Matthew Church (Saarbrücken-Burbach)

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Matthäuskirche on the Weyersberg
Matthäuskirche, ground floor and gallery floor plan, northwest view (monthly magazine for worship and church art, 3, 1898)
Matthäuskirche, interior view of the choir (monthly magazine for worship and church art, 3, 1898)

The Matthäuskirche is a Protestant church in the Saarbrücken district of Burbach above the Burbacher Markt on the Weyersberg. Your community belongs to the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland .

History and architecture

Preliminary planning

The establishment of an ironworks in the second half of the 19th century led to a sharp increase in the population in Burbach. In terms of the church, the evangelical factory workers who moved there belonged to the Malstatt parish. As early as 1867, suggested by the consistory, the mother parish set up services in a Burbach school room. Although the number of Evangelicals in the Burbach part of the community rose faster than in Malstatt, in 1870 the previous Evangelical village church on the Malstatter Kirchberg was replaced by a new neo-Gothic building.

start of building

The building site for the new church was acquired on September 7, 1889 and the church building fund had already raised considerable financial resources. The state building permit was granted on October 1, 1891. After lengthy negotiations, on June 29, 1892, the foundation stone for the construction of an own Protestant church could be laid on the Burbacher Weyersberg . The plans came from the Berlin architect Karl Doflein . The local construction management was the responsibility of the Burbach hut builder Ferdinand Müller.

Tower collapse

During the construction work on the east-facing neo-Gothic church, the tower collapsed in an early construction phase on October 27, 1892. Large parts of the already bricked-up nave were destroyed. Since the cause of the collapse was inadequate foundations , the ruins had to be completely removed. Long-term legal disputes initially delayed the start of construction again.

Second construction project

In 1895, the Burbach community announced an architectural competition for the new building project . The first prize went to the design by the Wroclaw architect Eduard Philipp Arnold , which was then implemented. The church could not be consecrated until March 22, 1898. The shell construction costs amounted to around 200,000 marks .

Arnold designed a three-aisled hall complex for Burbach with a broad rectangular choir in the east. Cross gable roofs with stitch emphasized the first three bays of the side aisles. Arnold placed the tower diagonally in the northwest corner of the nave and the shortened aisle, and thus cleverly refers to the access routes to the church from the upper and lower Burbach. In the opposite southwest corner there was a two-story entrance building with a side portal. The rising masonry had a reddish sandstone facing.

In contrast to the external elevation, which suggested a three-aisle structure, the interior of the building did not have a nave and had the character of a sermon church. A loft organ resting on slender pillars separated the rectangular choir from the parish squares. A narrow pulpit wall was built in front of the recessed organ loft at its apex, which was framed on both sides by two arched openings. Arnold arranged the altar, pulpit and organ axially in front of the congregation. To the left and right of the organ were rising rows of pews for the church choir. The space below the organ gallery served as the sacristy. Access to the sacristy was through a door in the southern arched opening. The church architecture was based on the interior of the Wiesbaden Ring Church , which had been built a few years earlier by Johannes Otzen .

Interior of the Wiesbaden ring church in 1896, view of the pulpit wall and the singing gallery with organ

Arnold moved the confirmation and assembly hall requested by the congregation under the west gallery. If necessary, this hall could also be used as an extension of the church space. On the ground floor, the parish chairs were built from curved and kinked benches in a fan shape around the pulpit and altar. In view of the axial alignment of the principal pieces , there was no central aisle . Further parish squares took up two narrow longitudinal galleries. On the balustrades of the gallery there were emblems that referred to the iron and steel industry, mining, handicrafts, mechanical engineering, trade and horticulture, "as a testimony that all these trades that exist in the local community are sanctified and fertilized by the Gospel", such as the Burbach pastor Hubert Nold emphasized. In contrast to the vaulted choir, a wooden ceiling construction closed off the large church space at the top.

Luther House

In the years 1929–1939 the Lutherhaus was built as a parish hall.

Destruction in World War II

In July 1942, the church building in Burbach was badly damaged in an air raid.

reconstruction

When the St. Matthew Church was rebuilt after severe war damage in the years 1953–1956, the architecture was greatly simplified. The high neo-Gothic helmet of the three-storey tower with its gables was removed and replaced by a lower pyramid roof, a choir window was added, the nave windows were enlarged by removing the tracery and the organ loft was relocated . The earlier roofscape, suggesting a multi-aisle structure, was abandoned. A flatter gable roof now covers the nave. The gables were removed. The entire rich ornamental interior painting and the neo-Gothic furnishings were finally destroyed during the construction work. The original interior concept was abandoned in favor of using the open rectangular choir as a chancel. Even before the rebuilt church was inaugurated, the separation from Malstatt took place in 1952 and an independent parish in Burbach was formed. The architect of the redesign was Helmut Zieboldt in Heusweiler .

