St. Michael at the water tower
The branch church St. Michael am Wasserturm was built in 1954 in Essen's southeast district and belongs to the parish of St. Gertrud, which was founded on April 20, 2008. The previous building from 1904 stood on a different piece of land and was destroyed in the Second World War.
The church was decommissioned on Easter Monday, April 22, 2019, with the last congregational service.
prehistory
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, industrialization in Essen and the entire Ruhr area was already well advanced through mining and the iron and steel industry. A great many workers were attracted, for whom more and more apartments were built. This is how new parts of the city emerged around the center of Essen, which were named after the direction of the quarter. This established the pastoral care district south for the church in 1897 and the pastoral care district north in 1904. The parish of the Essen Minster was no longer sufficient. And so the East Quarter, then called Steeler Berg , as Steeler Chaussee, today's Steeler Straße, ran uphill in the direction of Steele , received a pastoral care area through the efforts of the St. Johann church council . In addition, on October 26, 1898, the Catholic Community School X ( Roman : ten) was opened on Wächtlerstrasse, which had previously been blessed on September 29, 1898, the festival of the Archangel Michael . At the opening, 464 children attended this school. On January 30, 1900, under the chairmanship of the pastor of St. Johann, Arnold Reyners, the church building association St. Michael was founded . At a meeting in the hall of the water tower on Steeler Berg on March 8, 1900, the Catholic faithful of the East Quarter decided and approved the statutes of the association for the construction of a Catholic church on Steeler Berg. The minister's chaplain at the time, Wilhelm Pastern, campaigned for the construction of a St. Michael church; in memory of an altar that was once in the Essen Minster in honor of the Archangel Michael. As early as January 27, 1901, a St. Michael Choral Society came together, and a year later a Parament Society was founded. According to the conditions at the time, a kind of emergency church in half-timbered construction was planned, which, however, received no approval from the building authorities. A solid stone building was prescribed.
The pre-war church and its congregation
The neo-Romanesque church building was designed by the Essen architect Wilhelm Venhofen . The laying of the foundation stone of the sacred building, which cost around 48,000 marks , was then celebrated on October 11, 1903. After Pastor Reyners consecrated the new church, the first service was held on June 5, 1904. For this event, the clergy of the Essen cathedral parish litigated via Steeler Chaussee (today Steeler Strasse) and Leopoldstrasse to the new St. Michael Church at Wächtlerstrasse 52–54 ⊙ . Heinrich Giesbert was the first sexton from day one. At the beginning, the rectorate community , whose rector and pastor was Gustav Meinertz, had around 5,000 Catholics. The community school X now taught almost 1000 children in 15 classes. By the end of 1904, 109 children had been baptized and 25 couples were married in the parish. On December 1, 1904, a lending library with 50 volumes opened, which was affiliated to the Bonn Borromeo Association a month later . The St. Michael Choir became the St. Michael Church Choir through church consecration. On March 20, 1905, Hugo Liedmann from Krefeld was appointed the new priest, so that the number of holy masses could be increased. On April 1, 1907, an Easter Monday, the St. Michael Parish Church and the Rectorate were elevated to the status of an independent parish of St. Michael. With this St. Michael left the mother parish St. Johann Baptist in the center of Essen. The parish boundaries corresponded to those of the previous rectorate: the railway lines in the west and north, the border Frillendorf and Huttrop in the west and south. The former mother parish gave 25,000 marks to build a pastor's apartment and made available the 1991 square meter property between Wächtlerstrasse and Michaelstrasse. At the same time, land was made available to build a new church, as the previous church was intended as a better emergency church. This new church was never built, although its construction was decided in November 1907 by the new pastor Johannes Jansen and the church council. On February 21, 1908, the plans of the architect Paul Stockebrand for the construction of a rectory and two chaplains on Michaelstrasse were approved. These buildings were occupied in mid-1909. In January of that year it was decided to buy a new organ. In the early summer of 1911, construction began on a community hall, which was inaugurated on January 7, 1912. In the parish hall there was a non-public economy, the drinks of which were only served to the corresponding meeting participants at certain times. In October 1927 there was a new liquor license that extended the serving hours.
During the First World War , on December 12, 1916, the first Catholic day care center was opened in the parish at Community School X. Another day nursery followed on January 12, 1917, this time for girls in the Catholic clubhouse. After the war, around 1920, a problem arose that had to do with the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross , which opened on September 27, 1911 , because Steeler Straße separated this church, located north on the lower Steeler Berg, from St. Michael, so that many Church members went there. On Christmas Eve 1922, a warrior tablet was inaugurated next to the baptistery in St. Michael, which commemorated the almost 200 parishioners who died in the war.
