Church district Birkenfeld
The Birkenfeld parish is a former parish of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland . It comprised 26 parishes with a total of 41,032 parishioners (as of July 2008). The seat of the superintendent was Idar-Oberstein . On April 1, 2010, the church district was dissolved and merged into the new Obere Nahe church district . The last superintendent of the church district was Pastor Edgar Schäfer from Birkenfeld .
Historically significant church circle Birkenfeld was in that by the year 1934, he own state church was formed, namely the "Evangelical Church of the Principality (or after 1918: part of the country) Birkenfeld" .
history
Before 1789, the area of the later church district of Birkenfeld belonged to various domains, in particular to the Hinteren Grafschaft Sponheim , the Grafschaft Veldenz (or the Duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken ) and the Oberstein dominion. Some parts of the Reformation were introduced by the Dukes of Zweibrücken in 1523, while the greater part of the area did not become Protestant until 1557. Most of the congregations are still Lutheran today.
The Vienna Congress also fundamentally changed the political situation in the vicinity. The area of the later church district Birkenfeld became part of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg as the Principality of Birkenfeld . Due to denominational differences - there were a few Reformed parishes in the Principality of Birkenfeld - the Birkenfeld and Oldenburg Churches were never united; instead, a separate Birkenfeld regional church emerged, finally with the Birkenfeld Union of 1843, in which united the Lutheran and Reformed congregations into a single uniate evangelical church .
Until 1918 the duke or grand duke was summus episcopus of the Birkenfeld regional church. A consistory headed the site by the chairman of the Birkenfeld state government. The highest spiritual office was that of superintendent . Until 1919 this office was connected to the first pastor of the parish of Birkenfeld. After the end of the sovereign church regiment in 1919, the superintendent became the church council, a title that had previously been used as an honorary title by most of the Birkenfeld superintendents.
If the Birkenfeld regional church had never been particularly well looked after, in the following years it became increasingly clear that it would not be able to survive as a separate regional church in the long term. Taking up earlier considerations, they joined the Rhenish Church Province of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union in 1934 and became the Birkenfeld Church District. Since 1948 the church district has belonged to the newly founded Evangelical Church in the Rhineland .
The end of the Second World War brought another change with it: Part of the church district area with the communities of Bosen, Nohfelden, Sötern and Wolfersweiler was added to Saarland , which was initially administered in French , while the northern part belonged to Rhineland-Palatinate , which was particularly important in terms of financing The parish salary was problematic because the Saarland did not pay any state benefits.
Due to the demographic and financial development, the district synod approved in November 2008 a merger of the Birkenfeld parish with the Rhineland-Palatinate part of the St. Wendel parish . This took place on April 1, 2010. The newly formed church district is called "Kirchenkreis Obere Nahe".
List of Birkenfeld superintendents and church councils
Superintendent
- 1817–1822 Johann Adam Weber (for the Reformed churches)
- 1817–1833 Johann Karl Leopold Gottlieb (until 1822 only for the Lutheran parishes)
- 1833–1868 Jacob Friedrich Heddäus
- 1868–1881 Karl Friedrich Christian Gottlieb
- 1881–1907 Karl Friedrich Ludwig Haack
- 1907–1919 Friedrich Wilhelm Lueg
Church councils
- 1919–1923 Karl Friedrich Gotthilf Bonnet
- 1923–1927 Adolf Neubach
- 1927–1934 Karl Georg Friedrich Zeller
Superintendent
- 1934–1937 Paul Klos
- 1937–1950 Karl Georg Friedrich Zeller (until 1946 as "superintendent administrator")
- 1950–1975 Hermann Heinrich Schuster
- 1975–1992 Ernst Georg Hermann Gillmann
- 1992–2010 Edgar Schäfer
Communities
The following parishes belonged to the parish of Birkenfeld:
literature
- Freimut Heiderich: History of the Protestant Church in the Oldenburg Principality and the Birkenfeld region ; Communications from the Association for Local Studies in the Birkenfeld district, special issue 63; Idar-Oberstein: Gebhardt + Hilden; and: Writings of the archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland 19; Düsseldorf: Archives of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, 1998; ISBN 3-930250-29-2
- Edgar Schäfer: The Birkenfeld pastors in the past 250 years ; in: Presbytery of the Evangelical Church Community Birkenfeld (Ed.): 250 years Evangelical Church Birkenfeld. For the anniversary of the church and Georg-Wilhelm-Haus in 2001 ; Birkenfeld, 2001; Pp. 72-109.