Spandau procession

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The Marienkirche am Behnitz , 1848

The Spandau Procession was a Catholic public procession that took place in the city of Spandau annually on the Sunday after Corpus Christi from the 1830s to 1874 . Numerous believers from Berlin and Charlottenburg also took part in it , so that it can be regarded as the “most important celebration of diaspora Catholicism in the Prussian capital”. From 1875 the procession was no longer approved as part of the Prussian Kulturkampf .

Origin and process

The move, later known as the “Spandau Procession”, was probably first carried out in 1837 or 1838. The focus was on the Corpus Christi procession, which did not take place on the Feast of Corpus Christi, but on the following Sunday, because Corpus Christi, always on Thursdays, was a working day in Protestant Prussia . In addition to the comparatively few Catholics in Spandau, hundreds of believers from Berlin and the then still independent city of Charlottenburg soon took part, so that a multi-part "Spandau Procession Festival Complex" developed. The Berlin came from the St. Hedwig's Church , on Moabit common pilgrimage similar to Spandau. After a holy mass with a sermon, everyone held a common Eucharistic procession there . The participants from Charlottenburg returned to there in the evening in a processional train. After the opening of the railway line in 1846, a special train of the Hamburg Railway ran from Berlin to Spandau at 7 a.m. and back at 11 a.m.

In the extreme diaspora situation, the procession meant an upswing for the Catholic communities, which had re-established after the Reformation from the 18th century. In 1841 there were 749 members of the military and 300 civil Catholics in the Spandau parish . Because of the soldiers, the proportion of Catholics in the Spandau population was somewhat higher than in Berlin, where the Catholic population was 6% in 1871, compared to 86% Protestants and 4% Jews. In the 1860s, around 20,000 Catholic believers belonged to the Hedwig parish.

The small church built in 1766/67 on the gun plan

In retrospect, the procession was described as a “masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism”, which had the character of a “pious and happy folk festival”. It is possible that the procession at its beginning can also be seen as a counterpoint to the festivities with which the Evangelicals began the renovation of the St. Nikolai Church in Spandau in the presence of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. wanted to celebrate 300 years after Elector Joachim II converted to Protestantism in this church .

The place of the procession was initially the small Catholic church on the gun plan east of the citadel . At 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, the solemn mass began in the church. In the procession, only the children of the community followed behind the lecture cross , followed by the altar boys and finally the pastor with the holy of holies in the monstrance under the canopy . The blessing stations initially were all in the church. Probably over the years the third and fourth altars of blessing were placed outside near the church; In any case, altar tables were allowed to be set up in public spaces and birch branches were cut to decorate the city forest with official approval. Because the small church was not enough, a pulpit was built in the open near the entrance to the church between two hoppy poplars , from which the sermon was given.

Kolk Street , 2011

After the completion of the Church of St. Marien am Behnitz in 1848, the celebration took place there. As a result, it moved more into the field of view of the non-Catholic public, while it had passed rather inconspicuously on the remote gun plan . So now they went outside in the northern part of the old town, the oldest settlement area in Spandau called Kolk . The Eucharistic procession took its way after the high mass in the Behnitzkirche around the Kolk - at that time still an island - and withdrew to the church via the streets Kolk, Oranienburger Straße / Damm (today Möllentordamm) and Behnitz.

The church celebration ended at around noon, and people stopped to rest. Some of the out-of-towners were fed by the Spandauers, many also came to the restaurants, so that the procession was an economic factor for the city. In 1860 the Märkisches Kirchenblatt wrote: "Here Catholics and Protestants, some out of devout devotion, others as traders, look forward to the biggest public holiday that the city now has, when the Berliners come to the pilgrimage in their thousands." Procession. They usually celebrated their rifle festival on the weekend, and many of the Berlin pilgrims came there. This gave the day a strong folk festival character, so that the Protestant mayor of Spandau doubted the actual religious value: for some Protestant viewers such behavior was a nuisance.

