St. Josef (Eupen)
The Church of St. Joseph in the lower town of Eupen , Province of Liège / Belgium , is a Roman Catholic church building. It was built between 1855 and 1872 according to plans by the Cologne cathedral builder Vincenz Statz in neo-Gothic style for the residents of the local Haasviertel and consecrated to St. Joseph of Nazareth . It has belonged to the parish association of Eupen-Kettenis in the diocese of Liège since the 1990s and, including its neo-Gothic furnishings and organ, has been a listed building since 1994 . The church is an important monument of historicism in the city and its organ from 1874 from the organ building workshop Gebrüder Müller is the largest monument organ in the German-speaking Community of Belgium.
history
In the early modern period , when today's Belgium was still ruled by the Austrian Netherlands , Eupen-Unterstadt consisted of sparsely populated small hamlets, whose inhabitants built small chapels for their religious needs, as the main parish, St. Nicholas, was across a ridge in the center of the Eupener Oberstadt was located and could only be reached with difficulty. After a small mountain chapel had already been built in the 15th century for the so-called Bergviertel above the Weser valley, another chapel was to be built in 1692 for the Haasviertel in the lower town of Eupen, but for inexplicable reasons it was never completed . Only under Prussian administration and the associated membership of the Archdiocese of Cologne as well as the significant increase in population to around 4,500 Catholic citizens, which was due to an increased industrial settlement in the Haasviertel, was the construction of its own at the request of the residents and with the support of Mayor Amand von Harenne Church approved and at the same time a dedicated church building association was founded.
The Cologne cathedral master builder Vincenz Statz was won over for the planning and the foundation stone was laid on August 10, 1855 by the Cologne auxiliary bishop Johann Anton Friedrich Baudri . Due to unwanted construction delays and a lack of funds, the unfinished and incompletely furnished church was only officially inaugurated on January 8, 1864 by the pastor of St. Nicholas, which had to be improvised on the right side altar. Only after the high altar and the other side altars had been made and a pulpit and communion bench had been purchased due to increased donations, the church was officially consecrated on July 10, 1868 by the Archbishop of Cologne, Paulus Melchers, and consecrated to St. Joseph. A year later the church tower was the last to be completed and fitted with four bells, which were cast in the Aachen workshop of Joseph Beduwe and mostly financed by donations. However, only after the parish boundaries were established and the first appointed pastor was introduced on September 28, 1872, the parish was able to fully carry out its pastoral care duties. At the same time, the mountain chapel in the neighboring mountain district , which was built there in 1712 as a replacement for the old ailing predecessor chapel from the 15th century, was annexed as a branch church to the parish of St. Josef and, for this purpose, was fundamentally redesigned and redesigned in the Romanesque style and with a new equipment. Finally, after lengthy negotiations about the course of the border to the Nikolauspfarre, the establishment of an independent parish was approved and the construction of a new rectory at the Josefskirche was decided, the foundation stone of which was laid in 1873 and which could be moved into a year later. Between 1874 and 1875, two additional apartments intended for the chaplains were taken over and restored on the square in front of the church.
Since the Eupen district was annexed to Belgium in 1920 as a result of the Treaty of Versailles , the parish of St. Joseph initially belonged to the Eupen-Malmedy diocese and has been administered by the Liège diocese since its dissolution in 1925 . The church has been renovated several times since then, new windows and bells were added, and its tower was extensively restored between 1996 and 2009.
Building description
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The church building, built in the form of a basilica and in quarry stone construction, is divided into a dominating four-storey square tower with the entrance area, to which the three-aisled choir with an only slightly protruding transept in the center of the choir and a three-sided apse is attached. The raised central nave in the width of the tower is approx. 15.75 meters high and therefore almost twice as high as the approx. 7.60 meter high side aisles, whereas the transept is the height of the central nave. In the right, south aisle, the side entrance of the church is built into the front with a pointed arched window above, and the buildings for the sacristy and the weekday chapel adjoin the north aisle . At the outer rear corners of the aisles at the level of the apse, small octagonal towers with a greenish patina-like lead roof are attached, which only slightly protrude from the aisles. The aisles are connected to the nave by a buttress , the first struts on both sides of the tower being shaped as buttresses . Between the buttress, there are three pointed arch windows to the left and right of the transept, both in the masonry of the side aisles and in the upper aisles of the central nave, only the side walls of the transept and the three windows in the apse have large, continuous pointed arched windows. Both the central nave and the transept end with a gable roof , whereas the roofs of the side aisles and the apse have the shape of a hipped roof . On both sides of the sloping roof there are two dormers in the area of the side and central nave, the latter being provided with a tower-like pyramid roof.
tower
The four-storey square tower on the west side of the choir serves as an entrance area, as an organ gallery and to accommodate the bells. The two lower floors are emphasized at the corners of the front and the side surfaces by continuous support pillars, which are only interrupted by a continuous cornice between the floor sections and decorated with a small eyelash . The ogival main portal, which surrounds the double-winged entrance door and a striking relief above it in the tympanum , fills the entire ground floor. This relief, created by the Aachen sculptor Wilhelm Pohl in 1877 and donated by the citizen Johann Kaiser, shows Christ in the middle and Maria and Joseph at his side. The entire height of the first floor is determined by a large pointed arch window with richly decorated tracery , behind which the organ gallery is located. On the south side of the tower there is a five-sided narrow stair tower with small window hatches in the middle, which extends to the second floor and ends with a pointed and also green lead roof.
