North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
map
Map of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church
Basic data
Area : 16,525 km²
Leading clergyman: Bishop Gerhard Ulrich , Bishop Kirsten Fehrs and Bishop Gothart Magaard
Membership: VELKD , EKD , LWB
Sprengel : 2
Church districts : 11
Parishes : 594
Parishioners: 2,003,550 (December 31, 2010)
Ev. in% of the population: 43.3 (December 31, 2010)
Official Website: www.nordelbien.de and www.kirche.de

The North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church (NEK), sometimes just called "North Elbia" for short, was an Evangelical Lutheran Church that existed from 1977 to 2012. At Pentecost 2012 it was absorbed into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany ( "Northern Church" ).

The North Elbian Church was one of 22 member churches ( regional churches ) of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). Like all regional churches, it was a corporation under public law . The Church had 2,019,243 members (as of 2010) in 594 parishes and was one of the Lutheran churches within the EKD. She was also a member of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD).

The episcopal churches of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church were the Schleswig Cathedral (St. Petri) and the main church St. Michaelis (the "Michel") in Hamburg , until 2008 also the Lübeck Cathedral . Until the end of 2003, the regional church maintained an Evangelical Academy in Bad Segeberg and Hamburg.

Territory of the regional church

The territory of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church comprised the federal states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein with the exception of the Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral Community in Ratzeburg (Schleswig-Holstein), which belonged to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg . In addition, the Evangelical Lutheran Erlösergemeinde Vahrendorf ( Rosengarten parish ) in Lower Saxony and the German-speaking minority parish of the German North Schleswig-Holstein in Denmark were part of the North Elbian Church.

history

In particular Heinrich Meyer , the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lübeck , advocated better cooperation between the four Evangelical regional churches in the areas north of the Elbe in the early 1970s. The North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church was formed on January 1st, 1977 by the union of four independent regional churches and a parish of another fifth regional church. These were the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg state , the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lübeck , the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Schleswig-Holstein and the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Eutin and the Harburg District of the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Hanover . The initiative to merge these regional churches came from the Schleswig-Holstein Church, whose synod had already passed a resolution in 1956. But it took another 20 years before the constitution of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church of June 12, 1976 came into force. Before that, the NEK was formed with the contract on the formation of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church on July 1, 1970.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg state

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg State consisted of the city of Hamburg until 1860. In the course of the subsequent expansion of the city, however, it retained its territory. It was not until the church merger of 1977 that a new border was drawn that united the urban area of ​​Hamburg with some northern parishes in the Schleswig-Holstein district of Stormarn in the Hamburg district of the newly formed regional church.

With the merger in 1977, the main part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg state was merged into the newly formed district of Hamburg. The previous regional bishop of Hamburg thus became bishop of the newly created district of Hamburg. The episcopal chancellery continued to operate even after the merger with other responsibilities. The last regional bishop was Hans-Otto Wölber , who became bishop of the newly circumscribed Hamburg district from 1977.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Lübeck state

The origins of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lübeck lay in the originally Catholic prince-bishopric of Lübeck , which had existed since 1163. The Hanseatic city of Lübeck has been Protestant since the Reformation in 1530, the area of ​​the city and the church area were identical. At the head of the church stood the senior elected by the regional synod , who received the title of "bishop" from 1934. During the merger in 1977, the 31 parishes became part of the newly circumscribed Holstein-Lübeck district as a provost (today church district). The last bishop of the Lübeck regional church was Karlheinz Stoll . In 1958, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lübeck approved Elisabeth Haseloff , the first female pastor in Germany to have the same rights as her colleagues.

Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Schleswig-Holstein

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Schleswig-Holstein consisted of the areas of the states of Schleswig and Holstein . Both went to Prussia after the end of the Danish administration in 1867. Prussia founded a regional church with a joint regional consistory for the then province . The church was supplemented in 1876 by the previous Duchy of Lauenburg , which was incorporated as a state superintendent. The state superintendent of Lauenburg performed episcopal tasks in his sphere of activity.

