Tharangambadi

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Tharangambadi
தரங்கம்பாடி
Tharangambadi (India)
Red pog.svg
State : IndiaIndia India
State : Tamil Nadu
District : Nagapattinam
Sub-district : Tharangambadi
Location : 11 ° 2 ′  N , 79 ° 51 ′  E Coordinates: 11 ° 2 ′  N , 79 ° 51 ′  E
Height : 7 m
Area : 13 km²
Residents : 23,191 (2011)
Population density : 1784 inhabitants / km²
Tharangambadi - Danish fort
Tharangambadi - Danish fort

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Tharangambadi ( Tamil : தரங்கம்பாடி Taraṅkampāṭi ; formerly Tranquebar or Trankebar ) is a city with about 24,000 inhabitants on the Coromandel coast in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu . From 1620 to 1845 Tharangambadi was a Danish colony .

location

Tharangambadi is located on the coromandel coast of the Bay of Bengal north of an estuary of the Kaveri at a height of about 7 m above sea level. d. M. Chennai (Madras) is just 275 km (driving distance) north; the former French colony of Puducherry is about 115 km north. The region of Tharangambadi is particularly affected by coastal erosion . A coastal strip several hundred meters wide has been cleared since the Danish settlement period. The climate is tropical and warm; Rain actually only falls in the months of July to December.

population

Official population statistics have only been kept since 1991 and are published regularly. The increase in the population in recent decades is mainly due to the continued immigration of families from the surrounding area.

year 1991 2001 2011
Residents 18,881 20,843 23,191

A good 77% of the inhabitants of Tharangambadi are Hindus , just under 12% are Christians and just under 10% Muslims . The main language, like in the whole of Tamil Nadu, is Tamil , which is spoken by 99% of the population as their mother tongue.

history

View of Tranquebar around 1658
Tranquebar and Fort Dansborg around 1700

Tharangambadi was a Danish colony between 1620 and 1845 under the name Tranquebar . In 1620 the Danish East India Company acquired the place from the Raja of Thanjavur and founded Fort Dansborg. In 1624 the colony was transferred to the Danish king. The place was an important port and had its own coins and an important mission printing press for literature in English and Tamil .

In the years 1801–1802 and 1808–1815, Tranquebar was occupied by British troops in the course of the Napoleonic Wars , in which Denmark stood on the side of France. This brought trade to a standstill, which subsequently did not recover. In 1845, Tranquebar was therefore sold to the British. After Indian independence in 1947, Tharangambadi became part of the state of Madras (now Tamil Nadu).

To develop tourism, the churches, the fortress and the city gates were restored by 2004. The tsunami after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on December 26, 2004 flooded the city, destroyed the neighboring fishing villages and killed many residents. The reconstruction of the city of Tharangambadi and the neighboring fishing villages is being carried out by various local and international organizations and partner churches.

Danish-Hallesche Mission

Tranquebar became significant as the site of the first German Protestant mission. The Germans Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau were sent to Tranquebar as Lutheran missionaries by the Danish-Hallesche Mission , a foundation of the Danish King Friedrich IV (1699–1730) . When they arrived in Tranquebar on July 9, 1706, a year later they baptized the first Tamils and "half-breeds" ( Portuguese ) and founded a small Lutheran congregation, which by 1712 comprised around 221 members. A year later, Ziegenbalg was imprisoned at Fort Dansborg for several months (1708 to 1709), hostile to the Danish colonial authorities, who saw their trade interests endangered by the missionary work. Today a monument and a bust of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg near the fortress commemorate the missionary. The Danish-Hallesche Mission worked in Tranquebar from 1706 until the Danish branch was sold to the English in 1845. Christian Friedrich Schwartz was one of its missionaries here . By the end of the 1830s there were no missionaries subordinate to the Danish Crown in Tranquebar.

Leipzig Mission

The Evangelical Lutheran Mission Society in Dresden, founded in Germany in 1836 (from 1848 Evangelical Lutheran Mission Society in Leipzig ) saw itself as a successor organization to the Danish-Halle Mission and in 1840 sent its first missionary, Heinrich Cordes . The German-Lutheran missionary activity was continued under British colonial sovereignty until the beginning of the Second World War. The last mission pastor was Wilhelm Kanschat (1899–1981) from Memelland.

Furthermore, from 1760 to 1803 there was a mission station of the Moravian Brethren , the " Brethren Garden" in Porayar. Today there are various facilities of the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church (TELC). The TELC was founded in 1919 in the tradition of the Leipzig Mission and the Mission of the Swedish (Lutheran) Church. The TELC bishop bears the title " Bishop of Tranquebar " and has his seat in Tiruchirappalli .

Attractions

Several buildings from the colonial era, all of which were renovated in 2004, are reminiscent of the Danish time in Tharangambadi. Fort Dansborg is located directly on the beach on the southern edge of Tharangambadi . The fortress was built in 1620. Today it houses an archaeological museum. At the entrance to the town there is a town gate from 1792; it is the only remnant of the former city fortifications. There are also two churches from the Danish period in Tharangambadi: The Zion's Church dates from 1701 and is the oldest Protestant church in India. The New Jerusalem Church was built between 1707 and 1718. Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg is buried in her cemetery . Since the summer of 2016, his house has been under construction with the support of Ev.-Luth. Missionswerk Niedersachsen, the Francke Foundations in Halle and the Ev.-Luth. Missionswerk Leipzig is being restored and is to be permanently prepared as a place of remembrance and a museum for the intercultural dialogue between India and Europe.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Tharangambadi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tharangambadi - 2011 data
  2. ↑ Tharangambadi - Map with altitude information
  3. ↑ R. Manimurali Sundaresh, S. Jayakumar: Threatened coastal monuments at Tranquebar, Tamil Nadu. (PDF; 44 kB) Fourth Indian National Conference on Harbor and Ocean Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Surathkal 2007, pp. 461-466
  4. ↑ Tharangambadi - Climate tables
  5. ↑ Gingee - Census 1991–2011
  6. ↑ Tharangambadi - Census 2011
  7. ^ Danes in India (Danish) and trading companies