Inconspicuous Modernism in the Handlová Church

FORUM FÓRUM Gotický Kostol sv. Kataríny v Handlovej sa môže javiť ako reprezentant stredovekého staviteľstva na našom území, ktorý navyše neprešiel žiadnymi výraznými stavebnými zmenami. V skutočnosti sa však práve tento nenápadný kostol stal dejiskom manifestovania viacerých revolučných modernistických zásahov, z ktorých sa zachoval len ten posledný, pochádzajúci z pera československého architekta a pamiatkara Karola Chudomelku. Myšlienky jeho predchodcov, nemeckého architekta Rudolfa Schwarza alebo dvojice ďalších československých architektov Františka Bednárika a Františka Faulhammera, ostávajú ukryté už len v archívnych prameňoch. Dôvodom výrazných stavebných zmien, ktorými handlovský kostol prešiel počas rušného obdobia 20. storočia, bola jeho nedostatočná kapacita, nepostačujúca v tých časoch prevažne nemeckým veriacim baníckej obce Handlová. Vďaka miestnemu farárovi Josefovi Steinhübelovi plány pre rozšírenie kostola vypracoval na začiatku druhej svetovej vojny prominentný nemecký modernistický architekt a teoretik v oblasti sakrálnej architektúry Rudolf Schwarz. Jeho koncepcie vychádzajúce z premýšľania nad usporiadaním vnútorného liturgického priestoru, ktoré sa stali jednou z hybných síl ústiacich do Druhého vatikánskeho koncilu, sa ukážkovo prejavili pri prestavbe Kostola sv. Kataríny v Handlovej. Postavenie mohutnej priečnej lode, ktorá preťala pôvodnú gotickú hmotu kostola, a zároveň ponechanie pôvodných klenieb, plynulo vyústili k umiestneniu oltára do stredu kríženia lodí pod zachované renesančné zdobené klenby, ktoré vytvorili akýsi baldachýn nad Inconspicuous Modernism in the Handlová Church Skrytá moderna v handlovskom kostole


Introduction
The Church of St. Catherine in Handlová was built in the middle of the 14 th century as a smaller single-nave Gothic building with a polygonal apse on the south and a single tower on the west side of the nave. 1 By the 20th century, it underwent several rebuilding projects that did not have a significant effect on its architectonic substance. Perhaps more important was the vaulting of the nave of the church on two middle pillars, which was completed in the 16th century and thus divided the previously integral space into a two-nave hall. 2 Only the 20th century brought about a fundamental change in the design of this historic building, thanks to the demand for a several-fold increase in capacity. The first intervention was the rebuilding according to the plans of the German modernist architect Rudolf Schwarz. The project had not yet been even approved when the church was severely damaged by an aerial bomb 3 at the end of World War II, and Rudolf Schwarz's work was erased forever. After the war, new plans for renovation were drawn up by a pair of architects, František Bednárik and František Faulhammer. In the end, this plan was not carried out, and the church was not renovated until the end of 1950s under the leadership of heritage architect Karol Chudomelka.
The Handlová Church appears exceptional not only due to Karol Chudomelka's innovative approach to the choice of heritage methodology, but also due to several modernist demonstrations expressed in the architectural form.
It is important to mention that this building served as the scene for the manifestation of several revolutionary modernist interventions, of which only Chudomelka's work has remained.

