Bierkowo Church
| Church Bierkowo (Birkow) (Kościół Św. Józefa w Bierkowie) |
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|---|---|
 View of the village of Bierkowo with a view of the church |
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| Construction year: | 1909-1911 |
| Inauguration: | April 16, 1911 (Easter Sunday) |
| Style elements : | Neo-Romanesque |
| Client: | Evangelical Church Community Birkow ( Church Province Pomerania / Church of the Old Prussian Union ) |
| Location: | 54 ° 28 '38.1 " N , 16 ° 55' 42.2" E |
| Address: | ul.Grodzka Bierkowo Pomerania , Poland |
| Purpose: |
Evangelical Lutheran from 1945: Roman Catholic branch church |
| Parish: | Bruskowo Wielkie 36, 76-206 Słupsk |
| Diocese : | Koszalin-Kołobrzeg |
| Website: | www.parafia-bruskowo.pl/parafia/koscioly/bierkowo-kosciol-pw-sw-jozefa |
The church in Bierkowo was built between 1909 and 1911 in neo-Romanesque style. Until 1945 it was a Protestant house of worship in what was then called Birkow in the rear Pomeranian village. Today it is a Roman Catholic branch church of the parish Bruskowo Wielkie (Groß Brüskow) .
Geographical location
Bierkowo is located in Western Pomerania , seven kilometers northwest of the city of Słupsk (Stolp) .
Church building
The former Birkow in the Pomeranian district of Stolp was not an original church village . Rather, it belonged with the neighboring towns of Gatz ( Polish Gać ), Reblin (Reblino), Medenick (Miednik), Reddentin (Redęcin) and Zitzewitz (Sycewice) to the Symbow (Zębowo) parish in the Schlawe district . In order to get to the church in Symbow, it was necessary to cover an impassable seven-kilometer route. Because Birkow's population grew steadily, the church in Symbow became too small and it was necessary either to enlarge the parish church or to build a church in Birkow, which had been a separate parish since 1895.
The second possibility was planned in 1906, not without obtaining the consent of the Symbower church patron Zitzewitz on Zitzewitz and von Below on Reddentin . The pond in front of the school building was designated as the building site and the building project was then started under the direction of Pastor Reinhold Rathke . A project with a total cost of 40,000 marks was intended. The community provided manual and clamping services. The school pond was filled in and the subsoil was checked and measured. The brickworks delivered the brickworks Otto Koepke in Überlauf ( Polish: Gałęzinowo ). Rhenish beaver tails were chosen as roof and tower cladding .
The foundation stone was laid in the spring of 1909, and the topping-out ceremony was celebrated in the summer of the same year. After the shell had been wrapped up in the autumn and the tower was secured with a wooden shed, the construction remained in place for the winter. Construction work did not resume until the following year.
The church received an interior and exterior plaster and the tower was tiled. Artists worked on the interior with an altar and a pulpit attached above , benches for 400 seats and three side galleries . The altar and the chandelier of brass were donated, as well as the frontals .
An organ was installed on the western gallery . It came from the workshop of Paul Voelkner in Bromberg ( Polish: Bydgoszcz ) in West Prussia , the son of the organ builder Christian Friedrich Voelkner from the neighboring village of Dünnow (Duninowo), whose company he founded was destroyed by arson in 1906 and rebuilt by his son in Bromberg . The instrument had two manuals and a pedal .
The bell from the bell tower of the school building was brought into the church tower and united to one ring together with two bells supplied by the bell foundry in Apolda in Thuringia . The tower clock and chime bell came from the Kugelberg company in Rostock .
The festive dedication of the new church took place on Easter Sunday (April 16) in 1911 . With the participation of the whole community, the church was put into service by the leading clergyman of the Pomeranian Church Province , General Superintendent Johannes Büchsel from Stettin in cooperation with the pastor loci Reinhold Rathke after the key handover.
During the First World War , the parish had to deliver the two large ringing bells for ammunition purposes. In 1921/23 three new steel bells were procured. In 1921 the church received a memorial plaque for the 36 soldiers from Birkow who died in the war. A black granite memorial with a bronze eagle was placed in front of the church . A general overhaul of the church took place in the years 1924 to 1925 after it had received an electric heater shortly beforehand.
