Old Catholic Church of St. Martin in Schwaningen, Germany, to be sold after deconsecration

The Old Catholic church of St. Martin in Schwaningen, near Stühlingen, is up for sale. The building was closed because of its structural condition. In December 2019, the municipal assembly, with Father Guido Palazzari and Franz-Josef Stadler, chairman of the Old Catholic church community in Randen- und Wutachtal, agreed to give up the building and return it to the Roman Catholic pastoral unit Eggingen-Stühlingen Heilig Kreuz. A letter from September 2020 explained that the congregation had become so small that the Old Catholic church in Stühlingen was sufficient for its services.

The letter also said that the church in Schwaningen had many shortcomings that the Old Catholics could not remedy on their narrow budget. It stated that the congregation was returning the building “gratefully” to the Roman Catholic community, and that it was important to the congregation that the house of God be assigned to a purpose appropriate to the dignity of the space.

Pastor Karl-Michael Klotz, head of the pastoral unit Eggingen-Stühlingen Heilig Kreuz, described the steps taken since then. A deconsecration, which the source also calls a profanation, was carried out by episcopal decree. The source describes this act as the counterpart of ordination, and says it ended the church’s liturgical use. The building has since been completely cleared. The altar was placed in the depot of the Augustinian Museum Freiburg, the church benches were removed, and the bell was taken down on a Monday a week before the report. The bell will remain in Schwaningen as a cemetery bell. The cross with its ball was still being removed by scaffolding at the time of reporting.

The village has a long record in local documents. Schwaningen is first mentioned in 766, when three churches are recorded there, two of them dedicated to St. Martin. The parish is first mentioned in 1275. A great fire on 28 August 1911 destroyed 32 houses, the parish and its archives, and the Zehntscheuer. The church burned in 1767, and a new building in Rococo style was inaugurated in 1777. After the secularization of the 1870s, the large church was awarded to the Old Catholics, who were then the represented congregation, while the few Catholics built a small church of tuff stone nearby in 1876. In 1894 and 1895, almost half of the village’s residents were Old Catholics. By the 1920s their numbers had declined. Preserving that heritage is part of the story as the building changes hands, a way of passing the village’s history on to the next generation (Psalm 78:4).

According to the source, 60 Old Catholics are listed today in Stühlingen and Schwaningen. They use the Sebastian Chapel in Stühlingen for services. They belong to the Old Catholic parish of Blumberg and are supervised by pastors Guido Palazzari and Stefan Hesse.

Monika Uhlmann-Gindele and Reinhold Gindele, from Sauldorf-Bietingen near Sigmaringen, specialise in mediating historical buildings and are concerned with preserving such buildings under heritage requirements. Their website lists the Schwaningen church as having potential for individual cultural, gastronomic or residential use.

The sale price is 145,000 euros. The buyer would be responsible for renovating the floor, walls, windows and roof, and all changes must be agreed with the State Monument Office, because the building is listed as a monument. The property is classified as an inheritance lease.

Source: Read the original report (translated from German)