The secular leader of the church was the president of the consistory, the spiritual leaders of the church were the two general superintendents, later bishops, of Schleswig (seat in Schleswig) and Holstein (seat in Kiel), who presided over the two districts of the church of the same name.

The takeover of power by the National Socialists on January 30, 1933 also led to an attempt by the German Christians in the Schleswig-Holstein regional church to “bring the church into line” in the spirit of the NSDAP. At the “brown synod” on September 12, 1933 in Rendsburg, where they had the majority, they forced Bishops Eduard Völkel (Schleswig) and Adolf Mordhorst (Holstein) to resign and elevated DC pastor Adalbert Paulsen to the position of sole regional bishop. According to the “Führer principle”, the regional bishop ruled solely with the support of the regional church council and the consistory. After the collapse of the National Socialist dictatorship in 1945, Paulsen gave up his office. With the election of Wilhelm Halfmann as bishop for Holstein (1946) and Reinhard Wester as bishop for Schleswig (1947), the old order was returned.

The last bishops of the regional church were Alfred Petersen (Schleswig) and Friedrich Hübner , who was bishop of Holstein-Lübeck from 1977.

With the merger in 1977, the district of Holstein of the previous Schleswig-Holstein regional church was rewritten. It was expanded to include the provosts of the previous Evangelical Church in Eutin and the Evangelical Church in Lübeck, but had to surrender its southern areas, which had formed its own district since 1952 as the Provosty of South Holstein , to the district of Hamburg. Its new name was Sprengel Holstein-Lübeck.

Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church Eutin

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Eutin emerged from a part of the Oldenburg Church after the First World War . Their territory consisted roughly of the secular domain of the prince-bishops of Lübeck, the former Lübeck bishopric , which was secularized as the Principality of Lübeck in 1803.

The last bishop of the Eutin regional church was Wilhelm Kieckbusch . Before the merger, the regional church comprised around 20 parishes. Until 2009, these communities formed a provost office (today church district ) within the Holstein-Lübeck district.

Harburg Church District

The Harburg parish was part of the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Hanover . In the 1970s, when the regional churches were to be reorganized in Northern Elbe, the Harburg parish also took part in the discussion. This was due to the fact that the former city of Harburg had belonged to the city of Hamburg since 1937 as a result of the Greater Hamburg Act , but remained ecclesiastically with Hanover. They wanted to standardize the political and ecclesiastical borders as much as possible. The Harburg parish took part in the merger and then became a parish in the Hamburg district of the new church. In return, the Ev.-Luth. Church in the Hamburg State from its parishes in Cuxhaven, which had belonged to Hamburg until 1937, to the Hannoversche Landeskirche. For the first time since 1937, the entire city of Hamburg (again) belonged to a single Protestant regional church.

From northern Elbe to the northern church

Official exploratory talks with the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Mecklenburg and the Pomeranian Evangelical Church about a merger to form a unified Northern Evangelical Church in the German Baltic Sea region have been going on since April 2007 March 2009 the synod in Rendsburg voted with 102 votes of the 128 synodals for the merger. The Constituent Synod of the Northern Church met in Travemünde from October 29th to 31st, 2010. In the first reading of the new constitution and the Introductory Act, it also named the "Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany (Northern Church)".

Head of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church

The church leadership elected in February 2010, with Bishop Maria Jepsen (4th from right) and Bishop Gerhard Ulrich (far right).

At the head of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church is the church leadership, which consists of ten members elected by the synod for six years and the college of bishops. One of the two bishops chairs the church leadership. As a rule, bishops retire after they turn 65.

