St. Josef (Koblenz)
The parish church of St. Josef is a Catholic church in the southern suburb of Koblenz . It was built at the end of the 19th century as part of the southern expansion of the city. Its church tower , which defines the cityscape, is the highest in the city at over 90 m. It bears the patronage of St. Joseph , which is a signal of the assertion of the Catholic Church against Prussia a few years after the Kulturkampf .
history
After separation from the parish of St. Kastor , the new parish of St. Josef became independent on February 29, 1892. This was founded in a new settlement area, which was rebuilt with the demolition of the city fortifications from 1890 south of the former wall. Already in the first plan for the southern city expansion , which the important Prussian town planner Josef Stübben drew up in 1889, the parish church was intended as the center and urban highlight of the new district. The first pastor of the community was Peter Ditscheid (1846–1897). On February 13, 1895, St. Joseph was raised to a parish . Ditscheid campaigned for a new church to be built and made the building site available from his family property.
Construction of the parish church of St. Josef began on August 6, 1894, and the foundation stone was laid on May 6, 1895. The new church structure was built from 1895 to 1897 according to plans by Professor Josef Kleesattel from Düsseldorf . The solemn consecration was made on May 16, 1898 by the Trier bishop Michael Felix Korum . As part of the southern expansion of the city, the Catholic Herz-Jesu-Kirche (1900–1903) and the Protestant Christ Church (1901–1904) were built.
The parish church of St. Josef was badly damaged in 1944 in the heavy air raids on Koblenz during World War II . First, the nave was rebuilt in 1948. The transept and choir were rebuilt by 1953. On February 7, 1954, the Trier bishop Matthias Wehr consecrated the rebuilt church. The architect of the reconstruction was Joseph Kloke.
The church building was completely restored between 1979 and 1982 by the architect Wolfgang Schumacher and the restorer Gisela Schreyögg. The church got its neo-Gothic appearance back as much as possible after it had been impaired by the war damage and the sober reconstruction. The renovation was supplemented by a new tower rose (1981). It is a replacement for the predecessor that was broken in World War II. In the construction period in the 1950s, colored glazing with iron girders was chosen for reasons of cost. The picture showed St. Christopher climbing out of the Rhine at the Deutsches Eck with the baby Jesus on his back. Due to the weather, this window construction was in such a desolate condition that the opportunity was used to design a rose window with stained glass based on the original . An exterior renovation of the church structure was carried out in 2003-2009, and the church tower was also renovated.
Construction and equipment
Outside
The parish church of St. Josef was built in the neo-Gothic style. It is a brick building faced with tuff blocks and with the choir facing south so that it offers a vanishing point to Südallee. Accordingly, the imposing church tower stands at the end of Südallee. The three-aisled historic basilica with its transept and 90.46 m high tower facade takes up forms of the French cathedral Gothic . Originally an openwork stone helmet was planned for the tower . The main nave and transept form a huge Latin cross . The length of the church including the tower is 67 m; the transept is 33 m wide, the nave is 22.5 m wide.
The stone-faced building is very diverse, as chapels and entrances loosen up the floor plan and the details of the decorative elements vary. The fronts of the transept arms imitate different solutions of the French Gothic, one with a large rose window, one with several windows. The choir has a gallery, which, however, was built without the originally planned chapel wreath for cost reasons.
Inside
The interior of the parish church has an elongated, sovereign room with rib vaults , which is built up in three parts over cantoned free pillars and ends in an ambulatory choir. The neo-Gothic painting was reconstructed in 1982. Since then, the celebration altar has stood at the intersection of the crossing . Some pieces of the neo-Gothic furnishings have been preserved, such as the altar of the war memorial chapel, the pulpit and parts of the top and two reliefs from the former high altar . The current neo-Gothic high altar, which has only been erected since the last renovation, comes from the Catholic parish church of St. Laurentius in Ahrweiler and shows scenes from the life of St. Laurentius . Eight windows with figurative representations and several windows with graphic patterns were made by the Cologne-Lindenthal glass painting company Schneider and Schmolz . The five tracery windows in the choir, of which the middle three show scenes from the life of St. Joseph, were created by Rudolf Schillings and Jakob Schwarzkopf in 1953/1954 .
The oldest piece of equipment is a late Baroque miraculous image from around 1720 . This Madonna figure was brought to the parish church in 1954 and comes from the stamped chapel on the stamped roundel that was destroyed in 1944 . The pulpit is decorated with depictions of the four evangelists in a colored bas-relief. Under the organ there are two large colored reliefs from the time of construction, which show Jesus on the Mount of Olives and the ascension of Jesus. Two reliefs in front of the former high altar (side choir), which depict the birth of Christ and the Last Supper, and which were designed by Wilhelm Mayer, date from the same time.
