Agony of Christ Chapel (Dachau)
The agony of Christ chapel is a Catholic chapel in Dachau . It was built on the site of the Dachau concentration camp according to plans by the Munich architecture professor Josef Wiedemann and inaugurated on August 5, 1960.
history
The building of the place of worship goes back to the Munich auxiliary bishop Johannes Neuhäusler . Neuhäusler, who himself was a prisoner in Dachau after his arrest on February 4, 1941, until the liberation of the camp on April 29, 1945, had tirelessly publicly promoted the building of a spiritual place of remembrance after the end of the war.
On the occasion of the 37th World Eucharistic Congress , which was held in Munich in the summer of 1960, the chapel was consecrated as the first religious memorial in the former concentration camp on August 5, 1960 in the presence of 50,000 believers. The Munich Archbishop Joseph Cardinal Wendel determined its name with reference to the "fear of death from which tens of thousands of inmates in this camp had suffered day and night for years" .
description
Architect Wiedemann created a monumental, tower-like, round building open to the front at the vanishing point of the axis between the camp barracks. The load-bearing element is a reinforced concrete wall that was clad inside and outside with uncut pebbles from the Isar . There is a 550 kilogram crown of thorns made of copper above the entrance.
To the west of the entrance to the chapel is a free-standing scaffolding into which a 3000 kilogram bell was hung. It was consecrated on July 22, 1961 by the Abbot of Schlierbach, Berthold Niedermoser , and rings every afternoon at 2:50 p.m. to pray for the victims of the concentration camp.
At the front (outside) of the chapel there is a commemorative bronze relief with an image of Christ (" Christ in Rest "), which was created by the sculptor Benedykt Tofil and donated by formerly imprisoned clergy from Poland. The board reports in Polish, German, French and English on the suffering of the Polish prisoners in Dachau, who at 40,000 made up the largest group of prisoners. In the presence of Archbishop (1961–1976) Julius Cardinal Döpfner , the Dachau survivor Polish auxiliary bishop (and later Archbishop of Stettin-Cammin) Kazimierz Majdański unveiled this plaque on August 20, 1972, which was put there on his initiative.
Web links
- Agony of Christ Chapel at the Catholic Pastoral Care at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial
Coordinates: 48 ° 16 ′ 19 ″ N , 11 ° 28 ′ 4 ″ E