St. Lambertus (Morschenich)
St. Lambertus is a former Roman Catholic parish church in the Merzenich district of Morschenich in the Düren district in North Rhine-Westphalia .
The building is entered under no.25 in the list of architectural monuments in Merzenich and was dedicated to St. Martyr Lambert of Liège consecrated.
On June 15, 2019, the former church was profaned as part of a last holy mass and, according to current plans, will be used as the cultural center of the Merzenich community in the future.
location
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The church building is in the center of Morschenich on a small elevation on Ellener Strasse. The church is surrounded by the cemetery. Originally, the structure was located in the mining area of the Hambach opencast mine and was to give way to this and be demolished by 2022. Due to the earlier coal phase-out, the Hambach opencast mine will be significantly reduced in size and Morschenich will no longer be used by the opencast mine, which means that St. Lambertus will be preserved.
history
Legends tell of a hunting band that is said to have existed in the Bürgewald as early as the 8th century. A parish church with its vicarie is first mentioned in writing in the Liber valoris from 1308. At that time, Morschenich was already an independent parish in the old dean's office in Jülich in the Archdiocese of Cologne .
The parish remained assigned to the archbishopric until the French era and then became a parish in the newly founded diocese of Aachen in 1802 . In 1825 the parish came back to the Archdiocese of Cologne. Since 1930 Morschenich belongs to the re-established diocese of Aachen.
On January 1, 2016, the parish, which had existed since at least 1308, was dissolved and incorporated into the Merzenich parish of St. Laurentius. Since then, St. Lambertus was no longer a parish church, but a subsidiary church.
Building history
In the 12th century a church was built in Morschenich, which is mentioned in 1308 in the Liber valoris. Perhaps this church already had a previous building. In the 16th century this church was replaced by a new church, of which the basement of the bell tower is still preserved today. A fire destroyed this building in the middle of the 18th century, only the basement of the tower could be preserved. In 1775, a new hall church was built on the same site , incorporating the preserved basement tower. It was a two-axis building with a bell tower in front and a retracted choir, closed on three sides, in the Baroque style . The interior had completely preserved baroque furnishings until the war. In the Second World War , the baroque church was almost completely destroyed, only the north wall of the nave and the tower remained.
The reconstruction of the parish church could not begin until the mid-1950s. On July 25, 1954, the foundation stone of the new church was laid. The plans for this were made by the Düsseldorf architect Josef Lehmbrock , who integrated the remains of the old church into the new building. The consecration took place on September 3 or 4, 1955. In 1994 the roof was renovated. In 1998 the outside of the church was renovated.
On June 15, 2019, the house of God was profaned by reading out a letter from Aachen Bishop Helmut This , removing the Holy of Holies from the tabernacle and extinguishing the Eternal Light . Since then, the building is no longer a church under canon law. According to the plans of the Merzenich community, the Morschenich church is to be used as a cultural center in the future. The first event in St. Lambertus since the profanation was on March 7, 2020, a donation concert for the preservation of the church.
Building description
St. Lambertus is a modern two-aisled hall made of quarry stone . The three-storey bell tower and the north wall are still baroque. The choir in the east is rounded.
Furnishing
The stained glass windows of the church date from 1975 and the tower window from 1980. They are works by the Düren artist Herb Schiffer . The stone Lambertus figure in the choir was created by the Düren artist Herbert Halfmann in 1990.
Bells
In the bell tower of St. Lambertus there are three bells made of gray iron, which were cast by the company JF Weule from Bockenem in 1949. They replace a three-part bell that was melted down during World War II and had the chimes g ', h' and c ". The smallest and oldest bell was a casting by Peter Boitel from 1828, the two larger bells were made by the Gebr. Ulrich in Apolda in 1925.
|
No. |
Surname |
Diameter (mm) |
Mass (kg, approx.) |
Percussive ( HT - 1 / 16 ) |
Caster |
Casting year |
| 1 | - | 1,268 | 800 | f sharp ' +8 | JF Weule, Bockenem | 1949 |
| 2 | - | 1,050 | 460 | a ' +3 | JF Weule, Bockenem | 1949 |
| 3 | - | 931 | 330 | h ' + -0 | JF Weule, Bockenem | 1949 |
Motif: Te Deum
Replacement building
At the Morschenich-Neu resettlement site , the construction of a new St. Lambertus Chapel began in 2019, which will be built according to plans by the two architects Mathias Paulssen and Axel Maria Schlimm and should be completed in the course of 2020.
Pastor
The following pastors worked at St. Lambertus as pastors until the parish was dissolved in 2016:
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Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernd Limburg: Catholic parish church St. Lambertus in Merzenich - Morschenich. In: Bernd Limburg's website. Retrieved October 29, 2018 .
- ^ Divine service for dedication: Farewell to St. Lambertus in Morschenich. In: Dürener Zeitung. May 31, 2019, accessed June 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Emotional end of a resettlement. In: Dürener news. June 16, 2019, accessed June 16, 2019 .
- ↑ A church abandoned for open-cast mining becomes a "Reasonable Purpose" cultural center. In: domradio.de. March 3, 2020, accessed May 24, 2020 .
- ↑ RWE presents new plans for the Hambach opencast mine. In: Westdeutscher Rundfunk. February 28, 2020, accessed May 24, 2020 .
- ↑ Morschenich Church. In: Website of the Merzenich community. Retrieved October 29, 2018 .
- ↑ Letter from Aachen Bishop Heinrich Mussinghoff to the parishes of the Merzenich and Niederzier parishes dated May 28, 2015
- ↑ Engelbert Robens: The history of the parish church.
- ↑ A cappella artists bring life back to St. Lambertus. In: Dürener Zeitung. March 9, 2020, accessed May 24, 2020 .
- ↑ Engelbert Robens: The history of the parish church.
- ↑ Merzenich-Morschenich, Catholic Church of St. Lambertus. In: Internet site research center stained glass of the 20th century. Retrieved October 29, 2018 .
- ↑ Norbert Jachtmann: Bell music in the Düren region
- ↑ Merzenich Neu-Morschenich St. Lambertus branch church with community rooms. In: Website of the Paulssen and Schlimm architects. Retrieved June 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Hubert Böhr: 7000 years Merzenich. From the Stone Age to the year 2000, Aachen 2014, p. 193f.
Coordinates: 50 ° 51 '59.4 " N , 6 ° 32' 32.9" E