By Hiltrud Kier

“Who but you are interested in these churches?” – the naturally ironic statement of Vicar General Norbert Feldhoff, whom I visited in January 1981 to avert the reduction in church tax funds feared by Archdiocesan master builder Wilhelm Schlombs for the further restoration of the Romanesque churches in Cologne so enraged that I decided to ask the question publicly.

This happened immediately in March 1981 in the cathedral building commission, to which elitist committee cathedral master builder Wolff had invited me to confront Cardinal Höffner and minister Christoph Zöpel with this question – which at least in Cologne produced a smiley pleasure because the newspapers reported knew I would have recommended trusting God more to the cardinal than he was talking about the enormous cost. However, I only pointed out that in the discussion in 1946/47 the question of money did not arise and that construction was started with trust in God.

“St. Gereon, where is that actually? “

The next opportunity to ask this question about the interest in the treasure of Cologne’s Romanesque churches in the parliamentary group meetings of the CDU and SPD. How much these unique buildings had disappeared from consciousness, the question “St. Gereon, where is that actually? ”And in the SPD the question, which cannot be expected otherwise, of what it has to do with churches. Surprisingly, however, Jupp Jansen, Cologne’s SPD veteran and as a traffic expert, until then continued as an advocate of monument preservation suspects, and more positively told the comrades the importance of these buildings, which his father had shown him as a child in the still undestroyed condition.

How the foundation of the friends’ association with the mayor and archbishop as honorary chairman came about and which people from Sigurd Greven to Gisela Heidecke and the publishers Heinrich Heinen and Dieter Schütte to chairman Günter Heidecke were actively involved in it, I have in detail in “Colonia Romanica” 1997 described. As in so many other cases, I was the only woman in the group to die on this occasion. #Metoo wasn’t invented yet. Nobody answered my laundry, but the gentlemen could no longer afford some of the comments from back then.

Prejudice against working women

So, if, for example, Sparkasse director Fritz Hermanns smugly remarked that I would be lucky that my husband just let me work, or on other occasions he almost appreciatively stated that I had a male mind. The innumerable other indecentities and more or less silent accusations as a mother of four children had to be pushed aside or ignored, otherwise a successful work would not be possible.

The founding of the association in the Hansasaal on December 18, 1981 was the beginning of an immediate and unprecedented return of the Cologne population to their Romanesque churches. When the invitation to St. Kunibert on February 5, 1982 as the first general meeting of the friends’ association, the church was overcrowded and Pastor Franz Schneider was overwhelmed, because he had never seen his church so full. We had deliberately chosen St. Kunibert as a prelude, because it was particularly about the reconstruction of the still ruinous west transept.

First cycle of tours 1982

In the first cycle of tours, which I did in 1982/83, up to 1000 people came at a time. Especially during the tours of the construction sites in the choir of St. Maria im Kapitol, in the decagon of St. Gereon or in Groß St. Martin, people flocked to see these long architectural masterpieces.

But also in St. Pantaleon the church was so full that Pastor Karl Heinz Bergmann said that the loudspeaker system couldn’t do it: “There & you in the pulpit”. To be honest, my knees still shake when I think of it. But it works after taking his advice to speak slowly and not in my own reverberation.

Hiltrud Kier’s contribution comes from the book “Romanik und Portrait. 40 years of the Friends of Roman Churches in Cologne ”. It is not commercially available. Supporting members receive it free of charge.

www.romanische-kirchen-koeln.de