Qualla: The Red Bricks of Gedangan

The Red Bricks of Gedangan: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Crisco 1492, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 12 May 1873, the nearly completed tower of a new church in Semarang collapsed. The causes were debated -- an insufficient frame, poor-quality bricks -- but the congregation's response was not. They redesigned the tower lower, imported Dutch bricks as ballast aboard trading ships, and finished the job. Two years later, on 12 December 1875, Monsignor Joseph Lijnen blessed the completed building: a red-brick, neo-Gothic church on Ronggo Warsito Street, the first Catholic church in the city. That willingness to rebuild after catastrophe would define St. Joseph's Church, known locally as Gereja Gedangan, for the next century and a half.

Image: Crisco 1492 | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Red Bricks of Gedangan: A Congregation Without Walls

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Crisco 1492, CC BY-SA 3.0. Catholicism arrived in Semarang in 1808, when Father Lambertus Prinsen was dispatched from the Netherlands to serve a congregation that had no church building, no convent, and barely a dozen members. Fourteen people were baptized in 1809, most of them Dutch. For seven years, the ...

Image: Crisco 1492 | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Red Bricks of Gedangan: Nuns, Bricks, and a Frenchman's Bells

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Crisco 1492, CC BY-SA 3.0. The breakthrough came through Joseph Lijnen, who became pastor in 1858. Recognizing that the congregation needed women religious to run schools and minister to the community, Lijnen traveled to Heythuysen in the Netherlands and persuaded a group of Franciscan nuns to join him in ...

Image: Crisco 1492 | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Red Bricks of Gedangan: The Language of Conversion

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit F.W.M. Kerchman (Fotograaf/photographer)., CC BY-SA 3.0. By the 1890s, the Catholic Church in the Indies turned its attention to the indigenous Javanese population. Head pastor J. Keijzer wrote to the Netherlands requesting men who would learn the Javanese language to translate the catechism and preach to local communities. Three Jesui...

Image: F.W.M. Kerchman (Fotograaf/photographer). | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Red Bricks of Gedangan: Occupation and Independence

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Crisco 1492, CC BY-SA 3.0. When Japanese forces occupied the Dutch East Indies in March 1942, the church's European character became a liability. The occupation government seized church properties, forbade the use of Dutch in services, and confined European clergy. Two head pastors, G. Schoonhoff and G. de...

Image: Crisco 1492 | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Red Bricks of Gedangan: Nineteen Windows, One Story

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Crisco 1492, CC BY-SA 3.0. Step inside St. Joseph's today and the 800-seat interior tells its own layered history. Nineteen stained glass windows line the nave: three behind the altar depict the Holy Family's flight to Egypt, their daily life, and the death of Joseph. Twelve side windows portray individual...

Image: Crisco 1492 | CC BY-SA 3.0