Berlin procession

The Berliners received the pilgrimage blessing in the early morning mass in the Hedwigskirche at 4 a.m. and walked the three kilometers to Moabit to the meeting point on the premises of the later Plötzensee prison . From there, at 5 a.m., a pilgrimage with a lecture cross headed by a chaplain moved twelve kilometers through the Jungfernheide to Spandau. When singing and praying together, stewards set the pace with long sticks. Mounted police escorted the train to the city limits of Berlin . An estimated three to four thousand people came in 1854. Gradually the practice emerged of carrying flags. The church associations took part with their banners . This was above all the Piusverein founded in 1849 , which also mostly provided the files. Participants included members of the middle class, craftsmen and workers. Mission vicar Eduard Müller , who at that time also founded the Berlin journeymen's association (now the Kolping Family ), played a major role in promoting the procession ; he was called Apostolus Berolinensis , the "Apostle of Berlin".

From 1841 onwards, the pastor from Spandau, Franz Xaver Teuber, went to meet the Berliners in Rochett and Stola with his congregation as far as the powder factory . After the church on Behnitz was completed, the pilgrims were received at the citadel from 1849 at around 8:30 a.m., and the last piece was drawn to the Behnitz church while singing. There the high mass was celebrated and the procession with the holy of holies was held around the kolk.

In the evening, most of the Berliners took the train back home. In 1869, between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m., special trains ran from Spandau to Berlin at intervals of 30 to 45 minutes and were used by 10,000 to 12,000 people. In 1872 it is said to have been around 14,500 people. But there were also quite a few guests of the shooting festival who did not take part in the procession. In 1869 an innkeeper intended to follow the procession from Berlin to Spandau with a mobile drinking hall and set it up at the destination between the Marienkirche am Behnitz and the Schützenplatz.

Charlottenburg procession

The Charlottenburgers were there from 1854 after a Catholic community was established there in 1845. In the morning they joined the Berlin train. In the evening, however, they withdrew as a separate procession and received the final blessing in their newly built chapel in Lietzow (today: Herz-Jesu-Kirche ). In 1859 there were five to six hundred believers who moved back to Charlottenburg.

A harbinger of the Prussian Kulturkampf was that this procession through the densely populated Charlottenburg repeatedly got into trouble with the authorities, in contrast to the morning Berlin procession through the sparsely populated Jungfernheide. At times, the flags and banners were not allowed to be carried upright, but only horizontally. Hymns were not allowed to be sung at all or not too loud, litanies had to be prayed softly. There were several scuffles with Protestant viewers. In 1860 the procession was banned by the police under threat of punishment. Some Catholics turned to the Prussian House of Representatives with a petition, which criticized the ban in 1861 because the procession had to be approved under the Association Act of 1850. From 1864 the procession to Charlottenburg was under strong police guard.

Regulatory difficulties and withdrawal of approval

Pastor Theodor Warnatsch, pastor at St. Marien Spandau from 1849 to 1851, tried to obtain official permits in the run-up to the procession. The authorities repeatedly caused difficulties, especially when setting up blessing altars outside the church and in public streets. The responsibilities were complicated and involved the magistrate of the city of Spandau and the government in Potsdam . Pastor Warnatsch was even accused and convicted by the district court, but acquitted in a second instance by the higher court. The question was whether the procession was about "traditional" customs like elsewhere in Germany or not here. In some church documents, the beginning of the procession was therefore postponed to 1817, making it "older". The procession was then allowed to make its way around the Kolk, but the blessing altars were all close to the church. In 1864 Pastor Hanel and the provosts Leopold Pelldram and Franz Xaver Karker were sentenced to a fine of one thaler for “driving an unauthorized elevator” because the mayor had only received the permit application the day after the procession.

Even the Catholic provost Georg Anton Brinkmann , as the prince-bishop's delegate for Brandenburg and Pomerania, the representative of the Archdiocese of Breslau , was initially not pleased by the Spandau initiative with the “unpredictable crowd” of participants. His successor Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler , who later became the bishop of Mainz, personally led the procession from Moabit to Spandau in 1850, similar to his successors Leopold Pelldram (from 1851) and Franz Xaver Karker (from 1860).

