St. Clemens (Bergisch Gladbach)

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St. Clemens Church, south view (2006)
The Romanesque tower of the old Clemenskirche

St. Clement is the parish church of the Roman Catholic parish of Bergisch Gladbach-Paffrath . It is under the patronage of St. Clement . The church in Paffrath heard together with the parish of the Sacred Heart in Schildgen and St. Konrad in hand to Pfarrverband Bergisch Gladbach-West.

The church stands on the corner lot Kempener Straße / Nussbaumer Straße and is entered with the serial number 26 in the list of architectural monuments in Bergisch Gladbach .

history

The St. Clemens Church in Paffrath was first mentioned in 1160 as the property of the Cologne Cathedral Monastery. The church was built in the middle of the 12th century as a separate church of the cathedral monastery in Paffrath as part of the establishment of a manor. The so-called Red Missal to Paffrath by Pastor Conrad Voeghe, which is kept in the church, has been evidence of the Paffrath parish since the 15th century. Only in the French era with the secularization of all monasteries did the church come into the possession of the Duchy of Berg and his successors in 1803 . Since the church had become much too small around 1900, the incumbent pastor Joseph Römer commissioned the Cologne architect Eduard Endler with an extensive expansion. He had the right aisle of the old church demolished and at this point put the large neo-Romanesque extension to the old Romanesque church.

The laying of the foundation stone for the extension on the south side of the original Paffrath parish church took place on July 20, 1908.

The construction

View of the choir
View of a side aisle
Floor plan of the Romanesque church 1893

On a walled, abandoned cemetery increased standing church is essentially a three-nave originally quarried stone - Basilica of two yokes with choir square and a semicircular apse . The west tower from the middle of the twelfth century is in front, the ceiling was originally drawn in flat. Instead of the south aisle there is a larger scale neo-Romanesque building with a main nave. The south aisle and the three-part west vestibule were added in modified forms from 1908 to 1913 according to plans by Eduard Endler. The new building and the main nave of the old building were brought under a common high hipped roof . The exterior was plastered uniformly. The adjacent churchyard was largely built over by the new nave. The nave was extensively renovated in 1984 during a thorough restoration . The three basement floors of the tower are not structured; the bell- shaped storey with pilaster strips and coupled sound openings was completely renewed between 1978 and 1980. The strongly retracted helmet under the steep tip probably dates from the 17th century. The south side of the Romanesque nave was originally designed as a show front. The upper storey was structured by arched windows and twin panels under an arched frieze. In the old nave, strong square pillars and slender columns with a cube capital alternate . The low dividing arches are covered in pairs by blind arches. The barrel vault with stitch caps was drawn in in 1653. Groin vaults were drawn in in the side aisle and in the choir in the 16th century . In 1928 Anton Wendling painted the old building decoratively with angels, prophets and saints. The glass paintings in the north aisle with statues of saints were also made according to his design . The original painting of the new building, which in the meantime had been whitewashed during an interior renovation between 1956 and 1959, was restored by H. Dieckmann based on a finding from 1985. Decorative tendril painting adorns the nave, the apse is painted in the Byzantine style , a Majestas Domini can be seen in the dome .

Furnishing

In the church there are three baroque altars with carved attachments . The high altar was built around 1630. The altar painting from around 1800, painted on canvas, shows the Sacra Conversazione . The second is a side altar from 1651 with a wooden Vespers picture , which was created around 1700, the third a side altar from 1659, which shows the Adoration of the Magi on the corresponding altar panel.

The patron saint of the church, St. Clemens, can be seen as a carved standing figure from the 18th century in the original color . Another carved standing figure from 1490 in a new color version depicts St. John the Baptist. A triumphal cross made of wood with a body in the original color version dates from the middle of the 16th century. The cross was later renewed. A lecture cross comes from the second half of the twelfth century . The bronze casting shows remains of an old fire gilding . The cross comes from the Rhineland, possibly from Cologne. Furthermore, there is a crutch cross with a body cast for itself, above is the hand of God. The lamb of God and symbols of the evangelists are engraved on the back .

Outside on the east wall is the depiction of the Calvary from 1774.

organ

The former organ from the Stahlhuth company came from the time the church was expanded in 1910. After that, it was rebuilt and expanded several times. So it was revised in 1956 by the Johannes Klais company in Bonn and an electric gaming table built in 1948 from Cologne Cathedral was added. Another renovation, in which almost the entire historical substance of the organ was lost, took place in 1978. At the beginning of the 21st century, the organ was only a makeshift, which already showed damage or makeshift repairs in numerous places. It also had considerable sound and technical deficits. The organ expert of the Archdiocese of Cologne has shown this in a detailed report that the church council of the St. Clemens parish commissioned in 2014.

After a planning phase by a project group, the company Orgelbau Scholz from Mönchengladbach was commissioned with a new building. The new organ for the Paffrath Church has 27 registers - distributed over the main organ , swell organ and pedal . Parts of the old organ were also integrated. The organ prospect of the old steel hatch was moved to the back wall of the church and four stops of the previous instrument were taken over.

The new instrument was completed in 2019 after around two years of construction. It is in the middle of the organ gallery .

Old graveyard

The historic grave crosses of the churchyard can still be found along the remaining paths around the parish church. On the inside of the church wall there are stone images (approx. 40 cm × 40 cm) from different ages . The existing seven stone images show parts of the Seven Stations of the Cross as well as the traditional 14 Stations of the Cross .

  • Condemnation of Jesus

  • Veronica gives Jesus the handkerchief

  • Jesus dies on the cross

  • Historical grave cross

  • Historical grave cross

Outbuildings

Clemenshaus, on the left in the foreground the “circle spiral” by the artist Jörg Wiele

The Clement House is located directly next to the parish church. In this modern parish hall there are among other things conference rooms that are available to the parish for a variety of activities.

literature

  • Catholic parish of St. Clemens Bergisch Gladbach-Paffrath (ed.), Inge Flock: Paffrath. His church and congregation through the centuries. Rass'sche Verlagsgesellschaft, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-940171-02-3 .
  • Inge Flock: In search of the roots of the old church village of Paffrath. Dissertation, Fernuniversität Hagen, Hagen 2000.
  • Claudia Euskirchen, Olaf Gisbertz, Ulrich Schäfer (edit.): Dehio-Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, North Rhine-Westphalia I: Rhineland. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2005, ISBN 3-422-03093-X , p. 131 f.

Web links

Commons : St. Clemens  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Parish letters and homepage of the parish
  2. ↑ Overview of the Roman Catholic parishes in Bergisch Gladbach ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 29, 2015
  3. ^ A b c Claudia Euskirchen, Olaf Gisbertz, Ulrich Schäfer (arr.): Dehio manual of German art monuments, North Rhine-Westphalia I: Rhineland. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2005, ISBN 3-422-03093-X , p. 131 f.
  4. ^ Sigrid Scholz: Organ builder Martin Scholz. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  5. ↑ The Scholz organ in St. Clemens. website of the parish, accessed June 7, 2020.
  6. ↑ As expensive as a house: A new organ for St. Clemens. Retrieved November 8, 2017.

Coordinates: 50 ° 59 '58 "  N , 7 ° 5' 56.4"  E