St. Mariä Geburt

The Stammheim chapel was first documented in 1075; the little church had been built by Almericus, a ministerialis of the Archbishop of Cologne, together with his wife Eilbusch. At the instigation of Archbishop Anno II, the building passed to the Cologne monastery of St. Martin. In the mid-13th century, a single-nave longhouse was added to the tower, its buttresses and windows being altered around 1500; the upper parts of the Gothic tower masonry also date from this period. In 1901, the art historian Paul Clemen suspected that remains of the Romanesque predecessor church were preserved in the irregular masonry of the tower's lower storey.

As Stammheim's population grew and the chapel had become too small, a church building association was founded in 1898 under the patronage of the Count von Fürstenberg-Stammheim. Following building permission and the first turning of the sod in 1902, the foundation stone was laid on 14 September 1902, and on 2 August 1903 Dean Caumanns consecrated the new building. The construction supervisor Peter Josef Kleesattel put the cost of the extension at around 101,463 marks. The result was a Neo-Gothic hall church with a main nave and two side aisles; the tower and choir of the old building were preserved and thenceforth formed the transept. Because the old chapel had been oriented from west to east, the new apse faces north. Fired ring-kiln bricks were used for the façade, Weibern tuff for the cornices and tracery, and Kyllburg sandstone for the interior columns.

Since hardly any building material was available after the end of the war, the people of Stammheim made do with found materials. On the Rhine, at the bridge pier of a temporary bridge, they discovered around 170 large wooden planks, which volunteers carried more than a kilometre to the church. Reconstruction of the roof truss began on 24 August 1945; it was completed in 1947 and sealed in 1948. For reasons of cost and materials, only a shallow-pitched roof was built instead of the historic steep roof. In 1950, the tower was raised and given a pyramidal roof according to plans by the architect Peter Otto Bongartz; in the same year, the St. Anna bell became the first of five new bells.

Since its reconstruction, the building has been renovated twice: first in the 1970s and a second time in the late 1990s. During the most recent renovation, carried out in several construction phases, the roof and technical installations were renewed while Masses were still able to take place. The work concluded in 2000 with the reinstallation of the organ and a new window donated by the "Montagsbastelkreis" (Monday craft circle).