Friday October 25 2013

Looking Back: Bomb Crater to Auditorium

An article from November 1953

AT THE GERMAN KIRCHENTAG

The setting was the vast crater created by British bombs, converted now to the uses of the Gospel.

Professor MATTHEW BLACK was a representative of the Church of Scotland.

FOR the past five years German laymen of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches have been meeting each August in one of the great cities of Western Germany in a kind of vast lay General Assembly, to witness publicly to their faith, and to discuss openly and freely its practical bearing on present-day problems in Germany.

Under the inspiring leadership of its President, Dr. von Thadden-Trieglaff (on whom the University of Aberdeen, this year conferred an honorary D.D), this annual Evangelical Kirchentag has established itself as an influential and perhaps permanent institution in the public religious life of Germany. This year the attendance alone broke all previous records: more than 50,000 men and women from all parts of Germany came together to take part in the mass demonstrations of Christian unity and in the organised discussion groups. These numbers included some 15,000 visitors from the Eastern Zone, a special feature of this year’s conference. (The East German authorities surprisingly relaxed for this special occasion their total restriction on movement from East to West.)

By the presence of invited delegates from other Churches this year’s Kirkchentag, as in former years, was also an ecumenical occasion. Through the admirable arrangements made by the British Council of Churches and their representatives in Germany, delegates came to Hamburg from most of the Protestant Churches in Europe, from America, Africa, India, and even China had its representative.

Bomb crater to auditorium

The Kirchentag was opened by a service of worship in and around the great church of St. Michael in the much-bombed harbour area. The church itself stood, like St. Paul’s, miraculously undamaged (some slight damage to the roof from fire had long since been repaired), within a large are between the so-called “Englische Planke” and the Krayenkamp, where whole streets had been swept away. The bombs of 10 years ago had in fact carved out around the great building a vast auditorium capable of holding the 60,000 people who could not get near the doors of the church, already filled to capacity. The Kirchentag authorities had not been slow to see the possibilities of such a site. Against the east wall of the church a great wooden cross, with an improvised altar and pulpit of wood, had been erected. The whole area which the bombs had cleared was thereby converted into a vast extended nave of the church in the open air, and over the still irregular ground which covered up the bomb ruins and where the vast crowd stood, there hung the white church banners with their single violet cross.

The main centre of the conference was the fine building of Hamburg University and the beautiful Hamburg exhibition gardens, Plenten en Blomen, with their seven capacious halls, each able to take an audience of from 4,000-5,000 people. Here the real work of the Kirchentag was carried on, in addresses by prominent Church leaders and others (among them Bishop Dibelius and Pastor Niemoller) and in the discussion groups on the central themes of the conference, the Christian in the Church, in Politics, in the Family, in Work, in the Village, in the City.

Deeper than politics

The Kirchentag was, of course, strictly non-political, but it was inevitable, in the situation in which Germany now finds itself and with so many present from the Eastern Zone, that the political issues of the day should be discussed. It was equally significant, however, that it was the discussion group, “The Christian in the Church,” which attracted by far the greatest interest. Individual Germans are searching for solutions of their often tragic human problems at levels deeper than political discussion.

Perhaps the most encouraging feature of the conference was the large number of young people taking an active and enthusiastic part. A special evening was devoted to the work and witness of youth, in which some 10,000 young people took part. In this respect, as in others, the leaders of the German Evangelical Church, and especially its lay readers, have seen and grasped the vast opportunities of the post-war situation among German youth. It is one of the most promising signs in present-day Germany.

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