Forest Chapel (Rheinbach)

General view from the south

The forest chapel near Rheinbach is located on the road 492 between Rheinbach and the district of Todenfeld, about 1 km southeast of the local border of Rheinbach in a forest. For centuries it has been a place of pilgrimage and the spiritual center of the Rheinbach parish association .

The inner

Northeast side

North side with entrance

South side with crucifixion group

history

On January 20, 1681, while splitting a beech tree, the letters of the Christ monogram IHS were discovered in its trunk , the first two and the last two letters of the Greek name of Jesus . From 1683 the log was kept in the Jesuit Church of the Assumption of Mary in Cologne and from 1717 in the Jesuit Church of Namen-Jesu in Bonn. The first forest chapel was built at the site in 1683. In the course of the development of the chapel into a pilgrimage site, a monastery was built in 1686 and a church next to the chapel in 1728 . She owned roughly nine and a half acres (about 30,000 square meters). It was inaugurated in 1745 by Elector Clemens August .

From 1686 to 1707 living members (" recollects ") of the Franciscan order from Calvary Ahrweiler and from 1714 to 1802 Servite monks from Kreuzberg in Bonn worked here according to strict rules of the order .

The depiction of the Mother of Sorrows (" Pietà ") in the forest chapel is a cast of the original statue of Maria ( Mater dolorosa ). In front of this statue the pilgrims offered their prayers and presented their concerns.

In 1781, a hundred years after its discovery, the beech log , which was now covered in silver, returned to its place of origin.

In October 1794 the French occupied the Rhineland . Shortly before secularization , the monastery was dissolved in 1802 and initially served a. a. as a restaurant until it was sold by the French domain administration in 1804 . The monastery and church were demolished and the building materials were auctioned off; the forest chapel survived. In 1843 the city of Rheinbach acquired the chapel with the property and had it restored from 1846. The remains of the monastery complex were leveled and a free space was created around the chapel. Today the road to Todenfeld, built in 1865, cuts through the edge of the square.

Through a swap contract in 1904, the property came into the possession of the Catholic parish of St. Martin in Rheinbach. The chapel is being restored again. The northern entrance side will be faced with trachyte stones , the gable and roof turrets will be raised and 14 stations of the cross will be built. (Two of these stations have been lost and have been replaced by sculptures on the outer wall of the chapel [stations XIII and XIV].) In addition, the whole square was lined with plane trees .

In 1935 oil paintings, statues and gold stars in the chapel fell victim to the “new objectivity” and were removed. Two round windows were broken and a flat ceiling was put in.

In 1980 the forest chapel was drained . With the help of many volunteers, especially the St. George scouts from Rheinbach, the foundation walls of the monastery complex were dug up again, archaeologically recorded and partially rebuilt, so that the extent of the earlier complex can still be seen today.

In 1984 the silver-framed log was stolen, but was reconstructed again in 1986 using photos.

Since May 2009 the bronze “sister's bell” has been hanging in the forest church and rings the “ Angel of the Lord ” at 7, 12 and 18 o'clock . It is a gift of Rheinbacher Congregation of the Sisters of "Our Lady" , the bell in 1946 from the bell foundry Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock in the Westphalian city Gescher received. On the occasion of the name day of the house superior , Sr. Maria Irmingard, of the St. Joseph Gymnasium run by the sisters , the parents of the boarding school students gave the house bell as a gift. On the lower edge it bears the inscriptions “PAX HUIC DOMUI” ( Peace be to this house ) and “AVE JOSEPH PROTECTOR” ( Greetings, protector Joseph ). A ribbon of flowers adorns the top of the bell. A wooden cross is attached to the bell. It is reported that each sister was assigned their own number of chimes, so that the sister at the gate could summon a fellow sister without any special effort by ringing the bell as often as the person to be summoned, even if they were different stayed far away. Of course, the bell also called for prayer hours, meals or other recurring occasions. Since the mid-1990s, the bell was only rung for church services because the sisters now had telephones . The Rheinbach sister community was dissolved in 2008 and the bell was given to the Catholic parish of Rheinbach.