On the sides in the main entrance area are the war memorial chapel, built in the 1920s, with the hanging figure of St. Michael and the Boniface Chapel with a figure of St. Boniface , represented with a bishop's staff and cross. In front of the war memorial chapel, the grave slab of the first pastor of St. Josef Peter Ditscheid is set in the floor.
Main portal
Choir
Sanctuary
War memorial chapel
Boniface Chapel
organ
On the gallery on the tower is an organ with 46 registers and 3000 pipes , which was built and completed in 1990 by the Seifert organ builder from Kevelaer . The organ was consecrated on November 30, 1990.
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- Coupling : II / I, III / I, III / II, I / P, II / P, III / P.
Bells
The first bells in the parish church of St. Josef came from the Otto bell foundry in Hemelingen and were consecrated on September 26, 1897. The complete bell was melted down as early as 1917 during the First World War . Then a new bell was purchased, which was consecrated on Ascension Day 1922. This bell had to be given on May 19, 1942 during World War II . After the war, four new bells were installed before the end of the reconstruction on September 26, 1948.
Parish community
St. Josef is part of the " parish community Koblenz-Innenstadt Dreifaltigkeit", which also includes the Basilica of St. Kastor , the Church of Our Lady and the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the old town and St. Menas in Stolzenfels .
Monument protection
The parish church of St. Josef is a protected cultural monument according to the Monument Protection Act (DSchG) and entered in the list of monuments of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate . It is located in Koblenz-Südliche Vorstadt at St.-Josef-Straße 15 .
The parish church of St. Josef has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Upper Middle Rhine Valley since 2002 .
See also
literature
- Energieversorgung Mittelrhein GmbH (ed.): History of the city of Koblenz . Overall editing: Ingrid Bátori in conjunction with Dieter Kerber and Hans Josef Schmidt
- Vol. 1: From the beginning to the end of the electoral era . Theiss, Stuttgart 1992. ISBN 3-8062-0876-X
- Vol. 2: From the French city to the present . Theiss, Stuttgart 1993. ISBN 3-8062-1036-5
- Herbert Dellwing (arr.): Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate. Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Volume 3.1: City of Koblenz. Southern suburb and Oberwerth. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1986. ISBN 3-590-31033-2 .
- Parish office St. Josef (Ed.): “St. Josef “Koblenz. A documentation on the occasion of the renovation of St.Josefskirche, Koblenz, 1979–1982 for the solemn consecration of the altar on July 4th, 1982.
- Wolfgang Schütz: Koblenz heads. People from the city's history - namesake for streets and squares. Verlag für Werbung Blätter GmbH, Ed .: Bernd Weber, Mülheim-Kärlich 2005 (2nd revised and expanded edition), p. 131 and p. 271f.
- Ulrike Weber (edit.): Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate. Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Volume 3.3: City of Koblenz. Districts. Werner, Worms 2013, ISBN 978-3-88462-345-9 .
Web links
- Catholic parish of St. Josef in Koblenz
- St. Josef in: regionalgeschichte.net
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Walter Born: The high German church towers , ISBN 3-7848-7010-4 , Hildesheim: Lax 1979. The height information is based on official measurements. In this article the heights including cross tips, weather cocks, pommel and pole etc. and exclusively from antennas are given. The edition is from 1979, so some structural changes that have been made in the meantime, especially reconstructions of some towers after the Second World War , are not taken into account.
- ↑ Kunst-Glasmalerei Schneiders & Schmolz GmbH Koeln-Lindenthal: List of a number of already executed glass paintings together with a few illustrations . Cologne 1902, p. 10 .
- ↑ The brand image in the St. Josefskirche Koblenz ( Memento from November 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells. Family and company history of the Otto bell foundry dynasty . Self-published, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063109-2 , p. 588, in particular page 509 .
- ↑ Gerhard Reinhold: Church bells - Christian world cultural heritage, illustrated using the example of the bell founder Otto, Hemelingen / Bremen . Nijmegen / NL 2019, p. 556, especially p. 475 , urn : nbn: nl: ui: 22-2066 / 204770 (dissertation at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen).
- ↑ Reinhard Kallenbach: Archive Pictures Koblenz, 2000, p. 43
- ↑ http://www.dreifaltigkeit-koblenz.de/
- ↑ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - district-free city of Koblenz (PDF; 1.5 MB), Koblenz 2013
Coordinates: 50 ° 20 ′ 46.2 " N , 7 ° 35 ′ 27.5" E