Bruder Klaus Field Chapel

Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel 

Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany 

Architect Peter Zumthor 

Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, 

Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. 

Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung 

Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli 

issue 07 Bruder Klaus Field Chapel 

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Bruder Klaus 

Field Chapel 

29 

Mechernich 

Germany 

Peter Zumthor









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32 In September 2004 when Peter Zumthor, the Swiss architect, 

presented the inaugural international lecture of the Australian 

Architecture Association, to a packed house in the Melbourne 

Town Hall, he described a small project, then still in design. 

33 

It was for a tiny chapel on private farmland at Mechernich, 

a village about 50 kilometres southwest of Cologne, in southern 

Germany. He talked of how in 1998 he’d been approached by 

a farmer and his wife, Herman-Josef and Trudel Scheidtweiler, 

who wanted to build a shrine in one of their fi elds in honour 

of Bruder Klaus, a 15th century hermit. They wanted to erect 

the chapel, they had said, “in thanks for a good and happy life.” 

The audience sat spellbound as Zumthor described how the 

chapel was going to be built: of fi rst erecting a tepee of logs, 

encasing it in concrete and setting it alight from inside, to 

smoulder slowly until the logs were burnt away, much the same 

way charcoal used to be made, leaving behind a charred shell, 

lit only by an opening from above. From memory, he showed 

a beautifully rendered pencil drawing. 

Bruder Klaus (1417-87) was a farmer himself, but for the last 

20 years of his life he lived as hermit at Flüeli-Ranft, about 

70kms northeast of Lucerne, Switzerland, surviving, according 

to legend, on a diet of the Holy Eucharist alone. As a teenager 

he is said to have had visions of inhabiting a tower in the service 

of God; he also spoke of a vision, while still inside his mother’s 

womb, of seeing a star that lit up the world. In 1469, local 

civic authorities built him a simple monastic cell and chapel – 

it is still there – where he meditated and dispensed advice 

to the most powerful politicians of the day. He was declared 

a saint in 1947. It happens that Bruder Klaus is also the patron 

saint of Switzerland and a favorite of Zumthor’s mother. 

Zumthor took on the job, free apparently, as a gift to his mother. 

The chapel is now done, and it stands as a sentinel fi rmly 

rooted in the landscape on the edge of a fi eld on the Scheidtweiler 

farm. Since its inauguration in May it has attracted as many 

architectural pilgrims fl ocking to see this new work from the 

hand of the Swiss perfectionist as locals coming to pay their 

respects to the memory of a hermit monk. 

In its irregular fi ve-sided form, rising starkly above the surrounding 

landscape, there are virtually no clues to what lies within. 

It appears impenetrable, has no windows and it could be, for 

all you’d know, a modern take on the idea of a medieval lookout 

tower. A narrow gravel path leads from the road directly to its 

massive, triangular steel door; the only giveaway that this might 

be a place of pilgrimage: a spindly bronze cross embedded 

in the banded concrete surface above the doorway. ≥









34 35


36 ≥ 

But the chapel’s simple form is far richer in its signifi cance 

and more complex in its making than fi rst appears. The tower 

rises 12 metres in 24 layers of what Zumthor describes as 

“rammed concrete” – made from white cement, river gravel 

and reddish-yellow sand – the slop mixed together and pushed 

by hand into wood shutters by farmer Scheidtweiler working 

with neighbouring farmers, friends and acquaintances. 

But before that, the interior of the chapel had to be shaped. 

For that, 112 slender tree trunks, cut from trees felled in a nearby 

forest, were arranged in the shape of a tepee over a concrete 

platform. The outer body of the chapel was then constructed in 

50cm layers of concrete, each layer poured one per day for 24 

days between the end of October 2005 and September 2006; 

each band representing an hour of the day. 

The tree trunks were later set alight and left to smoulder for 

three weeks, until they fell away, leaving behind a black-brown, 

charred concrete shell, its walls scalloped by the timbers that 

once supported them. A local art founder added a fl oor of poured 

lead over a concrete base, melting four tons of recycled tin-lead 

alloyed with antimony in batches in a crucible and ladling it 

onto the fl oor by hand. 

