Mennonite community in Hamburg and Altona

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Mennonite Church Hamburg-Altona

The Mennonite congregation in Hamburg and Altona has existed since 1601. The current parish church was consecrated in Altona-Nord in 1915; earlier church buildings were in the Große Freiheit . In addition to the Mennonite Church, the community in Hamburg-Bahrenfeld has its own cemetery .

history

Gerrit Roosen, preacher in Altona
In a city map of Altona from 1803 the location of the former church and the former cemetery of the community is recorded, the also registered Herrnhuterkirche was also referred to as a small Mennonite church because it previously served as a church for the Dompelaars.

The first Mennonites came to Hamburg and Altona in 1575 as religious refugees from the then Catholic southern Netherlands . 1601 allowed them Count Ernst von Schaumburg and Holstein-Pinneberg the foundation of a community in the then still Holstein-Pinneberg belonging Altona . During the heyday of the community in the 17th and 18th centuries, many merchants, ship owners (whaling), entrepreneurs and craftsmen were Mennonites. From 1660 Gerrit Roosen was the preacher of the Altona Mennonites.

Former rectory of the Altona Mennonites from the 18th century in Große Freiheit
Pen drawing of the former Mennonite Church on the Great Freedom
Entry in the address book Altona (Hamburg) (1839)

In the first few years the congregation still met in private homes. It was not until 1675 that Mennonite whalers built a wooden church on the Great Freedom from five percent of the proceeds from a whaling season . The Great Freedom takes its name from the religious and commercial freedom that religious communities and non- guild craftsmen enjoyed in Altona at the time. During the Swedish fire in the Great Northern War , the wooden church was destroyed along with large parts of the city of Altona. But as early as 1715 a new stone church was built on the same site, which was used by the community until 1915. This church, built by the Altona city architect Claus Stallknecht , was a single-nave, towerless brick building with a pan-roofed mansard roof and a simple church room with a barrel ceiling. The facade was baroque with sandstone. Like other Anabaptist-Mennonite churches, this first stone church was not yet directly on the street front. In front of the church building, parish and rectory houses were built in 1772 and 1850, which also structurally separated the church from the street line. After the district around the Große Freiheit became more and more an entertainment district, the first plans for a move of the community arose. In 1915 the new church on Mennonitenstraße in Altona-Nord was inaugurated, which still serves as a meeting place for the community today. The church and parish halls on Große Freiheit 73/75 were sold to the city, which handed the ensemble of buildings over to the Hamburg Metropolitan Mission in the following years. In the Second World War, the church building on the Große Freiheit was finally completely destroyed. Only remains of the wall such as the brick-walled apse could be documented during later excavations. The meetinghouses remained, however, and are now a listed building. Until 1795, the congregation kept Dutch as the language of worship.

Between 1640 and 1648 discussions about the form of baptism determined the community, until finally in 1648 the faction of the Dompelaars split off from the community. The Altona Dompelaars also had their own church for a time, which was called the small Mennonite church . Their most famous preacher was Jakob Denner . After Denner's death in 1746, the group of Dompelaars disbanded and many moved back to the larger community. The small Mennonite church was then used by the Moravians.

In the 19th century, the number of parishioners fell to 338 members (1941) , mainly due to convertions to the Evangelical Lutheran regional churches in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg . After 1945, the number of parishioners in Hamburg rose to over 1,000 at times due to the influx of Mennonite expellees from West and East Prussia. Due to emigration and emigration as well as transfers to the regional church, the number of members has leveled off at around 430 baptized today.

Today the congregation is a member of the Working Group of Christian Churches in Hamburg and takes part in the Ecumenical Forum in HafenCity .

Church building

The current church was completed in 1915 in neo-baroque style. The building consists of a church with a vestibule and a pastorate. A larger community hall, also completed in 1915 and facing Langefelder Strasse, and a sexton's house were later given to the Lutheran-Pietist Ev. Prayer community sold so that the building complex is now used by two congregations. The actual church on Mennonite Street is still owned by the Mennonite community. As in other Mennonite churches, the pulpit takes the central place there , following the principle of a sermon church . The Lord's Supper is in front of her .

The new church was rebuilt in many elements of the earlier church on the Great Freedom.

Library

The parish has had its own library since 1770 , which was created from the estate of the parish preacher Hendrik Teunis de Jager. Over the years, the inventory has been increased through donations and purchases. Today the library has a total of about 5000 volumes. The main focus is on general and Mennonite theology and history from the 16th to 19th centuries. Most of the books from the 16th to 18th centuries are still written in Dutch. A printed library catalog was published for the first time in 1890 , and a new library directory was published in 2019. The library was relocated during the Second World War . The church library is now looked after by a library group from the Mennonite congregation.

See also

literature

  • One hundred years of moments - 100 years of the Mennonite Church in Hamburg-Altona , Hamburg 2015, ISBN 9783000502552

Web links

Commons : Mennonite community in Hamburg and Altona  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich von Beckerath: The old church of great freedom - ephemeral symbol of community spirit , in: Matthias H. Rauert and Hajo Brandenburg (eds.): 400 years of Mennonites in Altona and Hamburg. May 25 to August 19, 2001. Catalog for the exhibition in the Altonaer Museum in Hamburg · North German State Museum , Hamburg 2001, 19f. ISBN 3-927637-38-6
  2. ↑ Hamburg City Mission: About Us ( Memento from September 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Dr. Elke Först: Great freedom for the Mennonites , in: Blog of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg
  4. ↑ List of monuments of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg ( Memento from June 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ^ August Niemann: Schleswig-Holstein Fatherland Studies . tape 1 . Hamburg 1802, p. 46 .
  6. ↑ Mennonite Congregation in Hamburg and Altona Library ( Memento from October 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Dennis L. Slabaugh: Library directory of the Mennonite community in Hamburg Altona . Norderstedt, ISBN 978-3-7504-5574-0 .

Coordinates: 53 ° 34 ′ 1.7 ″  N , 9 ° 56 ′ 53.3 ″  E