CONTEMPORARY STAGING : NEW SPACE WITHIN ECCLESIASTICAL INTERIOR FOR A MEDIEVAL GNADENBILD. Marcus van der Meulen
abstract A medieval carved image of a mother with child has received contemporary housing inside an existing village church. Pilgrims attracted by the statue had requested a chapel for veneration. This was honoured by the dean of Wietmarschen and the Diocese of OsnabrĂźck. Part of the nave was given up to shape a separate space inside the interior. The intervention both reduces the number of seats in the nave and creates a place for pilgrims and visitors. Attendance of weekly worship has been decreasing, yet the attraction of the venerable virgin remains. Adaptation of the ecclesiastical interior to this changing reality has resulted in a contemporary chapel that separates and connects spaces.
EVERY YEAR THE WIETMARSCHEN
PILGRIMAGE
attracts some 2,000 visitors, commemorating the coronation of a sculpture by the bishop of Osnabr端ck in 1921. Dating back to the early thirteenth century, the carved representation of mother with child has been the object of local veneration since at least the seventeenth century. The request for a chapel for private worship however is of a more recent date. Attendance of weekly worship is decreasing in modern society including the rural areas of Germany. Yet objects like the medieval sculpture continuously attract visitors, pilgrims with religious intentions or tourists with interests in religious art. An adaptation to this reality resulted in the architectural intervention at the Church of Saint John the Apostle in Wietmarschen, Lower Saxony. The object of devotion here is an early thirteenth century Gnadenbild, a wooden image of the Mother with Child which arrived shortly after the creation of a monastery on this site. Since the creation of a benedictine house for religious women by Hugo van B端ren in the twelfth century the settings have changed considerably. Transformed into the Stift of Saint Matthew for women of the nobility in the sixteenth century the religious institution was finally abolished in 1811. Most of the church however dates from the early twentieth century when the parish needed a larger house of worship. The red brick construction with impressive west tower, echoing the Westwerk of Minden Cathedral, incorporated the much older chancel. A high altar attributed to Georg Dollart dates back to the seventeenth century.The oldest records of pilgrims venerating the wonderful mother of God in Wietmarschen date from the same period. After the reformation most of the region converted to Protestantism, however parts of the Emsland retained their catholic identity, notably the town of Meppen. Catholics from the larger region including Drenthe and Overijssel in the Netherlands were attracted to the image of the Blessed Virgin. In 1921 the Marian image was crowned by the bishop of Osnabruck, a ritual in the catholic church dating back to the sixteenth century called canonical coronation. This can be regarded a papal recognition of the significance of a, usually carved image. Annual apotheosis of veneration is the pilgrimage attended by the bishop of Osnabr端ck. Throughout the year however individual visitors and small groups of pilgrims come to Wietmarschen. What they missed was a separate space for veneration, quiet contemplation and prayer. Their request was acknowledged by the local dean. A survey held within the parish showed an overwhelming support for the erection of a chapel. Important player was the diocese of Osnabr端ck, Lower Saxony, which also contributed financially. A separate chapel for the image would emphasize its significance as a regional pilgrimage site. It took a symbolic seven years from development of the first ideas until consecration by Bishop Franz-Josef Bode.
Instead of a new addition the chapel was shaped inside the existing interior. Klodwig and Partner provided a space within space solution, a design where the Marian sculpture was located centrally close to the main entrance of the church. Doors were replaced by glass allowing an uninterrupted view from the outside. A path leading towards the main entrance under the westwork-like tower now forms a processional route towards the object of veneration. The early thirteenth century wooden sculpture itself is placed in a blue square resulting in a three dimensional icon evoking Marian paintings like the Roudnice Madonna. Albeit blue and gold are here reversed, the blue is a clear reference to its symbolic meaning in christian symbolism and its associations with immaculacy and purity. The chapel is shaped within the first bays of the nave reducing the seating here by at least a quarter. A curved wall in wood and glass separates the ceiling-less chapel from the nave retaining the feeling of one ecclesiastical space. This conceptualization results in a devotional space that never becomes secluded. Fully transparent at the entrance side of the church including two glass doors, the curved wall gradually becomes a solid wooden background for the three dimensional icon. The semi-oval shape of this space seating some sixty people echoes church designs by Rudolf Schwarz.
Saint John the Apostle was not the first project involving the redesign of a church for Klodwig and Partner. In the past years the architectural firm from Munster, North Rhineland-Westfalia, provided designs for the redesign of St.Hedwig Cathedral in Berlin and several columbarium projects. Last year the redesign of a church in OsnabrĂźck, a mixed-use project of a post-war church as a house of worship and columbarium, received positive attention from the WĂźstenrot Foundation as an example for adaptive reuse of sacred architecture in the future. At Wietmarschen the architectural intervention by Klodwig and Partner is an interesting meditative space within the existing ecclesiastical interior. A thirteenth century representation of the Mother of God, the object of regional devotion for centuries, received a contemporary stage outreaching to modern pilgrims and visitors. 12.01.2017 Marcus van der Meulen
Square - research redesign religious architecture
all photography by the author.