Evangelical Reformed Church (Bremen-Blumenthal)
The Evangelical Reformed Church in Bremen-Blumenthal is the church of the Evangelical Reformed Congregation in the district, which has belonged to the Bremen Evangelical Church (BEK) since June 8, 1959 . Since 1978 it has been an individual monument on the list of monuments of the state of Bremen .
history
The church, consecrated in 1879, is the oldest Protestant church in the Blumenthal district. Some of its furnishings go back to the 16th century .
The first small parish church with a belfry was probably built on site after the Reformation and was occupied by a Lutheran preacher. From 1568 to 1580, Christoph Pezel enforced the Reformed Confession in Bremen, which was also valid for Blumenthal, which at that time did not yet belong to Bremen. The Renaissance pulpit was installed in 1584 and remained in use until the church was expanded in 1662. In 1604 the "old tower" replaced the previous bell cage.
In 1732 the church, which had already been enlarged twice, was torn down due to the growing number of inhabitants and replaced by a larger building. The tower of the old church ( Low German Ole Kark ) was preserved. In 1741 the Blumenthal office of Bremen passed to the predominantly Lutheran Electorate of Hanover , which was ruled in personal union with England. The community counted with Lehe , Ringstedt , Holßel and Neuenkirchen to the "five Reformed on the Lower Weser".
In the years 1877–1879, today's church and rectory (the current “old parish hall”) were built because Blumenthal grew rapidly through industrialization. For the young architect Johannes Vollmer , who was later responsible for the Berlin Friedrichstrasse train station, among other things , it was the first independently designed building and the first sacred building in Vollmer's work as a church architect. His colleague Heinrich Müller took over the construction management. Vollmer chose the neo-Gothic style that prevailed in Protestant church construction at the time. The Bremen merchant and shipowner Christian Heinrich Wätjen wanted to enlarge his nearby park and estate to include the rectory and other church land. In return, he offered the parish to finance the new building of the church with 200,000 gold marks. The church council had resisted the offer for two years until a group of parishioners urged it to accept it. The previous church was demolished soon after the new building was completed, but the “old tower” was retained at the request of the founder, Wätjen. It is now the oldest preserved church building in Blumenthal and also an individual monument on the list of monuments of the state of Bremen (since 1973).
Shortly after the completion of the church , the parish was accepted into the newly founded Evangelical Reformed Church of the Province of Hanover (the Blumenthal community belonged to this province at that time). This association of municipalities gave itself a common synodal order in 1882 and received a church authority with a collegial constitution (the consistory) by order of the King of Prussia in Aurich. In 1939 the place Blumenthal was incorporated into Bremen. It was not until the end of the 1950s, shortly after the reformed regional church moved from Aurich to Leer, that the parish was reorganized into the Bremen Evangelical Church.
Building
With the four-bay nave , the transept and the apse, the church forms the traditional cross-shape of the old church. In the first three bays it has almost a single nave, apart from narrow side aisles. In the fourth yoke, the space expands through chapel-like additions to the crossing. They make the central area of the nave and transept three-aisled and form a spacious square in which the congregation can gather near the pulpit and at the sacrament table. There is also plenty of space in the extended transept for the galleries without visually restricting the space. The church originally offered 1,100 seats; their number was later reduced by moving the benches apart.
With a height of 61.4 m including the 4 m high point (cross and ball), the tower is the fifth highest church tower in Bremen. Only the towers of the four churches in the old town are higher. The clock is at a height of about 31 m. The entire length is about 49.5 m and the width about 26 m. The main axis of the church deviates from the otherwise common east-west axis ( easting ) by a relatively large angle of 45 ° . The choir room therefore faces north-east.