The intervention of Rudolf Schwarz in the Handlová church (1942 -1945)
The insufficient capacity of the small Gothic church in Handlová was the reason for the first significant rebuilding, which took place in the 20th century. As the church accommodated 500 to 600 worshippers, this figure was not enough for the 10,000 believers who lived before World War II in this mining village. The fact that Handlová (or in German, Krieckerhau) had a German population of 70% at that time played an important role in the whole proceedings: the intention of the parish office was to build a new church for the Slovak congregation and expand the original church, which would remain to serve the German population. In the end, no new church was built: not only on account of the markedly lower financial sum obtained through the collection from Slovak believers compared to the German ones, but also the promise of support from the Nitra County authorities, which suggested to the Parish Office of Handlová that they first focus on expanding the original church. The local priest Josef Steinhübel invited the German architect Rudolf Schwarz, who in June 1942 drew up project plans for the purpose of expanding the original church. 4 Rudolf Schwarz (1897 -1961) was a prominent German modernist architect, theorist, and designer of sacred architecture, who made a vast contribution to the discourse on modern sacral space. He manifested his provocative and revolutionary handling of the arrangement of the liturgical space not only through his architectural oeuvre, but also in the publication Vom Bau der Kirche 5 , where he presented seven plans for the arrangement of sacred spaces. In these plans, he gave particular stress to the relationship of the participants at the Mass and the venue of the liturgy; in fact, Rudolf Schwarz's spatial and theoretical concepts were one of the driving forces behind the Second Vatican Council. 6 In any case, the rebuilding of the Handlová Church by Rudolf Schwarz took place twenty years before the Second Vatican Council; more significantly, it forms an unknown and at the same time distinct work of this architect. 7 Perhaps this unusual status is because in the case of Handlová, it was not a new building but a rebuilding of a historic one, which had to comply with the statement of the Monuments Institute.
Rudolf Schwarz's proposal was to build a massive transept which cut through the original substance of the church. The transept took up the entire length of the original Gothic nave, breaking through its side perimeter walls and removing the historic truss. As a result, the external pillars of the Gothic support system became part of the interior of the newly created space, which opened into a beamed reinforced-concrete truss. 8 The altar was placed in the middle of the intersection of the naves, and like the canopy, the original decorated Renaissance vaults stretched out and above it, which the Monuments Institute forbade to remove at that time. 9 Despite the distinctive placement of the transept, Schwarz's concept did not reverse the orientation of the church. The interior was still entered from the west side, while in addition to the original entrance from under the tower, two side entrances located in the same way from the west were added.
This building was never accepted. In contemporary writings it was referred to as a "monstrous work" 10 or a "German pigsty" 11 . Rudolf Schwarz was again called a "Reich German architect" 12 .
According to the reports written by the Roman Catholic Parish Office of Handlová to the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment in 1946, the rebuilding was not completed or even officially approved when the church was destroyed by an air-raid bomb on March 27, 1945. 13 In the memoirs of the parish priest Josef Steinhübel, who was imprisoned and sentenced to death 14 at the end of the war, the following is written about the "Kirchenbau", as the rebuilding of the Handlová Church was called: "Like me (Steinhübel), he (Schwarz) worked with great pleasure on the new church. Just for fun, he once said, "There was a crazy architect who designed this building and an even crazier priest who had it built." However, it was not a "crazy" new building, but only a little bold, yet definitely an unusual church expansion." 15

The intervention of František Bednárik and František Faulhammer in the Handlová church (plans drawn up in 1946 -1948, renovation unrealized)
shortly after the end of the war, the Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical Community began its efforts to obtain financial support for the renovation of the church, either from the state, the patron of the diocese, which was the Bojnice Estate, the Baťa Company in Baťovany, or from the congregation. But while Father Steinhübel could relatively easily obtain the necessary financial amount during the wartime rebuilding 16 , the post-war situation was diametrically different.
Initially, the ecclesiastical community sought to renovate the church by financing repairs to the war-damaged mining houses in charge of the Settlement Office. At the beginning of 1946, officials from the Council of Ministers agreed to include the renovation of the Handlová Church in the repairs of the mining houses, noting that "the current interior architecture of the church, designed according to the Germanic style and with an exposed view of the truss, or the interrupted vaults above the altar, absolutely does not suit and never once did, as the whole church in this architecture does not express and did not even before, the symbol of nobility that the church is supposed to express." 17 At the end of 1946, František Bednárik (1902-1960 was commissioned to prepare new project plans in collaboration with František Faulhammer (1897 -1985), who proposed a renovation of the church with a budget of 6 million CZK. 18 Although the ecclesiastical and the political community externally expressed their objections to Schwarz's intervention, at the same time they demanded that nothing be demolished from the preserved parts of the building 19 and that the required increased capacity be observed when designing new plans. As a result, Bednárik and Faulhammer not only repeated the ground-plan outline of Schwarz's building in their design, but also went far beyond Schwarz's concept. The altar was placed at the end of the transept, on the north side, thus making the original Gothic presbytery into a side chapel. Entry to the church would have beent through several entrances. The main entrance was situated on the south facade, while the entrance from the under-tower was preserved and entrances added by Schwarz were to be used to enter the sacristy and the vestibule of the church. An additional proposal was the complete removal of the Renaissance vault, which remained undamaged after the war devastation. The new transept was planned as a reinforced-concrete skeleton, which would have supported the massive barrel of a reinforced concrete vault decorated with coffering.
These massive church renovation plans were, however, interrupted by the declaration of the so-called Two-Year Plan, in which funds were reserved only for the construction of new residential houses. Based on the enormous initiative of the local priest Mikuláš Mišík, who at the beginning of 1948 also took part in the deputation sent directly to Gustav Husák 20 regarding investments in construction in Handlová as an important mining town, an unimaginable quantity of funds was secured for the renovation of the church according to the plans of Bednárik and Faulhammer. Due to delays with the Monuments Institute, led by Vladimír Wagner, who only allowed the demolition of the vaults, 21 as well as a lack of materials, a few months later plans were revised to replace the new reinforced concrete vault with a flat wooden coffered ceiling. From these new plans, which were drawn up at the end of 1948 and approved by a state-guaranteed loan to the amount of CZK 6 million, the renovation of the Handlová Church was to be included in the first operative plan of the Five-Year Plan, specifically for 1949. 22 However, the ecclesiastical community failed to achieve this, mainly because in those days the funds were invested mostly in industrial and residential buildings, not in church buildings, which could only be included in operative plans through invoking an exception. The church remained a ruin exposed to weather conditions for the next few years, and masses held after the end of the war in the gym of the former German school, where a hospital was also established. This situation did not suit the Club of Communist Officers of the Regional National Committee in Nitra: not only with respect to the religious services in the gym, but also the presence of the church ruins on the square, which was to become a representative space as planned in the new regulation plan of Handlová. In 1951, the renovation of the destroyed church, the town's last memento of the war years, was put into consideration. 23

