Reformed Church (Lübeck)
The Reformed Church in Lübeck was built at the beginning of the 19th century in the classicism style, first put into use in 1826 and is the first post-Gothic sacred building in the world cultural heritage of Lübeck's old town.
Prehistory of the Reformed Church Community of Lübeck
The prehistory of the Reformed Church in Lübeck goes back to 1553. About 200 members of the London alien community of the reformer Johannes a Lasco , who were initially under in King Edward VI. had been admitted there by England , had to flee from the Catholic Queen Maria I and, after being rejected in Copenhagen , reached Travemünde in the autumn of that year . The Lübeck superintendent Valentin Curtius , who was the highest representative of the Free City's church policy directly on the council, was not very impressed by the newcomers and their variant of the Protestant faith. The refugees initially stayed outside the walls of the Hanseatic city, but were finally taken in in the cities on the Rhine.
The actual establishment of the municipality was carried out by Dutch merchants, triggered by a trade agreement that Lübeck concluded with the Dutch States General in 1613 under its mayor Heinrich Brokes . In this case, the Spiritual Ministry was unable to oppose the city's declared commercial interests. The reformed people were recognized, even if only verbally, by the mayor v. Höveln and v. Wickede in 1666. In the same year, on August 26th, the first public Reformed church service in Lübeck was celebrated by the first pastor of the congregation, Wilhelm Momma , in the house of a congregation member on Klingenberg . Nevertheless, the early days of the community were marked by resistance from the city council and the ministry of the clergy. Services were held in the summer house of Councilor Heinrich Kerkring in front of the Holsten Gate . A first church building could only be purchased outside the city walls and the ramparts in St. Lorenz , but even there, community events were repeatedly blown up by councilors. Intercession by Hedwig Sophie , the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel, or the pressure of her brother, the Great Elector in Brandenburg , had little effect. In 1673 Reformed church services were again banned in Lübeck. Pastor Momma left town and the surviving church had to do without a pastor for a long time. The change brought about the repeal of the Edict of Nantes and the beginning of the persecution of the Huguenots in France, who were allowed to practice the Reformed religion in Lübeck, so that a Dutch and a French-influenced community initially coexisted before they unified in 1781. In 1736, a building outside the city wall could be purchased for church services, where they took place until the inauguration of the new church in St. Lorenz in 1826, i.e. in front of the Holsten Gate. The pastor Otto Friedrich Butendach , coming from Berlin in 1762 , where he was inspector at the Joachimsthaler Gymnasium for seven years , began his service as pastor of the community. He was one of the early active members of the Enlightenment Society for the Promotion of Charitable Activities and laid the foundation for connecting the community with the enlightened Lübeck bourgeoisie of the time. His library bequeathed to the Reformed Church , the Butendach Library named after him, still reminds of him today.
Pastor Butendach
Pastor Geibel
Construction of today's Reformed Church
Butendach's successor from 1798, the preacher Johannes Geibel , used the spirit of the Enlightenment and the liberality of the French era , which was revolutionary for Lübeck , to prepare the construction of a church in Lübeck city center. The formal requirement was the real recognition of the community, first through the introduction of French law in 1811 and then through the German Federal Act in 1815. In the same year, the merchant Röttger Ganslandt, the first member of the community was elected to the Lübeck council. The offer to use one of the medieval side churches of the city like the monastery church of St. Katharinen was out of the question because the room layout did not correspond to the desire for a sermon church .
Today's property at Königstraße 18 spans three parcels of the medieval city, which can still be seen in the preserved cellars from the Gothic period , and is therefore extraordinarily wide in the old Lübeck scale. The rigid, classicist facade is the most massive of its kind in the city and stands out as the only example of rudimentary revolutionary architecture in a brick Gothic to Biedermeier environment. It is actually a Baroque palace behind it , which was covered with this facade by the city architect Börm. The conversion of an inner city building, which had been prepared for a long period of time politically, between 1824 and 1826 led to the first church in Lübeck in the post-Gothic period. It is unsurpassed to this day, as the new building of the Catholic Provost Church on the Parade near Lübeck Cathedral , with its neo-Gothic formal language, came very close to the traditional. A side wing in the Rococo style has been preserved in the garden from the baroque buildings . In 1870, a new parsonage for the community could be connected to the church property at the rear on Breite Straße .
use
The simple hall church built behind the classicist facade quickly became a popular meeting room in Lübeck beyond its use for worship services. In 1847 the second German Association of German Studies took place here under the direction of Jakob Grimm , and the role of the church in the March Revolution of 1848 found its way into world literature through Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks .
During the Nazi era , pastors of the Confessing Church in Lübeck were expelled from Lübeck on January 1, 1937 or placed under house arrest. Members of their congregations who were in opposition to the German Christians received support from the congregation of the Reformed Church. Their pastor Otto A. Bode made it possible for them to hold a confessional service, in which around 1,800 members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in and in front of the Reformed Church took part on February 5, 1937. Pastor Bode prepared the affected Lutheran confirmands of this year for their emergency confirmation in St. Nicolai in Mölln .
organ
The community brought the first organ from the previous building. This instrument, created in 1799, was rebuilt and expanded in 1858 by the organ builder Theodor Vogt.
In 1909 the decision was made for a completely new building by the Ludwigsburg organ building company Walcker (work number 1490). Was built in a game and register contracture pneumatic organ with two manuals , pedal and 18 registers . In 1939 there was an expansion to include a register in the pedal and a slight change in the disposition in terms of organ movement . Overall, however, the organ's romantic sound was retained. This makes it the largest Walcker organ in Schleswig-Holstein that has been preserved as a whole. After a long period of neglect, it was rebuilt in 1985/1986 by organ builder G. Christian Lobback , Neuendeich b. Hamburg, restored. With the support of the organ researcher Reinhard Jaehn ( Eutin ), Lobback was able to prevent an organ expert from implementing his plan for a new organ.
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- Coupling : II / I, I / P.
- Fixed and free combinations.
From 1846 until his death in 1872 Konrad Geibel , son of the pastor and brother of Emanuel Geibel , was an organist. Franziska Bräck (born December 9, 1916 - August 15, 2012), a student of Hugo Distler , held the office for almost 75 years in the 20th century .
Church today
Today the community has around 800 members. It became a member of the Evangelical Reformed Church in Northwest Germany in 1927 , today this is the Evangelical Reformed Church , one of 20 regional churches within the EKD .
Butendach library
Pastor Butendach bequeathed his private library of around 6,000 titles, which he had assembled over three decades, to the congregation . It is an important example of a scholarly library of the 18th century. The focus of his acquisitions was literature of the Enlightenment period , and especially primary and secondary literature in the humanities.
During the Second World War , some of the holdings - like those of the Lübeck City Library - were stored in mining tunnels in Central Germany and ended up as looted art in the Soviet Union after the war . So far, returns have only been made from a few former republics, something over 500 volumes from Georgia . Today the library has a historical inventory of 2869 titles in approx. 7500 volumes, including 637 titles in small letters.
The decimated library is now kept by the community in the Rococo garden wing of the church building. The preserved holdings were made accessible from 1979 to 1984 as part of the research project of the Joachim Jungius Society of Sciences “Viewing, Preserving and Developing Historical Private Libraries in Northern Germany” with financial support from the Volkswagenwerk Foundation .
literature
- Hymnal for the Evangelical Reformed Congregation in Lübeck. Borchers, Lübeck 1832.
- Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library
- Wilhelm Deiß: History of the Evangelical Reformed Congregation in Lübeck. 1866. ( digitized version )
- Barbara Tiemann: The Butendach library in the Reformed Church in Lübeck. The collector and his collection. In: Journal of the Association for Lübeckische Geschichte, 65, 1985, pp. 143-221.
Web links
- Evangelical Reformed Congregation in Lübeck
- Entry on the Butendach library in the handbook of historical book collections
Individual evidence
- ↑ Otto A. Bode: From the history of the evangelical-reformed community in Lübeck . In: Lübecker Jahrbuch 1925 , pp. 57–73.
- Jump up ↑ "For, as yet, create a republic."
- ↑ Werner Petrowsky / Working Group "History of the Lübeck Labor Movement": Lübeck - another story. Insights into resistance and persecution in Lübeck 1933–1945. Center - Youth Welfare Office of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (Ed.), Lübeck 1986, ISBN 3-923814-02-X , pp. 107-108.
- ^ Arndt Schnoor: For the 70th anniversary of the organist Franziska Bräck. In: Lübeckische Blätter , 2007, p. 189.
- ↑ Obituary notice
Coordinates: 53 ° 52 ′ 10.9 ″ N , 10 ° 41 ′ 20.7 ″ E