St. Michael (Neckargartach)
St. Michael is a Catholic church at Sudetenstrasse 55 in the Heilbronn district of Neckargartach . It was completed in 1959 in what was then a newly created settlement for expellees and was dedicated to the Archangel Michael . The church has been a cultural monument since 1992 .
history
Neckargartach has had a purely Protestant influence since the Reformation took place in 1543. Catholics did not settle again until the 19th century. In 1900 there were 92 Catholics. The community initially belonged to the Catholic parish of St. Peter and Paul in Heilbronn and did not have its own church in Neckargartach. In 1933 the number of Catholics in Neckargartach was 209 people. The community grew rapidly with the influx of displaced people after the Second World War. In 1949 there were already around 600 Catholics. Parish priest Laub introduced Catholic Sunday services in Neckargartach in 1946, which were initially held in the Protestant parish hall. In 1951 there were the first services in Polish for former forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners who had stayed in the region. In 1956, the Catholic parish acquired a piece of land in the center of the village, but it turned out to be unsuitable for a church. Through an exchange of land with the city of Heilbronn, the community then came into possession of the land on the ridge between Römerstrasse and Liebermannstrasse south of the historic town center.
The sacred building was built according to plans by the Stuttgart architect Hans-Georg Reuter . The first groundbreaking took place on July 5, 1958, the actual construction work began after the previously agriculturally used building site had been harvested with the laying of the foundation stone on October 5, 1958. After a little more than a year of construction, the church was opened on October 10 and 11, 1959 Auxiliary Bishop Wilhelm Sedlmeier consecrated. After the congregation had built a parish hall, a kindergarten and a parsonage by 1967, the pastoral care district of St. Michael was elevated to an independent parish on July 15, 1970 by a certificate from Rottenburg Bishop Carl Joseph Leiprecht . In that year over 2000 Catholics were already living in Neckargartach. The services in Polish, which had taken place monthly since 1958, were held weekly from the 1990s after the growth of the community with migrants.
The church has been enriched with various works of art over the years, e.g. B. a tapestry, a statue of Anthony and a statue of Michael. In 1992 the sacred building was declared a cultural monument because of its originality in the sacred architecture of the 20th century. In 1993 a new organ could be purchased. In 1995 the altar cross was replaced. In 1996 the exterior facade was renovated and in 1998 the choir room was redesigned .
description
Design
The church consists of a crystal-shaped church building on a prism-shaped, almost square floor plan with a tent roof up to 12 meters high and a free-standing, 28-meter-high white bell tower nine meters away . The portal facade of the 30-meter-wide and 27-meter-deep sacred building appears like a ship's bow and is intended to convey the following: “ A ship that calls itself a community sails through the sea of time.” The tent shape of the roof is similar to the Wartberg Church and the Aukirche in Heilbronn, which were created around the same time.
To the northwest, the church is adjoined by the sacristy of priests and altar boys; the Maximilian Kolbe room is located in the basement as an additional meeting and prayer room.
Choir room and organ gallery
The choir has had its present shape since the redesign in 1998. The previously more coarsely worked altar made of travertine was redesigned by Hubert Kaltenmark from Kressbronn as a sacrificial table and supplemented with an ambo and tabernacle stele made of the same material. The triangular font, also made of travertine, is located directly at the main portal. The former pulpit of the church was converted by Kaltenmark into a memorial stone with the most important dates from the history of the building, which is today in a rose bed to the right of the main entrance of the church.
The bronze cross above the altar was designed in 1980/81 by Karl-Peter Blau from Stuttgart for the Heilbronn Deutschordensmünster and as a result of the renovation there came in 1995 to the parish church of St. Michael, where it replaced an older work also carried out by Karl-Peter Blau. The cross is 1.50 meters wide and 1.60 meters high. In addition to the crucified one, the four evangelist symbols (winged person, lion, bull and eagle) can also be seen on the front of the cross, which is decorated with vine leaves and grapes . On the back there are various depictions of the Passion .
The organ on the wide, curved, almost floating organ loft on the portal side was purchased in 1993 instead of an electronic organ that had previously been used as a makeshift solution and manufactured by the organ builder Richard Rensch from Lauffen am Neckar.
Organ gallery above the main portal
Cross over the altar
Baptismal font
Stained Glass Window and Way of the Cross
The church building is illuminated by the concrete glass windows on the portal side, a large choir window and narrow ribbon windows on the side walls. The concrete glass windows on the portal side were also designed by Karl-Peter Blau. The left window shows the five secrets of the Sorrowful Rosary , the right window the twelve invocations from the Lauretan Litany . Both motifs are divided into five vertical bands of motifs, the thematic sequence of which takes place from the side walls to the portal.
The choir window was redesigned in 1998 by Lukas Derow from Stuttgart, whereby the asymmetrical design of the window from the 1950s had to be retained according to the monument authority. The window symbolically represents the struggle of the church patron Michael as the "victory of light over darkness".
In the interior of the church there are fifteen stations of the cross made of terracotta with colored glaze, which were made by the Benedictine abbey of Münsterschwarzach , and there is also said to be a tapestry with the Ascension motif designed by Josef de Ponte and made by the weaver Elsa Holzbrecher.
Concrete glass window on the left
Concrete glass window on the right
Three stations of the cross
Representations of saints
The Neckargartacher Madonna was donated by Josef Baumgärtner on the occasion of the church consecration in 1958 by the mother parish in Deutschhof. The colorful baroque wooden figure is around 300 years old, was probably the Madonna of the House in the Swiss Lake Constance area for a long time and was restored in 1980.
The wooden statue of Michael comes from a workshop in Oberammergau and was donated in 1993. It shows Michael in his typical portrayal as a dragon slayer, with Michael defeating Satan here . The wooden statue of Anthony of Padua was donated in 1982 by a pilgrim returning from Padua. The Black Madonna of Częstochowa (see Black Madonna of Częstochowa ) is an icon of Mary and was donated by a pilgrim of Polish descent and revised in 1998.
Michael statue
Anthony statue
Black Madonna
Bells
In the free-standing bell tower there is a large tower clock and two bells. The apostle bell is tuned to Ges' and has a weight of around 800 kg. Its inscription reads: “You are full citizens with the saints, built on the foundation of the apostles”. The smaller Marienglocke was donated by the neighboring parish of St. Augustine. She is tuned to As' and weighs around 560 kg. Its inscription reads: “Mary, Queen of Peace, give merciful peace in our day”.
literature
- 25 years of St. Michaelskirche in Heilbronn-Neckargartach. Catholic parish of St. Michael, Heilbronn 1984
- Otmar Möhler: Church leader of the Catholic parish church St. Michael in Heilbronn-Neckargartach . Heilbronn 2002
- Julius Fekete , Simon Haag, Adelheid Hanke, Daniela Naumann: Heilbronn district . (= Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany , cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg, Volume I.5.). Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1988-3 , pp. 242 .
Web links
- Page about the church at the parish
Coordinates: 49 ° 9 '51.1 " N , 9 ° 11' 54.35" E