St. Anna (Salzgitter)

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The Church of St. Anna was the Catholic church in Watenstedt , a district of Salzgitter in Lower Saxony . Most recently it belonged to the parish of the Holy Spirit with its seat in Hallendorf , in the Salzgitter dean's office of the Hildesheim diocese . The church named after St. Anna was on Hüttenstrasse, roughly opposite the train station.

history

At the end of the 8th century, the missionary work of the Sachsenland began under Charlemagne . The starting point was the monastery in Fulda , which was founded by Sturmi in 744 . The great baptism period began in 778 with a mass baptism in the Oker. The influence of the Fulda monastery ended in 815 when Ludwig the Pious founded the prince-bishopric of Hildesheim - Watenstedt was part of the archdeacon of Barum. With the Reformation , the population and the church of Watenstedt became Evangelical Lutheran.

The number of Catholics in the Salzgitter area rose sharply only with the arrival of workers as part of the development of the Reichswerke AG for ore mining and ironworks "Hermann Göring" , which was founded in July 1937 . The census According dwelt 1939 in Watenstedt already 3,600 Catholics, amounting to approximately 70% of the population Watenstedter. On the Catholic side, Watenstedt was part of the St. Petrus congregation in Wolfenbüttel . Attempts by the diocese of Hildesheim and the parish of Wolfenbüttel to build new churches in the area where the Reichswerke were being developed failed because of the anti-church attitude of the National Socialist rulers. In the summer of 1939 Adolf Hitler decided "that no building sites should be provided for churches in the new settlements, such as Linz , Fallersleben , at the Hermann Göring works, etc." Hitler had also answered the question of whether places should be kept free for church buildings for any later need.

A parish vicarie founded in 1940 was initially called Reichswerke Hermann Göring-Ost , and its parish vicar took up residence in Barum . Initially, the services took place in the Protestant church in Watenstedt or in private rooms. Although the local church council and even the Secret State Police approved the use of the Protestant church for Catholic services, Ludwig Hoffmeister , who was then working in the finance department of the Braunschweig Evangelical Lutheran Church , tried to prevent this. At the beginning of November 1940, the Catholic community banned the use of the Protestant church in Watenstedt, after Catholics evacuated from the Saar region returned to their homeland after the campaign in the west that was won by the Wehrmacht . On October 9, 1943, Parish Vicar Walter Behrens was arrested by the Secret State Police on suspicion of having heard enemy broadcasts . He was only released on May 11, 1945.

In 1945 the parish vicarie, to which Watenstedt belonged, was renamed Wolfenbüttel-Land I. In 1946 its seat was moved from Barum to Watenstedt (Bahnhofstraße 19). In Watenstedt, with the help of the occupying power, a NS after-work hall was converted into an emergency church , which was consecrated to Archangel Michael in 1946 . In 1948 Catholic life flourished in Watenstedt, a men's association, later also a women's association and a Kolping family were founded. In 1950 the number of Catholics began to decline as the warehouses emptied and the facilities of the Reichswerke were dismantled. Only in the course of the 1950s, triggered by the reconstruction of the steelworks and the construction of new apartments, did the parish stabilize. On April 1, 1955, Watenstedt-Hallendorf became an independent parish. The parsonage in Hallendorf was built in 1955 because the clergyman's apartment in Barum had been terminated and no new residential construction was permitted in the village of Watenstedt, which has now been declared an industrial area. On October 22, 1957, the emergency church in camp 11 burned down, the cause was suspected to be arson. From then on, church services took place in the hall of the Wienecke guest house, and the primary school gymnasium was used instead on high public holidays. A church building association founded in March 1957 collected donations for a new church. In November 1957, the new bishop Heinrich Maria Janssen even gave confirmation in the gym .

In 1959 the order for the construction of the church was given, at that time around 1400 Catholics lived in Watenstedt and Karl Wätjer was their pastor. On April 19, 1960, construction work began and took place on 16 November the same year by Bishop Heinrich Maria Janssen, the blessing of the church. The construction costs were around 150,000 German marks . In view of the large number of parishioners expelled from Silesia , the church was named after St. Anne, as St. Annaberg has been a central pilgrimage site in Silesia for centuries . On the 3rd Sunday of Advent in 1967, the newly built bell tower, which had been jointly donated by several companies, was consecrated. In 1970 an electronic organ was installed because the harmonium that had been used up to now was in need of repair. In the meantime, the population of Watenstedt had fallen sharply, and the population structure changed in the following years due to the influx of guest workers and asylum seekers . The church was closed in 1989 and has since been torn down.

Architecture and equipment

The prefabricated church was built according to plans by the Brunswick architect Alfred Geismar. Two steel bells hung in its free-standing tower .

See also

literature

  • Chronicle of the Holy Spirit. Salzgitter.
  • Willi Stoffers: Diocese of Hildesheim today. Hildesheim 1987, ISBN 3-87065-418-X , pp. 62/63

Individual evidence

  1. ^ City without churches ( Memento from March 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Thomas Flammer: National Socialism and the Catholic Church in the Free State of Braunschweig 1931–1945. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2013, pp. 158, 161, 175–176, 185, 229.

Coordinates: 52 ° 8 ′ 56.1 ″  N , 10 ° 24 ′ 27.8 ″  E