On March 7, 1927, Joseph Teusch , parish member of St. Michael, was ordained a priest in Cologne Cathedral . He was later appointed as cathedral vicar at the bishop's church. He headed the Abwehrstelle für NS Weltanschauung , which, under difficult circumstances, managed to get around 17 million copies of a Combative Catechism among Catholics across Germany. After the time of National Socialism he became Vicar General in the Archdiocese of Cologne . Teusch gained further fame as a leading co-founder of the Catholic aid organizations Misereor and Adveniat .
On November 10, 1930, was the first Martinszug the parish. When the new parish Heilig Kreuz was established on December 15, 1931 , St. Michael had to give up parts of his district, but in return received parts of the neighboring parish of St. Boniface. In 1936 the St. Michael parish had around 7,200 parishioners. And so the desire for a new church arose again, because the current building, erected as an emergency church, was so dilapidated that the church hall was under water in heavy rain. A plan by the Altenessen architects Böll and Dressler was approved by the archbishopric, according to which a new building could have cost around 300,000 Reichsmarks . When the construction site was fixed and the capital was available, the Hitler government's preparations for war were to blame for the fact that neither workers nor materials were available. So the money was used to repair the old church. The area of the parish of St. Michael changed again, in which an exchange with the parish of St. Hubertus took place on August 1, 1938.
Second World War
First restrictions
At the beginning of the new school year, the crucifixes were removed from the schools in April 1939 . The first sermon during a Holy Mass in St. Michael had to be canceled on Sunday, September 3rd, 1939 due to an air raid alarm. Four days later, the police forbade the ringing of bells for air defense reasons. This ban was relaxed again on October 29th - on Sundays and public holidays it was possible to ring the bell for three minutes. The basement of the club house had to be prepared as a protective cellar. The other cellars of the church buildings followed a year later, so that as many visitors as possible were allowed into the church, because according to the ordinance, they all had to find space in the protective cellars. Around 500 people were able to visit St. Michael. Since the main organ for the renovation was at the Klais organ manufacture in Bonn, a small choir organ with eight registers , consecrated on October 1, 1939, was placed in the chancel. The new organ, now with 31 registers, was inaugurated on June 16, 1940. The current pastor, Aloys König, bought uniform smocks for first communion because some parents could not buy their children first communion clothes, or because they were National Socialists, wanted to. Girls wore yellow ribbons and boys red ribbons over these coats.
Destruction from air strikes
Until 1942, the parish of St. Michael was spared from bombs despite many air raids. The first bomb hit a house on the Ruhrallee on March 9, 1942, the force of which even rattled windows on Steeler Strasse and Michaelstrasse. On the night of March 5 to 6, 1943, the bombs of a large air raid damaged St. Michael’s Church so badly that it burned out completely. The club house was also badly damaged in the process, so that the inn located in it had to remain closed from then on. Only the sacristy remained almost intact. In addition, many houses in the community around the water tower were destroyed and burned out, so that around 3,000 community members no longer had a roof over their heads or a parish church. At least the hall of the club house could be prepared as an emergency church so that the 800 remaining parish members - there were once ten times as many - could attend a service. Two more air raids followed on March 12th and April 3rd, 1943, which was the reason why many women, children and elderly people fled to the country. But despite all the turmoil, 22 children went to Holy Communion on the first day of Easter of the year. During the sixth major attack on Essen on July 25, 1943, a bomb strike on the nearby Kurfürstenplatz also damaged the poorly repaired community buildings. On June 18, 1944, around 500 believers came to a small ceremony in St. Michael's Church, which had burned out but had been freed from rubble. They commemorated the consecration of the church 40 years ago. As part of the metal donation by the German people, the St. Michael community also had to hand over all of its metal objects from the church, which were then mostly melted down. After another air raid on October 23, 1944, all windows and doors as well as the roof of the emergency church were again badly damaged. The onset of autumn rain, which now penetrated unhindered into the interior, destroyed everything else. Many people helped with the clean-up work to at least keep paths free of debris. The roof was boarded up with old doors. The pastor was able to use a bedroom, the kitchen and a cellar as an office in the rectory, and so continue to stay in the community. At Christmas 1944, after further air raids, a candlelit church service was held by Josef Hengst in the badly damaged emergency church . He had been ordained a priest a few days earlier and later became a police pastor in Essen. In the period before Christmas, the church was damaged more and more by bombs, so that the wall on Michaelstraße collapsed, all windows and doors were destroyed and the emergency altar was overturned. But here too, thanks to the cooperation of women and girls, a service was made possible.
