Mute Church

Neo-Romanesque Stumm Church

Stumm-Kirche, neo-Romanesque entrance portal. The original inscription to be read here read: “See, this is God's Lamb who bears the sin of the world.” The side portal, which served as the private entrance for the Stumm family, is adorned with the family coat of arms and the year of inauguration “1882”.

Stumm Church, view of the apse, the sacristy and the nave

The Stumm Church (also: Stumm Church or Old Church ) is a former Protestant church in the Saarbrücken district of Brebach-Fechingen . It is named after the Stumm industrialist family who built the church. The building is listed as a single monument in the Stummstraße monument ensemble . The former sacred building is used for agriculture today.

history

The church was built between 1880 and 1882 based on a design by the Hanoverian architect Ferdinand Schorbach (1846–1912) and was consecrated on June 18, 1882. The builder was Carl Ferdinand von Stumm-Halberg , who had the church built for his family and the Protestant workers of the Halbergerhütte . These were obliged to attend church. The north entrance was created especially for the Stumm family, as the emperor Friedrich III. (Freiherrn) family ennobled in 1888 came to the Sunday service by carriage from Halberg Castle , which Schorbach had also helped to plan. In return for the support of the community, the Stumms were allowed to choose the first pastor.

Based on the model of the Stumm Church, Carl Ferdinand von Stumm-Halberg had the Neo-Romanesque St. Mary's Church built by the architect Schorbach in the years 1884–1885 .

During the First World War , the widow Stumms donated both bells to the church for the armaments industry against the will of the congregation, which wanted to keep one bell. In 1936 the Braun von Stumm brothers finally donated the church to the community.

After the destruction of the Second World War , the church was extensively restored from 1945 to 1948. In 1970 the two evangelical parishes of Brebach and Fechingen merged and built a new, centrally located community center in the Brebacher Jakobstrasse. From 1972/1973 onwards, the community was no longer used for the building. The church was de-dedicated and sold to Philipp Huth. In the following years it was mainly used as a sheep pen and warehouse. The building fabric in the interior was badly damaged by renovations. The up to then completely preserved equipment was lost. After the church fell into disrepair, the roof was emergency refurbished in 1996 and finally completely refurbished in 2001 by the State Conservatory Office . Walled-up windows were partially reopened. However, the newly applied plaster does not correspond to the structure of the original.

In the late 1990s, plans for conversion ( Musikhochschule Saar , Saarländischer Rundfunk ) were not implemented.

architecture

Stumm Church, neo-Gothic design, apse and front

Stumm Church, neo-Romanesque design, front and apse

Stumm Church, neo-Gothic design, floor plan and apse (inside)

Stumm Church, neo-Romanesque design, floor plan and apse (inside)

Stumm Church, neo-Romanesque design, side facade

Architect Ferdinand Schorbach presented the building owner Carl Ferdinand Stumm with two designs for the building of the church, one in the Gothic style and one in the Rhenish Romanesque style . Stumm finally decided to carry out the Romanesque design, although the neo-Gothic church design would have corresponded more to the design of his neo-Gothic palace on the Halberg. In addition, the flat neo-Gothic choir solution would have corresponded more to the Protestant cult than the semicircular choir-accented apse solution of the neo-Romanesque design, which finally appeared “medieval Catholic” .

Both designs envisaged a four-axis hall with a west gallery, a slightly drawn-in, centrally arranged west tower and a north side portal. Depending on the style, there were variations in the galleries, the choir area, the ceiling solution and the ancillary rooms (sacristy and boiler room). With regard to the choir area, the neo-Gothic design provided for a rectangular choir directly adjoining the nave, in which the ancillary rooms outside would have been combined to form a flat end. The outbuildings would have unloaded over the ship's walls. The stairway was planned as a small extension in the manner of a transept in the southwest. Further differences between the Gothic and the Romanesque design were, in terms of the wall structure, Gothic pointed arches instead of Romanesque round arches and Gothic buttresses and pinnacles instead of pilaster strips and round arched friezes. The neo-Gothic building was to have an octagonal bent helmet, the neo-Romanesque building a rhombus helmet . In the neo-Gothic design, the gable roof would have ended in buttress-like reinforcements.

The church, which was finally completed, was built as a four-axis rectangular hall with a flat wooden ceiling in the middle of a former cemetery in Stummstraße in the Rhenish neo-Romanesque style . The facade is strongly structured by pilaster strips and arched friezes. The seven arched windows of the semicircular apse are surrounded by arches on the outside. The apse is richly designed on the outside with stepped plinths, pilaster strips, columns, arched positions and cornices. Inside, the apse is enlarged by a retracted vestibule, which also emphasizes the longitudinal axis of the church. The outside of the nave and the upper storey of the tower are divided into internal wall sections and a frame system in terms of the wall structure. The frame system consists of a base, pilaster strips and arched frieze. The arched windows and the twin windows are framed by masonry stones that interlock with the plastered wall surface.

The nave is covered on the apse side with a crooked hip roof, which corresponds more to the style of the rural baroque than that of the Romanesque. The gable of the north entrance, which was reserved for the Stumm family, is decorated with the Stumm family coat of arms with the date of the year of dedication of the church. A stepped portal serves as the main entrance in the tower in front of the hall church, above which a six-pass was added as an ornament.

