Evangelical Congregation German Language in Jerusalem
The Evangelical Congregation of the German Language in Jerusalem is a German congregation abroad of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), whose parish extends to Israel , the West Bank and Jordan .
history
In 1841 Great Britain and Prussia established a joint diocese of Jerusalem , which was dissolved again in 1886. The German-speaking part of the dissolved diocese constituted itself independently as a German community. She first used the so-called "Crusader Chapel" on the first floor of the cloister of the medieval Benedictine monastery on a plot of land in Muristan that Prussia had acquired on July 16, 1871, as a German Protestant chapel . After almost twenty years of preliminary planning, the Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem was finally opened by the emperor on Reformation Day (October 31), 1898 Wilhelm II. And Empress Auguste Victoria were inaugurated as part of their Palestine trip and since then it has been available to the congregation as a place of worship.
1910 was south provost building grown and incorporated parts of the former Benedictine monastery standing there with. Some of these rooms are now used as community rooms.
The archaeological park “Through the Ages”, which opened in November 2012 and is located under the Church of the Redeemer, offers the opportunity to celebrate more than 2000 years of Jerusalem's history.
local community
It is constitutive for the community that the German language is used. The community is supported by Lutherans , Reformed , Uniate and other Evangelicals . It is made up of people who are temporarily staying in the country ( volunteers , students , teachers , diplomats ), those who live permanently in the country and are sometimes married to Arab or Jewish partners, as well as the numerous pilgrims , visitors and tourists . Formally, the community is organized in a similar way: anyone who wants to become a member of the community must join it.
In addition to Jerusalem, the congregation also celebrates services in Ein Bokek on the Dead Sea (Israel), Latrun (West Bank) and in Amman (Jordan). She attaches great importance to ecumenism . Every year at Pentecost , she organizes the Ecumenical Church Day in Jerusalem together with the Benedictines of the Dormition Abbey .
Governing body of the church is the church council . Its social committee supports numerous people who are in need for medical reasons from a social fund with up to 40,000 euros per year. Due to the political situation, it is primarily people in the Palestinian Territories who do not have health insurance or the like and thus easily get into financial distress due to illness. People who are trying to escape unemployment by starting a business in order to create a livelihood for their family can, after a careful review of each individual application by the parish council, with the required start-up capital, mostly in the form of a cheap loan, from a Middle East fund created for this purpose get supported.
There are close contacts to the Roman Catholic German-speaking community in Jerusalem, the predominantly Arabic-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land , which also celebrates its services in the Church of the Redeemer, and to the Lutheran World Federation , the sponsor of the Auguste Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives .
Pastors and provosts
There have been German pastors abroad in Jerusalem since 1852. During his visit to the inauguration of the Church of the Redeemer in 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm II awarded the Jerusalem pastor the title of “ Provost ”. Today he is also the representative of the EKD in Israel, the West Bank and Jordan.
List of pastors (since 1898: provosts) with their periods of service:
- 1852–1866 Friedrich Peter Valentiner
- 1866–1869 Carl Hoffmann, son of the Berlin cathedral preacher Wilhelm Hoffmann
- 1870–1876 Hermann Weser
- 1876–1884 Carl Reinicke
- 1885–1895 Carl Schlicht
- 1895-1903 Paul Hoppe
- 1903–1910 Wilhelm Bussmann
- 1910–1918 Friedrich Jeremias
- 1921 Gustaf Dalman (acting)
- 1921–1922 Albrecht Alt
- 1923–1930 Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg
- 1930–1938 Ernst Rhein
- 1938–1954 Johannes "Hans" Döring
- 1954–1960 Joachim Weigelt
- 1960–1965 Carl Malsch
- 1965–1971 Hansgeorg Köhler
- 1971–1979 Helmut Glatte
- 1979–1985 Jürgen Wehrmann
- 1985–1991 Johannes Friedrich
- 1991–2001 Karl-Heinz Ronecker
- 2001-2006 Martin Reyer
- 2006–2012 Uwe Gränke
- 2012 Dieter Vieweger (acting)
- 2012–2019 Wolfgang Schmidt
- 2019–2020 Rainer Stuhlmann (provisional)
- from August 1, 2020 - Joachim Lenz
literature
- Uwe Grabe: The Protestant Church of the Redeemer . Leaflet, undated
- Uwe Grabe: Our donation projects . Leaflet, 2009.
- Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg (ed.): Jerusalem - history of a community. With the collaboration of Ernst Rhein, Dr. Johannes Döring, Joachim Weigelt, Carl Malsch . Self-published in Kassel 1965.
- Jürgen Krüger: Evangelical Church of the Redeemer Jerusalem (= Schnell art guide No. 2310). Regensburg 1997, ISBN 3-7954-6074-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Our donation projects winter 2011/12 to summer 2012, project 1 - Diakonie , Evangelical German-language community in Jerusalem , donation projects flyer , accessed on October 31, 2018
- ↑ a b Social work / Diakonie , website Evangelical Congregation German Language in Jerusalem , accessed October 31, 2018
- ↑ Jens Peter Iven: Rhenish pastor Joachim Lenz becomes the new provost in Jerusalem. In: ekir.de. January 31, 2020, accessed January 31, 2020 .
- ↑ New provost for Jerusalem. Israelnetz.de , February 3, 2020, accessed on February 9, 2020 .