St. Johannes Baptista (Altenkessel)

The Catholic parish church of St. Johannes Baptista in Saarbrücken-Altenkessel

View inside the church

View to the organ gallery

The Church of St. Johannes Baptista is a Catholic parish church in Altenkessel , a district of the Saarland state capital Saarbrücken . Church patron is John the Baptist . In the list of monuments of the Saarland, the church is a single monument listed.

The parish of St. Johannes Baptista and the neighboring parish of St. Elisabeth in Altenkessel-Rockershausen formed a parish community in the deanery of Saarbrücken ( Diocese of Trier ). With effect from January 1, 2013, the two parishes were merged to form the parish and parish of St. Nicholas with the parish church of St. Johannes Baptista. Together with the parish of St. Barbara Klarenthal, it forms the Altenkessel parish community .

history

A Catholic church was built in Altenkessel between 1868 and 1870. It was a prayer room owned by the Royal Prussian Mining Treasury (seat: Bergwerksdirektion Saarbrücken ), which was built according to plans by the mining official builder Dumreicher. The building was used sacred until 1903, after which it was profaned and converted for residential purposes.

Architect Wilhelm Hector ( Saarbrücken - St. Johann ) designed the plans for today's church building, which were implemented between 1902 and 1903. For the masonry and stone carving work , Richard Schmidt sen. ( Luisenthal ) responsible.

After the church suffered damage in World War II , it was repaired between 1945 and 1960 as part of a restoration .

As a result of the subsidence of the pits , the building fabric was badly affected, so that further extensive restoration work was necessary.

In 2000 the crypt under the sacristy was converted into a weekday church.

Architecture and equipment

The church building was built in the neo-Gothic style as a three-aisled basilica . The nave , with a church tower in front with a pointed spire , divided into a central nave and two lower aisles , is divided into four bays . A transept adjoins the nave and a five-sided choir with a polygonal finish. The shape of a Latin cross results as a floor plan . The ceilings of the three naves are formed by ribbed vaults. The ceiling of the crossing , the place where the central and transepts meet, has a star vault .

In the vaulted fields and arches there are paintings with stylized motifs from the animal and plant world, as well as ornamental paintings.

The interior of the church includes an artistically sophisticated pulpit with depictions of the four most important church teachers of the West: Jerome , Ambrosius of Milan , Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory the Great . Of the original altars, the only one that has survived is the Altar of Mary.

From the windows of the church in 2000, six by vandalism destroyed and restored in the wake of the company Frese (Saarbrücken). The three windows in the choir show important scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist.

There is a Lourdes grotto outside the church .

organ

The organ of the church was built in 1912 as opus 463 by the Friedrich Weigle company ( Stuttgart - Echterdingen ), but it was not set up in the church on the gallery until 1913 . In the 1950s and 1970s, renovations were carried out in line with the organ movement , in which some stops were exchanged to lighten the sound and the originally neo-Gothic prospect was converted into a free pipe prospect. Part of the case was preserved. The number of registers and the free-standing gaming table facing the altar were not affected by the renovation . The renovation work in the 1970s was carried out by Hugo Mayer ( Heusweiler ).

In 2006, the original disposition from 1912 was reconstructed by Thomas Gaida ( Wemmetsweiler ). The instrument has 30 registers, a group slide and two transmissions , distributed over two manuals and pedal . The action is pneumatic. The disposition is as follows:

I Hauptwerk C – g ³
1.	Bourdon	16 ′
2.	Principal	8th'
3.	Seraphone covered	8th'
4th	Viola di gamba	8th'
5.	Flute octaviante	8th'
6th	Gemshorn	8th'
7th	Dulziana	8th'
8th.	octave	4 ′
9.	Reed flute	4 ′
10.	octave	2 ′
11.	Mixture V	2 ² ⁄ ₃  ′
12.	Trumpet	8th'

II Swell C-g ³ (g ⁴ )
13.	Lovely covered	16 ′
14th	Violin principal	8th'
15th	Seraphone flute	8th'
16.	Lovely covered	8th'
17th	Quintatön	8th'
18th	Salicional	8th'
19th	Voix celeste	8th'
20th	Principal	4 ′
21st	Transverse flute	4 ′
22nd	Sesquialtera II
23.	Flautino	2 ′
24.	Echo Mixture IV
25th	Hautbois	8th'
	Cornet IV + V (group train from No. 16 and 21-23)	8th'

Pedal C – f ¹
26th	Violon bass	16 ′
27.	Sub bass	16 ′
	Covered bass (= No. 13)	16 ′
28.	Octave bass	8th'
29	Dacked bass	8th'
30th	Choral bass	4 ′
	Trumpet (from No. 12; from c ⁰ )	16 ′

Coupling : II / I (also as sub- and super-octave coupling), I / P, II / P
Playing aids : a free combination, p, mf, f, tutti, hand register down, crescendo down, tongues down, crescendo, automatic piano pedal

literature

Marschall, Kristine: Sacred buildings of classicism and historicism in Saarland . Institute for Regional Studies in Saarland, Saarbrücken 2002, ISBN 978-3-923877-40-9 , p. 666 .