After Christmas 1944 there had been no further air raids for almost two months. But on February 23, 1945, the district around the water tower went up again after a brief and violent attack. After that, paths were paved again through the rubble to the emergency church. After a Sunday service on March 13, 1945, bombers dropped countless bombs four times in a row at around 3 p.m. It was the last but also the heaviest attack on the parish of St. Michael. A direct hit completely destroyed the rectory. The rear part of the chapel also received a direct hit, the front part was badly damaged by close impacts. Neither the altar nor any other church inventory was preserved - the parish of St. Michael was largely destroyed. The safe with important files and the church registers could later be retrieved from the rubble, its contents were intact.
Emergency remedies after the war
Cleanup
On April 10, 1945, the first Americans marched on the nearby Ruhrallee. And from April 21st of that year the parish of St. Michael was allowed to celebrate its services in the auditorium of the neighboring Viktoriaschule . But even there, paths had to be cleared through rubble and rubble, the ceiling was perforated and there was no heating. In June the parish moved to the ground floor of the Gau-DAF-Haus (corner of Steubenstrasse / Manteuffelstrasse). In a makeshift way, the room was furnished with reworked benches from a bunker in Bassinstrasse and an altar made of boards. In September 1945 Pastor König and two years later Chaplain Heinrichs moved into this house, and a kindergarten was set up in the basement. At the end of 1945 around 3,000 Catholics were again living in the parish of St. Michael, but many of them came from other parts of the city. Many members of the church associations also no longer lived in the area, which is why rebuilding church life turned out to be very difficult. The parish library was reopened at the end of 1946, because around 2,000 volumes that had been confiscated by the Gestapo and some rescued from the rubble were now ready again. Little by little, groups, circles and associations began to form again, including a parament association and a small church choir. A new church was still impossible from a financial point of view. In addition, it was still unclear what size the future community would be.
Reconstruction of the club house
They began to fill in the bomb craters and clear rubble from Michaelstrasse and the clubhouse grounds. Several volunteers helped and cleaned stones that could be used again for building in order to be able to rebuild the club house as an emergency church with a front building as a residential building. The newly founded parish association collected 10,000 DM by the end of 1948 , so that construction began in February 1949. With a further loan of 50,000 DM, grants from the diocese and the state and almost 26,000 DM equity from the community, the emergency church in the rebuilt clubhouse on Michaelstrasse was inaugurated on September 29, 1949. The house had become the new spiritual center. Since many houses were newly built or refurbished in the vicinity, the number of parish members rose by around 1,000 people in the course of 1949. In 1950 the club house received a small bell. At the beginning of 1951 a new boys' choir was founded. Newly built apartment blocks on the old church premises were ready for occupancy in the middle of this year. The emergency church in the club house received a tapestry with a picture of the parish priest St. Michael at Easter 1952. On December 14, 1952, the new organ with four registers from the Seifert company from Kevelaer was played here for the first time.
New Church of St. Michael
Planning
On July 6, 1951, at a meeting of the church council, it was decided to start planning a new St. Michael church. When a new church council was elected a year later on September 14, 1952, neither the plans nor the money were approved. A year later, at a church board meeting on June 8, 1953, the decision to build a new church was made according to plans by the Essen architect Heinrich Böll . On September 1, 1953, the Archbishop's General Vicariate issued the building permit and the money had already been approved on June 24. The new church should now be built at Michaelstrasse 54.
From the first groundbreaking to the inauguration
The groundbreaking ceremony was carried out by Pastor Koehne on September 6, 1953 at 12:15 p.m. This was followed by the ceremonial laying of the foundation stone by Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ferche on October 25th , so that the company Hoch- und Tiefbau Müller & Co. could continue with the construction work. After frost damage to the new concrete foundation in January 1954, the shell was released for an initial inspection at Easter 1954. Then Auxiliary Bishop Ferche made the promise on April 14th of that year to consecrate the new St. Michael Church on October 3rd, 1954. This consecration had its first part on October 2nd and the second on Sunday 3rd October. On the second day the altar was consecrated, in which the relics of Saint Gereon and Saint Ursula were placed. They were a gift from the Archdiocese of Cologne. On October 10, 1954, the 50th anniversary of the parish of St. Michael was celebrated in the new church.
