Stephanus Church (Wolfsburg)

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Stephanuskirche from the south
Parish hall and church (left) from the northwest
Entrance to the parish hall

The Evangelical Lutheran St. Stephen 's Church was inaugurated in 1967 and 1968 by Alvar Aalto in Wolfsburg - Detmerode in Lower Saxony . It is one of six buildings in Aalto in Germany and is now a listed building .

history

According to Aalto's drafts, the cultural center in downtown Wolfsburg and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit with a community center in the Klieversberg district were built in 1962 . The Detmerode district, built in the 1960s, was looked after by the Heilig-Geist-Gemeinde, but was to have its own congregation and church. The city planners planned a national broadcast for Detmerode and offered a centrally located plot of land for a building by Aalto. Aalto delivered a first draft in 1962; on February 28, 1964 the order was given to him. In the same year the Evangelical Lutheran parish in Detmerode, today's Stephanus parish, was founded. An application to name the new parish after Dietrich Bonhoeffer was rejected by the state church office in Hanover in 1965. The efforts to name a Wolfsburg parish after Bonhoeffer could only be realized a few years later in Westhagen .

Construction began on August 5, 1964 when the site was filled up by around four meters. The foundation stone was laid on April 20, 1966. Between the topping-out ceremony in August 1966 and February 1967 there was a construction freeze due to the recession at the time . The parish hall was only inaugurated on October 29, 1967. Construction work on the church did not resume until late summer 1968; the church was consecrated on the 1st of Advent 1968. To date, however, the construction is unfinished. In 1992/1993 the tower was renovated, in 1998 the damaged marble facade was replaced. The initially natural columns of the tower were later painted white.

Architecture, equipment and use

The Stephanuskirche at Detmeroder Markt 6 is listed as a modern sacred building. As Aalto's late work, it shows a return to the functionalism of the 1930s. The church is located on the northern edge of the urban district center at the end of two shopping streets on a slight hill. From the shopping center, it shows a windowless facade clad in Carrara marble and interrupted by a cantilever roof . The main portal is a little to the left of the center. On the eastern side is the free-standing bell tower on nine concrete pillars painted white . Originally twelve columns were planned. Even today, the tower lacks the bells and the semi-transparent wooden lamellas provided for in the design. A planned west wing with a parish apartment was also not realized.

The back is marked by different sized cuboids of the community center, which run along the hill from the west and culminate in the tower. They are clad in whitewashed limestone .

In the simple, white-painted interior there are 250 individual wooden chairs and space for a total of 600 visitors. The high ceiling is characterized by round, wooden sound reflectors. The floor plan is trapezoidal . On the narrow side in the north is the altar made of Carrara marble, which is designed as a table. To the left is the simple pulpit , to the right the organ from the Hermann Eule company from Bautzen on a gallery . The organ has 20 registers . From the pulpit side, a lot of light falls into the church through large windows. Curved lines can only be found in the choir , while straight lines predominate in the rest of the church. The floor is tiled in brick red.

In the basement there is a baptistery into which very little daylight falls through the slats. In the center of the chapel is a baptismal font made of Carrara marble. The baptistery was originally intended as a sacred space, for example for spiritual chants and public prayers . It is characterized by a withdrawn atmosphere.

Several parts of the furnishings were not designed by Aalto. In the center of the choir hangs a metal mobile in the shape of a cross, created by Jochen Kramer (1935–1988) from Wolfsburg. Since November 2012 there has been a cross by the Halle native Thomas Leu on the altar . It is made of metal and has a circular opening in the center. The case of the organ was not designed by Aalto either.

To the west of the church, connected to the church, is the parish hall with halls of different sizes and functional rooms. Like the church windows, the windows are divided vertically. There are several dormers on the roof .

literature

  • Holger Brülls: Heilig-Geist-Kirche, Stephanuskirche, Wolfsburg. Kunstverlag Josef Fink, Lindenberg 1999, ISBN 3-933784-43-3 .
  • Nicole Froberg, Ulrich Knufinke, Susanne Kreykenboom: Wolfsburg. The architecture guide. Braun Publishing, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-03768-055-1 , p. 112.
  • Ulrich Knufinke, Norbert H. Funke, Nicole Froberg, Olaf Gisbertz (eds.): ATTENTION modern! Michael Imhof, Petersberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-7319-0344-4 , p. 112ff.

Web links

Commons : Stephanuskirche (Wolfsburg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eva Nick: A foray through Detmerode's history. In: Wolfsburger Nachrichten. Edition of May 26, 2020.
  2. ^ A b Markus Pachowiak: Why Alvar Aalto built a house of worship in Detmerode. Wolfsburg News from December 1, 2018
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Building history and furnishings of the Stephanuskirche and the community center ( Memento from February 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Church council of the Bonhoeffergemeinde (ed.): 20 years Bonhoeffergemeinde Westhagen. Wolfsburg 1994, p. 5
  5. ↑ Stephanus-Kirchengemeinde at kirche-wolfsburg.de , accessed on January 29, 2013
  6. ↑ A cross for Alvar Aalto's church. Wolfsburger Nachrichten of December 12, 2013, accessed on January 29, 2013

Coordinates: 52 ° 23 '39.4 "  N , 10 ° 45' 15.1"  E