This is not the first time I’ve written about Heidelberg’s historic and beautiful Heiliggeistkirche—the Church of the Holy Spirit—but it’s the first time I’ve really looked at its 20th-century stained glass and the stormy controversies around it.
The church’s original stained-glass windows were victims of war—in 1693—and were only ever replaced with plain or plain colored glass, most recently in the 19th century, with some repair after damage in 1945. In the mid-1970s, as part of a broad restoration, a well-known artist, Johannes Schreiter, was commissioned to make 22 new windows, the largest ever stained-glass commission for a single artist.
Only the one above, the so-called ‘Physics Window,’ was ever installed. The stark red is meant to represent the Holy Spirit, the white arrow at the top the Holy Spirit descending to earth. The date of the Hiroshima atomic bomb and the E=mc2 equation make the subject obvious. The first of two biblical quotations describes an apocalyptic end to the earth, while the other is a message of hope.
Public reaction to Schreiter’s proposed designs was mixed and heated. Drawing on the church’s history as a university church and seat of the historic Palatine Library, his designs included stock market reports, international traffic signs, scientific formulae, and graphically accurate text excerpts as icons.
On the one hand, it was hailed as a landmark in the history of glass design; on the other it was blasted as inappropriate and even sacrilegious. In the end, the rest of the commission was canceled, although some of the designs were later made for other venues. An interesting discussion of the period and the controversy can be read here.
After the rejection, a new competition commissioned five windows by Hella Santarossa, which are equally modern in design, but focus on more religious themes, including the creation story and the spirit of God. In the window at bottom right, a laptop and stack of books represents the church’s history as the seat of the Palatine Library; in the top right window, a child soldier peers out of a window that represents “the Spirit of God above the chaos.” Genesis, below, completes the series.
Between the Schreiter commission and Hellarossa, there was a proposal from British glass artist Brian Clarke, that would have taken up where Schreiter left off, but it was not accepted. Ironically, both Schreiter and Clarke returned to Heidelberg for other commissions—Schreiter for nine large windows in the St Peter Church a few blocks away and Clarke for a stunningly modern New Synagogue.
Aside from the generally ornamental glass that fills many of the windows, there is also another stunning modern work, the 1967 Revelation window, left above, by Gottfried von Stockhausen. Like the ornamental windows, it was installed before the big plans.
An additional organ and console has appeared since my last visit.
A cartoonish Martin Luther shows off his Bible translation…
And, the classic view of the church from the castle above the city.