Construction of the Ruhr expressway and the church tower
In 1956 the expansion of the Ruhr Expressway through Essen began. This meant, firstly, a further fragmentation of the community area, and secondly, the new apartment blocks on Wächtlerstrasse (on the old church grounds) and the kindergarten that had been built there had to give way to the Autobahn. The new kindergarten was built behind the new church and inaugurated on February 3, 1962. In the same negotiations about the exchange of land, a chaplaincy and a rectory on Steubenstrasse were agreed to replace the apartment blocks. Furthermore, the new church is to receive a tower. To this end, Pastor Koehne announced on November 1, 1957 that the Archdiocese of Cologne would provide 36,000 DM for this, but the congregation still had to add around 30,000 DM. And on December 29th, Pastor Koehne announced that the construction of the tower should begin in the week after White Sunday 1958. Finally, the construction of the tower, separated from the church body, began in the week of Corpus Christi in 1958.
Peal
On May 27, 1960, the St. Michael Church received the three old bells from the destroyed church in a procession. They were stored in a yard on Spichernstrasse. The bells with the names Michael , Joseph and Maria were overhauled by the Bochum association . He also poured two new bells, which were named after Saint Henry and Saint Martinus . Cathedral Capitular Gaul consecrated it on June 12th, Trinity Sunday. The entire ringing is tuned to the tones d , f , g , b and c .
Architecture and interior
In the early 1950s, the architect Heinrich Böll oriented himself towards the church building development of the previous two decades. In the process, he developed a rectangular hall three times as long as it was wide, with two side aisles and a slightly recessed choir square. The result was a basilica with a high central nave and significantly lower aisles. The entire building faces west.
In the interior, after going through a long central aisle between the church pews, there is a slightly raised altar level in front and to the right of it an oratory behind three pillars, which was once used as a weekday chapel. At the rear there is the baptistery on the ground floor and the organ gallery on two steel supports above it under a flat gable roof and in front of a colored rear wall of the choir. The ceiling has a longitudinal crease and is divided into squares, the blue color of which decreases towards the front. The church received this coffered ceiling as part of renovation work that began on April 20, 1964 and lasted until the beginning of 1965. A year later, the outer wall of the church building received fiber cement panels to protect against moisture penetration.
At the end of the 1980s, the St. Michael Church was completely refurbished technically and physically by the Essen architect Franz-Josef Gierse , with the interior being given a completely new color concept.
Sanctuary
The altar room, which is raised by four steps, has an almost black floor. Today's altar was erected in 1965 and manufactured by the Theodor Imberg company in Bochum.
Up until 2004, the rear wall of the choir was adorned with a twelve meter high and four meter wide tapestry that dominated the entire room. It came from the Cologne artist Milli Schmitz-Steinkrüger and was installed here on Palm Sunday, March 28, 1958. After a decision by the church council in 1956 to purchase the wall hanging, the artist needed about 1 ½ years for this work of art. In the upper third it represented the theme of the Trinity in the form of the mercy seat . The enthroned God held the cross of Christ in his lap in front of him, by a spirit dove shining above it and in the midst of eight praying angels. Under this picture, the four archangels could be seen, which together with the upper eight result in the symbolic number twelve. Seen from the left there was Uriel with the sword, Michael , the patron of this church as a dragon slayer, Gabriel with the messenger staff and finally on the right Raphael with the pilgrim staff . Furthermore, Adam and Eve were depicted here, who, after the smashing of Satan into the abyss, led Michael to paradise. This tapestry was irreparably damaged during cleaning in 2004, for the 100th anniversary of St. Michael, and could not be hung up again.
Since 2005 the rear wall of the choir has been decorated with a figure of Christ from the now demolished Evangelical Trinity Church on Basunestrasse in Essen-Altenessen . This approximately four by four meter wooden figure was created by a Bavarian sculptor around 1955 and shows Christ enthroned on a globe.
The Tabernacle forms with its tulip-like form on the right door Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on who might take his outstretched arms, the disciples pictured on the left door. There is a crown of thorns over the disciples.
