St. Bruder Klaus (Cologne-Mülheim)

The previously responsible parish of St. Antonius founded a church-building association. In August 1956, the rectorate parish of St. Bruder Klaus was established, with founding pastor Heinrich Eisenhut as its first head. The full design contract with Fritz Schaller was signed on 9 June 1956. On 28 August 1956, during the estate's inauguration and the 77th German Catholic Congress in Cologne, Cardinal Josef Frings laid the foundation stone. The topping-out ceremony followed in May 1957, and the church was consecrated by Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ferche on 19/20 November 1957, who then handed it over to Eisenhut.

In February 1958 a second portal was added on the west side. The adjoining youth center was completed in May 1958 and already expanded by 1959; in 1960 the altar servers' sacristy had to be enlarged. Ten years after construction, the cracked roof received new copper cladding. Due to spalling concrete, the tower was also renovated and clad in copper sheeting on its front face.

In 1967, St. Bruder Klaus received the Cologne Architecture Prize. On 5 February 2001 it was added to the City of Cologne's list of protected monuments under number 8488.

For this building, Schaller largely reused a design he had recently submitted—though never realized—for the chapel of the Archbishop's House in Cologne. The structure comprises three volumes: an almost square, single-story nave beneath a flat, diamond-shaped roof; an elongated hexagonal upper story; and the tower, twice as tall as the church with its superstructure, which juts into the space from the side. Beneath a curved canopy there lies the main entrance. Inside, ten round columns lift the upper structure clear of the nave, marking out the “nave” with raised areas for the baptismal font and altar. The hexagonal clerestory is structured by tracery of precast concrete elements set with leaded glass windows. The lower, outer sections house chapels, the sacristy, and confessionals, while the organ and choir gallery sit beside the altar. Opposite the tower and entrance hall, the sacristy projects outward on the north side as a risalit.

Most of the interior furnishings were designed by Elmar Hillebrand. Relics of companions of Cologne's patron saints St. Gereon and St. Ursula were embedded in the altar table of green dolomite; also by Hillebrand are the baptismal pulpit and, from 1972, the cross, tabernacle, eternal light, and a holy water font. On the exterior, Hillebrand created the crowning elements of the tower and roof. The clerestory windows were made in 1964 by Georg Meistermann, while earlier windows from 1957 are the work of Rudolf Krüger. The organ, installed in 1959 by organ builders Romanus Seifert & Sohn, originally had nine stops and was expanded to 17 in 1974. According to the Glockenbuch Köln, the Mabilon bell foundry cast the three-bell peal in 1990, tuned to F#1–G#1–B1; another source mentions a fourth bell with the pitch G1, possibly cast in 1507 by a certain Johann von Andernach.

As their home parish, St. Bruder Klaus is linked to Cologne priest Franz Meurer and to Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne.