Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. George (Samara)
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. George in Samara is a church building in the Russian city of Samara with adjacent buildings on Kuibyshev Street .
Church building
St. George's Church was originally built as a Roman Catholic church. The Catholic Russian merchant ENAnnaev donated the money for this church building. When the church was almost finished in 1863, an uprising took place in Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. As a result of this uprising, everything “Polish” was persecuted, the church was expropriated and given to the Lutheran community. The Catholic Church was then equated with "Polish", just as the Lutherans were identified with "German".
On September 26, 1865, the division preacher Peter August Pundani from Kazan , who visited Samara once a year to baptize and to celebrate the Lord's Supper with the congregation, consecrated the church together with Pastor Friedrich Meyer from Simbirsk . The church was finished thanks to donations from the residents of Samara and the support of the Lutheran relief funds.
Although the community in Samara now had its own church, initially it still did not have a pastor. As before, it was only visited from time to time by the preachers Pundani and Kern . Only in July 1868 did the congregation get its first pastor: Eduard Johansen , born in Estonia, moved to Samara with his family after 8 years of service in Omsk (Siberia). His knowledge of the Baltic languages encouraged him to worship in neighboring Baltic villages.
history
Beginnings
In the 1850s, many German business people came to Samara. The majority of them were of the Lutheran faith. One of the German Lutherans, Konstantin Grot, even became governor of the area. It was also he who founded and led the first church. As early as 1865 the congregation consisted of 112 members and belonged to the large “Moscow Circle”, one of the five Lutheran consistorial circles in Russia.
Church life
In 1878 the community had 300 members and, according to official state information, the proportion of Germans in the city area was 3.5%. For many years the Evangelical Lutheran. Church is the center of the spiritual and social life of the Germans in the entire area of Samara. There was a society for the "support of education", which cultivated the language and culture of the Lutherans and founded its own schools. The church had a private school and a kindergarten for German children. The teachers and students were supported by donations.
In 1875 there was a big fire in Samara, which also affected St. George's Church. In the course of the reconstruction, two outbuildings were added to the church; the “pastorate”, the pastor's apartment and the parish hall.
Time of repression and prohibition
Until 1924 the community in Samara could work largely unhindered. But from this point on, the congregation was exposed to ever stronger reprisals and on January 5, 1930, the new city administration decided to finally close the church - “at the request of the working people”, as it was called. Since then the Church has been deprived of its purpose. Initially, the “Covenant of the Wicked” gathered here, later the church was used as a warehouse. The fate of the Lutheran Church in Samara thus resembled the fate of other places of worship in Russia. Many community members were later deported - as Germans - to Siberia, Kazakhstan or Central Asia. Church life could no longer take place in public.
New beginning
On August 19, 1991, the "Evangelical Lutheran Congregation" was officially (re) registered with the authorities in Samara. Thanks to the efforts of the congregation, the Russian Germans and the urban and regional public, the parish got back the whole complex "for free use" and administration on September 6, 1991 according to the resolution of the city administration No. 651. There has been an organ since June 2003. Besides the organ in the Philharmonic, it is the only one in Samara. By a decree of the Russian President Putin 2010, the property and the church became the property of the parish again.
literature
- Annegret Mainzer: The Evangelical Lutheran St. Georg Church in Samara - center of German and Protestant culture. In: People on the way. 51. Vol. 3, 2000, ISSN 0042-8337 , pp. 10-11.
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 11 ′ 23.5 " N , 50 ° 5 ′ 27.6" E