The intervention of Karol Chudomelka in the Handlová church (1956 -1962)
In the autumn of 1952, at a commission meeting attended by public officials 24 , a representative of the Monuments Institute, and the priest Mikuláš Mišík from Handlová, the remediation of the church's ruins was resolved, which was to give way to the new planned construction and renovation of the square. Remediation was to consist of removing the remains of the naves, leaving only the undamaged Gothic tower of the church standing in the square together with the gable wall of the nave. The apse, although also preserved, was to be dismantled and transferred to the cemetery, where it would be re-exposed, while the tower was to serve as a chapel. As an explanation of the past situation, the outline of the floor plan of the original historic substance of the church was to be created in the paving of the new square. 25 The following year, in response to the possibility that Handlová would remain completely without a church, perhaps the most fundamental steps were taken to resolve the whole situation. The initiator of these major proceedings was the already mentioned Father Mišík, who sent several letters to all parties concerned in a short sequence-the Local National Committee, the Regional National Committee, the Action Committee of the National Front, and the Monuments Institute. In the letters, he commented on the matter of the church's rehabilitation and called for its renovation to be included in the operative plans. He substantiated his request with an argument as to why the correction should take place, and he very cleverly understood that if he did not make sufficiently strong arguments to satisfy all parties, his request would be rejected. He justified the need to restore the church by saying that if the Monuments Institute insisted on preserving the tower, it will certainly be better presented as part of a functioning building. In addition, the new church building would complete the new square. The public administration would not have to spend large sums of money to preserve the ruins, as this amount would be half of what the new building would cost. Moreover, if the preserved historic segments become part of a functional building, their maintenance will be ensured in the future as well. In this way, the last remnants of the war would also be removed. 26 This progressive thinking of Father Mišík and the constant urgency, whether by the parish or the episcopal office, led to the decision that the renovation of the Roman Catholic Church in Handlová would be included in the operative plans, with CZK 1 million set aside for the construction.
In 1956, The Parish Office of Handlová ordered new project documentation from the State Institute for the Reconstruction of the Towns and Objects of a Historic Value in Bratislava (Štátny ústav pre rekonštrukciu pamiatkových miest a objektov, SÚRPMO-Bratislava branch). Initial survey and project work was ordered from the State Institute for the Reconstruction of the Towns and Objects of Historic Value in Prague (Státní ústav pro rekonstrukci památkových měst a objektů, SÚRPMO, the main institute). The authorised representative of the supplier was Vilém Lorenc, the chief engineer was Karol Chudomelka and the designated designer was Katarína Boudová. 27 Karol Chudomelka (1922 -2013), a young Czech heritage architect, had already at that time completed many projects and completions in the field of monument restoration in Slovakia: not only interventions in smaller buildings or urban blocks, but also monument restorations of large castle complexes, manors, and castles.
The restoration of the Romanesque church in Bíňa is perhaps most comparable to the type of works that awaited Chudomelka on the project of the church in Handlová. 28 The Bíňa Church suffered a similar degree of destruction during World War II, yet the restoration of the churches was diametrically different, due to several reasons. While in Bíňa, it was a stylistic reconstruction to the exact state before the destruction, a symbolic reconstruction, very unusual at that time, was applied at the church in Handlová. 29 Chudomelka' approach was based on two main aspects -"from the requirement of protection of monuments to preserve and reconstruct the preserved remains of the historic building and keep the completion in the historic materials, and from the investor's request to plan the building

