Bürgermeister-Smidt-Gedächtniskirche, Gothic Revival church in Mitte district, Bremerhaven, Germany.
Bürgermeister-Smidt-Gedächtniskirche is a three-nave church in the Mitte district of Bremerhaven, built in the Gothic Revival style with pointed-arch windows and glazed clinker brick facades. It is a protected cultural heritage monument in the state of Bremen.
A first attempt to build the church began in 1846 but had to be abandoned because the ground was too weak to support it. Work restarted in 1853 using 522 wooden piles driven into the soil, which finally allowed the building to be completed.
The sandstone figures of Jesus, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli above the west portal survived the air raid of 18 September 1944, when the nave collapsed and the interior burned. They are the only sculptural elements from before the war still in place. The church's official name is Vereinigte Protestantische Gemeinde zur Bürgermeister-Smidt-Gedächtniskirche, and since 1927 it has honoured mayor Johann Smidt, who himself consecrated the Große Kirche in 1855.
The four bells ring every Sunday from 09:50 to 10:00 before the service, on Wednesdays from 17:55 to 18:00 before the evening prayer, and on Saturdays at 18:00 to ring in Sunday. The heaviest bell is also rung on All Saints' Day. The church stands on the Bürgermeister-Smidt-Straße, named, like the church, after the city's founder Johann Smidt.
The current organ, built by the Hamburg firm Beckerath, was inaugurated on 5 October 1986 and has 46 sounding registers, making it the largest organ in Bremerhaven. Its disposition follows the style of the French Romantic period, and it has been enlarged several times since. It replaced a Walcker instrument from 1964 whose 40 registers had malfunctioned from the start.
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