Lutheran Church of Ganja, Lutheran church in Ganja, Azerbaijan.
The Lutheran Church of Ganja is a single-hall building of about 650 square metres, with a foyer and fifteen rooms, built of baked brick and topped by onion-shaped domes that mark its Orthodox origin. Since 1986 it has housed the Ganja State Puppet Theatre.
German settlers who had founded colonies in the region built this prayer house in 1885, when 103 Germans lived in Elizavetpol. It served the Lutheran community until 1941. The building later became a puppet theater, established by order of the Azerbaijan SSR Council of Ministers on 18 September 1986.
The building now houses the Ganja State Puppet Theatre, founded by order of the Azerbaijani SSR Council of Ministers on 18 September 1986. Its name recalls the Orthodox church of Saints Cyril and Methodius consecrated here in 1902, though the claim that German Lutherans used it until the early 1940s has no documentary support.
The building stands on Ahmad Jamil Street, on the right bank of the Ganjachay, near the former Elizavetpol men's gymnasium it once served. It now operates as the Ganja State Puppet Theatre, founded by decree of the Azerbaijan SSR Council of Ministers on 18 September 1986, so visits follow theatre programming rather than church services.
The building is often called the German Lutheran church, yet no document confirms a Lutheran congregation ever used it; Ganja had no German Lutheran community in those years. It was a Russian Orthodox church attached to the men's gymnasium, and since it was never registered as a religious building, it is missing from historical lists of the city's churches.
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