Christianskirche, Baroque church in Ottensen, Hamburg, Germany
Christianskirche is a brick hall church built from 1735 to 1738 to plans by Otto Johann Müller, replacing an earlier church whose tower was kept and worked into the new building. The red-brown brick body carries a long red-orange tiled roof; on the right stands the tower, with an open belfry, a clock face and a dark slate spire topped by a weather vane. A small green-roofed porch projects from the right side.
The church was completed in 1738 under the patronage of Danish King Christian VI, replacing an earlier structure that had stood since 1548. The original tower from the medieval building survived and was incorporated into the new baroque edifice.
The church is also called Klopstockkirche because the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock is buried in the churchyard; his grave has been there since 1803. In 1846 the street passing south of the church was renamed Klopstockstraße along a 270-metre stretch. The graves of Klopstock, his wives Meta and Johanna Elisabeth, and of Adolph and Therese Halle lie on the small cemetery, where burials ended in 1929.
The church stands on the Ottensen churchyard, where Klopstock's grave and other historic tombs remain; the last burial there was in 1929. The tower's wooden spiral staircase and a late-15th-century crucifix are in the entrance hall. The Klopstockstraße stop on bus line 15 is about 270 metres south.
The tower's 42 bells were cast in Apolda and hung in 1938, not in the 1738 building campaign. In 1897–98 the tower's small windows were widened into large sound openings, paid for with 10,000 marks left to the parish by Günther Ludwig Stuhlmann, who died in 1872.
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