At the altar in Breitbrunn’s Heilig-Geist-Kirche, it is not a pastor who is sitting that evening, but the actress Gisela Schneeberger. She takes sheets of text out of her handbag, bright spotlights illuminate her and the small wooden table with a reading lamp directly in front of the altar, which can only be seen in outline in the half-darkness. Brightly painted crosses of Christ lean against the wall in the background.
Religion is not in the limelight this evening, but rather the actress, who has won several Grimme Prizes, and the story she brought with her: Eugen Roth’s “Umbrella”. A serious short story with a tragic ending.
Film celebrities instead of Christian liturgy, Gisela Schneeberger instead of Pastor Simon Rapp at the altar – all this is part of the cultural program of the Breitbrunner church, which in 2021 gave itself the nickname of a “cultural church”. The idea behind it, as it says on the homepage: in to unite in one church what has been “inseparably linked for many centuries”, church and culture, which have “always mutually enriched and shaped each other”. Religion and culture, be it music, literature or theatre. And more again In order to move people to the pews, more and more Protestant and Catholic places of worship have become cultural churches in recent years.
The proposal to create this connection in Breitbrunn as well came from Pastor Rapp and a committed church administration, reports Marie-Josefin Melchior, who has taken over the artistic team leadership. The comparatively young Heilig-Geist-Kirche, which was built in the 1970s, had structural defects in 2017, especially on the pitched roof; the municipality collected donations for the repair work. The sum of 50,000 euros was raised.
After almost three years of refurbishment, the doors of the church were reopened and the church administration wanted to attract more people again. “Like almost all congregations, we have a rapidly declining number of churchgoers,” reports church curator Christoph Welsch. Since 2021, artists have been performing regularly, excluding corona breaks, always on Wednesday evenings: they make music, play theater, even magic shows are on the programme, and they read it, like on the evening with Gisela Schneeberger.
The actress Gisela Schneeberger reads in the Breitbrunn church. “If a church is so often empty anyway, you can use it for other purposes,” she says.
(Photo: Franz Xaver Fuchs)
When the well-known actress read the last lines of “Umbrella”, there was a shocked silence. It is a touching story, “that you first have to process”, as the speaker says. The discussion moderated by the actress afterwards offers approaches to processing.
Fewer churchgoers on an ordinary Sunday morning, but even more on Wednesday evening. Around 200 people come to see Schneeberger in the church. Marie-Josefin Melchior, Christoph Welsch and press spokesman Franz Fürhaber are satisfied with the response. “Our goal is a sophisticated and serious cultural program in an architecturally beautiful place. It has nothing to do with the usual music in a village church,” says Malchior. Admission is free, but donations are welcome.
“The reference to religion is of course completely missing. But that’s no problem”
Church caretaker Welsch emphasizes: “It is important to us that the visitors are not denominational. Almost without exception, we choose non-Christian topics for our cultural evenings. This program doesn’t have much to do with Catholicism.” And with religion in general? Is there still a difference between a reading in a cultural church and one in one of the usual venues? Does a secular short story, read in a church, still have a spiritual effect?
Followed up by the audience in Breitbrunn: After the discussion, Rainer and Birgit Egen are one of the last ones still in the church room. You are at a cultural event in the Heilig-Geist-Kirche for the first time: “Of course there is no connection to religion at all. But that’s not a bad thing: at least there are that many, even if almost only older people in the church again,” says Birgit Eden. Reiner Eden adds: “The numbers leaving the Catholic Church are simply enormously high. She has to be inventive to lure people back to him.”
The Breitbrunner church towers over the Herrschinger district like a pyramid. Donations are being collected for renovations.
(Photo: Franz Xaver Fuchs)
Cultural churches are just one option to make going to church more popular again; Germany-wide comparisons show how “inventive”, as Rainer Egen calls it, other communities are becoming: in 2016, the Cologne Cathedral celebrated a disco service under the motto “Silent Mod” with light shows for young people under Cardinal Rainer Maria Wölki; that was described at the time by a Catholic newspaper as “worthy and awesome”. In 2018, participants in a sightseeing marathon in Bochum jogged through the Propsteikirche, among other places. In Mönchengladbach, a church became a climbing church. A scandal for the devout, but what to do when these devout slowly dying out”, as Christoph Welsch says.
In the district of Starnberg, just over 54 percent more people left their church community than in the previous year, and the Herrsching parish community is one of the communities where the increase was even higher. With the church taxpayers, the revenues are also falling.
“But it ends somewhere,” says Franz Fürbacher, for example. So no climbing church in Breitbrunn? “Reverend Simon Rapp is very open, but this is still a place of worship,” says church curator Christoph Welsch. Culture and church can be reconciled, even have to be reconciled. But one can then draw a line behind the “broadly expandable concept of culture”.
Herrschingen pastor Simon Rapp combines culture and religion.
(Photo: Nila Thiel)
When the discussion came to an end last Wednesday, technicians switched off the color-coordinated lighting of the Christ crosses and the altar. The church space empties. But the star of the evening, Gisela Schneeberger, is still sitting in the back room. “I’ve never read in a church. But I found the experience really great,” she says. She also welcomes the combination of religion and culture in the form of this additional offer. After all, pastor Rapp still has services, but with far fewer full rows of seats than hers.
Schneeberger sees the tightrope walk between traditional church operations and openness to modern community life as follows: “If a church is so often empty anyway, you can also use it for other purposes. It’s a good atmosphere for reading and exchanging ideas.” Regarding the disco service, she says: “I think every community has to set its own limits. Lots of things are possible,” there’s a short pause – “if it’s not just judo course is.”
The actress folds her lyric sheets back into her handbag: “I almost thoughtlessly placed this bag on the altar earlier. But I quickly took them down again. I had really briefly forgotten that I was in a church.” But that’s where she draws her personal, “respectful” line: handbag on the altar – that’s where it ends.
The “Culture Church” organizes cultural events on Wednesdays in a church setting: readings, plays, concerts, magic shows. Admission is free, donations are welcome. More information at www.kulturkirche-breitbrunn.de.