St. Markus Coptic Orthodox Church Frankfurt

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St. Mark's Church and Community Center
St. Mark's Church and Community Center

The St. Markus Coptic Orthodox Church Frankfurt is a place of worship of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Frankfurt am Main . The church is consecrated to the evangelist Mark , the first bishop of Alexandria according to early Christian tradition and thus the founder of the Coptic Church.

building

The church and community center are located in the former Käthe-Kollwitz-Haus community center in the Industriehof residential area of the Frankfurt-Bockenheim district (near the Brentanobad stadium ). The building erected by the municipal Saalbau GmbH was opened in 1963 as the seventh Frankfurt community center at the time. Due to unprofitable the building was sold in 1998 to the Coptic Orthodox community in Frankfurt, which was a guest in a Protestant church until 1997. However, some of them are still used as an urban day care center.

The colorfully painted iconostasis that separates the altar area (bema) from the inner nave is remarkable in the interior of the otherwise simple low-rise building .

local community

The Frankfurt community is considered to be the oldest Coptic community in Germany. It was founded in 1975 by Abuna Salib Sirial. The St. Markus parish is the largest Coptic parish in Germany and is responsible for the entire Rhine-Main area with 400 families (corresponds to almost 1000 of a total of 6000 Copts in Germany), including around 300 regular churchgoers. Abuna Pigol Bassili has been the priest of the Coptic Orthodox St. Mark's Congregation since 1987.

On the night of January 6th to 7th 2011, the St. Mark's Congregation celebrated the Christmas service, which was held in three languages ​​(German, Coptic and Arabic ), for the first time under police protection, as the St. Mark's Church on a website of the Islamist group “Islamic State of Iraq “Was named as a terrorist target.

On January 8, 2011, an ecumenical memorial service for the victims of the terrorist attack on January 1, 2011 was held in front of a Coptic church in Alexandria in the Markus Church in Frankfurt - the central event in Germany . Among the speakers were the head of the Coptic Orthodox Christians in Germany, Bishop Anba Damian , the Roman Catholic Bishop of Limburg, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst , Aiman ​​Mazyek , Chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, the Greek Orthodox Archimandrite Athenagoras Ziliaskopoulos as representative of the Orthodox Bishops' Conference in Germany and chairman of the Council of Religions in Frankfurt, the Bishop of the Evangelical Coptic Church in Egypt Tharwat Kades , Asfa-Wossen Asserate as representative of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church , the Bishop of the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church Hans -Jörg Voigt , the federal politicians Erika Steinbach (CDU) and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (SPD) as well as the Hessian State Secretary Rudolf Kriszeleit (FDP).

Others

The Coptic St. Mark's Church should not be confused with the Protestant St. Mark's Church , which is also located in the Bockenheim district. Immediately adjacent to the Coptic St. Mark's Church is the Catholic St. Raphaelskirche, a branch church of St. Anna. The Hazrat Fatima Zahra Mosque has been built near the Coptic St. Mark's Church since 2009 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Chronicle of Hausen on Frankfurt.de, accessed on Feb. 20, 2020
  2. ↑ Figure ( Memento from January 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ History of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Germany . In: Slavorum Apostoli. Circular letter of the action group Kyrillos and Methodios , ISSN  0938-8303 , volume 2017, 2nd quarter, p. 3.
  4. ^ Coptic Congregation in Frankfurt: Christmas with the Police , the daily newspaper, January 5, 2011
  5. ^ After posting: Coptic Christmas under police protection , hr-online, January 4, 2011
  6. ^ Coptic Orthodox Church in Frankfurt: Praying Against Fear , Frankfurter Rundschau, January 3, 2011
  7. ↑ BKA: Terror threats against Copts in Germany , Frankfurter Rundschau, January 3, 2011
  8. ↑ Christmas under police protection: the consul general leaves the fair prematurely , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 7, 2011
  9. ↑ Ecumenical funeral service: Commemoration of Copts killed , hr-online, January 8, 2011
  10. ^ "Being a Christian is not a crime" , Die Tagespost, January 10, 2011
  11. ^ Copts in Frankfurt: The calm after the storm , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 10, 2011

Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 30.1 ″  N , 8 ° 37 ′ 24.1 ″  E