St. Michael (Buir)

Parish Church of St. Michael, Buir

St. Michael is a Roman Catholic parish church in the Kerpen district of Buir in the Rhein-Erft district in North Rhine-Westphalia . The transept and choir were built between 1890 and 1891, the nave and tower between 1896 and 1898 according to plans by Franz Statz .

The building is entered under No. 25 in the list of architectural monuments in Buir (Kerpen) and is dedicated to St. Archangel Michael consecrated, the second patron is St. Blaise of Sebaste .

history

A church in Buir was first mentioned in the Liber valoris around 1300 . At that time Buir was already an independent parish . Since the 15th century, the Duke of Jülich had the right to collate the parish church. Until 1802 ( French times ) the parish belonged to the Bergheim deanery in the Archdiocese of Cologne . After the dissolution of the archbishopric, the Buirer parish belonged to the first diocese of Aachen until 1821 and has since been part of the archbishopric of Cologne again.

It is known about the parish church, mentioned around 1300, that it was located on the site of today's church building and that it was a single-nave hall church with a bell tower in front . Around the year 1600 the hall church was extended by a south aisle to a two-aisled hall church in the architectural style of the late Gothic . In 1629 a sacristy was added. The church was badly damaged in the Thirty Years' War . In the first half of the 18th century the bell tower became dilapidated and had to be partially rebuilt in 1741. St. Michael therefore had a three-storey bell tower in front of the nave, which still had Gothic forms on the lower two storeys and Baroque forms on the upper storey . The tower was crowned by an eight-sided spire.

At the end of the 19th century, the population in Buir increased so much that it was decided to rebuild the church. For this purpose, the Cologne architect and diocesan master builder Franz Statz made the plans for the new church. In 1890 the choir of the old church was laid down and the foundation stone for the new building was laid on October 5, 1890 . In the course of 1891, today's choir with the sacristies and the transept was added to the old nave . On January 15, 1892, the new building was consecrated by the then local pastor, Castenholz, and the first holy mass was read. The high altar , created by a sculptor named Jäger, was donated by the citizen of Buir, Peter Hess. The high altar was consecrated on June 9, 1892 by the Archbishop of Cologne, Philipp Krementz . It was not until 1896 that the now dilapidated nave and the tower of the old church were torn down and the current nave and bell tower were built by 1898. On May 18, 1898, the entire new parish church could finally be consecrated by the Cologne Auxiliary Bishop Antonius Fischer .

architecture

St. Michael is a three-aisled and four- bay cross basilica made of bricks in the neo-Gothic style . The east-facing church has a bell tower built in front of it in the west, a transept adjoining the nave and closes in the east with a choir closed on five sides. The two side choirs of the aisles are closed on two sides. There is a sacristy each on the south and north sides of the choir .

Furnishing

In the interior of St. Michael there are still some pieces of equipment from the previous church. These include a baroque baptismal font made of bluestone from the 17th century, a wooden figure of St. Blasius from the 17th century, a wooden Salvator mundi figure from the 18th century. Also from the 18th century comes a wooden figure of St. Johannes Nepomuk .

Of the neo-Gothic furnishings from the 1890s / 1900s, only four reliefs of the four evangelists in the former pulpit , the holy water basin, a small altar with the miraculous image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and the triumphal cross are preserved. The rest of the furnishings, such as the pulpit, high altar , side altars, communion bench, stations of the cross and pews were partly damaged in the Second World War, but most of them were removed from the interior after the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council .

Today's popular altar was consecrated on September 13, 1981 by the Cologne auxiliary bishop Augustinus Frotz . The altar and the ambo are works by the Frechen artist Olaf Höhnen . The sacrament house with tabernacle in the choir of the north aisle is the work of the artist Walter Prinz from Cologne. Today's pews come from the parish church of St. Barbara in Fortuna, which fell victim to the Fortuna-Garsdorf opencast mine . In the 1990s and 2000s, figures from the archbishopric's depot were placed in the Buirer church. In 1998 an old, relief-like way of the cross made of clay was purchased. It comes from the Church of St. Panateon in Unkel . The windows of the church were designed by the glass painter Paul Weigmann . The designs were used by the company Glasmalerei Oidtmann from Linnich from 1973 to 2000.

organ

The organ from 1966 is the work of the Bonn organ building company Johannes Klais and has 18 stops . The instrument is placed in the north transept, which means that the sound of the organ cannot fill the church space well, as the location is very unfavorable. The organ stage of the old organ has been preserved and is, as usual, in the west of the central nave. The organ prospectus of the old organ is also preserved, but otherwise the old Buirer organ was completely dismantled after the war.

Bells

No.	Surname	Diameter (mm)	Mass (kg, approx.)	Percussive ( HT - 1 / 16 )	Caster	Casting year	Others
1	Old Mary	1,250	1,350	e ' +5	Johann Duisterwalt & Christian Duisterwalt, Cologne	1409	-
2	Maria	1,000	620	g ' +6	Hans Huesker; Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock, Gescher	1951	-
3	Michael	880	420	a ' +7	Hans Huesker; Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock, Gescher	1960	-
4th	Agnes	771	290	h ' +8	Hans Huesker; Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock, Gescher	1960	-
5	Maria	680	210	c # " +10	Christian Kloit, Cologne	1411	-
6th	Queen of Heaven	362	35	h " +4	Hans Huesker; Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock, Gescher	1966	in the roof turret of the crossing

Motive: O Savior, tear open the heavens

Individual evidence

1. ^ Paul Clemen: The art monuments of the Bergheim district . In: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz Volume 4, Ed. Paul Clemen, Düsseldorf 1899, pp. 51 f. (431 f).
2. ↑ General-Anzeiger for the city and district of Düren. Dürener Zeitung, No. 6, Wednesday, January 20, 1892, article: "Locales."
3. ↑ General-Anzeiger for the city and district of Düren. Dürener Zeitung, No. 48, Wednesday, June 15, 1892, article: "Locales."
4. ↑ Waltraud Schnell: The Catholic Church of St. Blasius and St. Michael in Kerpen-Buir , Kerpen-Buir 1998, p. 4 ff.
5. ↑ Waltraud Schnell: The Catholic Church of St. Blasius and St. Michael in Kerpen-Buir , Kerpen-Buir 1998, p. 10 ff.
6. ↑ Kerpen-Buir, Catholic Church of St. Michael. In: Forschungsstelle Glasmalerei des 20. Jahrhundert eV Accessed on February 21, 2017 . 
7. ↑ LIST OF WORKS as of X / 2016 (PDF). (PDF) In: Website Orgelbau Klais Bonn. Retrieved February 21, 2017 . 
8. ↑ Gerhard Hoffs: Bells in the dean's office Kerpen

Coordinates: 50 ° 51 ′ 36.5 ″  N , 6 ° 34 ′ 54.5 ″  E