Sacred Heart Church, Cultural heritage church in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.
Sacred Heart Church is a basilica with a polygonal apse, transept and twin-tower façade modelled on Limburg Cathedral. Architect Max Meckel, bound to the late Romanesque style, used the Rhenish transition style. In the main gable, below a Sacred Heart figure, sits a bust of Meckel.
The Stühlinger district grew from the 1870s, and in 1884 a local committee formed to build a church for its mostly Catholic residents. After architect Franz Baer died in 1891, Max Meckel took over; construction began on 10 June 1892 and the church was consecrated on 2 May 1897. British air raids on 27 November and 17 December 1944 damaged it heavily, and it was reconsecrated on 27 April 1952.
The church is part of the Seelsorgeeinheit Freiburg-Mitte in the Archdiocese of Freiburg. Its name follows the 19th-century devotion to the Sacred Heart, which led many new Catholic churches of the period to be dedicated under this title. The choir windows and the rose window were designed by the painter Hans Baumhauer.
The church stands in the Stühlinger district, its double-tower façade aligned with the Blaue Brücke over the railway tracks near the main station. The Marienbrunnen fountain of 1954, crowned by a Madonna by Richard Engelmann, stands in front of the entrance. The building is an active parish church of the Seelsorgeeinheit Freiburg-Mitte, so visits are best timed outside services.
The pulpit, carved with reliefs by Georg Busch, was made twice in terracotta by the oven manufacturer Carl Roth of Baden-Oth; one copy went to the former Gengenbach monastery church, the other was shown at the 1900 Paris World's Fair before installation here in 1901. It was not reinstalled after the war.
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