St. Michael (Kelz)

St. Michael
Denomination :	Roman Catholic
Patronage :	archangel Michael
Consecration date :	September 13, 1853
Rank:	Branch church
Parish :	St. Marien Vettweiß
Address:	Kirchstrasse 11, 52391 Vettweiß-Kelz

50.7672 6.59573Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 1.9 ″ N , 6 ° 35 ′ 44.6 ″ E The Church of St. Michael is the Roman Catholic branch church in the district of Kelz in the municipality of Vettweiß in the Düren district ( North Rhine-Westphalia ).

The church is registered under number Kel-5 in the list of monuments of the municipality of Vettweiß .

history

A church in Kelz is mentioned for the first time in 931. This church probably already had the status of a parish church . In 1641 the Kelz church burned down completely, only larger parts of the tower were preserved. Presumably this was the successor church to the 931 mentioned. A new nave was built in 1641, but the tower was left as a ruin for the time being. The old church fell into disrepair in the middle of the 19th century. In 1851 the church council decided to build a new church. So in 1852 the old church was torn down except for the tower, which had probably been rebuilt in the meantime, and construction of the new church began in the same year. The plans came from the Cologne architect Vinzenz Statz , who had planned a three-aisled church in neo-Gothic forms. The church was finally consecrated on September 13, 1853. In 1889 the church tower was badly damaged by a lightning strike. The tower was replaced by a new one, which the Cologne architect Richard Odenthal had planned. During the Second World War, the church was so badly damaged that the vault of the central nave collapsed. Instead of the vault, a wooden ceiling was put in during an extensive renovation of the church in 1949. During a further renovation in 1955 and 1956, the entire church painting was whitewashed. Between 1988 and 1997 the church was completely renovated inside and out.

Since 2010 St. Michael in Kelz is no longer an independent parish. It became with the former parishes of St. Gereon (Vettweiß), St. Amandus (Müddersheim), St. Antonius (Ginnick), St. Gangolf (Soller), St. Jakobus the Elder (Jakobwüllesheim), St. Johann Baptist (Sievernich) , St. Martin (Froitzheim), and St. Petrus (Gladbach) merged to form the parish of St. Marien, Vettweiß.

Furnishing

In the church there is a neo-Gothic high altar from 1867, a choir stalls are the work of a Kelzer carpenter and still come from the old church. The first organ of the church was the work of the organ building workshop Gebrüder Müller from Reifferscheid from the year 1856. In 1934 the church received a new organ with 20 sounding stops, which was built by the organ building company Stahlhut from Aachen. This organ was extensively renovated in 2014 by master organ builder Hubert Fasen. Most of the windows of the church date from the 1950s and are works by the artist Hermann Gottfried. Another window is by Wilhelm de Graaf from 1954 and two more windows were created in 1900 by an unknown artist.