Religions in Dresden

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The Evangelical Frauenkirche Dresden

There are various religious communities in Dresden . Around four fifths of the approximately 550,000 inhabitants do not belong to any religious community. About 20% of the city's population is composed mainly of members of Christian denominations. Of these, 15.4% of the residents are Protestant, another 4.6% Roman Catholic and around 1,000 members of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Protestant church

Kreuzkirche

Since the Christianization, Dresden had initially belonged to the diocese of Meissen . There were several churches, monasteries and brotherhoods in the city at the beginning of the 16th century. Martin Luther visited Dresden several times since 1516 . The diocese of Meissen was abolished in 1521. The Reformation was introduced in 1539. In the same year the first church visit took place. Thereafter, Dresden was a predominantly Protestant city for many centuries - until the 1960s. From 1574 at the latest, the city represented strict Lutheranism .

As the former bishop's seat, Meißen was the seat of the consistory after the Reformation , but this was moved to Dresden in 1580 and is still in the city today, with the name "Landeskirchenamt". The few attempts to gain a foothold for the Reformed Confession were suppressed several times and some advocates of the Union's efforts of both denominations were even executed.

It was not until the 18th century that a small Reformed community was able to form, which in 1764 built its own church. However, it did not become fully equal with the Lutherans until 1811. The Reformed community today belongs to the Federation of Evangelical Reformed Churches in Germany with its seat in Braunschweig . The Federation of Evangelical Reformed Churches is an associated member of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

From 1949, most of the previously Protestant Dresden residents left the church. The proportion of Protestant church members fell from around 85% in 1949 to around 22% in 1989.

The city's Lutheran congregations belonged to the Dresden Superintendent , which was probably established soon after the Reformation. Today this administrative district is called the church district , which was later divided into two church districts Dresden Mitte and Dresden Nord. Thus today all parishes in the city belong to these two church districts, which belong to the Dresden region of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony . The church districts also include parishes outside the city. There is also a regional church community within the regional church .

Old denominational churches

St. Petri Church (SELK), Dresden

As early as 1871, the first Old Lutheran parish was formed in Dresden with the Trinity Parish, which together with other Old Lutheran parishes formed the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church (ELFK) in 1876 . A short time later, the Trinity Church on Alaunstrasse could already be built, but it was destroyed in the air raids in February 1945. A new building was rejected by the GDR leadership, so that church services had to take place in private rooms for many years. In 1988, part of the congregation joined the Evangelical Lutheran (Old Lutheran) Church , while the other - much smaller part - remained with the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church.

Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church

The part of the congregation that changed to the Old Lutheran Church now forms the Trinity congregation within the Lausitz church district of the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (SELK). A special feature is that this old denominational Lutheran parish has leased the church building and the parsonage of the Protestant St. Petri Church at Grossenhainer Platz 4 in Dresden-Neustadt. The Evangelical St. Petri Congregation continues to have the right to host.

Evangelical Lutheran Free Church

The Trinity Church remaining in the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church (ELFK) was able to open a new community center in the Kaditz district in 1996 . In 2012, the ELFK Trinity congregation moved to the Radeberger Straße parish hall, where Sunday services and weekly events have been taking place ever since.

Evangelical Free Churches

Parish hall of the Evangelical-Mennonite Free Church (a Mennonite Brothers Congregation) in Dresden
Church of the Herrnhuter Brothers Community, which stands in a courtyard in Oschatzer Strasse in the Dresden-Pieschen district.
Flag of the Salvation Army Dresden
Parish hall of the Adventist church in Löbtau

In the area of ​​Protestantism, in addition to the parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church and the old confessional churches in Dresden, there are also several parishes of Protestant free churches .

