Berlin City Mission

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Berlin City Mission is an independent association under the umbrella of the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia .

Organization and structure

As a free work in the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia and a member of the Diakonisches Werk Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia, the Berlin City Mission is legally independent and exists as an association with several subsidiaries. The city mission director (theological director) was Pastor Joachim Lenz until December 31, 2019 , while Martin Zwick was the commercial director. The new theological director of the Berliner Stadtmission has been Christian Ceconi since April 1, 2020, who has been pastor in the evangelical Martin Luther Church in Toronto.

The Berlin City Mission, which is made up of around 1,000 full-time and 1,500 volunteer workers, carries out missionary and diaconal work in cities with 42 diaconal institutions at over 70 locations and particularly wants to help people on the fringes of our society. It is mainly financed by public grants and donations . At the end of 2005, an additional foundation , the Berliner Stadtmission Foundation , was established. She has been supporting Housing First Berlin since 2018 to offer the homeless an interesting alternative to emergency accommodation.

The founders of the Berlin City Mission elected in 1877 from the Bible verse Jeremiah 29.7 from the Old Testament as his motto: "Seek the city best and pray to the Lord." The three areas of the Berlin city mission are: Mission , Diakonie and Encounter.

The Berlin City Mission is a member of the Association Missionary Services of the EKD and the Association of European city missions and the World Association of City Missions City Mission World Association / CMWA.

history

Hospice of the Berlin City Mission, postcard around 1900
Schrippenkirche, Ackerstraße 137, in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen

at the end of the 19th century

On March 9, 1877 , the court and cathedral preacher and later prominent anti-Semite Adolf Stoecker founded the Association for Berlin City Mission in Berlin at the suggestion of the evangelical Berlin superintendent and spiritual director Bruno Brückner , including the city ​​missionaries employed by the Berlin Johannis Foundation since 1858 and by Brückner in 1874. The united Berlin city mission was legally created as an association of the old order . By the Highest Cabinet Order (AKO) of November 16, 1891, the Association for Berlin City Missions was granted the rights of a legal entity and it has always been a non-profit organization . Under the leadership of Stoecker, the association originally had a vehemently anti-socialist and anti-Semitic orientation, so that it came to a political scandal when Prince Wilhelm, who became German Emperor only one year later ( Wilhelm II ), was hired for the purposes of the association. One of the early employees of the Berliner Stadtmission was the pastor and writer Ernst Evers (* 1844; † 1921), who lived in the capital Berlin from 1888 and ran the former publishing bookstore of the Stadtmission and several of its magazines.

In many German cities, city missions with the task of the " inner mission ", which goes back to Johann Hinrich Wichern , were founded during this time . The alienation of the people of Berlin from faith and the church had advanced well in the 1870s. The Berlin city mission initially concentrated on Sunday schools in order to reach the parents through the children. Due to the heavy immigration, however, the social conditions in the imperial capital deteriorated. The masses lived miserably in huge tenements ; there were as yet no state social institutions. The work areas of the Berlin City Mission soon became more diverse. In addition to Sunday schools, there were men's and women's clubs, visiting services for families, sick people and prisoners, poor relief, assistance to offenders and asylums .

Early 20th century

"Gypsy mission" of the Berlin city mission with the biblical saying described by Frieda Zeller-Plinzner: "The heathen will walk in its light" (1913)

The Berliner Stadtmission founded homes in the outskirts of Berlin ( Telz , Gussow , Bestensee ), where they made trips with often lonely workers. Since its early days, the Berlin City Mission has been close to the situation of the people and combines the aspects of mission and diakonia without demanding access to the Christian faith from the people it strives for. In the 19th century, every visitor to the “ Schrippenkirche ” was given two rolls to eat before going to church on Sundays . This initiative was the forerunner of today's cold aid . Wilhelm Philipps (theologian) headed the Berlin city mission from 1917 . He already saw the service in the Berlin City Mission as a service to the Protestant Church. Even in the last year of his life, 1932/33, Philipps worked tirelessly for the founding of city mission congregations, called "mission stations" in his time, in the areas of the city of Berlin that were particularly affected by settlement activity. From 1911 the city mission also ran the "Gypsy Mission", whose most prominent representative was Frieda Zeller-Plinzner . During the Weimar Republic , the later martyr Paul Schneider worked here from November 1, 1923 to September 15, 1924 under the guidance of the pastor and mission inspector Erich Schnepel , mainly in the east of Berlin, in order to carry out the practical work of a Christian- to get to know socially committed work of faith.

