New Zion Church
The Evangelical Lutheran Zion Church in the Südvorstadt in Dresden is one of three Zion churches in the Saxon state capital. To distinguish it from its predecessor, the old Zionskirche used as a lapidarium , which was burned out in the Second World War, the church building at Bayreuther Straße 28, erected in 1981/1982, is also known as the New Zionskirche .
Sister parishes of the Zionskirche parish are the Paul-Gerhardt-Kirchgemeinde Coschütz-Gittersee, the Resurrection - Parish Dresden -Plauen and the Annen - Matthäus- Kirchgemeinde Dresden. There is a partner relationship with the Swedish parish Kullavik. The Zionskirche is also the parent church of the Evangelical Student Community in Dresden.
Building description
The wooden church stands on an area of 12 mx 12 m and measures 10 meters at its highest point. At the top of the tent roof is a stainless steel cross , the four arms of which are connected at the corners of a right-angled diamond (square). The church hall is connected to the elongated parish hall through a common vestibule. Both buildings stand on a brick basement and have brick walls.
The church hall has room for 120 people, which is about a ninth of the capacity of the old Zion Church. The community hall can accommodate 100 people. The pews is instead permanently installed pews floating chairs, receives so that the hall more Nutzmöglichkeiten. In the service, the altar, lectern and stalls form a (multi-row) circle. To the left of the altar is the crucifix in front of a starry sky, a loan from the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments , which Fritz Löffler found in 1983 for his parish at his former place of work. Its origin is unknown; it may have been carved in Silesia or the Sudetes at the end of the 15th century. A small Sauer organ stands on a church wall for musical accompaniment .
history
A church was to be built in the Südvorstadt within five years of his death from the assets of the mechanical engineering manufacturer Johannes Hampel, who died in 1896, were bequeathed to the city of Dresden. The foundation stone was laid in 1901 on Nürnberger Strasse on time, and the church was named Zionskirche . The actual work began in July 1908, so that the Zion Church was consecrated on September 29, 1912 after four years of construction. As one of the younger sacred buildings in Dresden , it burned down completely during the air raids in February 1945 . After the end of the war, the shrunken congregation was unable to finance the reconstruction of the church. Most of it was left to the city of Dresden for use. In 1949, members of the Protestant student community built a barrack in the courtyard next to the ruin located around 800 meters northwest of the university campus, which was a donation from Swedish charities. This barrack was used jointly by the student and Zion congregations from 1956 onwards.
In 1965, the Lutheran World Federation promised the Saxon regional bishop Gottfried Noth on his 60th birthday that a church would be built at a freely selectable location. The construction would be carried out by the Swedish Church , whose home country took a neutral position during the Cold War . Due to government interventions, none of the more than a dozen proposed sites could be used for this in the following years. After Noth's death in 1971, the project was filed with the regional church. A change brought about a change in the church policy of the SED in 1978, when the church should also contribute its part in the endeavor for international recognition of the GDR. In a discussion on March 6, 1978, the Chairman of the State Council, Erich Honecker, and the Board of Directors of the Federation of Churches agreed on a special building program that made it easier to build new churches. In exchange for the Zionskirche ruin, the Zionsgemeinde received from the city of Dresden the property on Bayreuther Strasse, a good 1 ⁄ 2 kilometers away, for a new building. A deepening of the site made re-planning by the Stockholm architect Rolf Bergk necessary, because the building planned in 1965 was intended for a level plot of land. The project management sent the Civil Erik Granbom from Kullavik as a construction manager to Dresden, the German side was Eberhard Burger as a church building officer at the Regional Church of Saxony responsibility.
Within 18 months, the church and the adjoining parish hall were built under Granbom's direction by Swedish master fitters, employees of the Dresden church building yard and members of the Zionskirche and Protestant student congregations (in their free time): In the spring of 1981, the brick cellar was first built on which the wooden church was placed. After the laying of the foundation stone on June 5, 1981, the topping-out ceremony of the church could be celebrated punctually on August 28, 1981 with the participation of foreign church representatives as part of a meeting of the central committee of the World Council of Churches in Dresden. A glue truss that was too short in the parish hall, which was supposed to be placed on the basement, was only a short-term problem for site manager Granbom. The Swedish manufacturer still had a suitable binder in stock, which could be loaded onto a transport going to Stockholm the same day . Through further contacts of Granbom, the binder arrived on a Deutrans truck that was leaving for the GDR the next day and finally arrived in Dresden on the third day. At the beginning of winter, the external work was completed so that the interior work could be started quickly. Four sandstone relief slabs recovered from the old Zionskirche were integrated into the new building.
On Reformation Day (October 31) in 1982 there was a farewell service with Superintendent Christof Ziemer in the barracks at the old Zion Church. Then the congregation walked to the New Zion Church with the altar cross, baptismal and communion implements, Bible and lectionary, where they were welcomed by the Strehlen trumpet choir. Site manager Erik Granbom handed the key over to the Swedish bishop Helge Brattgård, who handed it over to the Saxon regional bishop Johannes Hempel . He gave the key to Pastor Michael Kanig. After the consecration service in the church that followed, Archpriest Gladyshchuk of the Russian Orthodox Church presented a gilded brass communion chalice.
The Zion parish and the home parish of the builder Granbom in Kullavik maintain a lasting friendship that is strengthened by mutual visits. When the weather had badly affected the original wooden cross on the church, the couple Ingrid and Erik Granbom started an initiative to be able to replace it with a weatherproof cross made of stainless steel for the tenth anniversary of the church.
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Our sisters and partners. Evangelical Lutheran Zionskirchgemeinde Dresden, accessed on January 3, 2021 .
- ↑ About us. Evangelical Lutheran Zionskirchgemeinde Dresden, accessed on January 3, 2021 .
- ^ A b c Lars Herrmann: Zionskirche. In: Dresdner-Stadtteile.de. Retrieved January 3, 2021 .
- ↑ a b c d e Chronicle of the Zion Church. Evangelical Lutheran Zionskirchgemeinde Dresden, accessed on January 3, 2021 .
- ↑ Wolfgang Made: The Zionskirche . In: State capital Dresden, Office for Culture and Monument Protection (Ed.): Lost Churches: Dresden's destroyed churches. Documentation since 1938 . 3rd, change Edition. Dresden December 2018, p. 70–73 ( online edition. PDF; 6.2 MB).
- ↑ a b c Michael Kanig (author), Anders Brogren (translator): Svenskkyrkan i Dresden. In: brogren.nu. Retrieved January 3, 2021 (Swedish).
- ↑ Holger Starke (ed.): History of the city . tape 3 : From the founding of the empire to the present. Theiss, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8062-1928-9 , pp. 594 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Martin Haufe: Moving and beginning in the new church . In: Evangelical Lutheran Zionskirchgemeinde Dresden (Hrsg.): Community letter . August / September 2012, p. 6th f . ( Online ).
- ↑ Sylvia Franke-Jordan: How the cross came on the roof . In: Evangelical Lutheran Zionskirchgemeinde Dresden (Hrsg.): Community letter . August / September 2012, p. 5 ( online ).
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 1 ′ 56.7 " N , 13 ° 43 ′ 13.5" E