  • Evangelical Free Church Congregation, in short: BEFG ( Baptist and Brethren Congregations ): The first Baptist congregation was founded in Dresden in 1892. It initially consisted of 52 members who had previously been entered in the register of the community in Halle. From 1891 to 1909 there were 372 baptisms; In 1909 the number of members was 230. Today there are four parishes in Dresden that belong to the BEFG (two of which are brothers), with a total of over 450 members.
  • There is an Elim congregation that belongs to the Bund Freikirchlicher Pfingstgemeinden (BFP). It is located in the new town. About 250 people come to the services, the congregation has 300 members; their catchment area extends to Großröhrsdorf and Coswig . The church was founded in 1926 after a tented evangelism. With other Elim congregations, she joined the then Baptist Union in 1938 (later the Federation of Evangelical Free Churches ), from which the Dresden congregation switched to the BFP in 1991.
The parish hall on Katechetenstrasse was destroyed in 1945. In 1952, a restaurant on Bischofswerdaer Strasse was converted into a parish hall.
There is further church work with the oasis in Gorbitz with around 70 members, in Prohlis with around 30 people attending church services, and in Gönnsdorf.
  • The United Methodist Church (UMC) has four churches in Dresden: The Emmaus Church , the Peace Church , the Immanuel Church and the Zions Church .
The Emmauskirche describes itself as a community and meeting center Emmaus . Your building, erected in 1907, is located in a back yard on Katharinenstrasse, from which it cannot be seen. The Emmaus community has around 200 members as well as just as many family members and friends. Their catchment area extends from Dresden to Stolpen.
The Immanuel Church congregation came into being in the last years of the 19th century. It belongs to the tradition of the "Protestant Community": From 1897, church services were held regularly in a drugstore. At the end of 1906, the community hall in the rear building of the post office, Cossebauder Str. 3, was inaugurated. Sunday school had a particular heyday in the years 1910–1930. The almost 200 children found hardly any space in the space available. The Immanuelkirche was consecrated on December 18, 1927. From 1930 Dresden III became an independent fourth district with the subsidiary communities Meißen and Hirschfeld. In 1947 the interior was renovated and the organ in the Immanuelkirche was consecrated. Another exterior and interior renovation took place from 1968 to 1976.
  • Evangelical-Mennonite Free Church : The congregation was founded in 1993 and has 110 congregation members. She belongs to the Working Group of Mennonite Brethren in Germany (AMBD).
  • Until 1945 there was a Free Evangelical Congregation (FeG) in Schäferstrasse. After the bombing in 1945, when the FeG also lost its building, community work in Radebeul was continued. Subsequently, the GDR authorities did not issue a permit for community work in Dresden. It was not until 1991 that the pastor from Radebeul and a few members from Dresden began to celebrate church services there again, first in a school dining room, then on a company site on Großenhainer Straße. Today the community center is located in the Goldener Lamm on Leipziger Strasse. More than 400 people gather for the services.
FeGs in Radeberg , Pirna and, since 2016, the Dresden-Süd community have been or are being created as subsidiary communities.
  • The Salvation Army is represented by a community ( corps ); she has been running a day meeting since she started work again in Dresden, as well as the second-hand shop "Second Chance" in connection with a clothing store, a mobile canteen as an emergency vehicle and, since 2015 on behalf of the city of Dresden, the Lindenhaus temporary residence in the Pirnaische Vorstadt .
  • The Herrnhuter Brothers Congregation has around 300 members who live in Dresden and the surrounding area. Among other things, because many members are also involved in other congregations, the worship services called sermon meetings only take place every two weeks.
  • The first Advent church in Dresden was founded in 1901. Today there are two Advent churches with a total of 300 church members and more than 100 children and young people . In addition, since 1927 the Adventists have been running today's Sonnenhof meeting center for recreational and meeting purposes as a self-catering house.

The membership numbers mentioned here add up to 1,760 people; Here it must be taken into account that on the one hand membership numbers are not given for all churches (e.g. Salvation Army), some of the churches expressly do not include (unbaptized) children (e.g. Baptists), and on the other hand not all members live in the city area ( e.g. Moravian Brethren). The approximate size of the membership of the free church spectrum with its 19 congregations is understandable.