The interior has white walls and vaults from the red brickwork of the masonry pillars, ribs, ledges and parapets. In the east there was initially a stone table with an altarpiece , more in keeping with the Lutheran tradition , then for several decades an unadorned stone table for the Lord's Supper (not called an " altar " according to the Reformed tradition ). After consultation with the state monument conservator, that table was removed from the church in spring 2015 as part of a disaster control exercise by the THW . This was followed by an art competition in cooperation with the Hochschule für Künste (HfK) in Bremen in order to have a new communion table designed that better corresponds to the reality of life in the community. Since June 2016 the wooden communion table “A Tavola” (“to table!”) By the artist Kirsti Masnick from the HfK has been in the choir room. The original idea of making the table from church pews that were no longer needed prevented the veto of the state monument conservator Georg Skalecki , who wanted to protect the pews that were part of the original furnishings of the church.
A large wooden cross without a body rises up behind the table as a symbol . When it was redesigned after 1960, it was placed in the room that was then painted in white and stood out clearly from the background. Since the renovation of the church, with which the red brick elements were made visible again, it has not been adapted to the architecture.
The symbols in the windows are the monogram of Christ JHS , a crown of thorns , a cup of communion, ears of corn, a nativity scene, a ship with a cross mast and a grapevine. Three crosses represent the death of Christ on Golgotha . Cross and serpent mean victory over sin . A cross on the globe symbolizes the power of faith to win. The crib symbolizes the angels' message to the shepherds. The oil lamp calls for vigilance. There is also a star and the dove as symbols of baptism and the Holy Spirit . The side windows of the choir have been bearing the names of the fallen soldiers and bomb victims of the Second World War since 1949.
The height of the original pulpit on the south side is matched to the galleries so that the participants sitting there can understand the sermon and see the pastor . This pulpit is now rarely in use.
The old pulpit from 1585 from one of the predecessor churches stands opposite the original pulpit on the north side. The first Reformed pastor von Blumenthal preached from here. It was probably donated by the Senate of Bremen as patron because the community could not afford an artistically carved pulpit. This oldest still preserved pulpit of all Bremen churches was only in use in its original place for 70 years, then the old church was enlarged. The pulpit was replaced by a new one and ended up in the storage room. As a result, remnants of their old paintwork have been preserved; they enabled the restorer to restore the original colors after 1980. The pulpit is decorated in the design language of the early Renaissance. On the other hand, the pulpit is designed in the spirit of Reformed teaching and the biblical prohibition of images, which means that it has an image program that is rare in pulpits. The four fields of the pulpit are structured by arches and Corinthian columns, which symbolize a temple in the imagery of the Renaissance. Wall blocks indicate the heavenly Jerusalem, cut gemstones in the arches the glory of God.
The eschatological drama from the Revelation of John is described in further symbols . It is about the wrath of God against apostate people and the salvation for the faithful church with whom Christ wants to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Ornamental ribbons on the base and head strips embody the heavenly garden with flowers. Fruits stand for good works and bay leaves for a clear conscience.
The organ of the church was built in 1951 by Alfred Führer from Wilhelmshaven . The instrument has 35 sounding registers in Hauptwerk , Rückpositiv and Pedal .
In the tower hall there is a bust of the shipowner Christian Heinrich Wätjen, who financed the building of the church.
In the portal, two stone tablets name the fallen soldiers of the First World War 1914–18, while those of the Second World War 1939–45 are in the side choir windows.
Outdoor facilities
To the south-east of the church is the former rectory, the current “old parish hall”, which u. a. houses the office of the pastor as well as a parish office, in which several Blumenthal parishes are administered. Like the church, it was built in the neo-Gothic style. The new parish hall with two halls is attached to it.
The church is on the edge of a cemetery (one of the currently 19 Protestant cemeteries in Bremen). From the beginning of 2014 to the beginning of 2016, the parish carried out a model project for sustainable cemetery design and use in cooperation with an environmental consultancy and with financial support from the Senator for Environment, Building and Transport . A natural design, an improvement in biodiversity and an inventory of the graves of historically significant people were part of this project. The project received attention in regional media and also in a national specialist publication on cemetery culture. To mark the 30th anniversary of the Federal Ministry for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BMUB) , a major event took place in 2016 at which the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) presented this project to a broad public at a stand on the subject of "Sustainable Cemetery". The concept fit in with the ecological orientation of the community, which, due to its own procurement regulations, relies exclusively on products from organic farming, from fair trade, on seasonal products or on products with eco-seals. During this time, the pastor of the community, Ulrich Klein, was also appointed environmental officer of the Bremen Evangelical Church (BEK).
