From Church to Columbarium: the German approach to the conversion of underused places of worship

Abstract

A building can be abandoned for several reasons, such as structural, functional, economics, socio historical issues. If it is a church, other factors had to be considered. In fact, the secularization of modern society is a wide phenomenon that involves all faiths from Catholics to Protestants, both in rural district and metropolis. The sacral building loses gradually its functionality and, due to high management costs, the owners (principally dioceses) had to optimize their financial resources. In particular, my study is focused on Germany where there is an ongoing transformation process of underused churches, in order to give them a new function and a new life. It led to convert church into ossuary (or columbarium). For this reason, it is important to stress that the cremation was not introduced in Germany until 1879 and since then columbaria were often built on external walls of many cemeteries. The current assumption is the impossibility to expand existent graveyards and the need to recycle religious buildings in ruins. The building sacredness is preserved, whereas liturgical function fails or is reduced. As a simple empty building, the church keeps its external volume but the interior space is adapted to the new functional requirements. This process, which started from 1990s, is emerging in the last decade. Two churches will be here analyzed. In particular, St. Kamillus in Mönchengladbach was built by Dominikus Böhm (1928-1931) and converted by BDMP | Architekten BDA (2015); St. Bartholomäus in Cologne was designed by Hans Schwippert (1960) and converted by Kissler + Effgen (2014).