Matthäuskirche (Frankfurt am Main)

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The Matthew Church

The Matthäuskirche (or St. Matthew Church ) is a Protestant church in Frankfurt am Main . It is located in the Gallus district between the exhibition grounds and the main train station on the west side of the Friedrich Ebert facility .

The church building is owned by the Evangelical Hope Congregation of the EKHN , the Congregation of the Dormition of Our Lady of the Romanian Vicariate of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan (which does not belong to the Romanian Orthodox Church ), the Congregation of St. Kyprianos and Justina of the Russian Orthodox Church, an Ethiopian congregation and the Frankfurt International Church . In 2008 it was also used by a Filipino community.

history

The old Matthew Church shortly after its inauguration in 1905

The Matthäuskirche was built between 1903 and 1905 according to a design by the architect Friedrich Pützer in a stylistic combination of neo-Gothic (e.g. pointed arches), neo-renaissance (e.g. gable) and new baroque (e.g. onion- dome tower helmet ) . The glass windows were designed by the Frankfurt glass painting workshop of Rudolf Linnemann and Otto Linnemann in 1905. The church was the second new Protestant church outside the historic Frankfurt city center - after the Luther Church in the north end - and the first church that, in addition to the church service room, also had ancillary rooms for the community and parish apartments received under one roof. The municipal area of ​​the Matthäuskirche included the upper middle class southern Westend as well as the lower middle class Gallusviertel . From 1939 until the church was destroyed in the air raids on Frankfurt am Main in World War II in 1944, Karl Veidt was pastor of the Matthäusgemeinde.

The new building, built from 1952 to 1955 according to plans by senior building officer Ernst Görcke, was based - in the deliberately reduced formal language of early post-war modernism - on the concept of the old St. Matthew's Church. Some parts of the ground floor remained from the previous building and were included in the new building. Half of the largely intact tower was demolished and the characteristic helmet was replaced by a cuboid belfry. Particularly noteworthy from the furnishings of the new St. Matthew's Church are: the altar wall relief by Hans Mettel , the pulpit relief by Hans-Bernt Gebhardt and the window design by Georg Meistermann . When it was inaugurated in 1955, the Matthäuskirche was the largest Protestant church in Frankfurt with 1,250 seats.

As a result of the structural change in residential areas around the city center, the number of parishioners fell from over 12,000 in the mid-1960s to less than 2,000 in the 1990s. As early as the 1970s, the church was cut in half by renovations. The south aisle and the gallery were converted into a day nursery . In 2002, the Matthäusgemeinde merged with the Evangelical Congregation at the main train station , which in turn was created in 1997 through the merger of the White Women Congregation and the Gutleut Congregation . Since then, the municipality has encompassed the Frankfurt districts Bahnhofsviertel , Gutleut , Gallus and the southern Westend. Of the four places of worship in the community, the Weißfrauenkirche was given up in 2004 and converted into a Diakoniekirche. The Gutleutkirche was divorced in December 2012. The new community center on Hafenstrasse was inaugurated at Pentecost 2013. Next to the St.

Planned demolition and high-rise planning

View from the east from Den Haager Strasse to the Matthäuskirche, in the background the Trianon , the FBC and the Antoniuskirche
The Matthäuskirche in the Frankfurt cityscape with the Tower 185 in 2013

In 1997, the Evangelical Regional Association , an administrative association of the Frankfurt parishes, which is responsible for the maintenance of the church buildings, among other things , struck the Matthäuskirche from the list of permanently maintained church buildings. The church, designed for 600 people, was last attended by only 3 to 30 believers per service. In April 2002, the regional assembly therefore decided to demolish the building and sell the property. Due to the weakness of the Frankfurt real estate market, however, no interested party has been found who wanted to take over the church at the expected price of 35 million. The neighboring former police headquarters has also been up for sale for a long time.

Criticism was expressed against the demolition from various sides. The Hope Community did not want to give up its church building and the local kindergarten and therefore sued the church court , which, however, postponed a decision on the matter because no concrete sales negotiations were conducted.

In order to reach a compromise between opponents and supporters of a new use of the property, the architect and urban planner Jochem Jourdan made the proposal in 2007 to preserve a considerable part of the church building and to integrate it into a new high-rise development. Jourdan was commissioned by the city of Frankfurt to name potential locations for new high-rise buildings in the city area. The property of the Matthäuskirche borders on the new development area Europaviertel , on the directly adjoining property the 200 meter high Tower 185 was built from 2008 to 2011 . In November 2007, the board of directors of the Evangelical Hope Church decided to sell the St. Matthew's Church, but subject to conditions: The church must be preserved as far as possible, above all the tower, the church windows, the pulpit, the sandstone relief on the rear wall of the choir and the church interior on the first floor must be preserved . This room should also be available to the community in the future and be renovated. In addition, a new, nearby location is to be found for the day-care center, which must remain under the responsibility of the municipality. However, the sale of the 3.3 hectare property did not materialize at the time.

In December 2008, the city council passed the new high-rise master plan . The property of the Matthäuskirche is also among the new locations. The construction of a 130-meter high-rise building on the area behind the church is permitted, whereby the church tower must be preserved and, if necessary, integrated into the high-rise project. As part of the bidding process for the neighboring property of the former police headquarters , investors were also interested in St. Matthew's Church at the end of 2017.

  • Interior of the Matthäuskirche, view to the altar

  • Interior of the Matthäuskirche, view of the organ gallery

  • Stained glass window in the Matthäuskirche

  • Landing at the entrance

Modern

Since 2010, the Matthäuskirche - and thus the Frankfurt hope community - has regularly participated in the Luminale light art festival.

Previous light and video artists: Thomas Leonard (2010), Ralf Kopp (2012, 2014)

  • Video art for Luminale 2014 in the Matthäuskirche

  • The interior of the Matthäuskirche is optically alienated with the help of video projections on the sandstone relief by Hans Mettel

  • Effect of a moving wall

literature

Web links

Commons : Matthäuskirche Frankfurt am Main  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Orthodox communities in Frankfurt aM in "Orthodocxie in Germany" , accessed on May 24, 2013
  2. ^ Church services - foreign-language congregations from "Die Evangelische Allianz Frankfurt am Main" , accessed on May 24, 2013
  3. ^ "Our host communities" ( Memento from April 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Article in the magazine for theology and aesthetics, No. 42
  5. ↑ Congregational Letter of the Hope Community March-May 2013 (PDF; 1.7 MB) , accessed on May 22, 2013
  6. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau of September 6, 2007, p. F1.
  7. ^ Matthias Alexander, Stefan Toepfer: Matthäuskirche: Chances for 130 meter tower increased . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 24, 2007, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed September 28, 2016]).
  8. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau: Real estate in Frankfurt: speculators besiege the church . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . ( fr.de [accessed December 8, 2017]).

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 38 ″  N , 8 ° 39 ′ 27 ″  E