St. Johannes (Eppinghoven)
The St. Johannes Church in Eppinghoven is the Catholic parish church in Eppinghoven , a district of Dinslaken . It is consecrated to the Evangelist John . Before that there was a chapel on the site of the church, which was first documented in a lending document from 1226. The church was built around 1450 and, due to the rapidly growing community, was expanded in 1927/28 with a round building with access in parabolic expressionistic Gothic style. Since 2011 it has been part of the St. Vincentius parish and pastoral care unit in Dinslaken, which extends to the entire city.
Location
The church is located in the center of Eppinghagen, a district of Dinslaken . Before the territorial reform , which came into force on January 1, 1975, it belonged partly to Walsum , now a district of Duisburg , and partly to Voerde . The traditional manor house of Eppinghovens, the moated house apartment , is still located in the Voerder urban area. The district of Stapp, directly on the Rhine, belongs to Eppinghoven. The Emscher has flowed into the Rhine there since 1949 . In a renaturation project , the Emscher estuary is to be converted into a floodplain landscape .
description
The church consists of two structures: the old part with cross vaults and bell tower was built in 1450, the new building was built in the 1920s. The old part of the church is a single-nave late Gothic hall church . It consists of brick with three bays, a polygonal apse, inside with flat arch niches. The nave and the apse are closed off by ribbed vaults . In the choir, on consoles and in front of arched shields in the ship, there are short rounds over head consoles.
On the south side, the church was expanded in 1927 by the architect Hermann Merl from Wesel with an extension with an interior with an octagonal floor plan. It looks like a large rotunda in an impressively harmonious architecture of the parabolic expressionistic Gothic style with pointed arched windows with tracery . All around there is a passage for processions inside. The nested pointed arches create numerous niches in which figures of saints are set up today.
Above the hipped roofs is the octagonal crossing tower with copper roofing, lancet windows with tracery, where daylight falls through the round opening in the main dome .
The interior looks like a large, almost round hall to which the choir room, which is structured with nested pointed arches, is attached.
Choir of the old part of the church
View into the choir and the side chapel
Round opening in the main dome
Window on the west side
history
The ancient parish of Eppinghoven is probably a Franconian settlement, laid out on the oldest connecting route between the Ruhr and Lippe , along the Lower Rhine terrace , where numerous Franconian villages have settled. At that time, in the 8th century, Eppinghoven was still called Eppinkheim.
Knowledge of the beginnings of the parish of St. Johannes Evangelist in Eppinghoven goes back to an allod that the Cistercian Abbey of Altenberg had in the parish in 1188. Allod is a term from Germanic law to designate personal property on land. This allod had its own chapel in Eppinghoven since 1226 at the latest, where a clergyman with limited pastoral rights was active.
The Catholic parish of St. Johannes in Eppinghoven was founded in 1236. At that time, the stately families in the Eppinghoven parish used the church. While the "common" people had to make their way to the mother church in Götterswickerhamm at church festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Whitsun , the stately families were allowed to house apartment and house "an gen Ende" (today House Endt) with their servants and the Court people of the Altenberg monastery celebrate the service in the chapel in Eppinghoven.
Eppinghoven fell under the rule of the nobles von Steck. His chapel was donated to the Walsumer Kommende (administrative district of a religious knightly order) of the Order of St. John in 1281 .
In 1289 the Counts of Kleve bought the lordship of Eppinghagen from Mr. Burghardt Steck, which included the free goods as well as the patronage of the chapel. For “his and his ancestors' salvation”, Count Johann von Kleve transferred the patronage of the church in Götterswick and the associated chapel in Eppinghoven to the pious brothers of the Johanniter-Kommende in 1349, so that from this time on the Walsum religious were not only secular but also spiritual owners the St. John's Chapel.
The expansion was financed from collections of the churches of the diocese of Muenster and the provincial government extra-approved home collection in the administrative district of Dusseldorf . The last structural change in the St. John's Church was the installation of new tracery windows arranged on the side showing modern stained glass from 1959/60.
