Archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland
The archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland is the central archive of this regional church. The archive has two locations: The main office in Düsseldorf - Golzheim administers the documents of the church governing bodies and the regional church office and is responsible for archive maintenance in the North Rhine-Westphalian part of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland (EKiR). The Boppard Evangelical Archive Office looks after the southern part of the regional church and acts as the EKiR's central church register archive.
history
The EKiR is the second largest German regional church. Their area coincides with the former Prussian Rhine Province . During his historical work, the later archivist of the Rhenish Provincial Synod, Max Goebel, came across files of supraregional importance. After a survey of such stocks, the 8th Rhenish Provincial Synod decided in 1853 to found a provincial church archive. It is the oldest archive of a Protestant regional church in Germany.
The archive was located in Koblenz at the seat of the consistory until 1928 and was then moved to Bonn. From 1936 it was housed in its own building in the Hofgarten. After war losses in both the files and the library holdings, it was relocated to Düsseldorf in 1951 in the office building of the regional church office. At the same time, Pastor Walter Schmidt, the first full-time archivist, was hired. In 1953 the Evangelical Archive Office Koblenz was founded as a branch archive.
Since 1986, 38 volumes have appeared in the archive's own series. The archive has also organized several exhibitions such as “Entrusted Time” (2003) or “So that extremes are prevented” (2010). An external magazine in Moers-Meerbeck will be available in 2017. Stefan Flesch has been the director of the archive since 2001.
Stocks
The archive at the Düsseldorf and Boppard locations together comprises approx. 700 holdings with a total of approx. 8,000 meters of shelves . They are divided into eight main groups. The estates of the first two Rhenish presides Heinrich Held and Joachim Beckmann are of supraregional importance for the post-war period and the early Federal Republic . Other important bequests come from the brothers Hermann and Johannes Schlingensiepen , both of whom were theologians in the service of the regional church. The archive of the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal documents theological and church history research and teaching in the 20th century in connection with several professors' bequests. Examples of important association archives are the tradition of the Evangelical Brothers Association and the student Bible groups . Part of the partially digitized photo collection is the extensive work of church photographer Hans Lachmann .
The historical holdings of over a hundred parishes in the Rhineland are mostly kept as deposits in the archive. Examples are the holdings from Aachen and Düsseldorf, which contain an extensive early modern tradition.
Evangelical archive office Boppard
The branch of the regional church archive responsible for the Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland and Hessian parts of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland has been located in a side wing of the former St. Martin monastery in Boppard since 1996. The branch office was previously located in Koblenz, from 1953 to 1957 in the former office of the Rhenish general superintendent at Mainzer Strasse 81 and from 1957 to 1996 in the premises of the newly established Koblenz State Archives in Karmeliterstrasse.
The reason for the establishment of a branch of the regional church archive in Rhineland-Palatinate was the return of the older church registers , which were collected by the French administration at the time, to the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, as planned by the Rhineland-Palatinate state archive administration . Since the state was only willing to return the books if the books remained on Rhineland-Palatinate territory and their administration as a closed collection, the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland opened its own small church book archive in Rhineland-Palatinate in 1953 with the Koblenz archive. With the takeover of approx. 250 Rhenish military church registers in 1967 and the extensive inventory of files from the church clerk of the Meisenheim Oberamt in 1968, further historically significant holdings were added. Since the move to Boppard in 1996, there has been enough storage space to accommodate the records of numerous parishes, church districts and other church institutions from the southern part of the regional church. Since 2016, there have been three PC workstations in the reading room of the Boppard archive office, where church records can be viewed. The archive office has been headed by Andreas Metzing since 2001.
Archive library
The library of the archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland is a historical specialist library on the Protestant church history of the Rhineland and comprises around 60,000 volumes. All publications on the territorial, local and personal history of the Rhenish Church and its forerunners are primarily collected. The library can be researched online using the catalog of the Southwest German Library Association ( SWB ).
literature
- Stefan Flesch: The archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. Its history and its holdings (= writings of the archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. No. 33). Archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, Düsseldorf 2003, ISBN 3-930250-46-2 .