Friedenskirche (Varel)
The Friedenskirche Varel (also Baptist Church Varel ) is the church of the Varel Baptist Congregation . It was inaugurated on January 29, 1922 and is a successor to the chapel built in 1858 by the congregation founded just two years earlier. The church is located on the corner of Mühlenstraße and Johann-Gerhard-Oncken-Straße. There is also a residential building on the property, which today serves as a castellan's apartment .
Architecture and building history
The Friedenskirche is a successor to the chapel of the Varel Baptists built in 1858 . After only considering an extension of the existing church in the first decade of the 20th century, the community assembly decided on July 12, 1914 to demolish the existing church in order to build a new building in its place. A building committee was set up to implement the municipal resolution. The construction contract was awarded to the company Brunken & Bohlken from Varel . The First World War , which began three weeks after this municipal decision, prevented the implementation of the plans. It was not taken up again until 1919 and implemented from 1921 onwards, despite the impending hyperinflation . A new building commission headed by Johann Schütte was appointed for this purpose. Incidentally, it was from her that the architectural drawings and the suggestion “ to give the new chapel the name Friedenskirche” came from. As a name for a Baptist church, this name was quite unusual for that time. The term chapel or Baptist chapel was common for the building . If the chapel should have a special name - which was by no means always desired - it was looked for in the first part of the Bible "with a penchant for the Old Testament". The leitmotif was the “community experience of God's people”. Only after the Second World War did this change. Today “names from the proclamation of Christ are preferred” and are associated with the building name church . On January 29, 1922, the Friedenskirche was completed and could be handed over to its destination on that day in the presence of numerous guests. In a report by the Truth Witness , the official organ of the German Baptist Union, it says about the new building of the Varel church a. a.
“The Friedenskirche is not a luxury building, but it is still dignified in both the execution and the floor plan. Thanks to the willingness of the members to make sacrifices, it was not only possible to build a beautiful building that normally offers 350 seats in a disproportionately expensive time, but also to finance it. There was great joy about the achieved goal [...] "
Over the decades the Friedenskirche has been renovated several times, but has largely been preserved in its original structure. The church has two entrances. One is oriented towards Mühlenstraße, the other as the actual main entrance to Johann-Gerhard-Oncken-Straße. When the visitor enters the church through the main entrance, he first arrives in a larger anteroom. This is where the parish book table is located, which has a selected range of Christian literature. Typical of a Baptist sacred building is the cloakroom, which is also located in the anteroom of the Friedenskirche. “[Baptists] feel at home in their church. Because you don't wear a coat at home either [...]. ”The mailboxes with names in the anteroom of the Friedenskirche are also typical features of an evangelical-free church. Each parishioner has his or her own compartment, which contains, among other things, the subscribed magazines, personal messages, minutes of meetings and invitations to special events. A side effect: If a mailbox overflows, those responsible for the community know that the mailbox owner has not attended church services for a long time.
organ
For the Friedenskirche, the firm Klassmeier, based in Kirchheide near Lemgo , built a two-manual organ with seven registers in 1922 . Today's instrument comes from Alfred Führer’s workshop in Wilhelmshaven . It was built in 1954 and has eleven stops on two manuals and a pedal .
Previous construction
Until 1858 the church service meetings of the Varel Baptists took place in the house of the shipper Wilm Schütte. Due to the strong growth of the congregation, soon after the congregation was founded in 1856, the plan was made to build an own church. Already on July 25, 1858, the first Varel Baptist Church was opened. It was essentially identical in construction to the prayer house of the Jever Baptists, also built in 1858 . Both houses of worship were probably also models for the Oldenburg Baptist Church on Wilhelmstrasse, which today serves as a synagogue for the Jewish community of Oldenburg .
Church history
The town of Varel, located near the Jade Bay , plays a special role in the history of German and continental European Baptism . It is the birthplace of the Baptist church founder Johann Gerhard Oncken , who saw the light of day here on January 31, 1800 as an illegitimate child. In addition to a street name, two memorial plaques commemorate him. One is at the location of the house where he was born in Langen Strasse (today: Hruschka office building), the other in the Vareler Café Hotel Viktoria , where Oncken worked as a billiard boy in his youth. The local researcher Wilhelm Kuck calls him "one of Varel's most important sons".