The right to vote for pastors
The Catholic parish of St. Johannes in Eppinghoven is still the only parish in Germany that has had the right to elect a pastor since the Reformation .
In earlier centuries, many a church community had special privileges : special income, rights of use , additional clergy , honorary titles for certain offices, much more and the right to choose a pastor for themselves. The Eppinghovener's right to elect pastors, originally reserved only for male heads of families or their widows, has undergone several changes in the 20th century due to a different understanding of the shared responsibility of women in church and society. When the pastor was last elected in 1987, Bishop Reinhard Lettmann extended the right to vote to all parishioners over the age of 18.
If the pastor is otherwise appointed by the Episcopal Vicariate General , the parishioners of St. John are the only ones in Germany to take this matter into their own hands. What this privilege originated from was no longer known even in 1685.
The election should be prepared by the church council and carried out under the direction of an episcopal election commissioner appointed by the bishop. The election is public. The voting is done secretly and by identifying the elected person on the voting slip without a signature.
Although the Il. The Vatican Council emphasized on the one hand the responsibility of the laity for the mission of the Church, on the other hand it was unequivocally opposed to a bound granting of church offices, which did not abolish the election of pastors as such, but gave the mandate to replace it with better solutions if possible. → see diocesan councils ; Parish councils
The election of a pastor in Eppinghoven is still legally permissible, although it is currently suspended.
Furnishing
In addition to old documents and some art treasures, the St. Johannes Congregation owned a special work of art: a wood-carved Virgin Mary , which was probably made around 1450 and is represented by the elegant figure with a lovely smile. It was stolen in November 1981. Until today there is no trace of her. Using photographs, the community had a woodcarver in Oberammergau make a replica of the statue of the Mother of God . The choir of the old church was changed between 1848 and 1905 on the one hand by painting the vaults in the Neo-Art Nouveau style and on the other hand by the wood-carved Passion high altar by Langenberg . Modern glass paintings by Egbert Lammers have been framed in the windows since 1958 .
Bells
The church has four bells . Three date from 1954, cast by Petit & Edelbrock in Gescher . The fourth bell, the Johannes bell, is much older. It weighs 300 kg and has a diameter of 79 cm, with the tone "b". It was cast in 1520 by Woltherus Westerhues from Münster . An inscription in Gothic minuscule under the lily border indicates: "anno domini MCCCCCXX procul omnia pello, nomen petis est Johannes, noxia mortales ad sacra templa cito" . Another bell from 1520 was melted down during the First World War .
literature
- Roland Günter , Rudolf Wesenberg and Albert Verbeek (eds.): The monuments of the Rhineland; Dinslaken district . On behalf of the Rhineland Regional Council; Rheinland Verlag / Schwann Verlag Düsseldorf; The monuments of the Rhineland, Volume 14; 1st edition 1968; Eppinghoven; St. John Evangelist.
- Rüdiger Gollnik (Ed.): Lower Rhine cities in the past and present: Dinslaken , Boss-Verlag Kleve, 1980; ISBN 3-922384-40-4 .
- Ruth Levin and Karl Heinz Tackenberg: Churches are treasures ; Evangelical Church District Dinslaken (ed.); www.ekir.de/kirchenkreis-dinslaken/; in cooperation with the Evangelical and Catholic parishes of Dinslakens for RUHR 2010 (Capital of Culture)
- Johannes Vahnenbruck: Lovable Eppinghoven - history and stories ; Eppinghoven undated (2004)
Web links
- catholic-kirche-dinslaken.de History of the parish of St. Johannes
- Church choir St. Johannes Eppinghoven
- eppinghoven.de
- nurickt.de Dinslaken Eppinghoven
- uni-due.de St. Johannes Evangelist in Dinslaken
- Johannes Vahnenbruck; Pastor election in Eppinghoven
Coordinates: 51 ° 33 '53.6 " N , 6 ° 42' 20.4" E