Friedenskirche (Uslar)

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Friedenskirche - Church of the Baptist Congregation Uslar (2012)

The Friedenskirche is the church of the Evangelical Free Church Community ( Baptists ) Uslar . It is the second church of the parish founded in 1891 and was built in 1933. Modifications and additions were made in 1964/1965 as well as 1975 and 1994/1995. The Friedenskirche is located at Stiftstrasse 7.

Building history

Löwen-Apotheke Uslar - the prayer house was located in its place

The first regular worship meetings of the Uslar Baptists took place from 1843 in the house of the nail smith Carl Kippenberg. This property was located at today's Neustädter Platz 26 and, in addition to the residential building, also included a forge. There, in 1849, an average of 20 people met for worship, sometimes with intense hostility from Uslar citizens.

The Baptist prayer house in Uslar Neustadt

In 1886, Carl and Christine Kippenberg bequeathed the building and the property belonging to it in the Uslar Neustadt to the not yet independent Baptist congregation. The house and workshop were demolished after the inheritance began and a prayer house with a separate apartment on the ground floor and a preacher's apartment on the first floor was built in their place. The registered owner was the Baptist church Einbeck, mother church of the Uslar station. The inauguration of the church building, in whose assembly room around 120 seats were available, took place at Whitsun 1888. The church service hall had a simple interior that included a communion table and a slightly raised pulpit in addition to the pews . The baptismal font typical of Baptist churches was only installed later.

In 1951 - 18 years after the new church was built - the house of prayer was sold and the proceeds were used to finance a new pastor's house. The buyer decided to demolish the abandoned building and built a new building in its place, today's Löwen-Apotheke.

Friedenskirche

Friedenskirche Uslar (seen from behind) - with the extension from 1975
Peace Church Uslar - with side extension from 1994/95
Cemetery of the Friedenskirche Uslar

The first plans to build a new Baptist community center and thus to replace the prayer house in Uslarer Neustadt, which had been in use since 1888, had evidently been in existence since 1924. In the autumn of this year, the Baptist community acquired a 1,800 m² plot of land for a total of 6110.30 Reichsmarks the Stiftstrasse 7. The Baptist congregation Einbeck was registered as the owner of the building site , since the free church congregation in Uslar currently had no corporate rights. The reasons for planning a new building were, among other things, the structural condition of the old prayer house and the lack of space for the congregation, which has now grown to 125 baptized members. The official decision to build the church was made in 1930. The implementation was delayed due to various circumstances and could only be started in 1933.

As part of a church service on March 26, 1933, the then parish preacher Kaspar Schneiter and the members of the building commission laid the foundation stone for the new church building. The enclosures to the foundation stone certificate contain various historical documents and a detailed building description of the Friedenskirche. Afterwards, the church designed by technician Heinrich Thiel ( Gierswalde ) offered comfortably space for around 250 people . In the further explanations it says:

" [...] in addition to the large assembly room with a gallery , the following ancillary rooms are contained: on the ground floor a preacher's room, at the same time a changing room for male baptized people, a changing room for women and a club room (for youth associations, women’s association, girls and boys, boys and boys). Above this is the small hall for the local prayer and Bible lessons as well as Sunday school . "

The length of the building was given as 21.23 meters and its width as 11.61 meters. The planned height of the facade was 11.25 meters. The calculated construction costs of the turnkey building were 28,000 Reichsmarks. Construction management was in the hands of a five-person construction commission. The construction work was carried out by various local craft firms, including the Uslar construction company August Kerl. The inauguration of the Friedenskirche took place on November 19, 1933. The so-called consecration sermon was given by Paul Schmidt , editor of the Oncken publishing house and later director of the German Baptist Union .

Paul Ott created the organ in 1948 . The instrument has 15 registers , which are divided into two manuals and pedal .

The first major renovation and reconstruction work took place a good thirty years after the church was put into service. The facade was subjected to a thorough renovation, a new sanitary area was installed and the west side of the church was built with a basement. In 1975 the congregation had a single-storey extension built behind the church building, which is still used today as a community hall and also offers a tea kitchen and various ancillary rooms. The main access to these new rooms is through the rooms behind the pulpit.

In 1977/78 the church service room was redesigned. The paneling was removed, a wooden ceiling was put in and the pulpit, which until then had formed the middle of the liturgical center, was moved to the right. Since this renovation, a striking stained glass window has also adorned the left side wall of the church. The newly designed church service room was officially put into service on January 8, 1978.

The Friedenskirche underwent the largest expansion to date in 1994/95. During this measure, the right side wall of the church was broken through and a light-flooded side aisle was added, which can accommodate 100 additional worshipers. In the back of the aisle there is a room where parents with small children can watch the service. There are numerous group rooms available for community work on the upper and basement floors of the extension. A spacious foyer was created in front of the original entrance area, in which the book table has also found its place.