During and after the Second World War

Among the pastors of the Confessing Church , City Mission Director Walter Thieme (* 18 November 1878; † April 27, 1945) and Hans Dannebaum , Mission inspector, and City Mission Director (from 1945 until 1947), the town grew mission until the beginning of World War II to a size that far exceeds today's. In Kreuzberg there was a city mission center "Am Johannistische", under the roof of which, in addition to a meeting room and a bookshop, there was also an own publishing house. This city mission center was completely destroyed by the bombing on January 29, 1944. After the end of the war, the city mission leased the former Protestant garrison church on Gardepionierplatz in the Kreuzberg district from the Berlin tax office for real estate , which after the renaming of the square on July 31, 1947, was called the Church on Südstern and was used by it until 1970.

In 1947 the “Paulinum” preacher's school was founded. Pastor Erich Schnepel (* 1893; † 1986), who had been Mission Inspector for East Berlin since 1919 and later also Deputy Chairman of the Berlin City Mission, stayed from his old home in Hesse after his release from American captivity in autumn 1945, especially from his pastoral position in the parish of Großalmerode , close contacts to his former Berlin sphere of activity before the Second World War and published them in "Letters from the East of Berlin and from Grossalmerode: From the wrestling of the community of Jesus Christ in the present" and in "A life in the 20th century ".

After the wall was built

During the time of the division of the city, the city mission in East Berlin and the city mission in West Berlin continued to develop . The office of the East Berlin City Mission was located in Treptower Isingstrasse, the office of the West Berlin City Mission in Neukölln Lenaustrasse. Heinrich Giesen was the director from 1961 to 1972 . There were lively connections between the pastors of the parishes in terms of work and faith. After reunification, a joint board was formed, which included the former director (1970–1981) of the Paulinum theological training center in Berlin, Pastor Anselm Tietsch (* February 25, 1916, † September 21, 2015) until 1995. From 1963 Tietsch worked on a voluntary basis on the board of directors of the Berlin City Mission in East Berlin and since 1967 he has been chairman. Max König (born March 26, 1900), the then head of the city mission in East Berlin, had won him over to work.

After the fall of the wall

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the two parts, which had been separate for 28 years, merged and the Berlin City Mission faced the new challenges of a new Berlin. Slowly but steadily, the number of facilities, full-time and voluntary employees rose. City mission director from 1989 was Pastor Hans-Georg Filker. He was followed on April 1, 2015 by Pastor Joachim Lenz.

today

In addition to the church services in its 19 congregations (e.g. the Junge Kirche Berlin founded in 1999 by Alexander Garth ) and missionary projects, the Berlin City Mission is known for its church services in unusual locations, B. she regularly celebrates ship services during the summer months. At the end of 2005, the Berlin City Mission established a foundation with the aim of supporting the work of the City Mission. Since then, the city mission has been looking for donors as well as donors who want to invest their money with a certain eternal value for a good cause. The Berlin City Mission is involved in the world working group of city missions and maintains close contact with other German city missions and city missions in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. In 2007 the Berlin City Mission celebrated its 130th birthday.

Also in 2007, the city mission acquired the Zingsthof , a recreation and retirement home in the Zingst seaside spa on the Baltic Sea . In the summer of 2015, the city mission started the Refugio project, a residential project for the integration of refugees, which is housed in a six-story house in Berlin-Neukölln .

Center at the main train station (center Lehrter Straße)

In 2002, the Berlin City Mission received a built-up area in Lehrter Strasse at Berlin Central Station from the Berlin district of Mitte for use and sale. The project Zentrum am Hauptbahnhof (Zentrum Lehrter Strasse) of the Berlin City Mission started.

The 20,000 m² site is located between Fritz-Schloß-Park and the main train station. In the center at the main train station (Zentrum Lehrter Straße) the traditional city mission work areas mission , diakonia and encounter are intertwined.

Periodicals

  • Panorama (since 1992)
  • Newsletter center at the main train station (center Lehrter Strasse)
  • Yes - being a Christian today (1971-2006)

