German Evangelical Congregation Rotterdam
The German Evangelical Congregation Rotterdam is one of the three German Evangelical Churches Abroad in the Netherlands.
The need to form an own Protestant parish in the German language in Rotterdam arose in the middle of the 19th century from the pastoral care of German sailors, Rhine boatmen, seasonal workers and traveling emigrants who embarked there for America. This group soon gathered Germans, merchants and German-speaking Dutch people who lived in Rotterdam. In December 1855 an association for German internal missions was founded. The German Evangelical Congregation was founded on February 26th, 1862. Its catchment area today includes the southern part of the province of Zuid-Holland and the provinces of Zeeland and Noord-Brabant .
Church building
Services took place in rented halls in the first few years. A resolution of the church council of November 13, 1867 to buy a building plot was only implemented under Pastor R. Greeven (1871–1875) with the purchase of a building site in the Zwarte Paardenstraat. After setting up a building commission and raising donations and loans, the building contractor van Wyk & Sonnefeldt began construction according to plans by the architect Jacob van Schaayck during the tenure of Pastor Theodor Umbeck (1875–1882). The foundation stone was laid on July 31, 1876, the inauguration was on Pentecost Sunday of the following year, May 20, 1877.
Numerous donations were collected for the furnishings, including the pulpit financed by Prince Hendrik of the Netherlands. In 1881 the company Gebr. Oberlinger in Windesheim was commissioned to build an organ, which was inaugurated on September 10, 1882. Pastor Ernst Wolff (1885–1898), who had also made a contribution to founding the German school and activating the seamen's mission in Rotterdam, made sure that church windows were purchased. In 1902, a replica of the “Blessing Christ” by Bertel Thorvaldsen , a new altar, altar chair and an altar balustrade were obtained from additional donations . The parishioner C. Breuning donated 1,912 a cast in the foundry Gebr. Van Bergen bell and an electrical signal bell, the Foreign Ministry and the Church Foreign Office took over in 1938 the bulk of the financing of a new organ, the organ manufacturer & GF Steinmeyer Co. in Oettingen and was inaugurated on March 26, 1939.
The church was severely damaged during World War II . During the German occupation of Rotterdam in 1941, it was planned to secure and expand it into a community center. Otto Bartning was called in to assess the construction status . However, the plans were not implemented. Even after the war, they were no longer realized, not least because of the cautious assessment by the EKD's external church office. Massive damage to the foundations ultimately made the renovation unprofitable, so the church council decided to demolish it. The last service took place on July 22, 1973. Since 1978, church services and all other community events have been held in the community center on 's-Gravendijkwal, a converted residential building.
literature
- The festival does not take place. 100 years after the foundation stone was laid for the German Evangelical Church in Rotterdam , Rotterdam 1976
- 150 Years of the German Evangelical Congregation Rotterdam , Ed. Church Council of the German Evangelical Congregation Rotterdam, Rotterdam 2012