Theology in Built Environments

Exploring Religion, Architecture and Design

Sigurd Bergmann, Sigurd Bergmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351472388
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Architettura religiosa

Built space is both a physical entity as well as a socially and historically constructed place. It constantly interacts with human beings, affecting their behavior, thinking, and feeling. Doing religious work in a particular environment implies acknowledging the surroundings to be integral to theology itself. The contributors to this volume view buildings, scriptures, conversations, prayers, preaching, artifacts, music and drama, and built and natural surroundings as contributors to a contextual theology.

The view of the environment in which religion is practiced as integrated with theology represents not just a new theme but also a necessity if one is to understand religion's own depth. Reflections about space and place and how they reflect and affect religious experience provide a challenge and an urgent necessity for theology. This is particularly important if religious practitioners are to become aware of how theology is given expression in the existential spatiality of life. Can space set theology free? This is a challenging question, one that the editor hopes can be answered, at least in part, in this volume.

The diversity of theoretical concepts in aesthetics, cultural theory, and architecture are not regarded as a problem to be solved by constructing one overarching dominant theory. Instead, this diversity is viewed in terms of its positive potential to inspire discourse about theology and aesthetics. In this discourse, theology does not need to become fully dependent on one or another theory, but should always clearly present its criteria for choosing this or that theoretical framework. This volume shows clearly how different modes of design in sacred spaces capture a sense of the religious.

“Symbolkirchen”¹

as bridges or boundary stones in a merging Europe?

Wolfgang Grünberg and Anna Körs

The return of the city and its symbols

For some years the expression “return of the city”² has experienced a revival in many different ways. The revival of this expression reflects the ongoing process of urbanisation in all parts of the world which has brought over half of the world’s population into the cities — most of them into so-called mega-cities. It also reflects the change in dynamics in most parts of Western Europe that can be described as a decline of suburbanisation, i.e. a move from big cities to the suburbs and surrounding countryside. The return to the city, an attractive human habitat, is an incipient development — but this paper explores the expression “return oft\\e city” from a different perspective.

Here “return of the city” means first of all the new significance that city centres have for the urban population and the tourists. City tourism has become an important economic factor for the cities. What are the reasons that make the city desirable? It is not the uniform-looking shopping malls that can be found worldwide. It is the number of characteristic features of the city, its unmistakable ambience, its uniqueness that makes it attractive and, therefore profitable for tourism. But these reasons also hold for the inhabit ants of the city themselves, especially for those who live on the periphery and are attracted by the cultural scene and the convenient and sometimes unusual living quarters of the downtown.

What makes the city unique? Its inhabitants and its history that can be sensibly experienced, especially through the buildings. It is the world-wide dominant process of urbanisation that leads us to search for specific characteristics of this/my/our city. In this spirit the question of identity and uniqueness of a specific city is raised. How do identity and uniqueness express themselves? Can they be symbolised? And if so, how does this work?³

In order to illustrate this trend, we will first provide some examples of both historical reconstruction projects and modern buildings. Subsequently, we will consider church buildings as buildings of a special kind and as parts of the overall architectural ensemble of city.

The city of Brunswick has accepted an offer from Europe’s biggest shopping mall company, ECE, to rebuild its castle. Thereby the city’s identity as the former seat of royal power is supposed to become visible again, although inside the castle there is nothing but a large shopping mall, beside some Cultural Offices (Kulturbüro).⁴

A second example is from Germany’s capital Berlin. After prolonged debates the German parliament and the state of Berlin decided in the spring of 2007 that the facade of the old castle will be rebuilt on its former site. The rebuilt castle facade will accommodate, in addition to the so called “Humboldtforum,” scientific, museum and public facilities. The famous “Schlüterhof” will be reconstructed too. The remaining space will be newly arranged according to contemporary needs.⁵

In Hamburg the main project of the so-called “Hafencity” is planned, which entails converting unused harbour areas to attractive urban space. The project shall now be crowned with a new impressive concert hall — the “Elbphilharmonie”. The phrase “Hamburg is building its new famous landmark” is everywhere.⁶ Beside the so called “Michel” — the church of St. Michael is at the “Geestkante” high above the river Elbe — the concert hall shall become a new symbol of the city. The question here is whether symbols of cities can be designed and produced. Do not rather the people themselves decide what will be a symbol for them? How can symbols “slowly develop”, but also “cease” or even “die”? We will come back to these questions later.