The cemetery is not only an ecosystem, but also a place of burial culture and the resting place of important personalities. There are old tombstones on the outside wall of the church, in the cemetery and by the old tower. The grave site of Ferdinand Ullrich (1884–1915), a commercial director of the Bremen wool combing , with the shape of a mourners made of cast metal is particularly impressive southeast of the church . Few meters away from that grave site is the grave of the writer and educational reformer Tami Oelfken which the church building in their 1940 published and registered with the Nazis banned novel Tine (1947 re-released as Maddo Clüver ) mentioned in detail. There is also a small urn mausoleum in the middle of the site and the gravestone of Captain Eduard Dallmann on the edge of the cemetery .
At the end of the path in the extension of the north exit, an oak was planted when the new church was built. When she died in 2004, the sculptor Nicola Dormagen made a work of art out of her. On three transparent boards the tree tells what it saw, heard and felt around it in its 125 years of life.
The old tower, built in 1604 in the western corner of the cemetery, contains a memorial designed by Jan Noltenius for those who died in Blumenthal during the two world wars. The wooden relief by the sculptor Walter Wadephul depicts a dead soldier for whom a woman is mourning. An angel points comfortably upwards with an outstretched arm. Two clappers inside the tower were among the bells that once called the community together. On the outside on the east side there are three old stone tablets. One honors the Mayor of Bremen, Johann (VII) Esich the Younger, Heinrich Zobel , Daniel von Büren III, who ruled the tower until 1604 . and Heinrich Houcken by their coat of arms. On the second, in 1732, the community thanks councilors Werner Köhne and Henrich Meier with a Latin inscription for donations for the new building of the church. The third panel shows the coats of arms of these two families in baroque splendor.
The cemetery area ends behind that “old tower”. It is lined by an urban path that leads between the cemetery and the railway tracks towards the castle wall . This path was named "Oltmann-Duit-Weg" by the Blumenthal Advisory Board and the other responsible municipal bodies on the basis of an initiative from the parish in 2018. The following explanation can be read under the street sign: "Oltmann Hermann Duit (1893–1956), with his life and administration as a pastor in Blumenthal, contradicted the Nazi ideology". From 1931 Duit was pastor in the Ev.-ref. Parish of Blumenthal. On November 5, 2018, the path was inaugurated in the presence of descendants of the resister honored in this way.
A historical find, probably from a sandstone frieze of the old church, is placed in the courtyard of the new parish hall. Abraham's sacrifice ( Gen 22: 1–19 EU ) is depicted with the Latin words from his calling history: DEUS IMPUTAT EUM AD IUSTITIAM ( God counted him (his faith) for righteousness ).
reachability
The Evangelical Reformed Church can be reached with the RS 1 line of the Regional S-Bahn Bremen / Lower Saxony (Bremen-Blumenthal station) and with the bus lines 90 to 92 and 94 to 97 of the Bremer Straßenbahn AG (Blumenthal station). It is also located directly on the A270 motorway near exit 3 (Bremen-Blumenthal).
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.kirchenrecht-bremen.de/document/13747#
- ^ Monument database of the LfD
- ^ Monument database of the LfD
- ↑ Height determined by indirect height measurements (more precise method) on October 24, 2009 by J. Möhring.
- ↑ Determination of the total length and width and the angular deviation of the main church axis to the east-west axis via satellite image.
literature
- Rolf Gramatzki: Bremen pulpits from the Renaissance and Baroque periods . Hauschild Verlag, Bremen 2001, ISBN 978-3-89757-071-9
- Lüder Halenbeck: Blumenthal and Schönebeck . Bremen 1878.
- Dieter Krampf: Johannes Vollmer (1845–1920). An architect of German Protestant church building in the 19th and 20th centuries . Dissertation. Bonn 1990.
- Alfred Tietjen: Blumenthal - my home . 1937
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 10 ′ 57 ″ N , 8 ° 35 ′ 0 ″ E