Episcopal persons

  • Sprengel Hamburg and Lübeck (since October 1, 2008)
    • 2008 to July 16, 2010: Maria Jepsen , had been Bishop of Hamburg since 1992.
    • 2010–2011: Provost Jürgen Bollmann temporarily took over the office of permanent episcopal representative after Jepsen's resignation.
    • from November 15, 2011: On June 17, 2011, Kirsten Fehrs was elected as the new bishop by the North Elbian Synod in the main church of Sankt Michaelis .
  • District Schleswig and Holstein (since October 1, 2008)
    • since 2008: Gerhard Ulrich
    • since 2009: Gothart Magaard , initially as episcopal plenipotentiary for the district of Schleswig and Holstein, elected bishop on May 11, 2014 after the introduction of Ulrich as regional bishop of the northern church as bishop's representative

Former districts (until September 30, 2008):

  • District of Hamburg
  • District Holstein-Lübeck (seat Lübeck)

The chairman of the church leadership was from 2004 to 2008 the Schleswig Bishop Hans Christian Knuth. With the election of Gerhard Ulrich as Knuth's successor, the North Elbian Church implemented the new bishop's model on October 1, 2008 with an expanded district of Schleswig and Holstein as well as the changed district of Hamburg-Lübeck. Gerhard Ulrich became bishop of Schleswig and Holstein, Maria Jepsen bishop of Hamburg and Lübeck (until July 16, 2010).

In May 2009 a leading bishop based in Kiel should also be elected. However, with the merger agreement of February 2009, the North Elbe Church renounced this occupation.

State Synod

The regional church had a synod as a “parliament” . Its members, the synodals, are elected by the church district synods, by the employees and from the ministries and works; some of the synodals are called. Its chairman was the President of the Synod, most recently Hans-Peter Strenge . The Synod usually meets twice a year, but due to the preparations for merger it meets significantly more frequently in recent years. Their tasks are similar to those of political parliaments.

Management and administration of the regional church

North Elbish church office and administrative hierarchy

The church leadership is based in Kiel and oversees the North Elbian church office, which is headed by a president. In addition to the president, there are seven senior church councils responsible for the various departments, other speakers and staff members of the church office. It is responsible for the implementation of church laws and church leadership decisions and oversees the subordinate administrations.

President of the North Elbe Church Office

The church leadership represented the North Elbian Church in public and directed it within the framework of the resolutions of the synod. She also supervised the North Elbian Church Office. Along with the college of bishops and the synod, it was one of the main organs of the NEK.

In the administrative hierarchy, the North Elbian Church was structured from bottom to top: At the base stood the parishes as corporations under public law with elected church councils and pastors. The church councils were elected by the parishioners. Other church leaders were appointed. The church council invited all confirmed parishioners to the parish meeting at least once a year.

Several parishes together formed a church district (in general administration comparable to a district ), headed by a provost; in large church circles there were sometimes several provosts. The church districts were also corporations under public law and had the church district synod with a church district executive as a body. The members of the church district synod were elected by the respective church councils of the parishes. Some synodals were also called.

Several church districts together formed a district, headed by a bishop. The Sprengelbeirat supported the bishop in the performance of his spiritual duties. The two districts together formed the regional church ( comparable to the federal state in terms of general administration ).

Sprengel with its church districts (since 2009)

Since a structural reform in 2009, the North Elbe Church has consisted of two districts with a total of 11 church districts and 594 parishes.

  • District of Schleswig and Holstein :
    • Altholstein (with Holtenau and Pries / Friedrichsort, two parishes in southern Schleswig belong to the Altholstein parish.)
    • Dithmarschen
    • North Friesland
    • Ostholstein
    • Plön-Segeberg
    • Rantzau-Munsterdorf
    • Rendsburg-Eckernförde
    • Schleswig-Flensburg
  • Sprengel Hamburg and Lübeck :
    • Hamburg-Ost (the parish of Vahrendorf also belongs to the Hamburg-Ost parish in Lower Saxony)
    • Hamburg-West / Südholstein
    • Lübeck-Lauenburg (the cathedral community of Ratzeburg has been a member of the Mecklenburg regional church since 1554)

The North Schleswig community , a German-speaking community with several parish offices in Denmark , which has the legal status of a "free community" there , also belonged to the Schleswig and Holstein district .

