Mayor Smidt Memorial Church

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Mayor Smidt Memorial Church
Mayor Smidt Memorial Church , also Great Church (2017)

The Mayor Smidt Memorial Church in Bremerhaven belongs to a congregation of the Uniate Churches consisting of Lutherans and Reformed people . Belonging to the Bremen Evangelical Church from the beginning , it is still the only parish of this regional church in Bremerhaven. The correct name of the "Great Church" is United Protestant Congregation for the Mayor Smidt Memorial Church . Bremerhaven's main church and the main shopping street ("Die Bürger" for short) have been named after Mayor Johann Smidt since 1927 .

Building history

Entrance with sandstone figures of Jesus, Luther (left) and Zwingli (right)
Nave

In Bremerhaven's city map of 1827, no church was planned. In 1842 it was decided to build a church. Immediately after the foundation stone was laid in 1846, however, the project failed because the inadequate foundations sagged in the soft marshland. Seven years later, a second attempt was made under the direction of the Bremen architect Simon Loschen . For this purpose, 522 wooden stakes were driven into the ground. Then the construction of the three-aisled church, the apse and the tower began.

The neo - Gothic three - aisled building was decorated with colored glazed clinker bricks and got Gothic pointed arches on the side fronts . The church was divided into seven bays by buttresses . In contrast to the roof turret , the branch towers were rebuilt. They stand on a 5 cm diameter iron rod on the eaves wall . Some of these round metals had suffered from the weather and had to be replaced around 2010. Some sandstone parts were also replaced.

The walls decorated under the eaves a brick fries . Sandstone figures of Jesus of Nazareth and Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli on both sides were incorporated into the western portal . There is a small rose window above the entrance , the large rose window was not reinstalled after it was destroyed. The smooth gable roof is covered with copper plates. The side entrances to the stairwells are decorated with tall eyelashes . A five-eighth apse in the width of the former central nave closes off the east. The 80 meter high tower with substructure, openwork octagon and the octagonal pyramid as the spire received a filigree design. The open bell floor is under the large clock.

Mayor and pastor Johann Smidt inaugurated the Great Church in 1855, although the bell tower, attached to the west of the church, was not yet completed. Work on it continued until 1870. Only then did he receive a pointed helmet . Before that, however, in 1869 the turrets on the tower and on the choir apse had to be removed for structural reasons. In 1883 Bremen donated three bronze bells. In 1888 a fountain was set up in front of the church.

destruction

In the Second World War , the church was badly damaged in the heaviest air raid on Wesermünde on September 18, 1944 - the pillars and entablature collapsed and the inventory burned. Only the tower and the sandstone figures remained. The community held its services in the Dionysius Church (Bremerhaven-Lehe) . On October 19, 1944, the community council decided to prepare the undamaged vestibule under the tower. The dedication service could be held on the 2nd Advent, December 9, 1945. Pastor Schmidt's sermon was based on Psalm 37, 35–37. He emphasized the godlessness of National Socialism and said prophetically:

“On one of the gold plates of the old German imperial crown, the king Christ is depicted with the inscription PER ME REGES REGNANT (" The kings rule through me "). The West grew up through faith in Christ and will perish without faith in Christ. ... Certainly dwellings have to be built, but places of worship, places of inspiration, places where the soul turns towards the eternal are just as important. The question of God is the fateful question of our time, just as little mere materialists and naturalists will see it. "

- Ernst Walter Schmidt

The pulpit of the tower chapel was given to the community by the Reformed community in Lehe. She came from Elberfeld and had served the Reformed community in Geestemünde. The harmonium was replaced on August 5th, 1951 by a small organ from St. Remberti (Bremen) . The lighting crown for the chancel was a gift from the architect Jäger. The last service in the chapel was held on February 15, 1953. After that the new parish hall was available.

reconstruction

Installation of the folding ceiling

On February 22, 1953, the pastors' and parish house was inaugurated as the Mayor Smidt Memorial Church . As planned, the reconstruction of the church was only started afterwards. The basis of the restoration costs had been laid in 1949 by the retired welfare worker Alma Reil . English shipowners donated 7,500 German marks . For the financing (as with the Stadttheater Bremerhaven ) “building blocks” worth 10, 25, 50 and 100 DM were issued. The volume of donations was enormous. In the first four months they raised 84,804 marks.

The reconstruction lasted from 1958 to 1960 and was accompanied by the architect Karl Franzius and the engineer Otto Schildt. The renovation of the 80 m high tower was particularly difficult. Since the nave of the church had lost its roof as a stabilizing bracket for the outer walls, the tower had inclined 25 cm to the northeast over the past 14 years. A reinforced concrete wall gave him a new hold. The walls of the nave were reinforced from the inside by means of reinforced concrete frames such as ribs connected underground . At the height of the eaves , a ring anchor was installed, also made of reinforced concrete, to which the folded ceiling made of expanded metal and plaster was attached - a seemingly weightless reference to the earlier neo-Gothic cross vaults.