Portal relief of the St. Matthew Church

The main entrance, at which rich architectural decorations are concentrated, was spared the radical redesign. The stepped portal is surrounded by a small porch with a gable. The pillars have bud capitals. The tympanum field is designed as a relief: on a ground that appears to be a gold mosaic, surrounded by laurel branches, a banderole with the biblical inscription “Lord, I love the place of your house and the place where your honor dwells” unfolds ( Ps 26 : 8  EU ). Above it rises a trefoil cross and a fountain with a central fountain and five spouts. The outer round bar of the portal arch is ornamented with crossed ribbons and flowers. A clover-leaf arched window appears above the typanon. The top of the gable of the portal is filled with a three-leaf flower in relief. A finial crowns the portal.

Similar to the east wall of the choir, the west facade is divided into two large sections by cornices . In the lower area there are three arched windows that originally illuminated the gallery and the rear chancel. Above this, the middle part of the facade recedes behind wide corner pilasters . The large round window on the west facade is framed by a wide sloping wall. Columns take up the overlay arch. Cornices are crooked around pilaster strips, wall surfaces and transom zone and thus contribute to the strong integration of the round window into the wall structure.

Naming

In 1963, the Protestant church in Burbach was given its current name “Matthäuskirche”, because a second Protestant church was built in the Burbach district of Füllengarten and these had to differ by name.

Interior after World War II

The glass painter Hans Gottfried von Stockhausen designed the colored glazing with scenes from the New Testament between 1953 and 1956. The lamps on the side walls show the names of the reformers Luther , Melanchthon , Calvin and Zwingli . There is a cross on the back wall of the choir. A memorial plaque for fallen parishioners was rebuilt on the western outer wall after the Second World War .

literature

  • Richard Brückner: Floor plan of the German Protestant church building. without location 1899, p. 162 f.
  • Joachim Conrad , Erwin Klampfer: The churches of the Saarbrücken church district. Saarbrücken 1993, p. 9.
  • Wilhelm Engel (Ed.): 375 years of the Evangelical Church on the Saar, 1575–1950. Saarbrücken 1950, p. 69.
  • Evangelical Church Community Saarbrücken-Burbach (Hrsg.): Ceremony for the inauguration of the rebuilt Evangelical Church in Saarbrücken-Burbach. Saarbrücken 1956.
  • Werner Franzen: Protestant church building in the Rhineland 1860–1914. Dissertation, Düsseldorf 2002.
  • Kristine Marschall: Sacred buildings of classicism and historicism in Saarland. Institute for Regional Studies in Saarland, Saarbrücken 2002, pp. 317–318.
  • Hubert Nold : The second Protestant church in Malstatt-Burbach on the Saar. In: Monthly magazine for worship and church art , 3rd year 1898, pp. 166–172.
  • Albert Rosenkranz : The Evangelical Rhineland, Part 1. Düsseldorf 1956, pp. 524-529.
  • Albert Ruppersberg : History of the former county of Saarbrücken. Part III, 2. History of the cities of Saarbrücken and St. Johann from 1815 to 1909, of the city of Malstatt-Burbach and the unified city of Saarbrücken up to 1914. Saarbrücken 1914, pp. 206–207.
  • For the inauguration of the Evangelical Church. In: Malstatt-Burbacher Zeitung of March 14, 1898.

swell

  • AdEKiR, 5- Malstatt local files : 14 (buildings), Vol. 1 (missing), Vol. 2 (1914–1935), Vol. 3 (1936–1958), Beiakte Provinzialkirchliches Bauamt Vol. 1 (1904–1943), Local files Burbach: 14 (buildings), vol. 1 (1953–1963), vol. 2 (1963–1971)
  • Archive of the Protestant parish in Malstatt: stock book on the history of the parish.
  • PKS Saarbrücken (1892), p. 18, (1893), p. 16, (1894), p. 16, (1895), p. 11, (1897), p. 15, (1898), p. 12– 13
  • KA 39 (1898), p. 42.
  • Rk I, pp. 524, 528-529
  • Institute for Contemporary Art in Saarland, archive, holdings Saarbrücken, Matthäuskirche (Dossier K 426)

Web links

Commons : Matthäuskirche  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ After Franzen p. 285 and Marschall p. 317: Architect Eduard Philipp Arnold, Aachen (initially, however, architect Carl Doflein , Berlin, but after the tower collapse, new tendering)
  2. ↑ Hubert Nold: The second Protestant church in Malstatt-Burbach on the Saar. In: Monthly magazine for worship and church art , 3rd year 1898, p. 166–172, p. 171 f.
  3. ↑ Werner Franzen: Places of worship in change. Protestant church building in the Rhineland 1860–1914. Dissertation, Düsseldorf 2002.
  4. ↑ Kristine Marschall: Sacred buildings of classicism and historicism in Saarland. Institute for Regional Studies in Saarland, Saarbrücken 2002, pp. 317–318.
  5. ^ Institute for current art in Saarland: Saarbrücken-Burbach, Matthäuskirche. Retrieved December 28, 2018 .

Coordinates: 49 ° 14 '32 "  N , 6 ° 56' 52"  E