St. Thomas Church (Helmstedt)
The St. Thomas Church in Helmstedt is a Protestant church in the style of brutalism .
history
The village of Runstedt was devastated between 1958 and 1968 in the course of open-cast lignite mining in the Helmstedt area . Many of the residents were settled in a newly built district in the west of the Lower Saxony district town of Helmstedt. As a replacement for their church from 1822, which was demolished in 1964, the St. Thomas Church was built there between 1963 and 1967 according to designs by Dirk-Erich Kreuter and Ulrich Hausmann in a modern concrete construction. It was inaugurated on January 22, 1967 and bears the name of St. Thomas . The parish belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran regional church in Braunschweig .
Furnishing
The altar of the church is slightly raised and free-standing in the church interior. On the altar there is a 2 m high bronze sculpture showing a Golgotha crucifixion group. The sculpture was created in 1964 by the sculptor Ursula Querner , who also designed the four candlesticks on the altar. On the altar wall there is a large embroidery that was made by parishioners over several months.
The pulpit of the church is decorated with a bronze relief by the artist Fritz Fleer from 1970, which shows Jesus Christ with the Apostle Thomas.
The baptismal font has had a bronze bowl since 2005, on which the four rivers of Paradise can be seen. A small figure of Christ and a child are on the edge of the pool.
The organ , which was built by the organ builder Rudolf Janke in 1968, is located on a gallery of the church . It has 34 registers with 1912 organ pipes .
A special feature in the church is the small way of the cross . Seven stone reliefs attached to the inner wall represent the stations of Holy Week : washing of feet and communion; Gethsemane ; Condemnation of Jesus; Carrying the cross; Crucifixion; Death of Jesus; Entombment.
In the bell tower of St. Thomas Church were four bells with the beat tones as , b , of and it installed. The bells were cast by the Bachert bell foundry in 1964 .
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 13 ′ 29.8 ″ N , 10 ° 59 ′ 49.8 ″ E