Of course, the listed Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit in the Emst district of the town Hagen has little in common with the largely medieval churches in the other regions here on the website – except for the round tower. I include it – like some of the other modern churches – here on the website partly for the sake of completeness, and partly because these churches are in the region where we live. We can therefore visit them quickly (unlike the churches in, for example, East Anglia). The church unfortunately has very limited opening hours outside of services, but when I was there early one Saturday afternoon, I ran into a gentleman who I asked if he happened to know where I could get a key, and it turned out he had one with him. So he let me into the church, and explained some more of the sights.

The church is the last building of the famous German church builder Dominikus Böhm, and was consecrated on 9 May 1954 by the auxiliary bishop of Paderborn, Franz Hengsbach. The tower is an architectural highlight, as the 47-metre-high cylindrical bell tower rises under a 15-metre-high conical roof in front of the south façade. This shape earned it the nickname “pencil” in the vernacular. The one-room church, with its significant architecture and interior decoration, is to be regarded as a complete work of art. The main building consists of a towering, red-bricked rectangular hall. The bell tower and the low sacristy wing extend to the south, and the baptistery closes the ensemble to the north.

The interior is characterised by a clear geometric form. The east and entrance façade consists of a simple gable wall clinkered in stretcher bond, above whose entrance portal six rectangular windows of equal size have been arranged. The view of the visitor is drawn to the altar and the surrounding apse, which in turn is lit on two sides by six plain window bands at full room height. The coloured glazing of the window bands planned by Dominikus Böhm was postponed for reasons of cost and was never carried out. Another planned continuation of the glazing behind the altar has not been approved by the diocese, according to the gentleman who showed me around the church.

The otherwise sober church interior contains a stucco ceiling with stylised tongues of the fire of Pentecost as its only decorative element, the titular feast of the parish. The upper windows facing north show various constellations. The lower stained glass windows depict the seven sacraments.

Essential information listed here have been taken from the page baukunst-nrw.de.