This list of examples could be continued indefinitely, especially when looking beyond the German borders: The rebuilding of Gdansk’s/Danzig’s Old Town, particularly the area around the “Long Market”, can be interpreted similarly. The charm and historic landmark are preserved, but behind the narrow, small facades of the ancient detached houses the floors have been made wide and open, going from the ground up to the roof as part of prefabricated concrete construction.⁷

1 The church tower of St. Marien in Wimar; photo: Wilma Schlaberg

The new museum building in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao is considered to be a pioneering work towards a new global strategy: Every year the Guggenheim Museum attracts more visitors than the Main Building in New York. It created an identity for a city which 10 years ago seemed to be a hopeless and cheerless industrial town. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is regarded as a prime example of how a city can open up new perspectives for itself through art and spectacular architecture.⁸

Churches - especially old ones - seem to be indispensable elements of city centres. The majority of the city churches — except the ruins that have become war memorials like St. Aegidien in Hannover or the old St. Nikolai in Hamburg — were rebuilt, even though city centres were depopulated. In some cases, churches were pulled down for political reasons, e.g. the University Church of St. Pauli in Leipzig or St. Marien in Wismar where only the spire remained. Significantly, in both cases efforts have been made to establish the former sites of the churches as visual commemorative places in order not to forget them. In Leipzig the church was partially reconstructed, whereas in Wismar plans are made for a row of low walls that are built around the former foundation of St. Marien. In Germany, church buildings were only seldomly converted to an alternative use,⁹ whereas, e.g., in the Netherlands radical decisions have already been made on non-liturgical usages.¹⁰ The Hanseatic city of Lübeck with its seven spires is a striking example, with a world-wide impact, of how churches are built as part of the city skyline, and are perceived as such until today. Thus, the idea is that church buildings fulfil not only ecclesiastical and urban, but also symbolic functions.

2 Foundations of St. Marien in Wismar; photo: Wilma Schlaberg

The “Frauenkirche” in Dresden has developed into the nationwide, most prominent example of a successful archeologically based reconstruction. The intention was to reshape the original function and purpose of this building, which was intended as a bourgeois city church, rather than the royal church of the King of Saxony. The tremendous amount of money that was donated shows the enthusiasm of the citizens and institutions. About 100 Million Euro, or three quarters of construction costs, was raised.¹¹ The “Frauenkirche” in Dresden can be regarded as the most popular example of what is meant by “Symbolkirche”: a building that opens up different ways of attaching meaning to it, and that provides a high potential for identification. But the “Frauenkirche” in Dresden is only the “first among several” church buildings that provide empirical evidence to back the hypothesis that their meaning cannot be limited to their immediate function as places of worship for a specific religious group. It is assumed that church buildings have a surplus of meaning that exceeds their conventional functions.¹² The actual power of church buildings is rather to be seen in their symbolic potential. From this point of view, a symbol can be understood as something that creates meanings in the processes of perceiving, thinking and feeling in the consciousness of individual persons, but also in the collective mind of a group, i.e. of a city.

