Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Dresden)

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Community center on Tiergartenstrasse

The community center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Dresden is located at Tiergartenstrasse 42. The building was built in 1988 as the second community center of this religious community in the GDR and is one of the few examples of the historicizing postmodernism in the GDR -architecture of the 1980s- Years.

history

Prehistory of the Mormons in Dresden

The Dresden Mormon Congregation was founded on October 21, 1855 by the Apostle Franklin Richards as the fourth congregation of the denomination in Germany. Shortly before , Karl Gottfried Mäser , who came from Meissen , had been baptized in the Elbe along with his wife and another man according to the Mormon rite . Mäser, who had previously worked as a teacher in Dresden, had to give up his job and left Germany in 1856 due to intense hostility and went to the USA. More Mormons followed him, so the church broke up.

It was only after the First World War that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was reconstituted and was now allowed to celebrate its services in public. Due to the strong increase in membership, there were even two parishes in Dresden at times, which used rooms for their get-togethers on Zirkusstrasse in the Pirnaische Vorstadt and on Königsbrücker Strasse  62 in Dresden-Neustadt . As a result of the war damage, these were lost or had to be abandoned in 1945. As a replacement, the parish was allocated some rooms in the former officers' mess on Dr.-Kurt-Fischer-Allee 12 (today Stauffenbergallee).

History of the property

The house at Tiergartenstrasse  40, which was owned by the Kommerzienrat Paul Leonhardt, was one of the numerous villa buildings in the vicinity of the Great Garden until its destruction on February 13, 1945 . Leonhardt used the villa as a residential building and was also Consul of Bolivia . The associated corner property at the level of the Carola lake extended between Tiergarten-, Oskar- and Wiener Straße and also included the area of ​​today's community center. During the Second World War, parts of the Dresden City Archives were relocated here, which were destroyed when the building was destroyed by the bombing. The ruin was demolished in the post-war period. The surrounding property along Tiergartenstrasse 40 and 42 to Wiener Strasse 75, which is now a protected cultural monument, has been preserved. Since the new community center was built slightly offset from the original building, it was given house number 42.

Background to the new building of the Dresden community center

In the post-war period and especially after the founding of the GDR , numerous Mormons left the country, which led to a decline in the number of members of the religious community. In addition, the Mormons renounced the usual missionary work in order to avoid difficulties with the GDR party and state leadership, so that the number of community members stagnated. In total there were around 4500 Mormons in the GDR in the 1980s, most of whom were concentrated in the southern districts . Alongside Chemnitz and Leipzig , the Dresden community was one of the largest of the 47 communities. Organizationally, these were organized in three “piles”, one of which was based in Dresden.

This did not change until the 1980s. After a meeting of leading representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with the GDR State Council Chairman Erich Honecker , the religious community received extensive concessions. According to the agreements made, the Mormons were even allowed to use government facilities for their meetings. In addition, the construction of a Mormon temple in Freiberg, Saxony , and other community centers in various places, including Dresden, were agreed. The background to this was, on the one hand, the GDR's foreign policy striving for international recognition, especially in the USA . The SED leadership attributed great political influence to the Mormons, as numerous Mormons held high government offices in the USA. In addition, the agreement between the religious community and the GDR leadership was based on the fact that the Mormons admitted to political abstinence and the renunciation of interference in socio-political issues.

After the first Mormon temple in a socialist country was opened in Freiberg in 1985 , construction of the Dresden community center began in March 1987. In connection with the consecration of the parish hall on October 26, 1988, the following day there was a meeting between Honecker and the counselor of the President and member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Mormon Community, Thomas S. Monson . Honecker explained the correspondence between socialism and Christian values ​​and goals, while Monson praised the trusting cooperation between his church and the state and the balanced state church policy. In a declaration by the Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the GDR on October 28, 1988, published on the occasion of the consecration of the parish hall in Dresden , which appeared in most daily newspapers in the GDR , the essential principles of the self-image of the GDR living Mormons explained.

Construction and opening

Community center on the day of inauguration in 1988

The construction of the Dresden community center took place as part of a special construction program of the GDR Council of Ministers and began in March 1987. The construction was carried out by VEB Gesellschaftbau Dresden with the participation of more than 50 cooperation partners. The planning came from the company's planning office under the direction of Dieter Hantzsche . Despite the constant lack of material and building capacities, the work could be completed in a relatively short time. The political significance of the building for the GDR party and state leadership is underlined by the fact that even contracts that had already been concluded with the Protestant Church were broken. For example, the GDR building ministry had several church building projects that had already begun stopped and officially justified with backlogs in the priority housing program. At the same time, however, Honecker guaranteed the Mormons a total of 15 new community center buildings in the GDR. However, it was financed exclusively from church funds and donations from parishioners.

