The FOR Sakralraumtransformation (www.transara.de) set itself an ambitious goal for its fifth annual conference, which took place in Leipzig on 15 and 16 May 2025: to examine the influencing factors and transformation patterns beyond simple binaries, in their overlaps and complexity, and to differentiate them in a European comparison. Experts from Germany and other European countries discussed this with researchers from TRANSARA and an interested professional audience.
Has this international conference, held in the transformed church space of Leipzig’s Heilandskirche, now produced a clearer picture of the patterns and paths of transformation, or has the increased complexity simply led to more confusion?
Welcome and starting point for research
To kick things off, Prof. Dr. Alexander Deeg, head of the Leipzig subproject, and Prof. Dr. Stefanie Lieb and Prof. Dr. Albert Gerhards, spokespersons for the research group, welcomed the conference guests and presented the work of the research group. The starting point for the TRANSARA research was the examination of two research areas based on the contrasting categories of urban-rural, Protestant-Catholic and East German-West German. In the course of the research, it became apparent that these categories of difference needed to be supplemented by additional vectors in order to take account of different developments and also to interpret some surprising findings. The classic binaries are intersected, for example, by the existing building culture, e.g. the urban significance of the buildings of the majority denomination, by a culture of engagement and by social infrastructures. Dr Kerstin Menzel, Elisabeth März, Martina Schmitz and Dr Manuela Klauser highlighted these lines of difference in their opening presentation. They presented the research group’s hypotheses, which had been made available to the speakers in advance as a basis for the conference.
International perspectives and parallels
In the subsequent presentations, researchers from other European countries referred to these hypotheses and shed light on the transformation landscapes of their respective countries. This revealed not only some parallels, but also complementary aspects or completely different contextual conditions.
Prof. Henrik Lindblad (Department of Art History, Uppsala University) presented the situation in Sweden, where the situation of church buildings is characterised by the specific post-state church constellation. Since the state is responsible for preserving cultural heritage but not religious life, churches are preserved and renovated, but there is often a lack of concepts for their use. There is still a lack of research and joint initiatives for a ‘living heritage’.
Prof. Johannes Stückelberger (Modern Art History, University of Basel / Institute for Practical Theology, University of Bern) presented evaluations from a church building database in Switzerland: https://www.schweizerkirchenbautag.unibe.ch/datenbank_kirchenumnutzungen/datenbank/index_ger.html. The landscape there is characterised by denominational differences that correlate with differences in settlement structure: the majority of repurposed Protestant churches are located in urban areas, while the majority of repurposed Catholic churches are located in rural areas. Thanks to a still favourable financial situation, only a few buildings have been sold by the churches so far.
Dr Linda Monckton (Policy Development Department, Policy and Evidence Group, Historic England) added perspectives from England, which made it clear that church closures in England are linked to monument status on the one hand and the economic environment on the other. Especially in urban and rural deprived areas, many churches that have no or only limited monument status are at risk.
Similar to the following lecture, the presentation by Dr Marcus van der Meulen (Faculty of Architecture RWTH Aachen/ FRH Europe) made it clear that the transformation of sacred spaces in post-socialist countries has long historical roots. The processes of abandonment and conversion are contrasted by impressive, architecturally monumental new buildings that refer to the close connection between religion and political interests in contemporary Poland.
Dr Barbora Spalová (Department of Sociology, Charles University Prague) gave an overview of developments in Czechia in connection with the social transformations since 1989. Differences within the Czech Republic are due to differences in religious affiliation and financial situation; in addition, the situation of churches in rural areas is more precarious than in urban centres. Emerging processes of repurposing or hybrid use are giving rise to new understandings of sacredness in a secular context – ‘infrasecular sacrality’. This lecture also highlighted the long and painful historical lines of transformation landscapes in post-socialist countries.
Prof Dr Sven Sterken (Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven) presented his conversion concept, developed over a period of ten years based on experience in research, teaching and practice, which is designed to help stakeholders in the vicinity of a church building to accurately characterise the initial situation and identify the potential offered by the building’s structural conditions. In Belgium, church building processes are well advanced and local authorities are obliged to submit a development plan that includes the buildings.
At the end of the first day of the annual conference, four experts from the fields of churches and cultural heritage came together for a roundtable discussion moderated by Dr Kerstin Menzel: Greg Pickup, CEO of the Churches Conservation Trust in England; Lilian Grootswagers-Theuns, President of the Advisory Board of the FRH Europe network; and church representatives Martin Reichenbach for the Church Council of the Church of Norway and Ivo Hermann for the Diocese of Eichstätt. The experts presented their work and commented on the afternoon’s contributions from their respective perspectives. Particularly insightful were the suggestions to question things that are taken for granted and to make processes participatory.
