Dominikus B\u00f6hm is considered – along with Rudolf Schwarz – to be the most important German church builder of the 20th century. The impetus for his built work came from the liturgical reform movement in the Catholic Church, which sought to turn passive worshipers into active participants in the events. Four decades before the Second Vatican Council, B\u00f6hm created the architectural space for this: the emergency church in Offenbach (1919), formed from the simplest volumes, and the parish church in Dettingen near Hanau (1922) are regarded as the first modernist sacred buildings in Germany that refused to follow the prescribed historical architectural style. His design “Circumstantes” (1923) was the first of its kind that, with the altar, consistently placed the center of action of the Catholic rite, which had been removed from the congregation for centuries, back into the room and among the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the 1920s, B\u00f6hm’s work developed from Expressionism to a religiously bound objectivity that often shows monumental features without lapsing into the harshness and coldness of imperial architecture. His church in Bischofsheim near Mainz (1926), with its parabolically curved raw concrete vault over the interior, had a groundbreaking effect. His buildings combine a will to new form with masterful construction and material effects and richly designed surfaces that often present the charms of masonry layering. The churches in Cologne-Riehl and in Hindenburg in Upper Silesia (both 1930) rank as major works of architectural modernism with international appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[1773,1774,1808],"product_tag":[],"class_list":["post-2258","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-architecture-urban-planning","product_cat-history-of-architecture","product_cat-monographs-about-architects","pa_herausgeber-ingeborg-flagge-wolfgang-voigt","first","outofstock","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n