On September 27, 1988, the new building was handed over to the Mormon congregation. In order to give non-members the opportunity to visit, an “Open House Week” was organized, which around 30,000 people used. The official consecration of the community center took place on October 25, 1988 as the second community center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the GDR. Before that, the Freiberg Temple had been built in 1985 and a parish hall in 1986 in Leipzig. Thomas S. Monson from Salt Lake City , the seat of the Mormons, attended as a representative of the Mother Church in the USA . The GDR government was represented by the State Secretary for Church Affairs Kurt Löffler . Löffler emphasized the "common ground between the SED and the church to express loyalty to our homeland GDR". Monson stated that his church "honors the land in which it lives and obeys the laws of the land". With its opening, the Dresden community center also became the seat of the regional presidency of the religious community in the GDR.

Building description

The building was erected “in the style of classic villa development” as a two-storey plastered structure. It respects the villas in the area in the south-west of the Great Garden, built in the 20th century, and complements them with “moderate postmodern memories of classic design elements, such as sloping gable roof, lattice windows, bay windows, hints of pilasters, etc.”. The color of the house was originally off-white, as this color is considered a sign of inner purification by the Mormons. The building creates a regional reference through its slate roof . The material comes from Ore Mountains slate, whereby slate was a seldom used material for later GDR architecture. In order to illustrate the religious function, there is a tower-like obelisk with a metal tip in front of the building.

The interior of the house is also largely unadorned. The floors and walls of the foyer are made of white marble and form a contrast to the doors made of maple wood. On the ground floor are the rooms of the bishop of the community and classrooms for religious instruction. There are also cloakrooms and a library. A staircase leads to the chapel on the upper floor and the baptistery, separated by a large pane of glass. Next to the chapel is the culture hall, a hall that can be used for conferences and larger events, which, if necessary, can be combined with the chapel to form one room by sliding partitions.

At the time of its inauguration, the building was considered "sensational ..."; It was controversial among the population: “When a Mormon temple was once built on Dresden's Tiergartenstrasse - in the middle of GDR socialism - it seemed paradoxical to people. The architecturally modern, sophisticated building and the almost unknown, because it was hushed up, history of the Mormons looked like foreign bodies at the time. "

Mäser memorial

Mäser memorial in the garden of the community center (2005)

Since 2001 there has been an approximately three-meter-high bronze statue of the Mormon Karl Gottfried Mäser, who was born in Meissen , on the property . Mäser was one of the founders of the first Mormon congregation in Dresden, but emigrated to the USA in 1856, where he founded Brigham Young University in Provo and is revered to this day as one of the "fathers of the school system" in the US state of Utah . In 1999, descendants of the family donated the statue that was originally to be placed in front of the vocational school center in Meißen. After fierce controversies about the importance of Mäsers and protests by the Evangelical Church, the city rejected the planned donation. As an alternative, the Mormons decided to erect the memorial on the grounds of the community center in Dresden. The sculpture is a copy of the Mäser monument in front of the University in Provo and was created by Ortho Fairbanks .

See also

literature

  • Ingrid Roßki: The Mormons - persecuted, tolerated, respected (series Dresden churches). In: Sächsische Zeitung , October 20, 2005, p. 21.

Web links

Commons : Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Dresden)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dresden City Archives (ed.): The Dresden City Archives and its holdings . Dresden 1994, p. 28.
  2. ^ Themed city map of Dresden with registered cultural monuments , accessed on February 25, 2015
  3. ↑ Reinhard Henkys: Adapted and closed from the outside. Sects and religious communities in the GDR . In: Deutsches Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt , September 16, 1984, p. 17.
  4. ^ A b c d Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Klaus Große Kracht (ed.): Religion and Society: Europe in the 20th Century. Industrial world . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2007, ISBN 9783412200305 , p. 298 ff.
  5. ↑ GDR is established by believers in daily conscientious work . In: Neue Zeit , October 29, 1988, p. 1.
  6. ↑ Honecker Volte . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 1989, pp. 6 ( Online - Mar. 13, 1989 ).
  7. ↑ a b c Mormon Community Center opened . In: Saxon Latest News , 1./2. October 1988.
  8. ↑ a b Dresden: Mormon community center handed over . In: Neues Deutschland , October 26, 1988, p. 3.
  9. ↑ See the Mormon settlement in Leipzig
  10. ↑ Dresden: Handover of the Mormon community center . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 26, 1988, p. 2.
  11. ↑ Kathrin Krüger: I hate superficiality . In: Sächsische Zeitung , May 29, 1999, p. 8.
  12. ^ Wolfgang Zimmermann: Saxony and the Mormons . In: Sächsische Zeitung , June 8, 2000, p. 13.
  13. ↑ Meißen, Mäser and Mormonen ( Memento of the original from September 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) 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. , Website of the Evangelical Federation of Saxony, accessed on March 4, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.confessio.de
  14. ↑ The Mäser statue will stay in Dresden . In: Sächsische Zeitung , July 14, 2001, p. 9.

Coordinates: 51 ° 1 ′ 57.5 ″  N , 13 ° 45 ′ 42.7 ″  E