THE ARCHITECTURE OF SACRED SPACE BY RUDOLF SCHWARZ: ST. ANNE'S CHURCH IN DÜREN, GERMANY

The paper analyzes the Church of St. Anna in Düren, built in the Second Post- War period by Rudolf Schwarz with a mixed structure in reinforced concrete and stones obtained from the rubble of the pre-existing Gothic church destroyed by the bombing of the war. Schwarz, one of the greatest architects in the liturgical field, recovered from the debris all or almost all of the red-brown limestone of the destroyed previous Gothic church to build the load-bearing masonry of the large, essential and sober shell of St. Anna. The millenary stone is reborn to new life, interacts and dialogues with the calibrated structure in reinforced concrete conglomerate. The church for its conformation anticipates of some decades the radical reform of the sacred space of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. The envelope is a bare wall box with a clear and sharp stereometry. Schwarz's concern to overthrow the authoritarian hierarchical model of the Church in favor of an approach of communion and equality that supports a universal liturgical space can be seen in the elimination of all visual barriers and in the reduction to a minimum of the separation space between nave and presbytery. The paper describes the construction history of the building, also in the light of Catholic symbology and theological directives. It also mentions today's problems of maintaining the integrity of the reinforced concrete conglomerate at sight between the negative scenario of being forced to intervene with painful choices for the aesthetic and historical instance and the technically necessary interventions, under penalty of ruin and unfit for use of the building.