Client in the Bremen church
In the municipalities of the Bremen city churches, building owners are called the executive boards. The totality of the builders forms the executive organ of the church council of the respective community. They carry out the resolutions of the board of directors or the convention and represent the community to third parties.
history
The origin of the ecclesiastical title of builder , or master builder as it was called back then, lies in the pre-Reformation period, when the builder of a chapel or church was also considered to be its owner. Clergy ( Bishop ) or secular men ( King , Noble ) acquired with the construction on their land and the tithe and could pastor set, but were obliged to provide for the upkeep of personnel and construction. These own churches were a contested one for the development of the parish in the Middle Ages important instrument because the episcopal churches were not able to ensure pastoral care for the faithful.
The builders in the four old Bremen churches, which have been handed down at St. Stephani since 1400, were administrators of the church building - the church factory , as it was called at the time - and had to take care of the maintenance and structural changes. Since, according to the church's view, every gift for church building belongs in the hands of the priest , the bourgeois master builders were appointed as trustees as security against such attacks . With this "factory maintenance" the clean separation between building assets and the benefices of the clergy was to be preserved. For centuries the builders were also the appointed leaders of the Protestant community in all things that were not particularly spiritual and mostly came from the Bremen council or the merchants. Only a few names are known from medieval times, because it was not they but the clergy who wrote down what concerned the church. The office of builder was retained in all churches even after the Reformation .
The situation was somewhat different in the cathedral , which was a church of the archbishop and the cathedral chapter and had had no parish rights in Bremen since the 12th century, and therefore had no civil parish . Here the cathedral chapter appointed the builder who managed an independent estate to which the cathedral chapter had no access. At the beginning of the 14th century both citizens and cathedral vicars were builders, from around 1425 onwards there are only clergy builders. After the cathedral was transferred to Bremen in 1803, bourgeois builders were again appointed to the administration of the church property and cathedral buildings from 1810, who also chaired the community committees and over the cathedral staff and the cathedral school . In general, there were four builders who came from the Senate and the merchant class.
Building owner office today
The building owners as voluntary community leaders are Hanseatic tradition and a typical institution of the Bremen church constitution. Since the second half of the 20th century women can also be elected to this office. The title of builder is only used in the cathedral and the old town churches of Unser Lieben Frauen , St. Martini and St. Ansgarii and St. Remberti and corresponds to the executive board members in the other parishes. The Church of St. Stephani has become a cultural church, here the term builder can only be found in the historical documentation.
The builders are elected by the community convention or by the board of directors. Their tasks include the administration of the church's property and the representation of the community to the outside world, they are supposed to promote the construction and furnishing of the places of worship.
See also
Builders at St. Petri Cathedral :
literature
- Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
- Friedrich Prüser : Eight hundred years of St. Stephen's Church - a piece of Bremen history . Arndt-Verlag Melchers & Boettcher, Bremen 1940
Web links
- Builders in the cathedral
- Builders in the Liebfrauenkirche
- Builders in St. Ansgarii (today in the Schwachhausen district )
- Builders in St. Remberti (today also in the Schwachhausen district )
- Builders in St. Stephani (only mentioned in the story)