literature

  • God loves this city. 100 years of the Berlin City Mission 1877–1977 . Berlin City Mission 1977; DNB 800658426
  • Martin Greschat : The emergence of the Berlin city mission . In: Yearbook for Berlin-Brandenburg Church History 50 (1977), p. 45 ff.
  • Martin Greschat: The Berlin City Mission . In: Kasper Elm , Hans-Dietrich Loock (ed.): Pastoral care and Diakonie in Berlin. Contributions to the relationship between church and city in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Publ. D. Hist. Komm. Zu Berlin, 74), Berlin 1990, pp. 451 ff. Also in: Martin Greschat: Protestanten in der Zeit. Church and society in Germany from the German Empire to the present . Edited by Jochen-Christoph Kaiser. Kohlhammer: Stuttgart / Berlin / Cologne 1994; ISBN 3-17-013182-6 ; Pp. 18-35.
  • Hans-Georg Filker (Ed.): Please, come to the point: Heinrich Giesen and the Berlin City Mission . Sowing, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1992; ISBN 3-7615-4672-6 .
  • John CG Röhl : Wilhelm II. The emperor's youth . Beck, Munich 1993; ISBN 3-406-37668-1 ; P. 717 ff.
  • Martin Greschat: The Berlin City Mission and its development under the direction of Adolf Stoecker . In: Theodor Strohm , Jörg Thierfelder : Diakonie im Deutschen Kaiserreich (1871-1918). Recent contributions from research on the history of diakonia . Heidelberger Verlags-Anstalt, Heidelberg 1995; ISBN 3-89426-075-0 ; Pp. 229-247.

Web links

Commons : Berliner Stadtmission  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ New Berlin City Mission Director Lenz introduced ( memento of March 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), ekbo.de, notification of March 8, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b https://www.berliner-stadtmission.de/fileadmin/BSM/downloads/Pressemitteilungen/2019-10-02_Kuratorium_und_Theologischer_Vorstand_der_Berliner_Stadtmission_neu_gewaehlt_.pdf , berliner-stadtmission.de, press release from October 1, 2019.
  3. ^ AGES Working Group of European City Missions
  4. ↑ See keyword Stoecker Christian Adolf in: Evangelisches Volkslexikon for orientation in the social issues of the present , Bielefeld / Leipzig, 1900; Digitized collections of the university. Münster, pp. 740–743 (741 III), author: Pastor Friedrich Patzschke; Digitized collections of the Münster University Library
  5. ↑ God loves this city. 100 years of the Berlin City Mission. 1877-1977 . Ed .: Berliner Stadtmission, p. 62ff .: data and events. Editing of the anniversary publication: Siegfried Dehmel
  6. ^ German biographical encyclopedia (DBE). 2nd, revised and expanded edition, Ed. Rudolf Vierhaus, Volume 3, Einstein-Görner, Munich 2006, keyword: Evers, Ernst (Eduard), p. 183; ISBN 3-598-23186-5
  7. ↑ See keyword Stadtmission in: Evangelisches Volkslexikon for orientation in the social issues of the present . Bielefeld / Leipzig, 1900; Digitized collections of the University Library Münster, pp. 720–722
  8. ↑ http://www.kaeltehilfe.berliner-stadtmission.de/ ( Memento from November 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ Obituary with portrait photo in: Berlin Church Calendar 1934 . Verlag Agentur des Rauen Haus, Hamburg, p. 183
  10. ↑ Schnepel, E .: A Life in the 20th Century, Part 1 1900–1930; R. Brockhaus Verlag, Wuppertal (3rd edition 1966), p. 95
  11. ^ Keim, K. / Reschke, O. / Wehner, G. Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945. Vol. 8; 2., erg. U. edit 2012 edition, “trafo” publishing group, Berlin (2012) p. 56f. Keyword: Thieme, Walther; ISBN 978-3-89626-908-9
  12. ↑ Hans Dannenbaum: Becoming and growing and growing a mission church. Experience and factual report from work in the service of the Berlin City Mission 1926–1947 . Schriftenmissions-Verlag, Gladbeck 1950, p. 185
  13. ↑ 75 years of the Berlin City Mission - 1877 March 9, 1952 - Author: Dr. Max Dietrich (City Mission Inspector), self-published (1952), p. 7
  14. ↑ 75 years of the Berlin City Mission - 1877 March 9, 1952 - Author: Dr. Max Dietrich (City Mission Inspector), self-published (1952), p. 82f.
  15. ^ Schnepel, E .: "Letters from East Berlin and from Grossalmerode". Verlag "Junge Gemeinde" Stuttgart (1950)
  16. ↑ Schnepel, E .: A Life in the 20th Century., Bde. 1 u. 2, R. Brockhaus Verlag, Wuppertal (1965, 1966).
  17. ↑ Tietsch, Anselm: We can't stop doing it. Experiences from six decades. (Approval for printing by the author Tietsch on December 16, 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the Paulinum Theological Seminary), p. 128
  18. ↑ Tietsch, Anselm: We can't leave it , p. 128, digitized, p. 132
  19. ↑ Kirchentagspastor becomes the new Berlin City Mission Director. June 27, 2014, accessed June 20, 2018 .
  20. ^ Official website of the Refugio Berlin