Religions in Kassel

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The Karlskirche in the center of the Oberneustadt by Paul du Ry
The tower of the Luther Church from 1897

Due to the long and eventful history of the city and the strong immigration of the past decades, Kassel was and is home to believers of all religions . The city has been traditionally Protestant since the Reformation , although Catholic parish life continued to exist in enclaves in the surrounding area and today also plays a greater role in the city. Kassel has also been the seat of one of the larger Jewish communities in Germany for centuries . The other world religions have settled in the city, which has always been internationally shaped , since the Second World War . But non-religious worldviews also make up a large proportion of the city's population today.

Denomination statistics

According to the 2011 census , 42.1% of the population were Protestant , 15.0% Roman Catholic and 42.9% were non-denominational , belonged to another religious community or did not provide any information.

Christianity

Before the Reformation, Kassel belonged to the Archdiocese of Mainz . In 1526, Landgrave Philipp initiated the Reformation in Hesse . At the beginning of the 17th century, the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel, Moritz the Scholar, enacted the Reformed Confession. The church administration of the (Reformed) church in Hesse was in Kassel, but later further consistories (church administration authorities) were set up within the state of Hesse-Kassel (1704 in Marburg, later also in Hanau). The Kassel authority administered the Reformed communities. From 1731 the Lutherans were allowed their own church service and their own clergyman, because Hesse had allied itself with Lutheran Sweden at the time. Only after the transfer of the Electorate of Hesse to Prussia (1866) was a unified consistory established for the entire administrative district of Kassel within the province of Hesse-Nassau (against which the Hessian Renitenz was directed ). In 1907, following sermons by the evangelist Heinrich Dallmeyer, there was a revival movement, the excesses of which lead to the rejection of the emerging Pentecostal movement by the evangelical community movement (see Berlin Declaration and Kassel Declaration ). The church, later named "Evangelical Church in Hessen-Kassel", merged with the Evangelical Church in Waldeck to form the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck . Within this regional church, the parishes of Kassel - if they do not belong to a free church - belong to the parishes of Kassel-Mitte, Kassel-East and Kassel-West (from January 1, 2005: Stadtkirchenkreis Kassel) of the Kassel district. The order of sisters of the Mennonite deaconesses has existed since 1947, albeit with declining ordination .

The new apostolic congregation Cassel was founded on February 1st, 1900 and moved into its first rented bar at Gießbergstrasse 5. From then on, this bar served as a meeting place for the steadily growing number of believers and guests. The New Apostolic Church in the church district of Kassel currently comprises five urban parishes and ten parishes in the region with a total of over 2,000 members.

An Evangelical Free Church congregation ( Baptists ) has existed in Kassel since 1847. Today, three Baptist congregations with a total of 550 baptized members are active in the Kassel city area. They belong to the Evangelical Free Church Association Hesse-Siegerland. The publishing house of the German Baptists is located in Kassel, which - named after its founder - operates as JG Oncken Nachf. GmbH .

The Free Evangelical Congregation has existed in Kassel since 1910. The original community is based in Wilhelmshöhe on Kurhausstrasse. In 2000 a second was added in Sandershäuser Strasse in Bettenhausen. Both belong to the Federation of Free Protestant Congregations in Germany .

In 1873 the Evangelical Lutheran St. Michaelis Congregation was founded. They and other parishes resigned from the state church in protest against the uniate consistory in Kassel and joined together to form the renitente church of unchanged Augsburg denomination in Hesse. Today the 300-member parish belongs to the independent Evangelical Lutheran Church as an old denominational free church to the Hesse-North church district . The church is also known as the Althessian Church.

In addition to these there is the United Methodist Church and a Unitarian congregation in Kassel.

After all Catholic parishes in Kassel had dissolved due to the Reformation , there have been Roman Catholic parishioners again in Kassel since 1731. From 1776, church services were allowed again, especially since the then Landgrave Friedrich II himself had become a Roman Catholic. The proportion of Roman Catholics increased thereafter, so that independent parishes soon formed again. These belong to the diocese of Fulda since 1821 . Within this diocese they now belong to the deanery of Kassel-Hofgeismar.

The old Catholic community, which was founded after the Second World War especially for the displaced old Catholics from the Sudetenland (Warnsdorf diocese), has its community center in the front west. As a diaspora community, it stretches across northern Hesse and the western part of Thuringia.

There are also some Orthodox parishes in Kassel . Including an Antiochene Orthodox , a Russian Orthodox (congregation in honor of the Holy New Martyrs of Russia) and a Serbian Orthodox congregation. The services of the Russian and Serbian Orthodox parishes are celebrated in the Old Catholic Church.

Kassel also has 13 congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses , gathered in three Kingdom Halls, as well as a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and a congregation of the closed branch of the Brethren movement .

Islam

A large number of small houses of prayer for the Islamic population and the multitude of individual currents have existed since the 1960s. One of the oldest communities is that of the DİTİB City Mosque (Merkez Camii) in the north of the city . It houses a prayer room, a tea room and a garden. A larger new building has been located on the grounds of the Graf Haeseler barracks in Niederzwehren since 2008 . Also in 2008, Mayor Bertram Hilgen laid the foundation stone for the Mevlana Mosque Kassel-Mattenberg for around 300 believers in the Mattenberg settlement . The project, which was presented to the City Hall in 2001, was preceded by a controversial debate. The new project building celebrated its topping-out ceremony in summer 2010 and was completed in 2014. With the Mahmud Mosque of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat with minaret and dome, there is another mosque in Kassel.

Judaism

The new synagogue on Mosenthalstrasse

There is evidence of a Jewish community in Kassel since the Middle Ages . It was an integral part of society for centuries and lasted uninterrupted until the 1930s, when the barbarism of the National Socialists almost ended Jewish life in Kassel as well. The destruction of Jewish religious institutions in the city began on November 7, 1938, by members of the SA and SS in civilian clothes, two days before the November 1938 pogroms .

Of 2301 Jews (1933), around 300 founded the community again after the Holocaust . Due to strong immigration in the 1990s, the community has grown again to around 1300 community members (as of 2006). Since the year 2000 the new building of the synagogue not far from the location of the old synagogue in the Untere Königsstraße was completed according to the lead management and the plans of Alfred Jacoby and inaugurated on May 28th, 2000. It is located roughly in the area of ​​the former old town, which was on the edge of the city wall not far from the Dutch Gate to the north and has been a Jewish quarter since the Middle Ages.

Other religions

In Kassel there is a small community of Tibetan Buddhists as well as Afghan Hindus and Sikhs . There is also a community of Alevis who do not see themselves as an Islamic community. They maintain a house of prayer on the star .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ City of Kassel Religion , 2011 census
  2. https://www.jw.org/apps/X_CONGSHARE?l=35421bda5881f44e362b45d972df3b19
  3. ^ Building a mosque: The muezzin soon calls out to prayer in Kassel. In: FR-online.de. Druck- und Verlagshaus Frankfurt am Main GmbH, August 28, 2008, archived from the original on September 5, 2008 ; Retrieved July 29, 2009 .
  4. ^ Kassel: After six years: New mosque in Oberzwehren almost finished - Kassel. In: hna.de. May 15, 2014, accessed May 28, 2019 .
  5. Tibetan Buddhists. Council of Religions City of Kassel, accessed on December 14, 2019 .
  6. Central Council of Afghan Hindus and Sikhs e. V. Accessed December 14, 2019 .
  7. The Faith of the Alevis. In: Alevi-Kassel.de. Retrieved December 14, 2019 .