The actual story of the Varel Baptists does not begin until 43 years after Oncken was born. The religiously awakened Wilm Schütte, a boatman from Weserdeich moved to Varel and bought the house at Mühlenstrasse 43 for himself and his family. Her maid Anna Buhr was already baptized as a believer and had contacts with the young Baptist movement in the Oldenburger Land . Connections were established with the Oldenburg (founded in 1837) and the Jeverschen community (founded in 1840). The first Baptist baptism in Varel was performed at Whitsun 1843 by the Oldenburg parish elder Carl Weichardt . Four of the five baptized were members of the Schütte family mentioned above. The place of baptism was probably the confluence of the Nordender and Südender Leke . The beginnings in Varel were accompanied by the Jever Baptist church. Johann Ludwig Hinrichs and Anton Friedrich Remmers were primarily responsible for carrying out the worship meetings . Soon further preaching stations arose - not least through the missionary commitment of those named - for example in Jaderberg , Beckhausen , Wapeldorf and Spohle .
In 1853 the Stettin- born Baptist preacher August Friedrich Wilhelm Haese took up residence in Varel. In 1855 he married the Baptist Metta Margaretha Schütte. Their marriage, which became possible due to the law on civil marriage in the state of Oldenburg passed on May 31, 1855 , was the first civil law marriage in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg . During his 44 years of service as Varel Baptist pastor, Haese baptized more than 200 people. On July 20, 1856, the Varel Baptists were constituted as an independent congregation, thus breaking away from the mother congregation in Jever.
In 2011 there were 82 baptized believers in the congregation.
literature
- Herbert Gudjons: Festschrift 125 Years of the Evangelical Free Church Community of Varel, formerly the Baptist Church of Varel, 1856–1981. Evangelical Free Church Congregation, Varel 1981.
- Margarete Jelten: Under God's roof tiles. Beginnings of Baptism in Northwest Germany. Bremerhaven 1984.
- Edwin Witt, Daniela Napoli-Martfeld, Ralf Splettstößer: Images of Peace: God is our peace. Festschrift for the 150th anniversary of the Evangelical Free Church in Varel. Varel 2006.
Web links
- Internet presence of the Baptist Congregation Varel ; Accessed March 21, 2013
- Internet presence of the city of Varel: Baptist Church ; accessed on September 3, 2013
Individual evidence
- ↑ These and other information in this section are taken from the following text: Herbert Gudjons (Ed. On behalf of the Evangelical Free Church of Varel): Festschrift. 125 years of the Evangelical Free Church in Varel. 1856-1981. Varel 1981, pp. 48-53
- ↑ For example: Bethel, Eben-Ezer, Immanuel-, Zoar- and Zionkapelle
- ↑ For example: Christ, Cross, Resurrection and Peace Church
- ↑ Compare Günter Balders : Artikel Kapelle , in: Evangelisches Gemeindelexikon (Eds. Helmut Burckhardt, Erich Geldbach, Kurt Heimbucher), Wuppertal 1986 (special edition), ISBN 3-417-24082-4 , p. 291, Sp I
- ↑ Quoted from Herbert Gudjons: Festschrift , p. 51
- ^ Frank Fornaçon: Open doors. An Evangelical Free Church Community introduces itself. Kassel 2004, ISBN 3-87939-059-2 , p. 10
- ↑ Frank Fornaçon: Open Doors , p. 10
- ↑ Organ list of the organ information. (PDF; 1.2 MB) (No longer available online.) P. 256 , archived from the original on November 23, 2015 ; Retrieved July 4, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Wenzel Hübner: 21,000 organs from all over the world. 1945–1985 . P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 978-3-8204-9454-9 , pp. 239 (Sources and studies on the history of music from antiquity to the present; 7).
- ^ Wilhelm Kuck: The streets of Varel and their history. Varel 1991, p. 81.
- ^ The father of the family Wilm Schütte was baptized three weeks later by Johann Gerhard Oncken in Hamburg; see. Edwin Witt, Daniela Napoli-Martfeld, Ralf Splettstößer: Images of Peace: God is our peace. Festschrift for the 150th anniversary of the Evangelical Free Church of Varel , Varel 2006, p. 4
- ↑ Herbert Gudjons: Festschrift , p. 18f
- ^ Statistics of the United Churches of Baptized Christians in Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Hamburg 1852
- ↑ Edwin Witt, Daniela Napoli-Martfeld, Ralf Splettstößer: Images of Peace: God is our peace. Festschrift for the 150th anniversary of the Evangelical Free Church in Varel. Varel 2006, p. 5
- ^ Association of Evangelical Free Churches (ed.): Yearbook of the Association of Evangelical Free Churches 2011/2012 , Kassel 2011, p. 120
Coordinates: 53 ° 23 '57.9 " N , 8 ° 8' 32.2" E