In Eschenlohe, a dispute about the nightly striking of the church bells of St. Clemens has escalated.
Residents who feel disturbed reported mayor Anton Kölbl and the entire local council - for assault.
A compromise should ensure (more) tranquility in the village this year.
Eschenlohe
- Heaven, help: Mayor Anton Kölbl (CSU) has probably sent one or two quick prayers to heaven in the past few months.
For about a year now, a dispute has been simmering in Eschenlohe over the nightly chiming of the bells in the tower of the Catholic parish church of St. Clemens - including legal correspondence, acoustical reports, on-site visits and local council meetings behind closed doors.
Now the case has made the rounds in the village - and Kölbl confirms the events that culminated in the fact that two residents filed criminal charges against him and the local council for bodily harm.
“Unbelievable,” says Kölbl.
“I have no understanding for that.
You have to leave the church in the village. "
The complainants are locals who live near the church
The massive walls of St. Clemens, a late Rococo work, are not shaken - but the bells, which have always chimed at night every 15 minutes and on the hour.
Because of a defect, says Maximilian Bach from the Ohlstadt administrative association responsible for Eschenlohe, these were temporarily silenced.
After the repair, the trouble started.
Two residents, "original locals", as those involved say, who live near St. Clemens, feel that their rest afterwards have been massively impaired by the resumption of time-keeping, which is the responsibility of the secular community.
“They wanted it to be abolished between 10 p.m. and 5:30 a.m.”, says Kölbl.
The municipal council adheres to the tradition of time keeping when it comes to resolutions
The municipal council unanimously took a different opinion, always adhering to tradition in its resolutions.
Defend against the beginnings, says Kölbl: “Today the chiming of the hour is disturbing, tomorrow it will be cowbells, the day after tomorrow a peacock and a rooster.
Anyone who lives with us has to come to terms with our circumstances. ”Nevertheless, the question arose for him: Is the nocturnal timing really louder than allowed?
The community commissioned an acoustical report in the summer.
Result: "Nocturnal limit values were exceeded slightly," says VG representative Bach.
The expertise speaks of a “high disruptive effect” at night, and wake-up reactions can be expected even when the windows are only tilted.
The community reacts with noise protection curtains and a planned quieter percussion for the night
The local council did not give up on chasing time, which “belongs to our village”, as Kölbl emphasizes.
But they looked for solutions and never stood idle.
Among other things, the municipality called in a specialist company and decided to take immediate action.
Four noise protection curtains, delivered at the end of August, are supposed to dampen the sound at two tower openings that point in the direction of the complainant's property.
In late summer, the municipality also commissioned a company to install another, quieter percussion mechanism for the night that complies with limit values.
This, says Kölbl, should be delivered this year.
Cost: around 14,000 euros.
The alternative would have been for the bells to sound at a lower volume during the day.
The next level of escalation: charge of assault
It did not come to that, but it did to the next level of escalation: In mid-September, the residents reported the charge of bodily harm to the Murnau police through their Munich lawyer, who had repeatedly asked the community to switch off the clock at night and to adhere to limit values. The lawyer, who yesterday did not respond to a written Tagblatt request, referred to "multiple wake-up reactions" in the criminal complaint. The quality of sleep clearly suffers, and physical well-being is limited as a result. The step was unsuccessful: the proceedings had been discontinued, explains Andrea Mayer, press spokeswoman for the Munich II public prosecutor. Reason: “Sufficient actual evidence of damage to health was not evident and did not result from the complaint.“The government of Upper Bavaria and the district administration also saw no reason to take action. "Since the municipality is looking for a long-term solution to the problem and has taken remedial measures to comply with the limit values at short notice, no intervention was required under either municipal or immission control law," says District Office spokesman Stephan Scharf.
Quarrel over the nocturnal chime occurs again and again
Emotional arguments about the striking of the bell with a mundane background are not uncommon. Around two years ago, a dispute over the Garmisch bells had heated people's minds. So now Eschenlohe: “Something like that happens every now and then,” says Father Stefan Kling, official bell expert and head of the office for church music in the diocese of Augsburg, who has also received a request from the parish of St. Clemens. It seems unusual to him that locals complain. Rather the rule: people move near a church "and are amazed that it makes noises". Kling has not yet heard that a bell dispute has resulted in a charge of assault: “This is something new.” Murnau's police chief Joachim Loy has not been confronted with anything comparable either:"This is the first ad of this kind for us. You usually read something like that in the newspaper."
Pastor Schindele hopes for an amicable solution that everyone can live with
The responsible dean and pastor Siegbert G. Schindele “cannot understand” the criminal complaint.
He hopes that peace will return to Eschenlohe and wants to sound out whether it makes sense for him to meet with the complainants for a discussion.
The clergyman wants an amicable solution that everyone can live with.
He advocates the beat of the clock, which is important to many.
In the parish of St. Josef in Memmingen, where Schindele worked for eleven years, this was abolished at night.
"There were a lot of complaints about that." The people had got used to the chiming of the bell - and suddenly it was "dead quiet".
