Gnadenkirche Tidofeld

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Gnadenkirche Tidofeld

The Gnadenkirche Tidofeld was built in 1961 in the district of the same name in the East Frisian city ​​of Norden in place of a barrack church. Today it is the documentation center for the integration of refugees and displaced persons in Lower Saxony and Northwest Germany .

history

The area on which the church stands has served as a training and transit camp for marines since the late 1930s. After the end of the Second World War , the city of Norden set up a refugee camp there. This was inhabited by an average of 1,200 displaced persons and refugees from 1946 to 1960. A total of around 6,000 people passed through the Tidofeld camp.

As early as 1946, the residents set up an ecumenical church in a barrack, which was replaced in 1961 by the current building, which served as an Evangelical Lutheran church for around 1,000 parishioners. The church has an area of ​​167 square meters, the associated parish hall an area of ​​38 square meters. Because of its size and location in the middle of a displaced area, it is considered to be one of the remarkable displaced churches in Germany. Around the turn of the millennium, the number of people attending church services fell, so that, after taking over the building from the Norder Ludgerigemeinde, in 2005 the church district decided to convert it into a documentation center for the integration of refugees and displaced persons in Lower Saxony and north-west Germany.

Documentation center

Since 2005, a project group of the Evangelical Lutheran Church District North under the direction of Superintendent Helmut Kirschstein has been working on the implementation of the project. The project was non-partisan and non-denominational from the start. Named supporters included members of the state and Bundestag from the CDU , FDP, SPD and GRÜNE. In 2007, the Hannoversche Landeskirche made it possible for Pastor Anton Lambertus to hire a full-time managing director. In 2009 the project group was transferred to the non-profit association Gnadenkirche Tidofeld eV . Since then, 1st chairman has been Superintendent Helmut Kirschstein, 2nd chairman is journalist and book author Johann Haddinga , and scientific director Bernhard Parisius from the Lower Saxony State Archives (Aurich location) . Institutional founding members are, in addition to the Evangelical Lutheran parish of the north, the city of Norden, the district of Aurich and the Roman Catholic diocese of Osnabrück . After eight years of preparation, the documentation center was inaugurated on November 2, 2013 with a festive service. The ceremonial sermon was given by the Hanoverian State Bishop Ralf Meister , the speech was given by the former Lower Saxony Minister of Education and State Parliament President Rolf Wernstedt .

The presentation of the documentation center Gnadenkirche Tidofeld takes place with the help of eyewitness interviews : Personal experiences from 1945–1960 come to life on numerous screens with the most modern touchscreen technology. Associated exhibits - private everyday items that often accompanied the long escape route and remained important even after arrival - illustrate the story. A wall frieze with dates, facts and backgrounds helps with global classification. The model of the Tidofeld refugee camp, combined with historical photographs, gives an idea of ​​the dimensions of camp life. Finally, a station “Outlook” presents current films on the subject of flight , displacement , integration and gives examples of the social and church challenges faced by today's global migration movements .

German-Polish youth exchange

The Gnadenkirche Tidofeld project is linked to efforts to promote international peace and reconciliation work. Under the leadership of the historian Zbigniew Kullas, German-Polish youth encounters have been taking place since 2009, which are linked to joint theater projects - for example, “A poet must not be silent” on the occasion of the beginning of the war 70 years ago, with bilingual texts and songs from the war and post-war period , presented in Norden and in Miastko , the former Rummelsburg.

patronage

Since 2008, ecclesiastical and political prominence has repeatedly been won for patronage . The spiritual patronage was initially the then Hanover regional bishop Margot Käßmann , in her successor since May 2011 regional bishop Ralf Meister . The first socio-political patron was the then Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Christian Wulff . He was followed by David McAllister (both CDU) before Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) took over the honorary office in April 2013 .

monument

The Gnadenkirche Tidofeld has been a listed building since mid-2007. The building is also worth seeing from an art-historical perspective: Max Herrmann ( Oldenburg ), master student of Otto Dix and Max Beckmann , created the impressive glass windows in the area of ​​the entrance, the former sacristy, the former choir and the gallery, which was leveled by the renovation. The colorful rose window in the west facade now also adorns the logo of the Tidofeld Documentation Center Gnadenkirche.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kirchenkreis Norden: Integration - a permanent task , viewed on January 31, 2016.
  2. ^ Bernhard Parisius (Head of the Aurich branch of the Lower Saxony State Archives ): Gnadenkirche Tidofeld. Documentation center for the integration of refugees and displaced persons in Lower Saxony and Northwest Germany , viewed on October 24, 2011.
  3. ^ Church district north: Gnadenkirche Tidofeld , viewed on October 24, 2011.

Coordinates: 53 ° 35 ′ 44.1 ″  N , 7 ° 13 ′ 56.4 ″  E