The attraction of the tower alone standing in its rural landscape 

would be compelling enough. But step inside, with the three 

metre tall steel door shut close, and the visitor enters an aweinspiring 

spiritual world. The walls lean in and all sense of light 

vanishes, momentarily, and it feels as if the visitor has been 

plunged into a dark underground world until, a few paces along, 

the tiny chapel, barely large enough for two or three people at 

a time, bursts into view, lit from above by an open, tear-shaped 

oculus. The light is intense, fl aring from above directly on to the 

molten lead fl oor; cascading down and illuminating the channels 

left over by the burnt-out tree trunks. Three hundred and fi fty 

holes punched into the concrete shell by the shuttering ties 

are fi lled with plugs of mouth-blown glass; the light passing 

through them, dancing and sparkling out of the blackened walls. 

The space is tiny and offers no obvious sense of comfort. 

A meditation wheel cast in bronze, similar to the meditation 

wheel of Bruder Klaus, stuck into the concrete wall overhead; 

37 

a bronze bust of Bruder Klaus on a slender pillar, by Swiss 


sculptor Hans Josephsohn; a bench crafted from a single piece 


of linden wood; steel candle holders; these are the simple 


objects that fi ll the chapel. It is, after all, a place for meditation, 


solace and refl ection. Is this Zumthor’s interpretation of the 


monk’s vision inside the womb? 


So, here is a small building fi rmly rooted in the landscape, open 

to rain from above, rising above a farmer’s fi eld, made from local 

materials – hand mixed concrete, wood and lead – put together 

by local labour. Yet it is compelling, almost perfect in its 

obsessive simplicity. It is masterful. JR 

Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli









38 39

Project Statement 


This fi eld chapel is dedicated to Nikolaus von Flue, 1717-1487, 


farmer, mystic and peacemaker, who lived as a hermit in Flueli 


Ranft, a mountain valley nearby. The interior of the chapel is 


shaped by 112 tree trunks. The trees were felled in the town forest 


of Bad Münstereifel. Under the direction of master carpenter 


Markus Reßmann, helpers stacked the trunks on a concrete slab 


in the fi eld to form a tepee-like construction. 

The body of the chapel was erected around the wooden tepee in 

50-cm-thick layers of rammed concrete, consisting of river gravel, 

reddish yellow sand from the Rhiem pit in Erp and white cement. 

The layers were poured one per day for 24 days between the end 

of October 2005 and September 2006. Friends and acquaintances 

of the Scheidtweiler family, forming so-called ramming teams 

for each of the 24 days, worked under the guidance of master 

builder Alexander Mahlberg and foreman Hans Joachim Engler. 

In the fall of 2006, a smouldering fi re was maintained for three 

weeks inside the wooden tepee, now clad entirely in concrete. 

The fi re dried out the tree trunks, causing some of them to come 

loose. All of the wood was then removed mechanically. After 

a concrete fl oor with a specifi ed gradient had been poured, 

Miroslav Stransky and his wife Dagmar, who run a fi ne art foundry, 

added a fl oor of poured lead about 2 cm thick. On site, they slowly 

melted four tons of recycled tin-lead alloyed with antimony in 

a crucible and ladled it onto the fl oor by hand. 

The metalwork, the main door, the sand containers for the candles 

and the sacred vessels were made by master locksmith Willi 

Müller and by Michael Hamacher, Markus Reßmann made the 

bench out of one solid piece of linden wood and Miroslav Stransky 

cast the diagram for meditation in bronze after the meditation 

wheel of Brother Klaus. The 350 holes left in the concrete by the 

shuttering ties are fi lled with crystal plugs of mouth-blown glass 

from the Eisch Glassworks in Frauenau. Swiss artist Hans 

Josephsohn sculpted the half fi gure in bronze of Bruder Klaus. 

Peter Zumthor 


40 41 

The tree trunks…set alight and left to smoulder for three 

weeks, until they fell away, leaving behind a black-brown, 

charred concrete shell, its walls scalloped by the timbers 

that once supported them.









42 43 

Three hundred and fi fty holes punched into the shell by the 

shuttering ties are fi lled with plugs of mouth-blown glass; 

the light passing through them, dancing and sparkling









44 45

Bruder Klaus Field Chapel

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