Furnishing

In 1954, the graphic artist and painter Erich Buschle from Saarbrücken designed a round window with the four evangelist symbols, as well as six semicircular windows, seven windows with the twelve apostles and Christ, which are exhibited today in the evangelical church center Brebach-Fechingen. The sacred art inside included an altar cross with a corpus from 1882. The cross was made from the wood of a cedar tree from the Garden of Gethsemane , which Baron von Stumm brought back from a trip to Palestine . The body was custom-made by Halbergerhütte .

A mosaic above the side portal on the north side shows Christ flanked by two angels.

swell

• Two drafts with a total of six plans and seven architectural drawings, dated March 29, 1881, signed by Ferdinand Schorbach, are in the Hannover City Archives, Schorbach estate 308, 1-308, 13.
• Institute for Contemporary Art in Saarland, archive, holdings Saarbrücken, Stumm Church (Dossier K 882)

literature

• Barner: From the history of the Ev. Kirchengemeinde Brebach, in: The Brebach Office in its 150-year history, Brebach 1954.
• Brebach-Fechingen - then and now, Brebach 1973.
• Joachim Conrad and Erwin Klampfer: The churches of the parish of Saarbrücken, a short historical outline, commemorative publication for the 90th birthday of Pastor i. R. Eduard Heinz, Saarbrücken 1983.
• Wilhelm Engel (Ed.): 375 years of the Evangelical Church on the Saar 1575–1950, Saarbrücken 1950, p. 55 f.
• Werner Franzen: Protestant Church Building in the Rhineland 1860–1914, Diss., Düsseldorf 2002.
• Harald Glaser and Delf Slotta: Local history calendar of the Brebach history workshop, Saarbrücken 1991, December sheet.
• August Keller: Brebach, history of an industrial site on the Saar, Brebach-Fechingen 1964, p. 81 (publication based on a manuscript from 1950).
• Martin Klewitz : The ev. Church building between 1800 and 1945, in: The ev. Church on the Saar yesterday and today, Saarbrücken 1975, p. 253.
• Günter Nieser: Brebach and Fechingen, The churches, the hut and the farming village, Brebach-Fechingen 2010.
• Kristine Marschall: The Church Buildings of Carl Ferdinand Stumm - Style Choice in the Sign of Sociopolitical Ideology? in: Journal for the history of the Saar region, vol. 47, 1999, pp. 302–330.
• Kristine Marschall: Sacred buildings of classicism and historicism in Saarland, (publications by the Institute for Regional Studies in Saarland, vol. 40), Saarbrücken 2002, pp. 211–212 and p. 438.
• Herbert Poppek: Evangelical Community Center Brebach, Creed in Pictures, Saarbrücken 2010.
• Rudolf Saam: From the history of the parish Brebach, in: Ev. Calendar 1964, pp. 173-185.
• Saarbrücker Zeitung of June 20, 1882: "On the dedication of the Protestant church in Brebach".
• Saarbrücker Zeitung of February 2, 1995: "Old Brebacher Church serves as a warehouse".
• JA Schmitt and Christof Trepesch : The garden on the Halberg in the 19th and early 20th centuries, in: The garden art in Saarbrücken, catalog for the exhibition in the old collection of the Saarland Museum June 20 - August 29, 1999, Worms 1999.
• Stefan Weszkalnys: The old Stumm Church in Brebach, in: Calendar "Old Saarbrücken", July monthly, drawings by Karl Nickel, Saarbrücken 1984.
• 100 years of ev. Community on the upper Saar, o. O. 1987, pp. 32–38.
• 100th anniversary of the parish (Brebach-Fechingen), in: Saarbrücker Zeitung from April 2, 1987.

Web links

Commons : Mute Church  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Stumm Church in the Saar Art Dictionary

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Saarland monuments list, Saarbrücken sub-monuments list ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 40 
2. ↑ Hans-Walter Herrmann: The Saar area between the founding of an empire and the end of the war . (= Volume 18 of the publications for Commission for Saarland State History and Folk Research, Commission for Saarland State History and Folk Research), SDV, Saarbrücken, 1990, p. 87
3. ↑ Peter Eilitz: Life and Work of the Royal Hanoverian Building Councilor Edwin Oppler, in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter 1971, pp. 131-310, here p. 143.
4. ↑ Michael Imhof: Historistisches Fachwerk, On the history of architecture in the 19th century in Germany, Great Britain (Old English Style), France, Austria, Switzerland and the USA, Bamberg 1996, p. 313.
5. ↑ Stummsche Church on www.sr.de.
6. ↑ In the silver field there is a blue oblique left bar covered with an upward-pointing blacksmith's hammer, flanked at the top by a black comb wheel, at the bottom flanked by a burning oil lamp turned to the left. There are three silver-blue-silver ostrich feathers attached to the crowned helmet. The helmet cover is black and silver on the right and blue and silver on the left. (Historischer Verein Stadt Neunkirchen: http://www.dufner-genealogie.de/stumm/frameset.htm , accessed on July 15, 2015.)
7. ↑ Kristine Marschall: Sacral Buildings of Classicism and Historicism in Saarland, (publications by the Institute for Regional Studies in Saarland, vol. 40), Saarbrücken 2002, pp. 211–212 and p. 438.
8. ↑ Seven choir windows draw a line to tradition  ( 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. , Saarbrücker Zeitung , August 4, 2010.  
9. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from July 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 14, 2015. 

Coordinates: 49 ° 13 ′ 2.1 ″  N , 7 ° 2 ′ 16 ″  E