St. Jakob: The Catholic Parish Church of Alt-Saarbrücken
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- German
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page13 sections
History
St. Jakob is the Roman Catholic parish church of Alt-Saarbrücken in Saarbrücken, Germany. Built in 1885–1887 in the Neo-Gothic style, it continues the medieval religious traditions of the town and its castle chapel, whose patronage became associated with James the Greater, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. The church belongs to the southern part of the Diocese of Trier.
Medieval chapels and the patronage of Saint James
The inhabitants of the original town, now called Alt-Saarbrücken, belonged to the parish of St. Arnual. By the thirteenth century, they had their own chapel, built during the rule of Countess Lauretta. On 23 August 1261, Bishop Philipp of Metz authorized the St. Arnual collegiate foundation, a community of canons responsible for worship and administration, to build a chapel in Saarbrücken and hold services there. The town remained dependent on St. Arnual, and the chapel was dedicated to Saint Nicholas of Myra.
A separate chapel for the count’s court and castle retainers probably stood in Saarbrücken before 999. It was probably dedicated to Saint George. After returning from Italy, Count Johann I replaced it with a Margaret Chapel, which Chorbishop Daniel of Metz consecrated on 2 May 1315. In 1356, Johann I’s successor, Johann II, established an altar dedicated to James the Greater in the castle chapel. Johann II had vowed to make the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, a major medieval destination associated with the apostle’s shrine, but Pope Innocent VI allowed him to replace the pilgrimage with the altar foundation. The arrangement required a priest to celebrate Mass there three days each week.
The castle chapel was demolished in 1466, and a replacement chapel was built in 1468 and consecrated by Simon de Rubo, the general vicar of Metz. The dedication to James gradually displaced the earlier Margaret dedication. The patronage of this medieval castle chapel was later transferred to St. Jakob.
Parish independence and the Reformation
Count Johann I repeatedly sought to free Saarbrücken and St. Johann from the pastoral control of the St. Arnual collegiate foundation, which he considered inadequate. During a mission to Pope Clement V in 1309 and a later journey to Avignon in 1325, he raised the difficulty of receiving baptism and the sacraments at the distant mother church. Pope John XXII instructed the Bishop of Metz to require baptismal fonts and a priest in both towns, but the communities continued to depend on St. Arnual. In 1549, the foundation finally permitted one of its priests to live in Saarbrücken, and the town became an independent parish.
Count Philipp III of Nassau-Saarbrücken introduced the Reformation in 1575. Catholic parish organization in the town was interrupted until the nineteenth century. On 9 May 1803, when Saarbrücken belonged to France’s Department of the Saar, a canton parish was established. It used the church in St. Johann while plans for a separate Catholic church developed.
Construction of the present church
In 1866, the widow Maubon of Bar-le-Duc donated three plots of land to the parish of St. Johann on the condition that construction of a Catholic church in Saarbrücken begin within four years. Carl Friedrich Müller designed the proposed building, intended to be the town’s first Catholic church since the Reformation. The plans were approved in early 1870 and the foundation stone was laid on 6 April, but disagreements halted the work. The land was sold because it could not accommodate both a church and a parish house.
A larger site was purchased in 1874, but the Kulturkampf, the nineteenth-century conflict between the German state and the Catholic Church, together with the Kulturkampf-era Old Catholic Law, delayed the project. Groundwork and foundation masonry began in July 1884 and were completed that autumn. Bishop Michael Felix Korum of Trier laid the foundation stone on 21 June 1885.
Arnold Güldenpfennig of Paderborn designed the church, which was built between 1885 and 1887. Saarbrücken building councillor Ferdinand Neufang directed the local works, while Ludwig Barth and Friedrich Sehmer carried out the construction. Bishop Korum consecrated the completed church to James the Greater on 9 July 1887. The first parish priest took office on 1 March 1888, and construction had cost 200,000 marks.
