St. Franziskus

Bilderstöckchen had grown considerably since the 1930s, initially through the conversion of a former artillery depot. In 1935 an emergency chapel was set up for the faithful on the upper floor of a shed wing; between 1935 and 1937 the pastoral area gradually became an independent parish, first separating from the parish of St. Joseph in Nippes. After the destruction of the Second World War and the subsequent growth of the settlement, the membership rose from around 1,300 to over 2,100 between 1951 and 1954, so that a church building of its own became increasingly urgent. From 1954 the parish secured the necessary plots of land through donation and exchange.

The building is an almost entirely closed rotunda of red brick. Two towers develop as half-shells out of the round body, turn inwards, and rise up in front of the building; Le Corbusier's pilgrimage church Notre-Dame-du-Haut in Ronchamp is regarded as the model for this form. Only a few small windows break through the smooth brick wall – daylight enters mainly through a continuous band of windows along the upper edge of the wall as well as through the towers, which are glazed at the top and open on the inside. The flat roof rests on four slender three-sided pillars arranged in a square. The east-facing church has a multi-tiered altar island opposite the entrance and an organ gallery suspended between the towers. In front of the main building lies a lower-set baptismal chapel, which was remodelled into a weekday chapel in 1974 to designs by Karl Band.

On the organ gallery stands a slider-chest organ with two manuals and pedal and electric actions, built in 1962 by Ernst Weyland of Opladen. The five-bell peal in the north tower combines four bells cast in 1961 by Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock with a bell of 1602 on loan from the archdiocese, to which the new bells were tuned; the strike tones are F♯1–G♯1–B1–C♯2–E2.