Further properties of the Friedenskirche

The small cemetery of the Friedenskirche is located on Eschershäuser Straße in Uslar . The property was acquired in 1896 and has a size of 873 m². The reason for the establishment of a separate burial site was frequent arguments with the Lutheran clergy when it came to the burial of Baptists in the regional church cemeteries. Today these conflicts have long been history, so that the Uslar community is considering giving up its cemetery after the remaining quiet periods have expired.

In 1985 the parish of the Friedenskirche acquired a 2800 m² property from the Uslar company Ilse , which is located in the immediate vicinity of the church property. Here she built a log cabin, which is mainly used for the community's youth work.

History of the Uslar Baptist Congregation

Bernhard Naundorf, first pastor of the congregation from 1888 to 1894

The history of the Uslar Baptist church goes back to the 1840s. The first Baptist in the city on the Solling was the aforementioned nail smith Carl Kippenberg (1815–1886), who had received the baptism of believers in Goslar at the age of 27 and developed intensive missionary work after returning to his hometown. So-called parlor meetings were also held in many other places in the vicinity of Uslar. The emergence of the Baptist movement in the early years led to many conflicts with the local population and the local state and church administrative bodies. For example, the Baptists were denied marriage, which at that time could only be carried out by clergy of the regional church, and in some places the performance of religious acts (sermon, baptism, communion) was forbidden with the threat of severe penalties. It was not until July 1875 that the free church congregations in Hanover were offered corporate rights, which considerably improved the situation (not only) of the Baptists.

Despite the indicated difficulties, the young Baptist movement grew in Uslar and the surrounding villages. Spiritual support was provided by the Einbeck Baptist congregation, which was founded in 1843 and grouped the preaching stations in Uslar and the surrounding area as a station behind the Solling . This station, in cooperation with the mother church, called the 28-year-old Bernhard Naundorf to be its preacher in 1886. Naundorf had previously completed his theological training at the Baptist seminary in Hamburg-Horn and started his first job in Uslar. When he left the congregation in 1894 to begin church planting work in Göttingen , there were 82 baptized members of the Uslar Baptist congregation. During the service of the preacher Naundorf, the Uslar congregation also became independent. It took place on February 15, 1891.

In the following years Uslar became the nucleus of further church plantings. We have already spoken of Göttingen. The Höxter preaching station joined forces with the Stadtoldendorf station congregation founded by Einbeck in 1902 and has been an independent Baptist congregation since 1991. In 1952, the Bodenfelde branch congregation, which had previously belonged to Uslar, gained its independence.

On June 10, 1971, the Lower Saxony minister of education granted the Evangelical Free Church Community of Uslar the rights of a corporation under public law . In 2010 the parish of the Friedenskirche Uslar had 208 baptized members. Within the Federation of Evangelical Free Churches in Germany , it belongs to the Evangelical Free Church State Association of Lower Saxony-East Westphalia-Saxony-Anhalt (NOSA).

literature

  • Evangelical Free Church Community Uslar (ed.): 100 Years Evangelical Free Church Community Uslar KdöR. 1891–1991 (Festschrift). 2nd edition, Uslar 1991.
  • Rudolf Donat: How the work began. Formation of the German Baptist Churches. Kassel 1958.

Web links

Commons : Friedenskirche  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rudolf Donat: How the work began. Origin of the German Baptist Congregations , Kassel 1958, p. 158f
  2. ↑ Evangelical Free Church Community Uslas (Ed.): Festschrift , p. 125
  3. ↑ Pictures of the prayer house can be found on the homepage of the Evangelical Free Church Community in Uslar ; Accessed June 19, 2012
  4. ↑ Evangelical Free Church Community Uslar (Ed.): Festschrift , p. 66
  5. ↑ Evangelical Free Church Community Uslar (ed.): Festschrift , p. 147
  6. ↑ Quoted from Evangelisch-Freikirchliche Gemeinde Uslar (Ed.): Festschrift , p. 70
  7. ↑ Wenzel Hübner: 21,000 organs from all over the world. 1945–1985 . P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 978-3-8204-9454-9 , pp. 239 (Sources and studies on the history of music from antiquity to the present; 7).
  8. ↑ Evangelical Free Church Community Uslar: Festschrift , p. 126
  9. ↑ Homepage of the Evangelical Free Church Community in Uslar: Community center (with numerous pictures and a floor plan of the extended Peace Church ); Accessed June 19, 2012
  10. ↑ Evangelical Free Church Community Uslar: Festschrift , p. 124
  11. ↑ Rudolf Donat: How the work began , p. 152
  12. ^ Rudolf Donat: How the work began , p. 158
  13. ↑ Evangelical Free Church Community of Göttingen: Festschrift. 100 Years of the Baptist Congregation Göttingen , Göttingen 1994, p. 10f; ( online ; PDF; 3.3 MB)
  14. ↑ Homepage of the Evangelical Free Church Community Höxter: History ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Accessed June 19, 2012  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.efg-hoexter.de
  15. ^ Homepage of the Evangelical Free Church Community in Uslar: Review ; accessed on November 26, 2010

Coordinates: 51 ° 39 ′ 41.7 "  N , 9 ° 38 ′ 19.2"  E