The Sankt-Gertraud-Kirche is a Protestant church in Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany. It is dedicated to Gertrude of Nivelles.

History

It was first built in 1368 by the city's tailors'

guild A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular area. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradesmen belonging to a professional association. They sometimes ...

as the "St.-Gertraud-, Urban- und Theobald-Kapelle vor dem Gubener Tor" (Chapel of St Gertrude, Saint Urban and Saint Theobald before the Gubener Gate) to provide a place of worship for merchants heading south and stopping off in the city. That building and its successor stood on what is now the site of the monument to Heinrich von Kleist. The Gubener Gate and the chapel were both destroyed by the

Hussites The Hussites ( cs, Husité or ''Kališníci''; "Chalice People") were a Czech proto-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus, who became the best known representative of the Bohemian Reformation. The Huss ...

in 1342, but the chapel was soon rebuilt and in 1539 was used as both a guild chapel and a parish church. Its

parish register A parish register in an ecclesiastical parish is a handwritten volume, normally kept in the parish church in which certain details of religious ceremonies marking major events such as baptisms (together with the dates and names of the parents), ma ...

survives as far back as 1614, though imperial troops burned the church and its district to the ground in April 1631 just before Gustavus Adolphus's troops attacked the city during the

Thirty Years War The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battl ...

. In 1660 the church was rebuilt in the

Baroque style The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

and reconsecrated on 25 April 1662. A new altar was installed in 1670 in the late-Gothic style. After the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

the tailors' guild could no longer afford to maintain the building and responsibility for this passed to the city authorities. Before the guild's dissolution, it donated a ewer, bowl and table used for baptisms - the silver baptismal bowl is still in use. The church was dilapidated by 1822 and services moved to the Marienkirche instead during 1823 and 1856 whilst restorations were carried out. A commission was set up to build a new Sankt-Gertraud-Kirche in 1865 and construction began in 1873. The new three-aisled

Neo Gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

basilica by Carl Christ and Wilhelm Kinzel was completed and consecrated on 20 December 1878, with the new organ installed the following year. A new spire was added between 1882 and 1885, whilst general repairs removed much of the decoration and added the current peak to the spire around 1930. The church was badly damaged by artillery fire at the end of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

but soon repaired and on 15 May 1949 the congregation left its temporary church and moved back into the permanent building. The parish merged with that of the Marienkirche in 1975 and a floor was put into the nave of the Sankt-Gertraud-Kirche between 1978 and 1980, creating a parish room and parish office on the lower floor and a worship space on the new upper floor. Since 1980 the worship space has also housed the medieval altar, bronze font, seven-branched candlestick and several inscriptions.

Sources

*http://ns.gis-bldam-brandenburg.de/hida4web/view?docId=obj09110161.xml {{DEFAULTSORT:Gertraud-Kirche Churches in Frankfurt (Oder) FrankfurtOder Gertrud Protestant churches in Brandenburg