The following is a revised excerpt from Jacqueline Burckhardt’s accounts:
"The church faces east, and you enter through the portal in the north wall. In the west there is no door through which you could walk directly down the whole nave to the choir, as is usually the case in church construction. The sun rises in the east, so the birth of Christ is depicted in that direction in the three choir windows by Augusto Giacometti from 1933. This marks the beginning of the New Testament in the Bible.
The first of Polke’s windows is in the northwest corner of the church, in the dark, metaphorically speaking. It is here that the cycle of the seven windows which are completely composed of translucent agate slices and embody the creation of the world, begins. Four of these windows are dedicated to the four elements earth, fire, water, and air. Agates form in the bubbles of cooled lava. Over millions of years, the cavities have grown concentrically inwards due to deposits and crystallization, often leaving a druse at the core, which contains unimaginably old water. The four elements are therefore literally captured in the stones; what is more, two quite different time dimensions also play a part in the formation of an agate: the Big Bang or volcanic eruption, and then the eternally long afterwards, in which the stone gradually takes shape. Polke – as always – lets the material speak for itself, does not illustrate anything. And we are invited to read the stones and all the traces in them that speak of their formation.
At the top of the windows devoted to the four elements, so-called eye agates were inserted. They symbolise the eye of God or the entity that brought about creation. Most of the agate slices came from Brazil and were already cut and artificially coloured with heat and acids, red, blue, and green. Their natural colours are less vibrant, generally grey, pastel, amber, or ochre.
From window to window Polke selected agate slices with increasingly complex internal patterns and composed them in such a way that the progress of evolution can be read in them. To this end, he first checked each stone to see what could be associated with it, and then integrated it precisely into the composition. Already in the design of the first three windows – earth, fire, and water – verticality and branchings appear, pointing to structures that have already developed from chaos, the legendary Tohu-wa-bohu. In the air window, the stones at the top are grouped together to form a rudimentary mask with eyes, nose, puffy cheeks, and a round mouth opening through which air is blown out.
At the fifth and largest agate window one has biological associations. The patterns, colours, and shapes in the stones and their constellations are reminiscent of cells and cell divisions, MRI or X-ray images, organ sections or grimaces.
Opposite the entrance to the church is a circular agate window in the south wall, which glows calmly and meditatively, in restrained amber colours. Above the entrance or exit, however, the exact opposite appears: a lunette with the largest and most colourful agates, blue, green and red, but also with very splendid black and white slices.
Upon entering, visitors are greeted by the contemplative round window and are thrust back into life when they exit under the brightly coloured lunette.
The agates were cut into slices like salami. There are therefore pieces which are never completely identical but nevertheless very similar. Polke played with a sequence of such slices several times; in the lunette he arranged them strikingly symmetrically. There are two blue stones in the top centre, which, in contrast to the eye agates symbolizing the creator’s eye, now look extremely profane, just as two Mickey Mouse eyes. It has become a really trendy, bright and cheerful window, whose colour and symmetry make it resemble the wings of a gigantic butterfly. One also thinks of the folded inkblot images of Hermann Rorschach, with which Polke repeatedly dealt. Thus, the lunette also contains a hint of the psyche. This last of the seven agate windows embodies evolution in an advanced state, on the seventh day of Genesis, so to speak. After the seven windows made of natural material, five more windows made of glass follow towards the east. For now evolution has given rise to man, who is able to produce material artificially, for example glass.
