St. Anthony of Padua (Berlin-Oberschöneweide)
| St. Anthony Church | |
|---|---|
 View from the southeast |
|
| Construction year: | 1906 |
| Inauguration: | November 3, 1907 |
| Builder : | Wilhelm Fahlbusch |
| Architect : | Wilhelm Fahlbusch |
| Client: | Catholic parish Oberschöneweide |
| Floor space: | 45 × 15 m |
| Space: | 1800 people |
| Tower height: |
39 m |
| Location: | 52 ° 27 '54.4 " N , 13 ° 30' 57.6" E |
| Address: |
Greek Allee 9 / Roedernstrasse 1 Berlin-Oberschöneweide Berlin , Germany |
| Purpose: | Roman Catholic divine service |
| Parish: | Catholic parish of St. Anthony of Padua |
| Diocese : | Archdiocese of Berlin |
St. Antonius von Padua is a Roman Catholic church in Oberschöneweide in the Berlin district of Treptow-Köpenick . The St. Church of St. Anthony of Padua was built according to plans by the architect Wilhelm Fahlbusch from Hanover and consecrated in 1907 . The completely listed building ensemble also includes the neighboring rectory, the design of which also comes from Fahlbusch and which was completed in 1908. The parish of St. Antonius von Padua is part of the Treptow-Köpenick deanery of the Archdiocese of Berlin .
History of church building
The rapid population growth in the new rural community of Oberschöneweide towards the end of the 19th century brought Catholics from all over Germany and also from Poland to the place. At first they were all parish in Koepenick . Initially there was no room for church services in the town , so in 1896 the Köpenick pastor Karst applied to the prince-bishop's ordinariate in Breslau to unite the other surrounding towns of Karlshorst , Baumschulenweg , Johannisthal and Niederschöneweide into a separate Catholic parish with a parish in Oberschöneweide. That did not happen, however, and the Oberschöneweidern were given the prospect of sharing the imperial pavilion in Karlshorst. So they celebrated their first service there at Easter 1897. In the long run, however, the pavilion was not enough for the crowd of believers. The Catholics from Oberschöneweide found a more suitable place in the recently completed fire station in Siemensstrasse from October 1899. After the Prince-Bishop of Breslau had raised Oberschöneweide together with Johannisthal and Baumschulenweg to their own curate in 1903 , the construction of a church in the community was planned. Chaplain Joseph Rennoch was able to negotiate the transfer of a well-located building plot with the support of the forest administration. The municipality had to pay 43,000 marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 265,000 euros) for road regulation work. The cost of building its own church building was estimated at 155,000 marks (today: around 955,000 euros), which came about with the help of donations from other German parishes. In the church chronicle it says:
“In order to achieve a very good success, I elected St., who is in great veneration among the Catholic people, as the patron of the church . Anthony of Padua. "
The plan for a church and parsonage submitted by the architect Wilhelm Fahlbusch from Hanover was approved by the parish council and the foundation stone was laid on August 26, 1906 . Fahlbusch then also managed the construction. After just 15 months, on November 3rd, 1907, the church was completed. The prince-bishop delegate Carl Kleineidam undertook the consecration of the church .
Fahlbusch had also designed the rectory in a baroque style and directed its construction. The corner at the Roedernstraße abgewalmtes received a mansard roof with two plastic segment arc gables on the attic. The relatively simple building was structured and plastered with clinker pilaster strips . On December 22nd, 1908, the rectory was also ready for occupancy.
After Oberschöneweide had been raised to a parish, the deanery appointed Joseph Rennoch as the first pastor of the parish of St. Antonius on November 13 of the same year . This led the congregation until 1923 when he took over another pastor's position in Berlin. During his tenure, he co-founded a total of 27 parish groups to enrich church life, including a church choir, a kindergarten, a journeyman's association, a men's apostolate, a Vincent conference, a Catholic workers' association and much more. In 1925 a major renovation of the church building took place: the roof was covered and the gallery was enlarged.
Bishop Konrad von Preysing consecrated the building of the church on November 3, 1937. On this occasion, the congregation received a relic of St. Anthony from a Franciscan order . It found its place in a shrine on the Antonius altar .
During the Second World War , on January 27, 1944, bombs damaged the building complex : the church roof was largely covered and all windows destroyed. The residents of the surrounding houses, which were also destroyed, now used some of the church rooms to store their remaining furniture. However, the survivors actively helped to make the church usable again in the same year. After the end of the war, more thorough repairs were made to the church. It was even able to be used by Catholic dignitaries during the 75th German Catholic Day in Berlin in August 1952. In 1954, an organ workshop carried out repairs on the instrument.
