Church of the Redeemer (Dresden)
The Erlöserkirche was the church of the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of Bohemian Exiles in Dresden . It was located on Paul-Gerhardt-Strasse / Wittenberger Strasse in the Striesen district of Dresden and was built in the neo-Gothic style by Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel from 1878 to 1880 . The church was destroyed in the air raids on Dresden in 1945 . Although the ruins were prepared for open-air church services, they were demolished in 1961/62 on the instructions of the GDR authorities. Today your space is partly a green area, partly there are residential houses on the property. Parts of the interior and the sculptural jewelry could be saved from demolition and are still there today.
prehistory
The Bohemian exiles living in Striesen, but also the Strieseners themselves, who until then belonged to the Kreuzkirche , campaigned for the construction of their own church . The Evangelical Lutheran religious community of exiles was originally based in Prague , but had to settle in Saxony during the Thirty Years' War . Since the demolition of the Johanniskirche in 1861, the Bohemian exiles , of whom about 3000 lived in Dresden, no longer had their own church.
After a limited competition, the architect Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel was commissioned to work on the project in 1878, although the architects Giese & Weidner had won the first prize. The decisive factor was the inexpensive offer and the fact that the required number of seats was exceeded (840 seats instead of 800 required seats).
description
The architect designed a three-aisled hall church with an almost square floor plan with a polygonal choir and built-in galleries in the side aisles. It was kept in early Gothic forms, which Möckel, however , had kept more coarse than the Johanneskirche, which was built earlier . The roof design was loosened up with the help of staggered and combined hip and gable roofs. Although this did not correspond to the floor plan, it "contributed to a varied building design." Small dormers, wrought-iron decorative shapes in the roof area and a portal gable relief "Lamb with the victory flag" also contributed. In front of the wide hall, Möckel placed a massive, 60-meter-high tower in which there was a vestibule.
The windows and portals were designed in the high Gothic style. The interior showed pillars and groin vaults. At the top of the tower a bell storey opened in a pointed arch position with a walkway could be seen. On top of it rested a tall spire clad in slate, which had triangular gables on all sides. Four sandstone figures representing the four evangelists were created for the facade.
The more modest decoration corresponded to the extremely low funds that the parish could raise: The construction costs were 168,000 marks in the end, and thus only about 30% of the construction costs of the Johanneskirche, which only had 100 seats more .
The organ with 24 registers was the work of the organ building company Schubert in Freiberg. The three bells were cast by the J. G. Große bell foundry .
History until the end of the Second World War
On October 9, 1878, the day the foundation stone was laid, construction began on the Erlöserkirche on the corner of Wittenberger and Paul-Gerhardt-Strasse, which was consecrated on June 20, 1880. It was named after the Prague "mother church" of the exiles. This consecration was a special feast day for the then still independent parish of Striesen, because on the one hand it was an exile church , but it was clear from the start that it was the Protestant Christians of the village of Striesen, who had not had their own church and were parished to the Kreuzkirche in Dresden , will be equally available.
As a result, the church was initially used jointly by the evangelical congregation and the Bohemian exile congregation, with both pastors alternately holding the sermons until both congregations were united.
In 1897 and 1909 the interior was redesigned and renewed. The original bronze bells were lost in the First World War and had to be replaced in 1920 by a steel bell. In 1933 new bronze bells could be purchased to replace the temporary steel bells.
In 1945 the church was destroyed, but the ruins were still used for church services.
Post World War II story
On December 1, 1959, the city building authority issued the claim notice for four church properties in accordance with Section 14 of the construction law of September 6, 1950 to the Andreas-Erlöser-Gemeinde for housing construction, which should begin as early as 1960. The ruins of the Erlöserkirche were located on one of the four claimed properties, the destroyed parish hall on a second and the destroyed rectory on a third.
Superintendent Gerhart Wendelin protested vigorously that the church ruin was a “cultural monument of a special kind”, that the Church of the Redeemer was built by the descendants of the Lutherans who were persecuted in Prague and had to flee in 1639. It is thus a structural testimony to the community of Bohemian exiles, which is why Czech was still spoken within the community and the connection to Prague has been preserved to the present day. It would also be a “living testimony to German-Czech friendship”. For example, delegations from the Czechoslovakia were also present at the church services held in the ruins in the summer.
Nevertheless, the ruin was demolished in the winter of 1961/62. The houses were not built in 1960, but a few years later, but no memory is possible on site.
