St. Dreikönigen, Church building in Bickendorf, Germany
St. Dreikönigen is a church building featuring a prominent bell tower in the Bickendorf neighborhood of Cologne. The main entrance stands at Weißdornweg 91 and the structure displays distinctive architectural elements typical of religious buildings in the area.
St. Dreikönigen was built in 1928–29 to designs by Hans Peter Fischer and Heinrich Forthmann for the growing Catholic community of St. Rochus, after a competition among 44 Cologne architects. The foundation stone was laid on 10 June 1928, and Auxiliary Bishop Hermann Joseph Sträter consecrated the church on 6 January 1929. Interior work continued until 1934, and the parish became independent of St. Rochus in 1931. Damaged in the Second World War, it was listed as a monument in 1982.
The church is dedicated to the Three Wise Men, the patron saints of Cologne, and its consecration took place on Epiphany, 6 January 1929. The five-lancet "Dreikönigenfenster" in the portal wall, made by Wilhelm Schmitz-Steinkrüger, a pupil of Jan Thorn Prikker, shows the Magi in figurative glass. Cardinal Frings celebrated Epiphany Mass here for three years after the war.
St. Dreikönigen stands at Weißdornweg 91 in the Bickendorf II estate, reached through a three-arch arcade that forms a small forecourt with a second arcade wall. The slender tower is set on the entrance side, with a low entrance annex opposite it and a single-storey side chapel with apse at the choir end.
The church's three bronze bells were cast by the Otto foundry in 1932; two had to be handed over for war use in 1942. Donations paid for identically inscribed replacements in 1949 and 1955, restoring the three-note peal.
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