Church of the Ascension
The Church of the Ascension in Munich is an Anglican parish . She is a member of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe .
history
In 1896 the Episcopal Church in Munich held services for the first time . In 1903 the Church of the Ascension was founded as a registered association in the offices of the Hamburg-American Steamship Line in Theatinerstraße . John Henry McCracken, who also led services in Oberammergau , was appointed as the first rector .
In 1910 the church took over a former school building on Salvatorplatz in the center of Munich. An English-language library was also set up there, where visitors could read books , newspapers and magazines . In 1913 the library already had 40,000 visitors. During the First World War , the church temporarily ceased its activities, because as a migration church it had almost only members from the United States, with whom Germany was now at war, and most of them had left the country.
The church resumed its activities between the two world wars, when a sufficient number of Americans again lived in Munich. However, on March 2, 1942, the building was closed by the Gestapo . The facility, documents, and 8,000 books of the John Henry McCracken Memorial Library were all burned. When the former rector John Haynes returned to Munich at the end of the war, the building on Salvatorplatz had been converted to house the Soviet mission in Munich. The church therefore initially used buildings belonging to the US Army .
In June 1955, the Church of the Ascension rented premises in Kaulbachstrasse in order to found the so-called “American Church Center” for the numerous US students in Munich. In the following year, Reverend G. W. Spellman was appointed Chaplain of the Church of the Ascension and Director of the American Church Center by the Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church. At the same time the congregation began to hold services in the Old Catholic Willibrord congregation on Blumenstrasse .
Since 1970 the church has held its services in the building of the Evangelical Lutheran. Emmauskirche in Munich-Harlaching . Due to the move from the city center to this outskirts, logistical and financial reasons led to the closure of the Church Center in Kaulbachstrasse. After the move, under Rev. Edward Riley (1969–76) and Rev. Henry H. Wilson (1976–92), the character of the congregation changed from an inner-city congregation consisting mainly of students and young people, to a more broadly oriented community, increasingly with families from the wider area.
In the 1980s, the community also became more financially stable and no longer required financial support for convocation. So she was able to give up her status as a mission and became independent. With the withdrawal of US troops from Germany at the end of the Cold War from 1992, further demographic changes came to the community. At the same time, Henry Wilson retired to Norway, and the congregation saw a number of changing priests and interim solutions, until in 1997 a new rector, Rev. Thomas J.-P. Pellaton came to Munich. Pellaton stayed until 2008; In 2009, Steven R. Smith was appointed principal.