Roman Catholic Church

Catholic court church

Since 1661 there have been catholic services in Dresden again , but initially they could only be held in the embassy chapels of the French and imperial ambassadors and were therefore not open to the public. After the conversion of the Saxon Elector Friedrich August I (Augustus the Strong) to Catholicism in 1697, a small Catholic community emerged in Dresden, which from 1709 also had its own church. The Catholic Court Church was built between 1739 and 1751 , which then became the home of the Dresden Catholics. It was not until 1807 that the Catholic community was put on an equal footing with the Lutheran communities through the provisions of the Peace of Poznan between France and Saxony, dictated by Napoleon . Like all Catholics in what was then the Kingdom of Saxony, it belonged to the Apostolic Vicariate with its seat in Dresden, which was the responsible administrative district from 1743 in succession to the dioceses that were dissolved during the Reformation and was abolished in 1921. Dresden became the seat of a deanery within the diocese of Meissen , which today also includes parishes outside Dresden. In 1980 Dresden became the seat of the diocese of Dresden-Meißen , which belongs to the ecclesiastical province of Berlin ( Archdiocese of Berlin ). The main Catholic church in the city and now the cathedral of the Dresden-Meißen diocese is the court church of the Holy Trinity ; There is also a plaque on the history of the Catholic Church in Dresden. On Catholics meeting Dresden 1987 took part more than 100,000 believers; it was the only meeting of Catholics in the GDR.

Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church was built in the 19th century. During the air raids on Dresden in February 1945, the church was the only building in a wide area to remain relatively unscathed. Today the congregation has over 1000 members.

New Apostolic Church

Church of the Apostolic Community in Dresden-Niedersedlitz

In 1895 the first "Apostolic Congregation of the newer direction" was founded in Dresden. Seven years later it was renamed the “New Apostolic Congregation in Dresden”, and since 1930 the worldwide uniform name New Apostolic Church has been in effect . In 1921, due to differences in their beliefs, the majority of the members turned away from the New Apostolic Congregation - of the approximately 600 believers only 25 remained in the congregation. The former parishioners later founded the Reformed Apostolic Community in Dresden (today: Apostolic Community ), which has its church on Bismarckstrasse.

The present Dresden-Neustadt congregation with around 700 members emerged from the former congregation of Dresden. Your church building has been located on Böhmische Strasse 37 since 1903 and has a capacity of 850 seats. An organ from Jehmlich Orgelbau Dresden was installed in this in 1965 . In addition, the communities Lockwitz and Cossebaude exist in Dresden.

Jewish communities

New synagogue on Rathenauplatz

The first documentary mention of a Jewish community contains the Jewish ordinance of the Meissen Margrave Heinrich the Illustrious of 1265. In 1430 the expulsion of the Jews from the entire Saxon state took place. It was not until the end of the 17th century that August the Strong permitted the immigration of Jews again due to the financial advantages that had been hoped for. An important step was the Jewish mandate of 1746. In 1942 the Jewish population of Dresden had shrunk from 5000 to 985 people. The deportations to concentration and extermination camps cost many Dresdeners their lives. At the end of the war there were only 41 Jews left in Dresden.

The preserved cemeteries are evidence of the pre-war period. The Old Jewish Cemetery is the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Saxony . It was created on the basis of a permit from Elector Friedrich August II. In 1751. In 1869 it was fully occupied with 1,250 graves on an area of ​​31.60 ares and was closed. The cemetery was not destroyed during the Nazi era. In 1867 a new cemetery was laid out in Johannstadt following the Evangelical Trinity cemetery. The first burial was in 1868. In 1920 this cemetery was expanded.

The Jewish community in Dresden has a long tradition, which was interrupted by the persecution by National Socialism and the destruction of the Semper Synagogue in 1938 . After the Second World War, church services were held again from 1950 in a building consecrated as a synagogue on the grounds of the New Jewish Cemetery in Johannstadt . In 2001 the Jewish community in Dresden was able to inaugurate its new synagogue . In 2001 it received an architecture award for the best new European building. Today's congregation has around 730 members.

There is also an Orthodox Jewish community in Chabad Lubavitch, which has around 80 members.

