Liturgische Intervention

Jesuit Father Friedhelm Mennekes SJ accompanied Hermann Nitsch over many years and also presided over his funeral. Mennekes, founder of the legendary Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne, realized an influential action by Nitsch in his church as early as the 1990s and is regarded as one of the most distinguished mediators between contemporary art and Christian liturgy.

This event is not a mass in the traditional sense, but a ritual of making visible: a concentrated, contemporary unveiling of those liturgical forms, symbolisms, and spiritual gestures that were central to Nitsch’s thinking and to his Orgies Mysteries Theater.

In this intervention, Mennekes makes tangible how Christian ritual structures, sacred signs, and the language of the cultic are transformed, expanded, and translated into an artistic experiential space within Nitsch’s work.

Through this, visitors gain a rare and profound insight into the spiritual and ritual foundations of Nitsch’s oeuvre—presented in a form that neither reproduces liturgical practice nor illustrates art, but brings both levels into a new dialogue.