Christ Church (Hamburg-Hamm)
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The Christ Church in Hamburg-Hamm is a Protestant Methodist church building from the late 1950s that is a listed building.
history
The Christ Church was built from 1957 to 1958 together with the neighboring Ludwig-Nippert-Heim as part of a residential complex of the Neue Heimat subsidiary Neues Heim . It replaced the church at Brekelbaumspark that was destroyed in World War II. The inauguration took place on the 2nd Advent in 1958. The architect was Helmut Lubowski , owner of the Methodist Church at the time , represented by the superintendent Walter Zeuner, Bremen, who was the first parish pastor to take up his service in the Christ Church for the inauguration. Today the church building is owned by the United Methodist Church (UMC). The Christ Church is the largest church building of the UMC in Hamburg, the second largest is the Eben-Ezer Church (Hamburg-Hoheluft-Ost) .
From June 24th to 30th, 1968, the unification conference of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical Community of the Methodist Church in Northwest Germany took place in the Eilbeker Immanuelkirche and the Christ Church in Hamburg-Hamm. As a rule, the superintendents of the Hamburg district, which roughly includes Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, are introduced to their office in solemn services in the Christ Church.
In 2004 the Alfred Führer organ was moved from the neighboring Kapernaum Church in Horn to the Christ Church. The day of inauguration was the 2nd Advent 2004. The two-manual instrument (24 stops) replaced an Ebner organ built in 1967, which initially stood in the Eilbeker Immanuelkirche and was transferred to the Christ Church when the two congregations were merged.
In 2007 the cultural authority included the Christ Church in the exhibition Architecture of Tomorrow at the Free Academy of the Arts. A catalog has been published about this exhibition.
Prehistory of the Christ Church HH-Hamm
The Christ Church is not the first church building in the parish, the establishment of which is considered to be the acceptance of the first members into the Episcopal Methodist Church in Hamburg on February 16, 1852 by Carl-Heinrich Doering (1811-1897). It was initially based on a true wandering through Hamburg's inner city in numerous rental accommodations: ABC-Straße, Katharinenstraße, Helbings Speicher in St. Pauli, Johannisbollwerk, Teilfeld, Deichstraße, Jägerplatz, Königsstraße, Brunnenstraße. This wandering put a great strain on the community, but due to a lack of money, no church could be built at first.
The community owes its first own church to the initiative of preacher Carl Fischkorn, who bought a house at 10 Kleiner Kirchenweg (later house number 15), St. Georg, with his own funds. It was not until 1885 that the Methodist Episcopal Church made the decision to buy this building, which had long since become the center of Methodist work in Hamburg. A church for up to 300 people was built on the property next to the house and was consecrated on February 28, 1886.
The work had developed so well since 1878 that in 1886 the deaconesses received their own nurses' home at Grindelberg 15a (today: Diakoniewerk Bethanien Hamburg ) and the first daughter congregation was founded in Eppendorf in 1897 and the second in Barmbek in 1910.
On December 1, 1922, the community bought a house with 24 apartments and two shops in what was then Mittelstrasse (today Carl-Petersen-Strasse). First, a new church was to be built in the garden of the building to replace the church on Kirchenweg, which had become too small and needed renovation. In addition, the social conditions in St. Georg put such a strain on the community work that the board of directors declared that it was no longer able to bear the responsibility “to let our young people come there”. However, the inflation caused by the World War ruined this project, so that initially only the church in Kirchenweg could be renovated.
On June 2, 1926, the community bought a piece of land at Brekelbaums Park 19 in Borgfelde and immediately built a new church, which was consecrated on February 13, 1927. In the same year, the third daughter community, the Wilhelmsburg community, was separated and given its own accommodation.
At the end of July 1943, the church at Brekelbaums Park was destroyed in the hail of bombs from "Operation Gomorrah". The community was initially completely dispersed and did not gather again until June 6, 1948, as a guest in the house of the YMCA on the Alster. In February 1950 she was accepted into her daughter community of Barmbek, whose hall, which was also destroyed, was replaced by a reconstruction on November 7, 1948.
With the admission of the congregation in Barmbek, however, the question was connected whether the core congregation of the Methodists in Hamburg, originally located in St. Georg and later in Borgfelde, should be dissolved or whether a new home should be found for this congregation. Superintendent Emil Schulz commented at the time: With the merger of the two parishes, “not only would a traditional parish have gone down without a sound, but Methodism in Hamburg would also have given up an important position in the exercise of its ministry in the flourishing city of Hamburg. To take responsibility for this before history would be an impossible undertaking. ”From 1951, services for this congregation were held again - in a school auditorium in Hasselbrook. On December 7, 1958, the Christ Church on Carl-Petersen-Strasse was inaugurated - as a “supra-regional center for the Methodist Church in the greater Hamburg area” (Karl-Heinz Voigt).
Building description
Together with two adjoining apartments, the church forms a building complex, which is a listed building as a whole. The sacred space is about two meters above street level; The community rooms are in the basement. A lift has been connecting the two floors since 2003. The 22 m high tower is striking.
The Christ Church received special attention because of the courageous use of electronic components for the time. Instead of a pipe organ there was an electronic organ, and instead of a bell ringing twelve loudspeakers were installed in the tower; the sound of the bells was produced by a tape recorder. However, these technical innovations have not proved their worth, and therefore a pipe organ sounds instead of an electronic organ and the electronic bell has been decommissioned.
Originally a daycare center was located in the basement in addition to the two community halls, but this was closed in the 1970s.
In the years 2009/2010 a fundamental renovation and expansion of the Christ Church took place. The building was supplemented by a glass rotunda as a new main entrance (architect: Johannes Lupp). The gallery was converted into a multi-purpose room; a new, smaller gallery was added. In addition, the Christ Church received new building and media technology and now largely complies with the new environmental and safety requirements.
Publications
- New home monthly issue 11/1956
- Bauwelt 37/1956
- Peter Krieger. Economic miracle reconstruction competition. Architecture and urban development in Hamburg in the 1950s. University of Hamburg: Dissertation 1999
- Tomorrow's architecture. Hamburg's post-war churches. Published by the Hamburg Monument Protection Office. Hamburg: Dölling & Galitz 2007
- Karl Heinz Voigt : The wrestling of the Methodists in the city of Hamburg. The difficult beginnings of community building in Germany's second largest city and steps towards your own chapels and churches. Lecture on the occasion of the celebration of "50 years of Christ Church Hamburg-Hamm" on December 6, 2008
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hamburg-Mitte Monument List, No. 14216 (PDF; 2.0 MB)
Coordinates: 53 ° 33 '30.95 " N , 10 ° 2' 47.72" E