The church building was preserved during World War II , but the interior was badly damaged. The organ was no longer playable.
Shortly after the end of the war, the previously Protestant church was transferred to the Catholic Church. On November 18, 1945, she received a new consecration , which she assigned to St. Joseph as the patron saint. In the following years, several restoration work was carried out, for example in 2008, combined with a general overhaul. Since 2003, with financial help from former residents in Birkow, which is now called "Bierkowo", a renovation of the organ has been planned in order to get the valuable instrument to sound again. In 2011 there was a celebration for the 100th anniversary of the church.
Parish
On August 6, 1895, a Protestant parish of its own was founded in Birkow, which was connected to Symbow ( Polish: Zębowo ) as a parish priest . The Symbower parish belonged to the parish of Rügenwalde (Darłowo) until 1814 and then to 1945 to the parish of Stolp -Stadt in the church province of Pomerania of the Church of the Old Prussian Union . The newly elected parish councilor Birkows acquired the first property on which a cemetery was created. Until 1895, the Birkow residents were buried in Symbow. The cemetery area still exists today ("Cmentarz ewangelicki"), but is no longer used as a burial site. In 1972 it was deedicated and leveled. On July 17, 2010, a cross was placed here in memory of the cemetery.
In 1940, the parish of Birkow had 772 parishioners in addition to the 1602 parishioners in the rest of the parish . Until 1945 the pastors of Symbow remained the clergy of the Birkow church.
Between 1895 and 1945 the Protestant pastors of Symbow (now Zębowo in Polish ) were responsible for the church in Birkow.
- Pastor until 1945
- Reinhold Rathke, 1895–1913
- Friedrich Witte, 1914–1927
- Martin Hedemann, 1927-1934
- Oskar Klopsch, 1935–1945
Since the escape and expulsion of the local villagers of Birkow by Polish authorities, the inhabitants of Birkow have mainly belonged to the Catholic denomination. The Catholic clergy from Bruskowo Wielkie (Groß Brüskow) have been looking after the Catholic church members in Bierkowo since 1946 .
The parish Bruskowo Wielkie and with it the Bierkowo church is subordinate to the deanery Ustka (Stolpmünde) and belongs to the diocese of Koszalin-Kołobrzeg (Köslin-Kolberg) of the Catholic Church in Poland .
Evangelical church members living in Bierkowo belong to the Kreuzkirche parish in Słupsk (Stolp) in the diocese of Pomerania-Greater Poland of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Poland .
Church records
The church register documents from the time before 1945 are considered lost. It is believed that they were destroyed in the 1945/1947 arson on the buildings of the Symbow Church. Statements from 2004 that they were offered at a Polish flea market are speculative.
literature
- Reinhard Schulz, Birkow in Pomerania. Chronicle , Leipzig, 2007
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ernst Müller, The Evangelical Clergy in Pomerania from the Reformation to the Present , Part II, Stettin, 1912
- ^ A b Johann Granzow, Der Kirchbau in Birkow , in: Stolper Heimatblatt , October 1956, pp. 304–306, reprinted in: Reinhard Schulz, Birkow in Pommern. Chronicle , pp. 35–37
- ^ A b Karl-Heinz Pagel: The Voelkner organ in the Birkower church. In: Reinhard Schulz: Birkow in Pomerania. Timeline. Pp. 38-39.
- ↑ Ernst Voss, The church was built on the pond. The history of the one-hundred-year-old church in Birkow, Stolp district, and its community , in: DPZ , episode 10/11, p. 8
- ^ Karl-Heinz Pagel, Birkow , in: Der Landkreis Stolp in Pommern , Lübeck, 1989, pp. 398–402
- ↑ Hans Glaeser-Swantow, The Evangelical Pomerania , Part 2, Stettin, 1940
- ^ Parish Bruskowo Wielkie
- ↑ Reinhard Schulz, Birkow in Pomerania. Chronicle , p. 42