Research project “’Symbolkirchen’ at religious and political junctions in the Baltic Sea Area”

Theological Foundation

In theological academic discourse, the question of the symbolic meaning of church buildings and its function for the urban identity has not been adequately addressed. In the recent years, a research team at the University of Hamburg has focused its work on exactly this issue. The term “Symbolkirche” thereby expresses the central working thesis of their project: Churches as God’s houses and as significant buildings in the city centres are, in the literal sense, outstanding symbols. This had to be verified from a historical, an empirical and a theological point of view. Considering this procedure, the expression “return of the city” opens up another dimension and raises additional questions: Is the talk about the “return of the city” a nostalgic withdrawal from modernity as far as postmodernity is concerned? Or do the idea and realisation of the European city — which was so often declared to be dead¹³ — get a new chance in the present-day emerging Europe? Is it possible for significant churches, castles, town halls and gates of a city to be understood both as local landmarks and as buildings through which European history can be discovered? From this perspective they would fulfil two important functions in the process of building self-identity for the city’s inhabitants: They could look with pride onto their home city and they could understand and feel themselves as part of a European network.

Thanks to the work of organisations such as the Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz, not only German but also European projects such as the “European Route of Brick Gothic Architecture” or the “Romanesque Route” could be established.¹⁴ Can this development only be understood as a nostalgic “escape” into history? Not likely.

What is the theological background of an academic research programme that focuses on the symbolic meanings of brick Gothic churches? Churches which are in use — i.e. where congregations hold public worship, open their doors to visitors regularly and organise other, e.g. cultural, events — are, from the theological point of view, not only important as historical and cultural buildings. They are much more: Corresponding to the demands of a city church, what is at stake here is a peace of mind, peace for the city, consolation for the suffering, encouragement through God’s spirit, the individual but also the collective “well-being”. From the point of view of its self-image, a church is, therefore, more than just a representation of history. Churches rather bring about a change in one’s position towards the actual present. This new position is characterised by experiencing and meeting the presence of the Holy Spirit that casts a new healing light onto the past and future, i.e. onto memories and visions. Thus the horizon of the individual existence is necessarily transcended. Baptism and the remembrance of baptism mark this changed position. Baptism as a promise of the healing presence of God in one’s life places the individual existence of every Christian in the universal community of all baptized, in the “one holy Christian church of all times and places.” This quotation from the “symbolon christianum”, the Apostles’s Creed, is a concrete utopia, a foreseeable but at the same time still pending and challenging hope.

How could such “dogmatic” views be concretised regarding brick Gothic churches? Every Gothic church symbolises these statements in many ways. E.g. the alignment of the nave eastwards symbolises a turn towards resurrection, which took place in the early morning in Jerusalem, i.e. towards the “centre of the universe”, where because of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ a hope for a new life for everybody arose. From this point of view, the actual place where the church is located is drawn into a wider “map” that connects not only the nearby churches, but also churches nationwide and in neighbouring states — and even beyond these boundaries!¹⁵ Similar to the fact that the Roman Empire was surveyed with milestones which marked the distance to Rome — because all paths were leading towards Rome, the centre of the world-empire — likewise the alignment of the church axes points beyond itself towards the worldly and the heavenly Jerusalem as the old but still abiding centre on the “map” of hope. Thus from a theological point of view, the church itself, as a place, can be understood as a “milestone” along the way. Therefore, villages and cities located alongside pilgrims’ trails always had a special significance to them. This also explains why today nearly every mediaeval city has at least one church that is named after Jacob and why all Nicolai-churches and Maria-churches with their patron saint Nicolaus and their Maria-pilgrimages refer to each other. So the churches were not only symbols of faith, they could also become appropriate symbols of cities because they wove the cities themselves into a big city network with a worldly (Rome) and a spiritual (Holy Land with Jerusalem) centre. The recollection of these structured references enables theological reflection to recognise churches as central places in the city, potentially serving as “milestones” and “bridges”. Historical-critical recollection at the same time cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that churches were also functioning as fortresses and boundary posts, intentionally or not.

How do such theological reflections relate to empirical reality? One must ask the following question: Do churches perhaps hold a specific potential to serve as milestones or bridges, but also as boundary stones or boundary posts (o...