New Town Church (Gumbinnen)
| Neustadtische Kirche (Reformed Church) in Gumbinnen |
|
|---|---|
| Construction year: | 1736-1739 |
| Inauguration: | 1739 |
| Architect : | Joachim Ludwig Schultheiss von Unfriedt |
| Style elements : | Brick construction , cross-shaped floor plan |
| Client: | Reformed parish in Gumbinnen ( Church Province of East Prussia , Church of the Old Prussian Union ) |
| Location: | 54 ° 35 '21.6 " N , 22 ° 11' 57" E |
| Address: | ul.Pobedy Gusew Kaliningrad , Russia |
| Purpose: | Evangelical Reformed Parish Church |
| Local community: | Not available anymore. The church building has been destroyed and cleared |
From the 18th century to 1944, the Gumbinner Neustadtische Kirche (also: Reformed Church ) was a place of worship for the German, French and Swiss Reformed parishioners living in Gumbinnen and the surrounding area in the former district town and now called Gussew, the district capital of the Russian Oblast Kaliningrad ( Koenigsberg area ( Prussia) ).
Geographical location
Today's Gussew is located in the eastern part of the Kaliningrad Oblast on the former German Reichsstrasse 1 , today's Russian trunk road A 229 and Europastrasse 28 . The city is a train station on the former Prussian Eastern Railway with the Kaliningrad – Nesterow railway line (Königsberg – Stallupönen / Ebenrode) to continue to Moscow .
The New Town Church stood in the south-western part of the city on what was once called Königstraße and is now Uliza Pobedy . The exact location is no longer recognizable.
Church building
Numerous colonists from the Reformed areas of Switzerland and France as well as from Nassau and the Palatinate , who had found a new home in Gumbinnen at the beginning of the 18th century, first celebrated their services in a brewery. When in 1732 many expelled Salzburg exiles came here and also settled, plans to build their own Reformed church matured. It was built between 1736 and 1739 based on a design by Joachim Ludwig Schultheiss von Unfriedt .
A plastered brick building was built on a cross-shaped floor plan. The tower in front was never completed. The vaulted interior was cleverly structured, otherwise simple and with deep galleries on the sides . A double staircase led to the pulpit on the east wall, under which - in accordance with Reformed tradition - there was only a simple table as an altar . The interior painting was renewed in 1912.
In 1760 the church received an organ from the workshop of the Königsberg organ builder Adam Gottlob Casparini . It had 20 registers on a manual and pedal . In 1903 Bruno Goebel from Königsberg built a new instrument in the historic Casparini case. It was his Opus 209 and had 18 stops on two manuals and a pedal.
The ringing consisted of three bells , which were consecrated in 1744. Two were melted down in World War II ; one “survived” in the Hamburg bell cemetery and found its way into the Großwolder church in Westoverledingen in East Frisia .
The church was destroyed during acts of war in 1944. The remaining walls of the ruins were cleared after 1985.
Parish
In 1732 an Evangelical Reformed church was founded in Gumbinnen . Clergymen have been serving here since 1714. At the beginning, two pastors each looked after the German-Reformed and French-Reformed congregations, the total number of congregation members increasing to more than 3800 by 1925. The village belonged until 1945 to the ecclesiastical province of East Prussia the Prussian Union of churches , but was not as Lutheran -oriented New Altstadt Church with the Salzburg church the church district Gumbinnen assigned, but was part of the special Reformed Church District East and West Prussia , which is based in Kaliningrad ( Prussia) .
The flight and expulsion of the local population as a result of the war, as well as the anti-church religious policy of the Soviet Union destroyed the church life of the Reformed community in the city now called Gussew.
It was not until the 1990s that a new Evangelical Lutheran congregation was able to form in the city , which in 1995 came back into the possession of the restored Salzburg church . It is now a place of worship for both denominations of the mostly Russian -German congregation. This is now the parish seat and with its parish includes the entire eastern Kaliningrad Oblast. It belongs to the Kaliningrad (Königsberg) provost of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of European Russia .