Expansion, parish change, and reconstruction
Moritz Gombert extended the church in 1906–1907 by adding a transept, the cross arm of a church, and a new choir, the area reserved for clergy and liturgical singing. The original choir was demolished, and the building acquired its present cross-shaped plan. The parish of Christ the King was separated from St. Jakob in 1929 for Catholics in St. Arnual. The St. Mauritius expositure, a subordinate pastoral establishment linked to a larger parish, was established in 1938. Its church was deconsecrated in 2004 and transferred to the state.
St. Jakob was damaged during the Second World War. Rudolf Krüger directed partial reconstruction of the choir and transept in 1948–1949, and Emil Tiator completed the rebuilding in 1954. The work reshaped parts of the prewar church. The nave received a modern grid ceiling in place of its Neo-Gothic vaulting, while the older transept gables and the elaborate stone window framework were replaced by the postwar design.
Klaus Dieter Köhler of HTW Saarbrücken led a student project group that remodeled the altar area in 1994. St. Jakob is listed as an individual monument in the Saarland monument register.
Remains
Plan and exterior
Nave, transept, and choir
St. Jakob is oriented with its apse, a terminating recess, to the north. Its original form was a three-aisled Neo-Gothic stepped hall, in which the central aisle rises above the side aisles without a fully developed clerestory. A southern entrance tower and a slightly projecting transept completed the initial arrangement, while the choir consisted of a choir bay and a three-sided termination.
Pointed-arch arcades on slender circular piers divided the three-bay nave. The crossing was marked by piers made from four half-columns with polygonal impost blocks, and the bays originally carried cross vaults. The 1906–1907 extension created a second, widely projecting transept and a new choir. The resulting arrangement has three roughly equal-depth, three-sided terminations, with subsidiary choirs opening toward the main choir and transept.
Entrance tower
The massive southern tower is divided by cornices into three principal stages. Its lowest stage reaches the height of the main nave and contains three large tracery windows, whose ornamental stone framework faces the interior. Buttresses surround the corners and become round corner turrets at the second stage. Blind pointed arches with blind tracery occupy the spaces between them, while pointed-arch sound arcades rise above.
A tall octagonal spire crowns the tower, surrounded by the four conical roofs of the corner turrets. Small intermediate gables accommodate the tower clocks. Across the church exterior, doubly stepped buttresses express the internal division into bays. Large pointed-arch windows were set above a continuous sill-course that visually linked the church and tower. Postwar reconstruction gave the window openings simpler tracery than the prewar church.
Interior and furnishings
Altar area and devotional sculpture
The altar is mounted so that it can rotate around a fixed point, allowing the altar area to serve different forms of sacred use. It can also be removed completely, permitting the space to be used for cultural activities. The interior includes a sculpture of Saint Barbara in the left side chapel and a group of Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child in the right side chapel. A Madonna and Child stands in the Marian chapel, alongside a carved wooden group of Saint Anthony. The tabernacle is decorated with a scene of the Last Supper.
Organ
Gebr. Späth of Ennetach-Mengen built the organ in 1950 as opus 553. It originally had 17 stops on two manuals, or keyboards, and pedal, the foot-operated keyboard, and stood on the gallery in the eastern transept. After the nave was rebuilt and a partition wall was removed in 1962, the instrument was enlarged with a third manual in the form of a smaller division called a Rückpositiv, traditionally placed behind the organist in the gallery rail. Fifteen additional stops were added, including a 16-foot zinc principal, and the organ received a new free-standing console.
The instrument retains electro-pneumatic action and cone chests, systems that control air admission to the pipes, while the later Rückpositiv uses a slider chest. Later alterations assigned the Rückpositiv to the first manual, the Hauptwerk to the second, and the Swell to the third. The organ now has 33 stops on three manuals and pedal. Wind loss and heavy internal soiling have affected it, although repairs have contained major failures and its condition is considered moderately good. Its couplers are III/I, I/II, III/II, I/P, II/P, and III/P. Listed playing aids include hand registration, three free combinations, tutti, reed-off controls, an automatic piano pedal, crescendo, crescendo-off, and individual reed-canceller controls.
Bells
The tower contains four bronze bells cast in 1955 by the Mabilon foundry of Saarburg. Together they form a peal in a Prefation motif. The bell frame and yokes are made of steel.
