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Jesuit Church (Mannheim)
Encyclopedia
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
History
The church was built between 1733 in 1756 as the Court Church of the Mannheim electors Charles Philip III and Charles TheodoreCharles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria
Charles Theodore, Prince-Elector, Count Palatine and Duke of Bavaria reigned as Prince-Elector and Count palatine from 1742, as Duke of Jülich and Berg from 1742 and also as Prince-Elector and Duke of Bavaria from 1777, until his death...
to a design of the Italian architect Alessandro Galli da Bibiena. It was completed in 1760 and consecrated to St. Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish knight from a Basque noble family, hermit, priest since 1537, and theologian, who founded the Society of Jesus and was its first Superior General. Ignatius emerged as a religious leader during the Counter-Reformation...
and St. Francis Xavier
Francis Xavier
Francis Xavier, born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta was a pioneering Roman Catholic missionary born in the Kingdom of Navarre and co-founder of the Society of Jesus. He was a student of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits, dedicated at Montmartre in 1534...
by the Prince Bishop of Augsburg, Joseph of Hesse-Darmstadt.
Features of the exterior are the twin towered facade of red sandstone, the statues of the four cardinal virtues, the Pheme
Pheme
In Greek mythology, Pheme was the personification of fame and renown, her favour being notability, her wrath being scandalous rumors. She was a daughter either of Gaia or of Hope, was described as "she who initiates and furthers communication" and had an altar at Athens...
, by Baroque sculptor Paul Egell, which adorns the 75 m-high dome.
The marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
pilaster
Pilaster
A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
ed interior is in a late Baroque-early classical
Classical architecture
Classical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, enriched by classicizing architectural practice in Europe since the Renaissance...
style. Egid Quirin Asam
Egid Quirin Asam
Egid Quirin Asam was a German plasterer and sculptor active during the period of the Late Baroque....
from Munich was instructed to decorate the church. He decorated the dome with scenes from the life of the order's founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, while the nave had an over 400 square metre fresco whose content referred to the subject of the high altar, namely the Mission of St. Francis Xavier to India.
On the occasion of city's 300th anniversary in 1906 the church was extensively renovated. The two statues of the founders of the Jesuit order in the lobby are by the sculptor Thomas Buscher. During the Second World War, the church suffered severe damage from British and American air attacks, especially the choir and the dome. After the war it was decided to rebuild the church in its historical style with the use of original parts in the reconstruction of the approximately 20 metres high marble altar of Peter Anton von Verschaffelt
Peter Anton von Verschaffelt
Peter Anton von Verschaffelt was a Flemish sculptor and architect.Verschaffelt designed, among other things in Mannheim, the High Altar of the Jesuit church , the arsenal and the Bretzenheim Palace, as well as the church Wallfahrtskirche Mariä Himmelfahrt in Oggersheim .-Life and work:Verschaffelt...
, and the electoral pews.
Today’s Furnishings
Even today, this church is still very rich in Baroque art. It has, the six side altars and font by Verschaffelt. In the crossing beneath the dome there are four frescoes representing the continents by the Mannheim Baroque painter Philip Jerome Brinckmann. The confessionals were reconstructed like the electoral pews. The most important sculpture is the 1747 "Crowned Silver Madonna" of Augsburg silversmith, Joseph Ignaz Saler. The destroyed frescoes by Egid Quirin Asam were not restored. Today's pulpitPulpit
Pulpit is a speakers' stand in a church. In many Christian churches, there are two speakers' stands at the front of the church. Typically, the one on the left is called the pulpit...
was only placed here after the war. It was created in 1753 and originally came from the Carmelite convent in Heidelberg. In the lobby there are very richly ornamented wrought iron gates made by the Mannheim master locksmith Philip Reinhard Sieber in 1755 and two monuments of the church from 1906.
The main organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
case in the west gallery is built according to a design of the elector’s court sculptor Paul Egell. It survived the bombing and the small damage it suffered was repaired in 1952. In 1965 an instrument from the workshop of Johannes Klais of Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
was installed. In 2004 this was optimized acoustically. The four manual organ has 62 registers. In the left side gallery is the choir organ. The case is by an anonymous artist. It was constructed for the Catholic Church in Fuerth in Odenwald in 1751/52. In 1961 it was transferred to Mannheim and contains 16 registers from the case of the post-war Egell organ. The instrument is now technically unreliable and will be replaced by a new one.
To take into account the current requirements of the liturgy
Liturgy
Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
the high altar was reconstructed and the choir redesigned. Klaus Ringwald created an altar of silver and bronze, with a new design of the sanctuary and four very large candlestick
Candlestick
A candlestick, chamberstick, or candelabrum is a holder for one or more candles, used for illumination, rituals, or decorative purposes. The name 'candlestick' derives from the fact that it is usually tall and stick-shaped.Candlesticks are also called candle holders...
s. In the new marble floor of the nave a memorial plate with the names of the Jesuits buried in the crypt together with the name of the longtime rector and the Mannheim honorary citizen Fr. Joseph Bauer.
Bells
The largest Mannheim Baroque bell, cast 1754 by Johann Michael Steiger, was recast in 1956 by Frederick William Schilling into five bells and in 1975 the Heidelberg Bell Foundry cast another two bells. The eight bells are distributed between both towers; the two largest hang in the North West tower, the other bells in the south-west tower.| No. | Year | Foundry | Diameter (mm) | Weight (kg) |
Nominal Tone |
| 1 | 1956 | F. W. Schilling | 2023 | 4 935 | g° |
| 2 | 1956 | F. W. Schilling | 1671 | 2 772 | b° |
| 3 | 1956 | F. W. Schilling | 1477 | 1 921 | c′ |
| 4 | 1754 | J. M. Steiger | 1275 | 1 400 | es′ |
| 5 | 1956 | F. W. Schilling | 1094 | 857 | f′ |
| 6 | 1956 | F. W. Schilling | 1006 | 700 | g′ |
| 7 | 1975 | Heidelberger Glockengießerei | 892 | 511 | b′ |
| 8 | 1975 | Heidelberger Glockengießerei | 790 | 362 | c″ |
Parish Life
In the Jesuit Church and the separate parish, inter alia, the following priests worked:- 1839-1846 Johann Baptist Orbin, later Archbishop of Freiburg (1882-1886)
- 1864-1893 Spiritual Counsellor Caspar Koch
- 1893-1895 Karl Fritz Pfarrverweser, later archbishop of Freiburg (1920-1931)
- 1895-1951 prelatePrelateA prelate is a high-ranking member of the clergy who is an ordinary or who ranks in precedence with ordinaries. The word derives from the Latin prælatus, the past participle of præferre, which means "carry before", "be set above or over" or "prefer"; hence, a prelate is one set over others.-Related...
Joseph Bauer, the first dean of the City deanery and honorary citizen of Mannheim - 1951-1974 prelate Charles Nicholas, Dean
- 1974-1984 Spiritual Counsellor Charles Münch
- 1984-2005 Mgr. Horst Schroff, Dean
- Since 2005 Karl Jung, dean
Literature
- Eva-Maria Günther: Die Jesuitenkirche in Mannheim. Lindenberg 2005, ISBN 3-89870-245-6
- Karl Weich: Mannheim - das neue Jerusalem. Die Jesuiten in Mannheim 1720–1773. Mannheim 1997, ISBN 3920671171