Islam

There has been an Islamic community in Dresden since the 1980s. In 1998 the association Islamisches Zentrum Dresden eV was founded. The seat of this association is the Alfaruq Mosque. In 2013 three mosques were available for the 750 practicing Muslims .

Other religious communities

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), the Christian Community, and Jehovah's Witnesses are also represented.

In Dresden there are Buddhist communities of Diamond Way Buddhism, Dzogchen Buddhism, the New Kadampa Tradition and the Kwan Um Zen School . The city's first Buddhist burial site was consecrated in the Heidefriedhof at the end of September 2015 .

There has also been a Baha'i community in Dresden since the 1920s . And by the Hindu faith community, the Sri Chinmoy Center since the early 1990s.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Religion in Dresden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dreieinigkeitsgemeinde Dresden: history and church building. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 2, 2014 ; accessed on March 23, 2014 . 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.selk-dresden.de
  2. ↑ ELFK.de - Evangelical Lutheran Free Church | Communities. In: elfk.de.dd21408.kasserver.com. Retrieved May 10, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Partly cited from http://www.dresden.ebu.de/wir-ueber-uns/ , read on May 6, 2019.
  4. ^ Rudolf Donat , The Growing Work. Expansion of the German Baptist congregations through sixty years (1849 to 1909), Kassel 1960, p. 343.
  5. ↑ Yearbook 2017/2018 of the Federation of Evangelical Free Churches, Kassel 2017, p. 161. No membership number is given for a congregation.
  6. ↑ gä , sermons from the video studio: The Dresden Elim congregation goes more unconventional ways , in: Dresdner Latest News from December 1, 2012, online at https://www.dnn.de/Dresden/Lokales/Predierter-aus-dem- Videostudio-Die-Dresdner-Elim-Gemeinde-goes-unconventional-ways , read on May 7th 2019.
  7. ↑ https://www.atlas.emk.de/orte/ , read on May 6, 2019.
  8. ↑ Information read from https://gbz-emmaus.de/wer-wir-sind/ on May 6, 2019.
  9. ↑ Information according to https://www.atlas.emk.de/emk-dresden-immanuelkirche/herzig-willkommen/ , read on May 6, 2019. Quotations that are partly verbatim are not marked.
  10. ↑ Mennonite Yearbook 118, 2019, p. 161
  11. ↑ Mennonite Yearbook 118, 2019, pp. 188f.
  12. ↑ https://dresden.feg.de/geschichte/ , https://dresden.feg.de/gemeindegruendung/ , https://dresden-sued.feg.de/vision/ , https: //www.dnn. de / Dresden / Lokales / US-Ehepaar-gruendet-free-community-im-Dresdner-Sueden , all read on May 7, 2019.
  13. ↑ https://www.heilsarmee.de/dresden/ueber-uns.html as well as the subpages there community life and social work , accessed on September 10, 2019.
  14. ↑ See http://www.dresden.ebu.de/wir-ueber-uns/ , read on May 6, 2019.
  15. ↑ See http://www.dresden.ebu.de/gemeindeleben/ , read on May 6, 2019.
  16. ↑ Quoted from https://www.sta-dresden.de/adventisten/ , read on May 6, 2019.
  17. ↑ https://www.sonnenhof-dresden.de/ , read on May 6, 2019.
  18. ↑ http://www.orthodox-dresden.de/stsimeon/index.php/de/kirche/russisch-orthodoxe-kirche-zu-dresden-1874-1999/31-die-gemeinde-heute
  19. ^ NAK Central Germany: Short chronicle of the Dresden-Neustadt community. Retrieved March 23, 2014 .
  20. ↑ http://www.izdresden.de/ueber_uns.php
  21. ↑ http://www.moscheesuche.de/moschee/Dresden/Alfaruq_Moschee/13523
  22. ^ Mosques in Dresden , accessed on October 18, 2013.
  23. ↑ sz-online: Buddhist tomb dedicated. Retrieved September 27, 2015 .
  24. ↑ dresden.de: Churches / Other faith communities. Retrieved March 2, 2017 .