Among other things, the church building association St. Michael am Wasserturm was founded in autumn 2002 to expand and design the chancel , which, among other things, contributed to the new lighting of the room.
organ
The Franz Breil company in Dorsten built the first organ in the organ gallery in 1954, with two manuals and eleven registers . In 1967 the organ was expanded and received six new registers, and two years later four more registers. In 1975 the pedal was rebuilt and the organ was enhanced with four new registers. After a further expansion by the Franz Breil company in 1977, the organ had a total of 28 registers, with which it was inaugurated on October 8, 1977 with an organ concert. On April 22, 1990, after a four-year planning and implementation phase, a new organ was installed in St. Michael’s Church. It was built by Manufacture d'orge under the direction of Patrick Collon in Brussels. It was adapted to the conditions of the church building and now has three manuals, 32 registers and adjustable wooden wings that radiate the sound optimally into the room.
After the last church service on Easter Monday 2019 and the associated decommissioning of St. Michael, the Collon organ was transferred to St. Bonifatius .
Baptistery
The octagonal natural stone baptismal font is located two steps lower inside a circular railing. It bears the inscription: Descendit in Hanc Plentitudinum fontis virtus spiritus sancti ( Let the power of the Holy Spirit descend into this fullness of the source); under it stands: Fons vivus - Aqua regene - Unda purificans (living spring - refreshing water - cleansing wave). A colored baptismal hanging by the artist Viola Kilian is attached to the wall behind the baptism site . A large stone candlestick with a water bowl carries the Easter candle in front of the baptism site.
window
In the side aisles there have been fourteen round windows with colored glazing since 1954, which the Essen painter Schöler had executed in the Derix glass painting according to his plans . These show biblical themes from the Old and New Testaments, for example the birth of Christ, the sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham or a picture of the Trinity.
In addition, in 1972 and 1973 the St. Michael Church received abstract stained glass windows based on designs by Willi Heinzen from Essen , made by the glass art workshops Otto Peters in Bottrop and Paderborn. Other artists interpret these bright colored glass surfaces according to a Bible verse:
"In front of the throne it is like a sea of glass, like a crystal."
More works of art
On May 31, 1964, St. Michael's Church received a statue of the Madonna attached to the eastern outer wall of the building. This two meter high Madonna image was created by the sculptor Johannes Fischedick from Bottrop. The inner walls of the side aisles have been adorned with fourteen rectangular bronze reliefs by Heinrich Gerhard Bücker since 1963 . They show little more than Jesus with the cross, from the condemnation to the crucifixion to the descent from the cross. In the back left, in the porch of the church, the larger than life statue Ecce homo depicts the suffering man, crowned with thorns and mocked. It also dates back to 1963 and was created by Gottfried Kappen from Kirchhellen from fiberglass. He also made the statue of Saint Anthony of Padua from the same material in the same year.
There is also a so-called Marien Altar in the church. A kind of icon, a devotional image on which Mary embraces the baby Jesus, hangs on the wall above the altar-like base for placing candles and flowers. It was designed by the artist Klaus Zangerle from Essen- Huttrop . A cross as a mercy seat in the weekday chapel and the apostle Judas Thaddäus are two wooden sculptures that round off the entire artistic decor of the church.
See also
literature
- Eduard Hegel : Church past in the diocese of Essen. Driewer publishing house, Essen, 1960.
- Rudolf Schwarz , Maria Schwarz , Josef Rüenauver, Albert Gerhards: Church building. World before the threshold. Schnell & Steiner publishing house, Regensburg, 2007, ISBN 3-7954-1961-1 .
- Heinz Dohmen , Eckehard Sons: Churches, chapels, synagogues in Essen. Nobel-Verlag, Essen, 1998, ISBN 3-922785-52-2 .
- Catholic parish of St. Michael am Wasserturm (Ed.): 100 years of Catholic parish of St. Michael am Wasserturm 1904-2004. Essen, 2004.
Individual evidence
- ^ Diocese of Essen, parish of St. Bonifatius , accessed on June 5, 2020.
- ↑ lokalkompass_essen-sued, St. Michael am Wasserturm: The last trade fair before closing is imminent , accessed on June 4, 2020.
- ↑ 1891 named after Karl Gottlieb Wächtler, pastor of the Protestant community in Essen-Altstadt from 1844 to 1890. As a district school inspector, he was considered a pioneer in social housing in Essen. The street got its name on the occasion of the construction of residential houses for low-income citizens in the 1880s.
- ↑ Internet portal of the Catholic Church in Germany (kathische.de): Trinitatiskirche gives away its figure of Christ - Article of May 9, 2005; last accessed on January 22, 2009, offline
- ↑ St. Gertrud-Bote, May-November 2012 edition, page 11
Coordinates: 51 ° 27 '2.2 " N , 7 ° 1' 36.3" E