Harbor Church (Mannheim)

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Harbor Church

The Harbor Church (full name: Harbor Church of Divine Mercy ) is a Protestant church in the Mannheim district Jungbusch . It was built between 1951 and 1953 by the architect Max Schmechel .

history

In the last third of the 19th century, the population of Mannheim increased so much that the historical city limits became too narrow and residential development spread to the neighboring areas. In the west, the Jungbusch district was created between the port and the city ​​center . The number of Evangelicals in Mannheim, for whom there were only two churches with the Trinity Church and the Konkordienkirche , grew from 18,431 to 61,710 between 1871 and 1900. The Trinity Church was responsible for the Jungbusch area, which posed great difficulties for the pastors, because the spatially separated Neckarspitze also had to be looked after. A separate service was therefore held in the kindergarten there from 1892. Considerations to add the Neckarspitze to the new Neckarstadt Luther Church had to be discarded.

Finally, in 1914, another, the third, independent parish was set up at the Trinity Church for the Jungbusch. Pastor Erwin Eckert , one of the most famous representatives of the Religious Socialists in the Weimar Republic, worked here from 1927 to 1931 . After the Second World War , the Jungbusch parish received its own church. It was built between 1951 and 1953 on an old factory site. On May 10, 1953, the port church was consecrated by regional bishop Julius Bender . While there were around 5,000 parishioners at the beginning of the 1960s, the Jungbusch underwent profound change in the decades that followed. Migrants preferred to settle in the comparatively cheap rental apartments . For this reason, the parish also worked closely with the parishes of the neighboring Yavuz Sultan Selim Mosque and the Mannheim synagogue . In 2008 just under 900 Protestants lived in Jungbusch, which is why the community merged with the Konkordienkirche to form the “Citygemeinde Hafen Konkordien”.

church

Altarpiece

The harbor church is in Jungbusch, set back from Kirchenstrasse. The Bender cork factory and, most recently, a Burda publishing house , which burned down during the Second World War, was located on the area surrounded by apartment blocks . The basement and parts of the walls were integrated into the church. The free-standing church tower is also at a point where the factory already had a tower. The church has a single nave and is covered by a gable roof. The wooden ceiling in the interior is reminiscent of an upturned ship's belly. On the wall of the retracted chancel there is the sgraffito illustration of “Christ on the Sea of ​​Galilee”.

In the tower hang four bells in the striking sequence b 1 –c 2 –es 2 –f 2 , which were cast by the Karlsruhe bell and art foundry in 1952/54.

Ship's pastoral care

Boat of the harbor church

The port church also includes the ship's pastoral care, the activity of which has changed significantly since the Second World War. While in the 1950s the inland boatmen lay in the Mannheim harbor on weekends and were able to visit the church, the unloading and loading times are now so short that the boatmen hardly ever come ashore. For this reason, the harbor church has its own 12 meter long boat for visiting the ships, but also for baptisms and weddings of the boatmen's families, the Johann Hinrich Wichern . The boat is named after Johann Hinrich Wichern , the founder of the Inner Mission of the Evangelical Church.

Boathouse of the harbor church

literature

  • Ulrich Schäfer: 50 Years of the Church on the Water - The History of Ship's Pastoral Care Mannheim-Ludwigshafen 1951–2001 . Mannheim 2001.
  • Ulrich Schäfer: 50 years of the Harbor Church for God's Mercy . Mannheim 2003.
  • Udo Wennemuth: History of the Protestant Church in Mannheim . Sigmaringen 1996, ISBN 3-7995-0930-5 .
  • City archive Mannheim, Mannheimer Architektur- und Bauarchiv eV (ed.), Andreas Schenk: Mannheim and its buildings 1907-2007: Volume 3 . Mannheim 2002, ISBN 3-923003-85-4 .
  • Andreas Schenk: Architectural Guide Mannheim . Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-496-01201-3 .

Web links

Commons : Hafenkirche  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Udo Wennemuth: History of the Protestant Church in Mannheim . S. 149. The numbers refer to Alt-Mannheim without the incorporations.
  2. ↑ Mannheimer Morgen, September 17, 2003
  3. ^ Volker Müller: Bells in Mannheim . 2007.

Coordinates: 49 ° 29 ′ 33.5 ″  N , 8 ° 27 ′ 27.3 ″  E