Johanneskirche
The Johanneskirche is a Roman Catholic church located in Freiburg im Breisgau. It was first opened in 1899 and is currently located in the Wiehre district. Around the church, further historic buildings were built. On the western side is the presbytery of the community next to a vocational school and to the north is the Lessingschule. At the same time as the Johanneskirche was being completed, the Protestant Christians built their own church near to Johanneskirche, the Christuskirche.
History
After the Wiehre district had joined with Freiburg in 1825, a large construction project took place. The population rapidly grew within a few decades. Since the Church of St. Cyriakus and Perpetua was only designed for less than 200 people, the church was no longer adequate for the rising population figures. This led to a decision being made to build a new church in 1889. The client was the domain directorate, subordinated to the Ministry of Finance of the Grand Duchy of Baden. The contract was given to building manager Josef Durm. The Ministry rejected its draft because of its costs. In order to accommodate the required space on a smaller site, the Ministry of Finance called for galleries. Durm and the church initially rejected this as unsuitable for a Catholic church since the faithful in the gallery could not participate appropriately during mass. Churches with galleries were only considered suitable for Evangelical preaching services. Finally, Durm gave in. The city council was also involved in designing the church. Durm's next draft, in Romanesque-early Gothic style, seemed to be too much in competition with the Minster. Durm then changed his design and emphasised more strongly the Romanesque sections. He designed the towers to be taller and later added them to another storey. Construction served to mark the town-planning guiding principle under Lord Mayor Otto Winterer to mark the expanding of the city of Freiburg by towering buildings.Construction work on a site near to the Dreisam, on which the first gasworks had stood, began in 1894 and ended when the church was consecrated in 1899. In order to make good use of the existing site for a church with 900 seats, the church was designed with a very wide central nave and two side aisles with galleries. The length of the building is 74.3m. The crossing of the nave and the transept has a diameter of 16.8m.
The building is decorated in red sandstone and resembles the typical features of new Romanesque architecture, which included elements of late Romanesque churches. Unlike older churches, Johanneskirche is not orientated to the east, with the altar located to the west. The facade, whose entrance is shaped in the form of an octagon, is flanked by two towers about 60m high with very steep spires pointing eastwards towards Talstraße, which forms a long line of sight for the church.
Architect Josef Durm, in a letter addressed to the Finance Directorate, described Bamberg Cathedral as a model for the new church, with mainly relates to the exterior view to the east with the entrance apse flanked by two towers. On the other hand, both the floor plan and the interior are clearly different from the aforementioned model. "The architect has found his idols rather in late Romanesque of the Lower and Upper Rhines. Durm arrives at an independent solution so that a direct derivation from a late-Romanesque building is not possible".
The church's glass windows were created by Freiburg artist Fritz Geiges between 1898 and 1901.
After the interior was renovated between 1971 and 1973, crossings with the altar island and celebration made by Joseph Henger were redesigned in 1975. A further exterior renovation took place from 2006 to 2008.