St. Maria Queen (Sitterdorf)

St. Maria Sitterdorf Church

The Church of St. Maria Königin is the Roman Catholic parish church of Sitterdorf in the canton of Thurgau . Sitterdorf belongs to the pastoral area Bischofsberg , which is made up of the parishes of Bischofszell-Hauptwil-St. Pelagiberg and Sitterdorf composed.

history

prehistory

Already in the Middle Ages there was a parish church in Sitterdorf, dedicated to St. Martin was consecrated. This church has been documented since the 13th century. Against the resistance of the abbot of the prince abbey of St. Gallen , the parishioners joined the reformed faith in 1528 . But then the mass was reintroduced, and in 1633 the Catholics of Sitterdorf were assigned their own pastor. From then on, St. Martin's Church was used equally until the Catholic Church of Mary Queen was completed in 1961.

Building history and parish

In 1953, the Catholic population of Sitterdorf decided to use an upcoming renovation of the parity church as an opportunity to dissolve the simultaneous relationship. In 1955, the community selected the Im Letten area as the building site for the Catholic Church , which is in an elevated position on the outskirts. In 1958 an agreement was reached between the Reformed and the Catholics, and on April 3, 1960, the Catholics approved the building project by the Zurich architect Fritz Metzger . After two years of construction, the Bishop of Basel , Franziskus von Streng , consecrated the church to Mary, the Mother of God , on October 29, 1961, the festival of Christ the King .

In 1984 the church was renovated for the first time . Another renovation took place in 2009.

The localities of Sitterdorf and Zihlschlacht (with Oberegg, Blidegg and Degenau ) belong to the parish of St. Maria Sitterdorf . Part of the village of Hohentannen and a small area of ​​the municipality of Muolen also belong to the parish. It has around 850 members (as of 2016).

Bell tower

Building description

Church tower and exterior

Fritz Metzger designed the ensemble of church, parish center, parsonage and church tower in a modern architectural style on a long, triangular-like floor plan. In the free-standing, square bell tower with a sloping roof, a room for the youth groups is housed on the ground floor. A four-part bell hangs in the bell from the Schilling bell foundry in Heidelberg . The bells are dedicated to the Blessed Mother, St. Anthony and St. Martin and St. Consecrated to angels . Each of the four bells has an inscription. On the smallest, the angel bell, it says: «Praise the Lord you all his angels, you mighty heroes who carry out his word.»

inside view

Interior and artistic equipment

The interior of the church consists of a transversely oval space, which is composed of various segments of a circle . Above the altar is a tilted canopy , which for good acoustics contribute to the church. The roof over the chancel is supported by a single column on the right and a side wall pierced by vertical slots. This side wall separates the chancel from the side altar on which the tabernacle is located. The tabernacle is adorned with white enamel plates with golden twigs of thorns in the joints. The burning bush from the Old Testament indicates the presence of God in the consecrated bread , which is kept in the tabernacle. Above the tabernacle there is a cross with a corpus , which in turn is covered with white enamel plates. The main altar originally stood on the choir wall in a raised place, but was converted into a people's altar after the liturgical reform. In its place are the priest's offices in front of the choir wall. The pews offer space for 350 people. As a special feature, the floor in the area of ​​the pews is not covered with the black slate that forms the rest of the church floor, but with wooden blocks that are grouped with long slats made of dark wood. At the back of the church is the gallery above the baptistery and the main entrance to the church . The architect erected a permanent, semicircular platform for the choir on it. The organ is located on the north side of the church. The weekday chapel is accessible from the church interior as well as from the forecourt and consists of a simple rectangular room adorned with glass windows . The curved church interior gets its sacred gesture from the colored glass windows created by the Zurich painter Fritz Weigner. In red, yellow and blue tones, the windows in abstract motifs take up the importance of the church patroness as Queen of Mary.

Späth organ from 1966

organ

In the beginning a single manual auxiliary organ was used until the present organ was purchased in 1966. The instrument was planned by the cathedral organist Siegfried Hildenbrand, the organ was built by the company Gebrüder Späth from Rapperswil SG . Following the trend of the 1960s, the instrument does not have a classic organ case, but only a wooden frame that defines a case. The prospectus is designed like a Mitra and consists of pipes from the register Flötbass 16 'and Praestant 8'. Due to a lack of space, some pipes had to be placed horizontally. The instrument has 1640 pipes on 24 registers.

Disposition of the organ:

I Hauptwerk C – g 3 Quintatön 16 ′ Praestant 8th' Pointed flute 8th' octave 4 ′ Wooden flute 4 ′ octave 2 ′ Third note 1 3 ⁄ 5  ′ + 8 ⁄ 9 ′ Mixture IV-V 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′

II Swell C – g 3 Harp principal 8th' Coupling flute 8th' Principal 4 ′ Pointed cover 4 ′ Night horn 2 ′ Pointed fifth 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′ Sharp III – IV 1' Trumpet 8th' Schalmey 4 ′

Pedals C – f 1 Flute bass 16 ′ Sub bass 16 ′ Principal 8th' Pommer 8th' Choral Bass II 4 ′ + 2 ′ Rauschbass IV 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′ bassoon 16 ′

• Couple
• two free and two fixed combinations
• Register crescendo
• Slider chests
• mechanical action mechanism
• electro-pneumatic stop action

literature

• Angelus Hux, Alexander Troehler: KlangRäume. Churches and organs in Thurgau. Frauenfeld 2007.

Web links

Commons : Catholic Church St. Maria Königin (Sitterdorf)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Pastoral room website
• Bells on YouTube

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Parish Church of St. Maria Sitterdorf. Origin. ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2016 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. In: Parish website. Retrieved September 19, 2016. 
2. ↑ Angelus Hux, Alexander Troehler: KlangRäume. Churches and organs in Thurgau. P. 410.
3. ↑ Parish Church of St. Maria Sitterdorf. Our Church of St. Mary Queen. ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2016 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. In: Parish website. Retrieved September 19, 2016. 
4. ↑ Our parish. ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2016 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. In: Parish website. Retrieved September 19, 2016. 
5. ↑ Bell information on YouTube. Retrieved September 19, 2016.
6. ↑ Parish Church of St. Maria Sitterdorf. The stained glass window. ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2016 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. In: Parish website. Retrieved September 19, 2016. 
7. ↑ Angelus Hux, Alexander Troehler: KlangRäume. Churches and organs in Thurgau. P. 411.
8. ^ Organ profile Catholic Church St. Maria Sitterdorf TG. In: Organ directory Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Retrieved September 19, 2016.

Coordinates: 47 ° 30 '23.83 "  N , 9 ° 14' 37.03"  O ; CH1903:  seven hundred and thirty-five thousand nine hundred and seventy-four  /  two hundred sixty-three thousand three hundred and twenty-seven