St. Stefan (Wiesendangen)
The Church of St. Stefan is the Roman Catholic parish church of Wiesendangen in the Winterthur district of Zurich . It is at Wannenstrasse 4 . The parish belonging to it is responsible for the places Bertschikon , Ellikon , Elsau , Rickenbach- Sulz and Wiesendangen.
history
History and naming
Wiesendangen was first mentioned in a document in 804 when it was part of a donation to the St. Gallen monastery . In 1155, the Wiesendangen church is mentioned in another document. As a result of the Reformation carried out in Zurich in 1524 , the Wiesendangen church was used for Reformed services from then on. From then on, Catholic worship was banned in what is now the Canton of Zurich until the 19th century. The Edict of Tolerance of 1807 allowed a Catholic worship service in the canton of Zurich for the first time, but only in the city of Zurich. In 1813, 50 Catholics residing in the city of Winterthur appealed to the city fathers for tolerance , but it was not until 1862, when the Rheinau monastery was abolished and the further use of its property was legally regulated by the canton of Zurich, that the first Catholic service was allowed in Winterthur have taken place since the Reformation. The so-called First Zurich Church Law from 1863 recognized Zurich as well as the Catholic parishes in Winterthur, Rheinau and Dietikon (the last two were traditionally Catholic places), so that a Catholic parish could be established in Winterthur. In 1868 the newly built St. Peter and Paul Church was opened in the presence of representatives of the cantonal government, including state clerk and poet Gottfried Keller, and the city council of Winterthur. However, the establishment of further parishes in the canton was not recognized by the state, which is why these had to be set up on the basis of private and association law.
Development and construction history
In 1939 a separate pastoral care district was set up for the Catholics in the parishes near Rickenbach and Seuzach, but this remained affiliated to the parish of St. Marien in Oberwinterthur. In the same year, the first mass in the new pastoral care district was celebrated in the restaurant zur Mühle in Rickenbach. In 1956 the building site for the church St. Josef in Rickenbach-Sulz was bought. There the Catholics built the church with a lot of personal effort in the years 1957-1958, which was consecrated in 1958. After the state recognition of the Catholic Church in the Canton of Zurich in 1963, the Catholic parish Rickenbach-Seuzach was founded with the political communities: Altikon , Bertschikon , Dägerlen , Dinhard , Ellikon an der Thur , Elsau , Hettlingen , Rickenbach, Seuzach, Thalheim and Wiesendangen. The St. Josef Foundation was founded in 1966 to promote pastoral care, church services, religious instruction and charitable interests in Sulz-Rickenbach . In 1968 the Rickenbach-Seuzach parish rectorate was set up, which remained attached to the St. Marien parish in Oberwinterthur. St. Martin in Seuzach and St. Josef in Sulz-Rickenbach were raised to independent parishes in 1972 and separated from St. Marien Oberwinterthur. In the following year, the building site for the St. Stefan church was bought in Wiesendangen. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on February 1, 1980, and the foundation stone of the church was laid on June 27, 1980 by Dean Gebhard Matt and Pastor Werner Frey. The Church of St. Stefan was built according to plans by the architects Felix Loetscher and Robert Tanner . On August 30, 1981, the St. Stefan Church in Wiesendangen was consecrated by the Bishop of Chur , Johannes Vonderach . At the same time the parish office moved from Sulz-Rickenbach to Wiesendangen and the parish was renamed St. Stefan. In 1983 the church of St. Josef in Sulz was renovated and consecrated by the vicar general Gebhard Matt.
The parish of St. Stefan Wiesendangen belongs together with the parish of St. Martin Seuzach to the common parish. With 5,936 members (as of 2017), this is one of the larger Catholic parishes in the Canton of Zurich. The parish of St. Stefan is responsible for the 3,714 Catholics in the parishes of Ellikon adTh., Elsau, Rickenbach and Wiesendangen (including the Bertschikon settlements belonging to the Thurgau parish of Gachnang).
Building description
Church tower and exterior
On Friday, June 27, 1980, the foundation stone for the new parish church of St. Stefan was laid on the property at Wannenstrasse 4 in Wiesendangen, which the parish had acquired at the end of 1973 . The architects Robert Tanner and Felix Loetscher implemented the building project Treffpunkt Foyer , which emerged as the winner of the architecture competition. The Winterthurer Landbote on June 24, 1977: “The St. Stefan parish center is a simple building complex with quiet structures and structures. What is striking is the well thought-out, versatile use of the foyer with adjoining church space, while the actual sacred space can be easily expanded depending on the number of visitors. " The bell chamber is clearly visible from Wannenstrasse in the roof of the church. In this way it was possible to dispense with a church tower and the bells still have the opportunity to be heard throughout the place. The bell cage houses a four-part bell that was cast on April 3rd, 1981 in the Rudolf Perner bell foundry in Passau. After the transfer to Wiesendangen, the bells were consecrated on June 24, 1981 by Dean Tarcisi Venzin and raised in the bell room on June 25, 1981. The ringing is coordinated with the bells of the Reformed Church. The visitor arrives at the entrance of the church via a forecourt, which leads into a bright foyer. The foyer leads to the parish center and the church.
| number | Weight | volume | dedication |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | approx. 700 kg | g 1 | St. Stefan |
| 2 | approx. 400 kg | b 1 | Holy Cross |
| 3 | approx. 300 kg | c 2 | Maria |
| 4th | approx. 200 kg | it 2 | St. Oswald |
Cornerstone
tabernacle
inside view
Späth organ
Interior and artistic equipment
The bright, tent-like church service room with ball lamps - furnished with 160 chairs - is characterized by the high choir / chancel with the liturgical locations of the altar , ambo , baptismal font and tabernacle . These are made of the same brown-reddish wood as the cross on the choir wall and the 12 apostle crosses on the east wall. The design for liturgical objects comes from the architect Felix Lötscher, the woodwork was carried out by the Huss company, Wiesendangen. An essential design element is the statue of Our Lady, which was carved by K. Ruff, Rickenbach-Sulz. The organ was donated by the Catholic Central Commission of the Canton of Zurich and built by the organ building company Späth from Rapperswil. The instrument has about 550 pipes. Since the church of St. Stephen had been appropriately equipped at the time of its construction, the parish wanted to make the interior more friendly with a wall design. The project was started on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the church. The artist Kathleen Weber designed a design on the subject of creation , which was created by 47 women from the parish in weekly meetings over two years. The work consists of 19 panels and has adorned the west wall of the church since 2005.
literature
- Episcopal Ordinariate Chur (ed.): Schematism of the Diocese of Chur. Chur 1980.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Peter Niederhäuser and Flurina Pescatore: St. Peter and Paul. The mother church of Katholisch-Winterthur. Pp. 7-17.
- ^ Website of the parish of St. Stefan, section history. ( Memento from May 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Catholic Church in the Canton of Zurich (Ed.): Annual Report 2017. p. 84.
- ↑ a b Website of the parish of St. Stefan Wiesendangen, section Architecture and Art in St. Stefan. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 27, 2014.
Coordinates: 47 ° 31 '27.6 " N , 8 ° 47' 12.5" E ; CH1903: seven hundred and one thousand five hundred and thirty-two / 264 606