Instead of the three-nave church, a light, single-nave church was built. Hans Gottfried von Stockhausen designed the church windows in the chancel . The blacksmith von der Dovenmühle had created the large cross on the altar. The altar table, pulpit and foot of the silver-plated baptismal font were made of Obernkirchen sandstone , the same material from which the filigree church spire had been made 90 years earlier. The sandstone tracery of the windows had to be dispensed with for cost reasons. They would have cost ten times the white wooden frames that were chosen. The word of Paul of Tarsus is carved in gilded letters on the altar table : UBI SPIRITUS DOMINI IBI LIBERTAS ("Where the Spirit of the Lord works, there is freedom.").

The construction and reconstruction of the Mayor Smidt Memorial Church is a reminder of the Mariahilfkirche (Munich) . St. Dionysius (Borbeck) also received a folding cover . The church has been a listed building since 1978 .

Seafarers Church

Hidden main church

The church was the symbol of the city. 21 captains had already committed themselves to the construction of the church, the 80 meter high tower towered over the dike as well as all the buildings at the mouth of the Weser before. It served as a landmark for all seagoing and returning ships. The church tower lost this great emotional significance for the people of Bremerhaven and the seafarers due to the high-rise buildings of the Columbus Center built in the line of sight between the harbor and the church .

Parish hall

Church history

The State Treaty between Bremen and the Kingdom of Hanover of 1827 for the purchase of the land for the construction of the ports also stipulated that the future residents of Bremerhaven would be cared for by the parish in Lehe. The distances were long and the Dionysius Church in Lehe soon became too narrow with the rapid increase in population.

In 1840 137 citizens signed a petition to the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen . They asked "to obtain their own church and the facilities connected with it". In 1842, 21 captains followed suit with a petition in which they used them for their seamen. In 1842 the political community received the site for a church building. Bremen's mayor Smidt, as a theologian advocate of a church union, proposed in 1842 to found an evangelical uniate congregation. The Bremen Senate then appointed a provisional church council from Lutherans and Reformed . In 1849 the first service took place in a hall and from 1850 services followed in the Bremerhaven emigration center . In 1854, 76 citizens took another petition and demanded the "maintenance of the Lutheran church there".

Mayor Smidt inaugurated the Great Church on April 22, 1855. In 1855 Lutherans and Reformed Protestants protested against the election of the free-thinking pastor Wolf from Kiel. Wolf took up his position in 1856.

Organs

Beckerath organ
Disposition of the Beckerath organ in the Great Church in Bremerhaven

The first organ in the church was built by Philipp Furtwängler & Sons from Elze and completed in August 1856. The two-manual instrument had 32 sounding registers and had as only one of its built organs in pedal a pedestal 32 '. This valuable instrument was completely destroyed in the bombing of the church on September 18, 1944.

After the church was rebuilt, the Walcker company (Ludwigsburg) was commissioned to build a new organ, which was inaugurated on November 1st, 1964. This three-manual instrument with 40 registers had serious structural and tonal deficiencies right from the start: susceptibility to failure of the register and playing structure, sharpness and imbalance of the sound image due to a disproportionately high proportion of z. Sometimes remote aliquot and experimental mixed registers and an extremely stiff action. In 1980, a completely new building was planned.

On October 5, 1986, today's organ from Beckerath (Hamburg) was inaugurated. The symphonic instrument is arranged in the style of the French Romanticism and was expanded in 1999 by the Hamburg organ builder Hans-Ulrich Erbslöh to include a Spanish trumpet in the main work, equipped with a larger composer system and re-voiced. On the initiative of the current cantor, David Schollmeyer, in January 2016 he not only installed a new electrical coupling system with 3 sub-couplers, but also expanded the disposition to include a base 32 ′ in the pedal (built by the organ building company Simon from Borgentreich) and one Zimbelstern. The organ now has 47 sounding registers with over 3,500 pipes and is the largest instrument in the city of Bremerhaven.

Church bells

In 1855 the church received a steel bell, which was not sonically satisfactory. It was replaced by new steel bells in 1870, but the sound of the steel bells was no better either. In 1883 the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen donated three bronze bells that were cast by the Otto bell foundry in Hemelingen near Bremen. The bronze bells had the following sequence of striking notes: b - d flat - f sharp. The bronze bells bore the following inscriptions written by the poet Arthur Fitgers .

Christ bell

Christ bell is my name ,
Two noble ports I know -
a, your fishermen hernieden for you ,
one for everyone in the kingdom of heaven .