The now urgently needed renovation of the church could take place in 1962/1963. The redesign was based on the liturgical aspects of the Second Vatican Council . The artist Georg Nawroth from Görlitz had chosen the motto “ Adoration of the Lamb ” for the principles . His designs for a completely new furnishing such as the altar window, pulpit, tabernacle, side altars, chapels and so on were approved by the church council. In May 1963, renovations and renovations began. With the installation of the five new altar windows, which the artist had designed with figures of saints, the first phase of the interior renovation was completed on October 19, 1963. The other renovations (windows, pulpit and pews) were carried out in further steps. Only with the erection of the tabernacle and the inauguration of a new Way of the Cross did the planned work in the church finally come to an end in 1966.
In the meantime, donations from parishioners were able to purchase 18 new bronze candlesticks for the three altars. In 1963, the Antonius Congregation received the shrine of a late Gothic carved altar with the Coronation of Mary from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin as a permanent loan .
In 1977 a structural analysis showed that the tower was in disrepair . A mobile crane was needed for repairs, but it was not available in the GDR ; so they ordered him in West Berlin . On May 23, 1977, the crane lifted the tower helm so that specialists could now carry out the necessary renovations. The spire came back on the shaft the very next day.
Finally, in 1980, the first value-preserving measures began on the buildings of the church, the rectory and the daycare center. But only after the political change could they be continued on a larger scale and with the help of subsidies until the year 2000. The final work took place in 2011/2012, for which a sum of 200,030 euros had to be raised. Remnants of the first wall frescoes were also uncovered.
The 100th anniversary of the consecration of the church was celebrated with a pontifical office of Archbishop Georg Cardinal Sterzinsky on November 11, 2007.
architecture
The church building is a building in neo-Gothic style . Bricks were used as the building material and Fahlbusch chose a basilica with a cruciform floor plan as the basic shape. The three-bay nave is spanned by a ribbed vault. Further features are a three-sided closed choir , a west tower with a square floor plan and an approximately 24-meter-long transept, equipped with tracery windows . The round-arched, funnel-shaped main portal is incorporated into the tower shaft. Above is the Cecilia window, which is used to designate the glass rose window. In the church tower hang a tower clock with a rectangular dial and a three-part bell. The tiled tower roof has a pointed helmet , the gable surfaces of which are decorated with ornamental rosettes. The whole thing is crowned by a cross on a tower ball with a gold-plated weathercock.
The nave offers space for 1800 people.
Furnishing
Three bronze bells were installed in the church tower, two of which had to be delivered as a metal donation from the German people during the First World War . The smallest bell (Ave) was retained for the time being. In 1924, donations from community members were used to make two replacement bells, this time as cast steel . The larger St. Joseph bell with the inscription: " O Lord, give to those who fell in World War 1914/18 eternal peace" and the middle St. Antonius bell with the inscription: " Save us from plague , famine and war, O Lord . ”Were raised in the church tower on December 8, 1924. They rang together with the smallest bronze bell for the first time at Christmas of the same year. The Ave bell , which was also melted down for war purposes in World War II, was also cast in steel in 1956 and consecrated in September 1957. It bears the inscription “Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us”.
The Berlin sculptor Joseph Breitkopf-Cosel made the high altar based on a design by the architect Fahlbusch; it was inaugurated in 1913. On the gallery in a place Orgelbauanstalt Eggert from Paderborn -made organ into place. It was consecrated on January 26, 1916. The crucifix in the choir dates from the late 14th century. In 1991 the parish acquired a small organ from the company W. Sauer Orgelbau Frankfurt (Oder) , which was placed in the main nave below the gallery.
History of the parish
At the time of the consecration of the church, the catchment area of the parish of St. Antonius of Padua consisted of the districts of Ober- and Niederschöneweide and Johannisthal . The new congregation united around 6,000 believers. Between 1926 and 1927, a chapel for the parish of St. Anthony of Padua was built on a plot of land in Johannisthal and was consecrated to the Evangelist Johannes . The inhabitants of this part of Berlin had their own church and were spun off from St. Antonius. The parish of St. Anna was established for the Catholics in Baumschulenweg .
In 1934, the Antonius congregation opened another building in Weiskopfstrasse, which was used for child and youth work. The child care was steadily expanded in the following years. In the late 1990s, a St. Konrad senior citizen center was founded in cooperation with Caritas . At the beginning of the 21st century, the dwindling number of members and the economic problems led to the fact that church areas that were previously spun off from Johannisthal were returned to the St. Antonius Church. In the autumn of 2012, the St. Anthony parish consisted of around 2000 Catholics.
literature
- Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin-II . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 325 .
Web links
- Homepage of the Catholic parish of St. Anthony of Padua
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List with further information
Individual evidence
- ↑ Status of renovation of the church interior. (PDF; 1.3 MB) In: ponticulus , parish letter of the parish of St. Anthony of Padua; December 2011 / January 2012, p. 9 ff; Retrieved November 10, 2012
- ↑ Breitkopf-Cosel, Joseph . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1919, Part 1, p. 306. “akad. Sculpture, models and carving, memorials and tomb sculpture ”.