The valuable communion implements of the Bohemian exiles, which had been relocated to Dippoldiswalde as a precaution, were saved. Silver chalices, the damaged altar crucifix and the copper baptismal font have also been preserved. The Pirna coat of arms, some documents and the church registers from 1880 to 1942 have been preserved in a fireproof safe. All of these items have been in a foundation since the exile community was abolished on January 1, 2000. The smallest bronze bell was initially given to the Sacred Heart Church , which later passed it on to a Lusatian village church. Four statues of the apostles and a relief medallion with the Lamb of God were saved from the tower facade. First they were to receive the Reconciliation Church , they were finally installed at the Striesen cemetery chapel . A Luther relief from 1915, which has also been preserved, has been lost since it was cleared.
The community
In 1910 the exile community and the ev.-luth. Congregation united to the Redeemer Congregation, which now had over 40,000 members and which was therefore divided: A large part formed the congregation of the Church of Reconciliation. In addition to the Church of the Redeemer, the Erlöser parish also had two parsonages and a residential building on Wartburgstrasse 5, which is still preserved today. In 1912, a new parish hall for church events on a smaller scale was built in the immediate vicinity.
In February 1945 the church, parish house and rectory burned down completely. Of the 26,000 people in the community at that time, around 3,000 remained. From May 1945 the congregation was able to celebrate Protestant services in the little damaged Catholic Sacred Heart Church. The foundation walls and the tower stump of the church were preserved and served as a space for open-air services in the warm season. The area was used intensively for many occasions such as prayer, jubilee confirmations or community celebrations.
The Dresden Exulantengemeinde celebrated its 300th anniversary on Maundy Thursday, April 6, 1950. Contacts to the “mother church” of the exiles, the Prague Salvator Church, were established again in the 1950s and mutual visits took place under sometimes difficult conditions. However, the number of parishioners in the Exulantengemeinde decreased steadily, in 1994 only one name was on the list. Due to the old statutes, the Bohemian exiles were no longer able to act.
The St. Andrew's Church , located on Stephanienplatz, had the same fate as the Church of the Redeemer: About 2500 people remained from this community, the ruins of their church were also later demolished. On November 1, 1945, the two decimated congregations merged to form the Erlöser-Andreas-Gemeinde. On September 22, 1957, the newly built parish hall with church hall in Haydnstrasse 23 was consecrated, which received a bell from the old St. Andrew's Church. In the artistic and religious design of the new church hall in the parish hall and the restored cemetery chapel (crucifixes, windows), the collaboration with the sculptor Rolf Schulze, who had also designed the church seal of the Erlöser-Andreas parish in 1971: The sign of the Exulantengemeinde, the chalice on the open Bible, and underneath it the St. Andrew's cross can be found in it.
With the merger of the parishes Erlöser-, Andreas- and Trinitatiskirchgemeinde to "Johanneskirchgemeinde Dresden-Johannstadt-Striesen", which took place on January 1, 2000, the Bohemian Exulantengemeinde was also abolished.
Cantors and organists
- 1884–1912: Louis Fischer from the Striesen community
- 1890–1911: Friedrich Läßker from the Bohemian Community
- 1898–1907: A. Hottinger (auxiliary organist)
- 1907–1911: Ernst Schnorr von Carolsfeld (auxiliary organist)
- 1912–1914: Karl Richard Fuchs
- thereafter: A. Kubel, Reiche, Jost and Schanze ( vacancy representation )
- 1916–1945: Richard Schmidt (representation during military service by empires)
Web links
- Hansjörg Dehnert: The Church of the Redeemer . In: Landeshauptstadt Dresden (Ed.): Lost churches - Dresden's destroyed churches. Documentation since 1938. 3., alter. Edition Dresden 2018, pp. 34–37. ( Online , PDF; 6.4 MB)
- The Erlöserkirche on dresdner-stadtteile.de
literature
- Volker Helas: Architecture in Dresden 1800–1900. Verlag der Kunst Dresden GmbH, Dresden 1991, ISBN 3-364-00261-4 , p. 187.
- Matthias Lerm: Farewell to old Dresden - Loss of historical building substance after 1945 2nd slightly revised edition, Hinstorff Rostock, 2001, ISBN 3-356-00876-5 , pp. 221–223.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Karl-Heinz Barth : Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel . Parthas Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-932529-89-8 , p. 85.
- ↑ Helas, p. 187 (Erlöserkirche. Wittenberger Straße. 1878/1880 by Möckel)
- ^ Karl-Heinz Barth : Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel . Parthas Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-932529-89-8 , p. 85, footnote 19, p. 210.
- ↑ a b Dehnert, p. 36.
- ↑ a b dresdner-stadtteile.de
- ↑ Lerm, p. 221. (Church of the Redeemer)
- ↑ Lerm, p. 223
- ↑ Dehnert, pp. 35-36.
- ↑ Dehnert, p. 35.
- ↑ a b c Dehnert, pp. 36–37.
Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 3.7 ″ N , 13 ° 46 ′ 55 ″ E