From 1977 to 2008, 27 church districts were divided into three districts:

  • Sprengel Hamburg: Alt-Hamburg, Altona, Blankenese, Harburg, Niendorf, Stormarn
  • District Holstein-Lübeck: Eutin, Kiel, Duchy of Lauenburg, Lübeck, Münsterdorf, Neumünster, Oldenburg in Holstein, Pinneberg, Plön, Rantzau, Segeberg
  • Schleswig district: fishing, Eckernförde, Eiderstedt, Flensburg, Husum-Bredstedt, Norderdithmarschen, Rendsburg, Schleswig, Süderdithmarschen, Südtondern

Parishes

The church districts consisted of a total of 594 parishes . In the course of the past few years, the number of parishes had initially increased sharply, with parishes in cities becoming so large that they were divided up and new parishes were created. Many parishes were later reunited to form larger ones. The distribution of the parishes to the three parishes was as follows:

  • Sprengel Hamburg and Lübeck: 226 parishes
  • District of Schleswig and Holstein: 368 parishes

North Elbian Cross

Since November 23, 2007 the North Elbian Church has been using an independently designed logo. Two symbols characteristic of the North Elbian Church were connected in an abstract way . On the one hand the cross , which traditionally stands as a symbol for the Church of Jesus Christ, and on the other hand the sail , as a symbol of a modern and living church between the seas: +). The abstract design of the North Elbian Cross allowed it to be displayed on all keyboards, similar to an emoticon .

Partnerships

The North Elbe Evangelical Lutheran Church was in partnership with a number of churches and Christian councils around the world. The partnership work was organized either by the North Elbian Mission Center (Hamburg) or the Ecumenical Department (Kiel). a. through parish and church district partnerships, staff exchange (ecumenical cooperation), internship and scholarship programs (Der Andere Blick, ecumenical missionary scholarship) and the Christian Jensen College ( Breklum ). Partnerships existed with the following churches / Christian councils:

Asia

Africa

  • Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania
  • Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • Kenyan Evangelical Lutheran Church

Latin America

  • Ev. Luth Church. Confession in Brazil
  • El Salvador Lutheran Church

Europe

Hymn books

At the time of the merger in 1977, the Evangelical Church Hymn - edition for the Evangelical Lutheran regional churches Schleswig-Holstein-Lauenburg, Hamburg, Lübeck and Eutin, Hamburg , introduced from 1950/53, was valid. In more recent editions the hymn book was entitled Evangelical Church Hymn - Edition for the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church .

Since 1994 the congregations have been singing from the Evangelical Hymnal - edition for the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church ; Hamburg and Kiel, 1994

In addition, hymn books in Frisian and Low German were also used with Loow nü e Hiire and Op goden Kurs .

Church closings

Since the first decade of the 21st century, especially in Hamburg, but recently also in smaller rural parishes, parish mergers and, increasingly, church closings. The church administrations often refer to declining church tax revenues and membership numbers as justification. The buildings are given to other religious communities or even demolished. Membership in the North Elbian Church fell between 1940 and 2011 in Hamburg from 80% of the population to 29% and in Schleswig-Holstein from 90% to 51%. The reason for this loss of membership is the increasing existential security in the German population.

Child abuse

In June 2010 it became publicly known that a pastor from the parish of Ahrensburg allegedly sexually abused several girls and boys from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s . After the first allegations became known, the church office transferred the pastor to the Schleswig juvenile detention center in 1999 as a prison pastor . Disciplinary proceedings have not been initiated. The pastor was later given early retirement. After Der Spiegel reported on July 10, 2010 that the bishop in the Hamburg-Lübeck district, Maria-Jepsen, had already been informed in 1999 about sexual assaults by the pastor from Ahrensburg on minors in her church and had not taken any action, she stepped down on July 16, 2010 returned from her office as bishop. Jepsen stated that he had not been informed about the abuse cases, which, however, contradicts statements made by, among others, the former provost Emse.