Parish
Before 1945, not only the Reformed church members of the town of Gumbinnen belonged to the parish of the Neustadtische Kirche, but also those in the surrounding towns, among them with a particularly high number of Reformed parishioners: Grünweitschen (1938 to 1946: Grünweiden, no longer existent), Kulligkehmen (1938 to 1946: Ohldorf (Ostpr.), Russian: Lipowo), Nestonkehmen (1938 to 1946: Schweizertal, Russian: Woronowo, no longer existent), Pakullauken and Perkallen (1938 to 1946: Husarenberg, both no longer exist), Pruszischken (1938 to 1946: Preußendorf, Russian: Brjanskoje) and Sadweitschen (1938 to 1946: Altkrug, Russian: Perwomaiskoje).
Pastor
At the New Town Reformed Church in Gumbinnens officiated as clergy - among them numerous auxiliary preachers in the second half of the 19th century:
- Heinrich Wasmuth, 1714–1755
- Friedrich Wilhelm Kühn, 1747–1749
- Johann Gerhard Krulle, 1749–1799
- Johann Heinrich Müller, 1801-1818
- Karl Friedrich Kramer, 1819–1848
- Johann Wilhelm Muttray, 1848–1861
- Wilhelm Hermann Buchholz, 1862–1875
- Richard Adalbert Wilhelm Schinck, 1875–1908
- Friedrich Wilhelm Bock, 1891-1892
- Friedrich Otto Kowalewski, 1895–1896
- Paul Friedrich Bruno Ebner, 1896–1897
- Friedrich Heski, 1899–1900
- Adolf Johann Wilhelm Alexander Hoese, 1902
- Emil John, 1902-1903
- Kurt Knorr, 1903-1910
- Georg Max Lehmann, until 1910
- Franz Theodor Liedtke, 1908–1913
- Leopold Emil Schröder, 1909–1934
- Walter Stutzke, 1914
- Bruno Moritz, 1934–1945
Reformed pastors:
- Jean Pierre Remy, 1731-1736
- Jean Jaques Audouy, 1738-1763
- Jean Pet. Chr. Rocholl, 1763–1777
- Johann Gerhard Krulle, 1777–1779
- Johann Ernst Lüls, 1779–1798
- Johann Heinrich Müller, 1799–1801
- Philipp Gottfried Bierbrauer, 1801–1807
- Franz Leopold Gossauner, 1807–1808
Church records
The church registers of the Neustadt community have been preserved and are being kept at the German Central Office for Genealogy in Leipzig :
- Baptisms: City = 1731 to 1818, City and Country = 1845 to 1847, German Reformed = 1714 to 1735, French Reformed = 1731 to 1736 and 1752 to 1808
- Weddings: 1800 to 1819 and 1845 to 1847, French Reformed = 1731 to 1808
- Burials: City = 1714 to 1818 and 1845 to 1847, Country = 1786 to 1818.
References
- ↑ a b Gumbinnen at GenWiki
- ↑ New Town / Reformed Church Gumbinnen
- ↑ Walther Hubatsch , History of the Evangelical Church of East Prussia , Volume 2: Pictures of East Prussian Churches , Göttingen, 1968, p. 98, fig. 417-418
- ^ The New Town Church, around 1930
- ↑ Werner Renkewitz, Jan Janca, Hermann Fischer : History of the art of organ building in East and West Prussia. Volume II, 1: Mosengel, Caspari, Casparini . Pape Verlag, Berlin 2008, pp. 397-400.
- ↑ Werner Renkewitz, Jan Janca, Hermann Fischer : History of the art of organ building in East and West Prussia. Volume II, 2: From Johann Preuss to E. Kemper & Sohn, Lübeck / Bartenstein . Siebenquart Verlag, Cologne 2015, p. 490 (catalog raisonné Bruno Goebel).
- ^ Lost buildings in Gumbinnen
- ↑ a b Walther Hubatsch, History of the Evangelical Church of East Prussia , Volume 3: Documents , Göttingen, 1968, p. 508
- ↑ a b Friedwald Moeller, Old Prussian Protestant Pastor's Book from the Reformation to the Expulsion in 1945 , Hamburg, 1968, p. 232
- ↑ Evangelical Lutheran Provosty Kaliningrad ( Memento of the original dated August 29, 2011 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.
- ↑ Muttray († 1892) was a member of the Corps Littuania . From Gumbinnen he came to the Judtschen Church .
