St. Suitbertus (Wuppertal)
St. Suitbertus in the southern part of the Wuppertal district of Elberfeld is the fourth Catholic church building in Elberfeld.
history
The influx of many Catholics, especially from Westphalia , to Elberfeld, which expanded rapidly in the course of industrialization in the 19th century, was taken into account with two church buildings consecrated in 1886 in the east ( Marienkirche ) and north ( Herz-Jesu-Kirche ). The approximately 7,000 Catholics of the Elberfelder Südstadt, whose population was particularly characterized by workers and officials of the booming railway, had to continue to use the main church of St. Laurentius on the other side of the Wuppertal. As early as 1884 a "St. Suitbertus Church Building Association" was established, which was supposed to remedy this situation, which was perceived as injustice, and to force the construction of the "Südstadt-Dom". While looking for a plot of land, he first tried to find the garden behind the Johannisberg pub , but this failed because of the cost of this exposed location. Later the Elberfelder Stadthalle was built on the same site .
Ultimately, the association succeeded in acquiring several parcels of land on Kölner Strasse and rounding off a building site. Between 1896 and 1899, the church was built according to plans by the Barmer master builder Gerhard August Fischer , from whom a total of four Wuppertal churches come and who was responsible for the reconstruction of Burg Castle . There are doubts about Fischer's sole authorship: The estate of the Cologne architect Theodor Roß contained detailed plans for a “Kath. Church for Elberfeld ”, which are strikingly similar to St. Suitbertus. This could speak for a counter-draft, but also for an anonymous draft on behalf of Fischer; the deviations of the built church from these plans can in any case be explained for financial reasons for simplicity.
The church was consecrated on May 11, 1899 to the "Bergisch Apostle", Saint Suitbert .
On June 25, 1943, the church was destroyed except for the outer walls in an air raid on Elberfeld and rebuilt by 1954. The plaster inside was removed so that today the red bricks of the wall structure define the interior. A small roof turret of the original building over the crossing was not reconstructed.
In 1994 the church building was entered in the Wuppertal list of monuments.
description
The historicist , east-facing building is based on late Romanesque forms . A westwork with a double tower facade, modeled on that of Limburg Cathedral , is placed in front of the nave; for the interior, elements from the Bonn Minster served as a model. It is a three-nave, six-bay basilica with a single-nave transept and a short rectangular choir with a high, semicircular apse. This apse is surrounded by a colonnade, above which a small gallery with pointed arcades surrounds the choir and apse.
The brick-built building was faced with local building materials: basalt lava for the base, tuff stone for the wall surfaces, red sandstone for the outer edging and structuring details. The interior was plastered and painted, pillars and other architectural elements were made of sandstone.
Bells
For the newly built church, the Otto bell foundry from Hemelingen / Bremen cast two bronze bells each in 1899 and 1905. Of these four bells only one survived the confiscation of bells during the First World War. After this war, the three melted Otto bells were replaced by three bells made by Schilling, two of which were melted down during World War II. Today's two-part chimes include Otto's dis'-bell from 1899 and Schilling's e'-bell from 1925, i.e. two bells from the two largest German bronze bell foundries of the 19th and 20th centuries.
|
No. |
Surname |
Casting year |
Foundry, casting location |
Diameter (mm) |
Mass (kg) |
Chime | Remarks |
| 1 | Joseph | 1899 | Bell foundry Otto , Hemelingen | 1310 | 1400 | dis' + 2 | receive |
| 2 | Antony | 1925 | Franz Schilling, Apolda | 1260 | 1357 | e '+2 | Preserved, first casting in 1905, new casting after destruction in the First World War |
| 3 | 1925 | 3223 | 1750 | h 0 | lost | ||
| 4th | 2243 | 1510 | cis' | lost |
organ
The first organ by Romanus Seifert ( Kevelaer ) was built in 1901 and had 24 registers. It was destroyed in an air raid in 1943.
In 1956, the Krell brothers' workshop in Duderstadt delivered a new instrument with a free pipe prospect, electro-pneumatic cone chests and organ-moving disposition:
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- Coupling : normal coupling, sub- and super-octave coupling in the main work
- Playing aids : 2 free combinations
Contemporary witnesses have divided opinions about the condition of the organ in the 1970s. Whether the organ was really beyond repair and in poor condition can no longer be fully understood today. In 1978 the Krell organ was replaced by an instrument from the Walcker company, with a large part of the pipework being taken over from the previous organ. Since then, its case has covered the artistic rose window in the westwork of the church.
In March 2016, the congregation announced that the church organ had to be replaced due to its poor condition. Among other things, the organ was built from inferior material, not regularly maintained and now heavily soiled with candle soot, so that the cost of a restoration can no longer be borne by the Archdiocese of Cologne . A Wuppertal organ dealer was entrusted with finding a used instrument, which should keep the rosette window free again if possible. The municipality held twice a year since the concert series Feierabend.Konzerte of the project using donations to realize.
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- Coupling : I / II, III / I, III / II, I / P, II / P, III / P
- Playing aids : six typesetting combinations, tutti, tremulants adjustable.
literature
- Klaus Pfeffer: The church buildings in Wuppertal-Elberfeld , Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-88094-301-X .
- Klaus Goebel , Andreas Knorr (ed.): Churches and worship places in Elberfeld , Düsseldorf 1999, ISBN 3-930250-35-7 .
- Hermann J. Mahlberg : St. Suitbertus in Wuppertal-Elberfeld , in: Bergischer Geschichtsverein et al. [Hrsg.]: Geschichte in Wuppertal , 8th year, Wuppertal 1999, ISSN 1436-008X .
- Joachim Dorfmüller : 300 years of organ building in Wuppertal , Wuppertal 1980.
Web links
- Entry in the Wuppertal monument list
- Portrait of the church on the pages of the Catholic Parish Association Elberfeld Mitte
proof
- ↑ erzbistum-koeln.de St. Suitbertus: History
- ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells. Family and company history of the Otto bell foundry dynasty . Self-published, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063109-2 , p. 588, here in particular pp. 47, 510, 514 .
- ↑ Gerhard Reinhold: Church bells - Christian world cultural heritage, illustrated using the example of the bell founder Otto, Hemelingen / Bremen . Nijmegen 2019, p. 556, here in particular pp. 66, 476, 479 , urn : nbn: nl: ui: 22-2066 / 204770 (dissertation at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen).
- ↑ Bell Book Wuppertal PDF
- ↑ Our organ needs help! (No longer available online.) St. Laurentius Catholic Parish, March 31, 2016, archived from the original on August 23, 2016 ; accessed on June 22, 2016 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 15 ′ 1.8 ″ N , 7 ° 8 ′ 37.7 ″ E