The second day began with a look at the visualisation of emerging patterns and paths that had already been started on the first day. Researchers from sub-project 2 of TRANSARA had prepared a dynamic mapping for this purpose, consisting of paradigmatic types of transformation (‘the civic church’, ‘the commercialised church’, ‘the abandoned church’ and others) in the form of building blocks, as well as contextual conditions symbolised as map elements (‘the highway of top-down decision making’, ‘the jungle of urban influx’, ‘the delta of multireligious diversity’, ‘the summit of cityscape dominance’ and others). The map elements and buildings were grouped on a table to visualise trends and paths and, if necessary, to ‘play’ with them by moving buildings around to reveal new possibilities. The presentation of the mapping stimulated discussion among the participants and served as a productive introduction to the subsequent small group phase.
In groups of approximately ten people, the conference participants then reflected on the insights gained on the first day and explored questions relating to processes and actors, materiality and sociality, sacredness and values, among other topics. Discussions focused on the axes that implicitly emerge in the mapping and how the different dimensions of resources (architectural, ecclesiastical, religious, social, economic, etc.) affect the development paths of church buildings.
Subsequently, two further panels presented examples from individual disciplines that had been identified by the research group as intersecting comparative vectors: the sociological view of secularity, the practical-theological view of the relationship between church and society, and paradigms and developments in the fields of architecture and monument preservation.
Prof Dr Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (Institute for Cultural Studies, University of Leipzig) explained as a sociologist what secularisation can mean for the transformation of buildings. In addition to the decline in church membership and the loss of significance of religion, secularisation is also evident in the historical sense of the word secularisation as ‘expropriation’ and loss of power of ecclesiastical authority – resulting in a shift towards non-ecclesiastical experts who take responsibility for buildings. Secularity and sacredness are being renegotiated there – in a thoroughly conflictual manner – especially the demarcation between religious and non-religious spheres.
Prof Bernd Hillebrand (Faculty of Catholic Theology, University of Graz) spoke about which images of the Church are associated with which basic theological assumptions and what effects they have on the relationship with society. He advocated an understanding of the Church as a fluid network that withdraws its own intentions as far as possible and limits its own authority in order to make room for the search for the common good. Nevertheless, the paradox of ‘vacating space’ and ‘not giving up’, of remaining present, remains.
Prof Dr Andrea Longhi (Politecnico di Torino) gave a lecture on the paradigms that are effective in architecture. He advocated moving away from normative typologies in architecture and instead focusing more on the diversity of processes (including the actors involved). To this end, he presented a matrix of values associated with a church building that should be taken into account during a transformation.
Values also play an important role in monument preservation, as Dr Eva Schäfer (ArchitekturGeschichten, Bern) made clear in her lecture on paradigms of monument preservation. On the one hand, there are international agreements on the protection of cultural heritage, while on the other hand, different principles apply at national level. The desire to preserve a building in as non-invasive a manner as possible conflicts with the need to use it, which may require intervention. Guidelines and criteria are needed to weigh up these interventions, and these differ across European societies depending on the social significance of church buildings, the financial situation and the building stock.
Similar to the first day, the series of presentations was reflected upon and supplemented by a discussion between the experts, moderated by Elisabeth März.
Prof Dr Albert Gerhards and Prof Dr Stefanie Lieb concluded the conference with a brief summary from their perspective as spokespersons for the research group. Gerhards emphasised the broad consensus at the conference on the significance of sacred buildings for society. They belong not only to the church communities, but to everyone. However, there is often a communication problem here with regard to the real estate strategies of decision-makers.
The conference succeeded in identifying some common threads in the complexity of developments, with all their contextual factors, stakeholders and accompanying discourses. In particular, the power dynamics at work in the changes, which are linked to social negotiation processes around religion, public spaces and architecture, became clear. Economic and other social resources, which are already distributed differently across regions in European countries, were highlighted as a key influencing factor.
With a view to shaping the transformation in a beneficial way for the future, there was clear convergence on several points: preserving the public nature of church spaces, strengthening the openness of the processes to participation, involving the social context in the search for new uses, and reviewing existing structures and limits, particularly in the theological and cultural/heritage preservation contexts, in order to generate more openness to new approaches. The playful mapping proved to be very stimulating in different directions – both as an instrument for perception and potentially as an inspiration tool for practice.
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