July 2018 - Gerry Lynch: Priest, Writer, Photographer

St Aldegundis, Emmerich

9 October 202021 July 2018 by Gerry Lynch

Difficult to photograph close in due to its dense inner-city site, some say that St Aldegundis is on the site of the original mission church in what later became Emmerich am Rhein, founded by St Wilibrord around 700. That is debatable, but what is certain was there was a collegiate foundation in the town by 914 and that a church on this site burnt down in the early 15th Century. The current building was built to replace it between 1449 and 1514.

It has many lovely late medieval statues, photographed and described below…

St Pancratius, ‘s-Heerenberg, and the ‘Gestapo Window’

9 October 202019 July 2018 by Gerry Lynch

St Pancratius, 's-Heerenberg, North Elevation

St Pancratius (de Pancratiuskerk) in the little Dutch market town of ‘s-Heerenberg (population 8,000) and literally a ten minute stroll from the German border.

At first blush – another pretty, ornate, but unexceptional post-Vatican I church in the south eastern Netherlands, a sign of a long suppressed community bursting into both prosperity and political power. Inevitably designed by the Albert Tepe, a prolific architect of Dutch neogothic… and then…

In the north aisle a unusual piece of stained glass catches the eye – is that a Gestapo man in stained glass?

St Pancratius, 's-Heerenberg, Close Up of ‘Gestapo Window’

Yes, it is. And so one learns of the story of Frs. Galama and van Rooijen, parish priest and curate respectively, arrested in 1941 after preaching against the Dutch Nazi Party, the NSB, who were deported to Dachau where both died in 1942. The scene of the Judas kiss immediately above makes clear the bitter but rarely mentioned memories of collaboration and betrayal that must have haunted communities like this for decades after the war.

What Is A Man? The Question Asked by a Memorial to Forgotten Wars

9 October 202018 July 2018 by Gerry Lynch

The memorial to the fallen of the 1860s Wars of German Unification in the Rheinpark in Emmerich (Kriegerdenkmal, Emmerich). Emmerich is a sleepy little river port on the Rhine, literally within a casual afternoon stroll of the Dutch border.

Completed under Wilhelm Kreis in 1913 on the eve of the First World War and deeply redolent of the ‘dulce et decorum est’ mentality which played such a role in that conflagration.

Upper text: “Der ist ein Mann, der sterben kann für Gott und Vaterland. EM Arndt.” – He is a man, who can die for God and fatherland.