded in the wall in the anteroom of the church with pebbles of parishioners, each with a black and a white hand. The tradition with the Dankeskirche continues to be embodied in the original founding document of the church, which was recovered from the altar foundation during the demolition and is now hanging in the anteroom of the church.
Photovoltaic system
As a result of initiatives by the church environmental group, a photovoltaic system was installed on the flat roof of the community center in 2002 with state funding from the German Federal Environmental Foundation of over € 17,000 and a contribution of € 2,500, which was largely raised by community sponsors , and the electricity was fed into the general grid and whose income is displayed in the anteroom. This continues to satisfy the principle of the preservation of creation with active works. After the system has amortized , its income will be used for charitable purposes.
Individual evidence
- ↑ On the history of the city, compare: Manfred Faust: Geschichte der Stadt Hürth , ed. from Heimat und Kulturverein Hürth, Cologne, JP Bachem Verlag, 2009, on Hürth-Mitte p. 196 ff
- ^ Message from Pastor Steves
- ↑ according to statistics Hürth in Faust p. 97
- ^ The newly formed parish of Hürth, Flyer o. J. (1957) and Rev. Hermann Michel: The Evangelical Church Community of Hürth , in Clemens Klug, Hürth Cologne, o. J. (1961). P. 140 f.
- ↑ Helmut Fußbroich, Günther A. Menne, Christoph Nötzel: (eds.) Lutheran Matthew's community Hürth ; in: Helmut Fußbroich u. a .: Evangelical churches in Cologne and the surrounding area ; Cologne: JP Bachem, 2007; ISBN 3-7616-1944-8 ; Pp. 255-256
- ↑ Matthäus-Kirchengemeinde Hürth: Matthäus-Kirchengemeinde Hürth has lovingly adopted its pastor Dieter Steves into retirement after 34 years. (No longer available online.) December 2, 2005, archived from the original on November 9, 2014 ; Retrieved November 2, 2014 . 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.
- ^ Pastor Steves
- ↑ Annex report of the DBU (accessed February 2010)
literature
- Helmut Fußbroich u. a .: Evangelical churches in Cologne and the surrounding area ; JP Bachem, Cologne 2007; ISBN 3-7616-1944-8 ; Pp. 255-256
Web links
- Parish website
- MLK church at Evangelical Church in Rhineland (ekir.de) with picture of the first groundbreaking (accessed November 2014)
See also
List of churches in the parish of Cologne-South
Coordinates: 50 ° 52 ′ 53 " N , 6 ° 52 ′ 31.6" E