Luther bell

I am called Luther .
I call over sea and land .
A good defense in storm and need ,
a strong castle is our God .

Smidt bell

My name is Smidt after the man who built this city .
O citizen, think that his spirit speaks from my sound .

In 1942 the church had to hand in two bells for the metal donation of the German people .

In 1969 the Otto foundry delivered four new bronze bells. The Great Church today has four ringing bells with the tones d '(1352 mm, 1700 kg) e' (1204 mm, 1200 kg) g '(1013 mm, 650 kg) a' (902 mm, 500 kg). The bell is rung for the service (every Sunday) from 9.50 a.m. to 10.00 a.m. for Wednesday prayer 5:55 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and for the Sunday bell (every Saturday) at 6 p.m. In the past, the Great Church rang every day for the Angelus (6:00 p.m.) plenary (all bells). In exceptional cases, the lowest bell of this church rings on All Saints' Day .

Pastors

Tower room chapel (1945–1953)
  1. 1856–1880: Heinrich Wolf
  2. 1877–1895: Eberhard Cronemeyer
  3. 1883–1926: Theodor Sachau
  4. 1896–1916: Paul Schatzmayr (1868–1916), from Halle (Saale)
  5. 1917–1957: Hermann Raschke (1887–1970), from Altona, Freemason, kept the community free from the influence of German Christians. "Christianity as the highest perfection of a Gnostic doctrine of redemption"
  6. 1926–1964: Ernst Walter Schmidt
  7. 1957–1973: Wilhelm Werner (1915–1980), social-ethical anti-state church, founder of the parish hall for the elderly
  8. 1962–1991: Dr. D. Peter Gerlitz
  9. 1967–1970: Friedrich Cornelius
  10. 1970–1985: Wilhelm Fuhrmann (1922–2003), from Berlin, political theology
  11. 1974–1984: Manfred Schulken (* 1935), Diakonie, Innere Mission
  12. 1986–1992: Dr. Peter Ulrich (* 1953)
  13. 1991–2019: Dirk Scheider (* 1956), from Berlin; Youth work, on-board pastoral care of the EKD, emergency pastoral care Bremerhaven
  14. 1993–2009: Frank Mühring (* 1963), chairman of the Bremen main group of the Gustav-Adolf-Werk , regional chairman of the Ev. Trombone Works Bremen
  15. since 2010 Mathias Rösel (* 1964)

literature

  • Theodor Sachau: The history of the church of the United Evangelical Lutheran and Reformed Congregation in Bremerhaven . Bremerhaven 1931.
  • Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . Edition Temmen , Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
  • Church Council of the United Protestant Congregation: Festschrift 150 Years of the Great Church of Mayor Smidt Memorial Church . Bremerhaven 2005.

Web links

Commons : Bürgermeister-Smidt-Gedächtniskirche (Bremerhaven)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Commemorative document for the restoration of the Mayor Smidt Memorial Church in Bremerhaven (1960)
  2. ↑ a b c Herma Wetzel: "God's admonishing finger" - The post-war period and the reconstruction of the Great Church , in: 150 Years Great Church / Mayor Smidt Memorial Church , ed. by the Church Council of the United Protestant Congregation. Bremerhaven 2005, p. 31.
  3. ^ Monument database of the LfD
  4. ^ Karl Franzius on the church as a landmark of Bremerhaven , in: United Protestant Congregation for the Mayor Smidt Memorial Church Bremerhaven (ed.), The Mayor Smidt Memorial Church in Bremerhaven , Church Guide, p. 7
  5. ^ Stiftung KiBa (annual report 2005) ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Harry Gabcke : Bremerhaven in two centuries ; Volume I, pp. 41, 71 and 73. Nordwestdeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Bremerhaven 1989, ISBN 3-927857-00-9 .
  7. ↑ Disposition and photo of the Walcker organ from 1964 , accessed on October 3, 2019
  8. ^ Georg Bessell: The first 100 years of Bremerhaven - 1826-1927. Bremerhaven 1927. Reprinted by Salzwasser-Verlag Bremen 2010.
  9. ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells. Family and company history of the Otto bell foundry dynasty . Self-published, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063109-2 , p. 588, here in particular pp. 184, 185, 228, 409, 502, 576 .
  10. ↑ Gerhard Reinhold: Church bells - Christian world cultural heritage, illustrated using the example of the bell founder Otto, Hemelingen / Bremen . Nijmegen / NL 2019, p. 556, here in particular 126, 177, 179, 214, 384, 470, 515 , urn : nbn: nl: ui: 22-2066 / 204770 (dissertation at Radboud University Nijmegen).


Coordinates: 53 ° 32 ′ 39.5 "  N , 8 ° 34 ′ 44.5"  E