OBNOVA KOSTOLA V HANDLOVEJ PODĽA NÁVRHU KAROLA CHUDOMELKU
Source Zdroj: Archive of The Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic so that the church has a capacity of thousands of visitors." 30 The basis of its concept was thus built on maintaining the external image of the historic building yet at the same time fulfilling the function that the building was to serve. These features are characteristic of his entire work. In this case, it was the original function, but he had to deal with the need for doubling the building's capacity.
Chudomelka proposed reconstructing the original Gothic substance of the church and inserted a reinforced concrete frame into the interior, which supported two floors of side and rear emporiums. Divided by new columns into three naves, the interior space was based on the basilica system, where the main nave was elevated relative to the lateral ones, with the aim of supporting the illusion of a Gothic spatial solution. 31 Drawing on historic prints showing the inside of the gable walls, it was possible to determine the original height and slope of the roof, while the traces of the vaults were also preserved. 32 These vaults were not reconstructed because they would not allow the insertion of emporiums, and thus increase capacity. However, its symbolic remnant appeared in the design of the new ceiling above the main nave. This ceiling was designed as reinforced concrete with diagonal ribs, which were to create deep cassettes for the play of light and shadows like diamond vaults. 33 The use of symbolic references to the original architectural form was not used in Slovak architecture after the Second World War, which made Karol Chudomelka into an exceptional innovator.
Chudomelka's solution ensued from the application of the principle of historic construction, namely in the underlying principle of the construction system, when the modern concrete frame transmitted pressure to the reconstructed external supporting pillars. Similarly, in the colour scheme, he did not design new elements as white, but in reddish and sandstone shades. However, the proposed surface treatments were in the end never implemented. Even the design solutions that we find on the railings of the emporiums today are different from the ones that the author originally intended. The proposed decoration of the triumphal arch is also missing, which was to be lined with gypsum boards of smaller dimensions, with an isosceles cross on each board and four nails in its corners with the same symbol of the cross used in the floors of the emporiums. This is the only decorative form that was carried out exactly matching Chudomelka's plans.
It is necessary to pay attention to Chudomelka's work with architectural morphology. Chudomelka adapted the choice of material based on whether it involved a historic or a modern construction. In other words, he proposed to reconstruct the original Gothic substance of the church from bricks with lime mortar, and the main nave was to have sandstone paving. The supporting frame, the emporiums, and the ceiling, all designed as a modern construction, were made of reinforced concrete, with prefabricated reinforced panels as railings and the covering using contemporary ceramic tiles. If there was no exact evidence of how a certain construction was rendered, he chose a modern form and did not use historic elements. 34 With his design, he achieved a harmonious perceptive balance of the Gothic church with new modern elements, which are only revealed to the visitor when visiting the interior of the church. Only one element perceptible from the exterior reveals that the nave of the church

VLOŽENÝ SKELET S BOČNÝMI A ZADNÝMI EMPORAMI A NÁZNAKOM KLENIEB
Photo Foto: Martina Jelínková is not Gothic: the shape of the windows Though the proportions of the nave's windows are based on the original Gothic fenestration, their upper lining is straight, not angled. 35

Conclusions
The unassuming Church of St. Catherine in Handlová covers a period that reflects the diverse approaches of several famous architects toward building design, not only as a reflection of their intellectual stance, but also reflective of the opinion of the society of that time.
Schwarz's approach to the expansion of the Handlová Church, which was never appreciated and remains unknown in the context of his work, was based on a preference to conceiving a modern internal liturgical space. Historic connections would only have enterd his proposal to the extent of the peaked roof over the new nave and the windows with segmented arches, an element otherwise unknown in the context of Schwarz's work. His other design of sacral structures is strongly modernist. In the case of the Handlová church, it is the unexpected and progressive location of the altar, placed at the centre of the crossing of the naves and thus physically closer to the worshipers. After all, the fundamental question for his work was the the church space from the point of view of the symbolism and relationship of the Church and its believers.
The design of Bednárik and Faulhammer was, to a certain extent, traditional regarding the solution of the inner sacral space -the place of the liturgy was separated from the place for the worshipers not only by the location of the altar, but also by inserting a newly built but traditionally formed triumphal arch. However, their rotation of the orientation of the sacral space relative to the cardinal directions can be considered controversial. The concept of these two architects was based on the use of historicising elements, which they reached through the connection with historical architecture.