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Hella de Santarossa Heilig-Geist Kirche Heidelberg

Hella de Santarossa: "Schöpfungsgeschichte" (Creation History), 1997-2002, Heilig-Geist-Kirche, Heidelberg

In 1997 Hella De Santarossa won the international competition organized for designing new windows to take the place of the windows that were destroyed in 1945. The jury: “She convinces through her theological power of expression and her artistic originality. She succeeds in connecting a timeless biblical message with contemporary problems.
 
‘The church windows tell of the creative work of the Spirit of God, who creates life, orders, illuminates and clarifies, reconciles and loves. The Spirit of God, who lives and works behind, in front of, above and around the whole creation.’ Werner Keller
 
Window 1: God’s Spirit above the waters
The seperation of the waters described in the history of creation is represented
in monochrome colour planes, around which dive-motifs have been painted that
are surrounded by glass prisms. The swimmer represents the still seemingly
unordered, chaos-like world in which God works.
 
Window 2: God’s Spirit above the chaos
Gods order seems to have vanished. Grey to black colour areas express the fear of humanity to be lost without God’s help. Between prism-like glass sequences appears the motif of the child soldier, who seems to stand before an emptiness, while the light in the upper part of the window renders him hope. War as metaphor and as an existence threatening situation of humanity needs God’s Spirit to see things in perspective.
 
Window 3: God Spoke: ‘Let there be light’
In this window white and yellow dominate: colours that represent the energy and light of the sun and the moon. Energy and vitality are to be understood as gifts of God to humanity, without which there will be no life.
 
Window 4: The world is full of God’s Spirit
Once upon a time the greatest treasure of the church was the famous collection of books of the Biblioteca Palatina, which was taken to Rome as war booty during the 30-years war. Very realistically a huge pile of books towers over a lap top computer – a tribute to the modern way of collecting knowledge.
 
Window 5: The tree of the knowledge of good and bad
The motif in the middle shows a rich choice of the fruits of the earth, which – each representing their own value – reflect cultural and ethnological diversity. The dark colour area expresses the knowledge of evil.
 
For more information about Hella De Santarossa: www.hellasantarossa.de/