Old rectory

Today's vicarage stands on the site of the former Widenhof (also known as Wiedenhof). This was possibly the nucleus of the village of Dürscheid.

At the very least, this farm belonged to the Dursen estate, which had been owned by the monastery of St. Maria im Kapitol in Cologne since the late 11th century.

For centuries, Dursen (also Dursten, today's Dürscheid) was the administrative seat of this monastery for its numerous possessions in the Bergisch region.

The meetings of the so-called court of justice, which regulated the ownership structure, took place in today's Dürscheider Hof, a very old house which, according to some experts, could also be the original Hof Dursen.

The Widenhof, i.e. the farm "dedicated" to the local clergyman, served as the priest's residence and as an additional source of income. The clergy could not live on the small fees for pastoral services at the time - so-called "Stolgebühren" had to be paid for baptisms, weddings and funerals (church taxes did not yet exist). This Widenhof was either managed by the priest himself or leased out. In our case, part of the building was used as a pastorate until the end of the 19th century.

A photograph from before 1895 shows a rather barn-like building with the handwritten inscription "Pfarrhaus".


When the pastor at the time, Johann Voß, came to Dürscheid in 1891 and tackled the new construction of the dilapidated church as his first major building project, he also planned the construction of a new rectory at the same time. The old vicarage, or Widenhof, which was apparently just as dilapidated as the church - the vicar had lived in the vicarage in the meantime - was demolished and the new building made of Blissenbach bricks was erected in its place in 1893/95. The Rausch brickworks was operated in Blissenbach from 1873 to 1906. This construction project remained within the calculated costs (there was even a small surplus), whereas the parallel construction of the new church required considerably more money than estimated.

1960 - today

1988 was a decisive year - not for the building of the rectory, but for its inhabitants. In this year, the parishes in the civil parish of Kürten were merged to form a parish association. The head priest was now based in Biesfeld. A deacon and his family moved into the rectory. The previous head priest, Heinrich Pohl, had retired shortly before. When the deacon was transferred to another parish in 2005, he was succeeded by a parish assistant, also with a family. This situation did not change when the parish association was transformed into the large parish of St. Marien Kürten in 2010.

The building also houses a contact office for the parish.