This second floor is optically separated from the first floor by a further all-round cornice and the square base area is slightly smaller. With the exception of the east side, to which the roof of the central nave adjoins, all three other sides are decorated with three adjacent blind pointed arches between the supporting pillars at the tower corners, all of which are crowned by a sandstone eyelash. Only in the central pointed arch on the entrance side is a narrow door and above it a small walled-up pointed arched window with tracery. Originally the eyelashes were decorated with crabs and finials and the supporting pillars with pinnacles , but these were no longer attached after the last tower restoration.
The third floor is used to accommodate the bells. It dissolves the square floor plan and was drawn up in an octagonal shape on a slightly smaller footprint. The eight sides between the pillars decorated with pinnacles are also built in the shape of a pointed arch and decorated with eyelashes. In the main points of the compass west, south, east and north, the pointed arches are equipped with lamellas as a sound opening for the sound of the bell and with tracery above, while the sides in between contain blind pointed arches with tracery. The tower clocks are embedded under the pointed arches on the west, east and south sides. The storey ends with an octagonal brick roof helmet , which is decorated with attachments and small eyelashes and crowned by a wrought iron cross on a finial.
The tower houses the two current bells, which were cast in the Marcel Michiels bell foundry in Tournai in 1952 and which replace the four old bells from the time the church was built. The Marienglocke, weighing 1022 kg and tuned to “f sharp”, bears the inscription: “HUC UBI FILIUS EST, CAMPANAE VOCE MARIA INDUC NOS OMNES COELITUS ALLICIENS” (“ Here, where is your son staying by the voice of the bell, guide us above the mind, Mary graciously up ”). Reiner Weißhaupt and his wife Rosalia Esselen are noted as godparents. On the second, the Joseph Bell, weighing 1325 kg and tuned to "dis", the sentence: "1869-1924-1952 HAEC DOMUS VIDE JOSEPH, TIBI PLENO CORDE DEDICATA - EJUS AERAE VOX, VOX TUBA NOBIS ERRIT" (" Joseph, graciously see the house that we once consecrated to you from the bottom of our hearts, let us be engraved with your brazen mouth warning voice ”). Here are the godparents of the former pastor Michael Heinen and the Eupener citizen Maria Pankert.
Furnishing
The bright and light-flooded interior of the church is structured by six mighty columns to the right and left of the central nave at the height of the partition walls, which are equipped with small capitals . Above these capitals, the columns merge into the pointed arches of the partition walls as well as into the ribbed vault with limestone ribs in the central and transepts . The ribbed vaults in the side aisles are also supported by the columns in the central aisle and by pilasters on the inside of the outside walls of the church. The rich painting of the walls with various Christian motifs, originally carried out by the decorative painter Franz Wirth from Aachen, has meanwhile been painted uniformly white.
A large part of the numerous old church windows were partly financed by donations from influential citizens and were manufactured and designed in the glass painting Oidtmann in Linnich and in the workshops of Friedrich Baudri in Cologne and Michael Hubert Schmitz in Aachen. They show different scenes from the life of St. Joseph or figures of the apostles and other saints who are especially venerated in Eupen. Later, a large part of the windows was replaced, repaired and supplemented by the Schneider and Schmolz glass painting in Cologne.
The center of the apse is the relatively graceful high altar, which is decorated in Gothic style and extends to the base of the windows. It was carved in Roermond in 1864 and shows the Most Holy Trinity in a niche covered with a canopy, under which the tabernacle with a cross is located in another niche . In addition, in niches under pointed roofs are the figures of St. Nicholas and St. Joseph on the left as well as John the Baptist and St. Lambertus on the right, all patrons from the Eupen churches.
To the right of the main altar at the transition from the apse to the choir is a group of figures of St. Family set up, made around 1870, in front of which the baptismal font, designed by Vincenz Statz in 1865, has found its place, both a foundation of the Eupener Wollspinner. In contrast, the altar table in the center of the sanctuary is more recent and was designed in 1976 by Klaus Iserlohe from Aachen and made of bluestone .
The side altars at the end of the side aisles depict scenes from the life of Our Lady. The right one, originally dedicated to St. Severus of Ravenna is a gift from the weavers in Eupen and shows Maria and her child how she was dedicated to St. Dominic hands over the rosary. The left side altar is a representation of the painful Mother of God and was donated by the women and girls of the city in 1864.
