St. Laurentius (Bensheim)
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St. Laurentius is a Roman Catholic church in Bensheim . As a modern post-war building from the 1960s, the church is now a listed building .
history
What is now the western part of the city of Bensheim was turned into building land, especially because of the resettlement of the displaced persons and refugees from World War II. The large, only Catholic parish for Bensheim St. Georg was soon no longer sufficient for the increasing number of believers.
On July 1, 1953, construction work began on an urgently needed kindergarten. This was inaugurated by the Mainz bishop Albert Stohr in 1954 on the patronage of St. Winfried ( Bonifatius ). The parish curate of St. Laurentius was notarized by the new bishop of Mainz on September 14, 1962. It covers the area of the Bensheim district west of the Main-Neckar railway . The groundbreaking ceremony took place on April 29, 1963, and the foundation stone was ceremoniously laid on September 15, 1963 for the church, which was built according to plans by the Würzburg government architect Erwin van Aaken . On June 19, 1965, Bishop Hermann Volk consecrated the church.
The church building
The spatial conception of the parish church under the patronage of Laurentius of Rome shows the form language of modern building that was typical of the time and developed in the 1950s .
Already the floor plan in the form of a parabola (Greek parabola = parable), which is closed by an arc of a circle, refers to the claim of the room to become a parable itself: as a sacred, sacred room, the side walls of which seem to run backwards into infinity, where they rise and extend wide, as if they wanted to embrace the whole community with outspread arms and unite them in open space.
A flat arched roof in the shape of a keel spans the church. A continuous arc of light under the ceiling with narrow concrete ribs and concrete glazing illuminates the worship room. The height of the side walls increases from about 7 m on the entrance side to twice the height above the choir room. The popular altar as the central place of the Holy Mass and liturgical focal point, according to the liturgical reform of the second Vatican, in the focal point of the interior should enable the active participation ( Participatio actuosa ) of the assembled people of God.
In 1992 the interior of the church was renovated, in which the altar level was lowered at the suggestion of the architect Heinz Frassine, and thus brought closer to the church people. The communion bench was removed from the sanctuary. The freed stone material was used for an ambo and for the tabernacle , with the tabernacle placed in the middle behind the altar.
A free-standing campanile , with a ladder-like reinforced concrete construction, only closed in the upper third, is crowned with a large cross. The tower was completed in July 1964. Since 1969 it was equipped with three bells that were cast by Friedrich Wilhelm Schilling . These were replaced in 1996 by new, lighter instruments from the Bachert bell foundry . This measure became necessary because cracks appeared in the tower. The new bells are tuned to the tones b, c and d and with the remaining old bell f 'and were consecrated on November 30th by Cathedral Chapter Dietmar Giebelmann .
The church stands as a "testimony to the intellectual, artistic and technical activity, in the preservation and care of which there is a public interest in promoting historical awareness and increasing the value of the environment", under monument protection . Since 1997, St. Laurentius has been part of the Bensheim Parish Association with St. Georg and Holy Cross in Bensheim-Auerbach.
Parish center
Vicar General Martin Luley was able to inaugurate a parish center on November 7, 1981 after years of long fundraising.
Web links
- State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (Ed.): Catholic Parish Church St. Laurentius In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse
- Homepage of the parish of St. Laurentius
- St. Laurentius on the website of the Diocese of Mainz
Individual evidence
- ↑ Laurentius ( Memento from December 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on denkmalpflege-hessen.de
- ↑ History ( Memento of the original from December 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the parish
Coordinates: 49 ° 40 ′ 45.5 ″ N , 8 ° 36 ′ 32.1 ″ E