A church disciplinary procedure is also being investigated against a second Ahrensburg pastor. As a consequence of the incidents, in August 2010 the North Elbe Church hired two ombudsmen for victims of sexual violence. The local church parish asked the victims for forgiveness in the summer of 2010. In an open letter to Bishop Ulrich from October 2010, the initiative criticized the way the regional church and especially the bishop dealt with the victims. The citizens' initiative "Return to Reason" criticizes the approach of the church council in clearing up the incidents as "unprofessional" and as participation "in a public hunt". The initiative also criticizes the fact that several members of the church council were already members of the church council at the time of the incidents and therefore there was no neutrality in these cases, which was necessary for a substantive processing of the allegations of abuse.

In March 2009 a church musician from Lütjensee was dismissed without notice when the church learned that he had been sentenced to six months' imprisonment in April 2008 for possession of child pornography.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Source: http://www.ekd.de/download/Ber_Kirchenlösungen_2010.pdf
  2. ↑ Source: http://www.ekd.de/download/Ber_Kirchenlösungen_2010.pdf
  3. ↑ 2010 World Lutheran Membership Details; Lutheran World Information 1/2011 ( Memento from September 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 199 kB)
  4. ^ Bishop Heinrich Meyer died . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 2, 1978, p. 4.
  5. ↑ Rainer Hering: Women in the pulpit? The long road to legal equality ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ "North Church": North Elbian Synod for Merger Negotiations ( Memento from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) - Evangelical Press Service (epd) Landesdienst Nord
  7. ^ Ostsee-Zeitung , February 7, 2009
  8. ↑ Sebastian Dittmers: Origin of the Northern Church Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany . Lutherische Verl.-Ges, Kiel 2015, ISBN 978-3-87503-181-2 , pp. 175-177 .
  9. ^ Bishop Maria Jepsen resigns, WELT Online, July 16, 2010
  10. ^ Provost Bollmann takes over Jepsen's official duties. (No longer available online.) Protestant press service, formerly in the original ; Retrieved July 23, 2010 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.epd.de
  11. ↑ Kirsten Fehrs elected as the new bishop ( memento from August 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) NDR.de, June 17, 2011, accessed on July 19, 2011
  12. ↑ Protestant press service: Church leaders sign merger agreement  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ); Retrieved February 7, 2009@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.nordelbien.de
  13. ↑ North Elbian Church, structure and structure ( Memento from June 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church: A new graphic face for North Elbe ( Memento from September 5, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  15. ^ Dittmers, Sebastian: Origin of the Northern Church Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany . Lutherische Verl.-Ges, Kiel 2015, ISBN 978-3-87503-181-2 , pp. 128 .
  16. ^ Dittmers, Sebastian: Origin of the Northern Church Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany . Lutherische Verl.-Ges, Kiel 2015, ISBN 978-3-87503-181-2 , pp. 125-150 .
  17. ^ Resignation of a bishop: End of the silence . In: Tagesspiegel
  18. ↑ A Shepherd's Kisses . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 2010 ( online ).
  19. ↑ The bishop is said to have known about abuse years ago . In: Spiegel Online , July 12, 2010.
  20. ^ Resigned Bishop Jepsen: Faith, instincts, forgetting . In: Spiegel Online , accessed October 22, 2010
  21. ↑ Brothers without a Guardian . In: taz , accessed October 22, 2010
  22. ↑ North Elbian Church introduces ombudsmen. (No longer available online.) North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, formerly the original ; Retrieved October 22, 2010 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / nordelbien.de
  23. ↑ explanation. (No longer available online.) Evangelical Lutheran Church Community of Ahrensburg, formerly in the original ; Retrieved October 22, 2010 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.kirche-ahrensburg.com
  24. ↑ Open letter. (PDF; 333 kB) Association Abuse in Ahrensburg, accessed on October 22, 2010 .
  25. ^ Dialogue in Ahrensburg. Return to reason, accessed 16 May 2011 .
  26. ↑ Convicted church musician hoarding child porn - fired. Retrieved July 19, 2011 .