The elaborately carved pulpit , which is located to the left of the chancel in the area where the transept crosses, comes from the same year . On the outer walls of the body, under a slightly protruding canopy, there are several figures that represent a scene of the Sermon on the Mount .
Opposite the pulpit, on the other side of the aisle, on a table-like ornate pedestal, is a life-size statue of the Mother of God with Child Jesus from the workshop of the Aachen sculptor Gerhard Breuer from the year 1875, which is prepared every year as a May tarry. There are also figurative representations of St. Blasius von Sebaste with crossed candles in the right aisle, a statue of the Sacred Heart from the workshop of Wilhelm Pohl on the right of the main entrance and St. Anthony of Padua standing on a pedestal by the first large right pillar. On the opposite left pillar is the statue of St. Joseph and in the left aisle next to the entrance to the sacristy a figure of John the Baptist and a few meters further the miraculous image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help .
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At the end of this aisle, right next to the entrance to the so-called weekday chapel, which is available for smaller devotional events, there is a portrait of the crucified Savior, which was originally part of the great triumphal cross from 1889 .
Beginning at the upper end of the right aisle in front of the side altar, the Way of the Cross runs clockwise into the left aisle. The stations are a gift from the station association and are relief images cast in cement from the Fischer workshop in Aachen and were donated by the cloth masters in 1867.
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Also in the aisles are two old oak confessionals designed by Vincenz Statz and made by the Cologne woodcarver Mengelberg, which were donated by a pensioner. They are adorned with richly decorated carvings in the neo-Gothic style and on their fronts banners testify to the engravings: “DONA DEDIT” and “NJ. HAVENITHG 1866 “the donor and the year of origin.
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Under the organ gallery there are two memorials for the war dead of the two world wars. For the dead of the First World War , a wall relief made of bluestone is attached to the right of the entrance, which was made in 1921 by the Eupen sculptor Christian Stüttgen and in front of which a stone flower pot is placed. In the upper area the relief shows an angel with a cross, above and to the side of it the sentence: “YOUR WAR DEAD THE GRATEFUL PARISH OF ST. JOSEPH EUPEN 1914 1918 ”and under which the names of the dead are engraved in four columns. To the left of the entrance, a wall relief, created in 1965 by the Eupen sculptor Josef Braun, reminds of the dead of the Second World War and shows two people in mourning and a grave cross with the inscription: "1940-1945". Underneath is a small symbolic altar made of bluestone, on the front of which the sentence: “IN MEMORY OF THE DEAD AND MISSING OF THE WAR” is engraved.
organ
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The first organ was a foundation of the Eupen men's choir in 1864 and came from Melaten. After the purchase of the new organ it was given to the Bonifaziusverein for the church in Speldorf . The new organ was financed by collections from the factory masters in Lower Town among their workers, as well as by donations and income from concert events. It was commissioned by the Müller brothers in Reifferscheid . The organ, completed in 1874, comprised 30 stops on two manuals and a free pedal and was given a public honor by the Aachen organ expert Heinrich Böckeler . The originally two-part richly decorated organ case was made by the Bong brothers in Cologne in a neo-Gothic style. After the organ was fundamentally renewed in the Georg Stahlhuth organ workshop in Burtscheid in 1929 and a new pneumatic instrument was installed, the two-part case was joined together and centered with the figure of St. Cecilia of Rome . Since then, the instrument has remained unchanged as one of the few organs from the Stahlhuth workshop that has been preserved in its original form and, for this purpose, has been placed under monument protection.
literature
- The St. Josephs parish church under the Haas , in: C. Rutsch: Eupen and surrounding area , C. Jul. Mayer, Eupen 1879, pp. 119–126 ( Chapter II / 6 as digital or as pdf ).
- Johann Gerhard Heinen: Parish history of Eupens , The St. Joseph parish and The parish church to the h. Joseph p. 294–317, self-published, printed by C. Jul. Mayer, Eupen 1896
- Leo Hermanns: Church and parish of St. Joseph in Eupen , publisher of the Eupen History and Museum Association, special edition, Markusverlag, Eupen 1972
- Johann Cloot: Romanticism, Historicism and the St. Josefs Parish Church in Eupen , in: Geschichtliches Eupen, Volume VII, Eupen 1973, pp. 65–82.
- Jean-Jacques Bolly, Norbert Kreusch: Photographic Directory of Sacred Art in Belgium , Royal Institute for Art Heritage, Eupen 1981, pp. 25–28 pdf
- Catherine Weisshaupt and Josef Weber: The stained glass of St. Josef Eupen - Four generations of church windows in Geschichtliches Eupen, Volume 51, pp. 129–160, Eupen 2017, ISBN 978-3-86712-126-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Monument to the fallen of St. Josef, Eupen
- ↑ Works list of the Müller brothers' organ building workshop
Coordinates: 50 ° 37 ′ 22.5 ″ N , 6 ° 2 ′ 22.2 ″ E