It appeared to have been a thorn in the side of the authorities that the small group of Catholics attracted such great attention. But the Prussian constitution of 1848 guaranteed the free practice of religion, so that there was initially no handle against the religious festival. Many Protestants watched the procession. There were also provocations. In 1853, the Märkisches Kirchenblatt reported disruptions due to "inadmissible gazing at the train and indecent smoking of tobacco".

Not least because of the administrative difficulties, the procession received considerable press attention. As part of a beginning Catholic renewal, pilgrimages and processions were more popular in diaspora areas than in "Old Catholic" regions because they were more attractive as a "novelty".

The Prussian Kulturkampf began in Berlin with the " Moabiter Klostersturm " on August 16, 1869, when a large crowd of people led to tumultuous riots against the founding of a monastery by Dominicans in Moabit. In 1870 the procession to Spandau was also interrupted by men who stood in the way of the procession with clubs. However, numerous peaceful Protestant spectators showed solidarity with the Catholics against the “mob”. There were similar attempts at interference in the following years. The Spandau procession of the Catholics was increasingly portrayed in the liberal press as a demonstration against the Protestant majority population. The National-Zeitung saw the blame for the disturbances with the Catholics themselves, since they provoked the "rabble" by actions which did not correspond to the customs of the country; Basically the aim of the procession is to irritate the Protestant majority population.

In 1875 the procession was no longer permitted by the magistrate “according to a higher order”. Regretfully, the Schützenfest recorded a significant drop in visitors. However, there was no broad resistance to the quasi-ban.

The great processions were not resumed after the end of the Kulturkampf. In memory of tradition, the new parish church Maria, Hilfe der Christians in Spandau, consecrated in 1910, is deliberately designed in such a way that there is enough space for processions in a wide area around the central part of the church. From 1925 a Corpus Christi procession took place in Berlin on the square in front of St. Hedwig's Church, on June 23, 2019 a procession moved from the Church of Mary, Help of Christians through the old town to the Church of St. Marien am Behnitz with blessing altars on the Market square and at the St. Nikolai Church .

literature

  • Lena Krull: "A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism". In: Lena Krull (ed.): Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. (= Religion and Politics , Volume 5.) Ergon-Verlag , Würzburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-89913-991-4 , pp. 216-251.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, p. 303.
  2. ↑ message in Märkischen church Journal of 1850: "13 years ago", so in 1837; Mentioned in the Spandau parish archives: 1838, according to Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 217.
  3. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 217.
  4. ^ Association for the History of Berlin e. V., founded 1865: The history of Berlin (Arne Hengsbach).
  5. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here pp. 72 and 74.
  6. ↑ Ernst Thrasolt : Eduard Müller. The Berlin Mission Vicar. A contribution to the history of Catholicism in Berlin, the Mark Brandenburg and Pomerania. Berlin 1953, p. 157, quoted in: Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 217, note 510, p. 221 and 232.
  7. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216-251, here pp. 218 f.
  8. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 220f.
  9. ↑ Franz Kohstall: history of the Catholic parish Spandau. Spandau 1924, p. 61.
  10. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216-251, here p. 221 f.
  11. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 231 ff.
  12. ↑ Franz Kohstall: history of the Catholic parish Spandau. Spandau 1924, p. 61.
  13. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here pp. 227–231.
  14. ^ Association for the History of Berlin e. V., founded 1865: The history of Berlin (Arne Hengsbach).
  15. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 232.
  16. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here pp. 223 and 237.
  17. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here pp. 217 (predated) and 222–226.
  18. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here pp. 223 and 226.
  19. ↑ Märkisches Kirchenblatt , June 4, 1853, quoted in: Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 241, note 691.
  20. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 221.
  21. ↑ National-Zeitung , June 7, 1872, illustrated by Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 247, overall pp. 241–251.
  22. ^ Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, p. 304.
  23. ↑ Lena Krull: A masterpiece of young Berlin Catholicism. In: Lena Krull: Processions in Prussia. Catholic life in Berlin, Breslau, Essen and Münster in the 19th century. Würzburg 2013, pp. 216–251, here p. 247, in total p. 248 ff., P. 73 (Berlin).