Church Ochsenwerder, Lutheran church in Ochsenwerder, Germany.

St. Pankratius in Ochsenwerder is a brick church with red-brown walls, a steep hipped roof of dark brown tiles and a slender tower on its left side, topped by a tiered grey-green spire with an open belfry. The nave was built in 1673–1674 with a wooden barrel vault and a five-sided choir; the three-storey tower with copper roof followed in 1739–1741 to a design by Johann Leonhard Prey. Arched windows with white frames sit in the lower walls, and a small dormer breaks the roof on the right.

A church in Ochsenwerder was first documented in 1254 at Avenberg, near the Norderelbe, and was abandoned after storm floods. In 1332 a new church was built on the present flood-safe terp with fieldstone foundations and a wooden bell tower. The brick nave followed in 1673–1674, and Johann Leonhard Prey designed the three-storey tower with copper roof erected in 1739–1741. Bombing in 1945 damaged church and parsonage.

The church keeps its medieval name from Pancras of Rome, a saint invoked against false oaths. Inside, the north choir holds the "Juratengestühl", a carved bench from Hein Baxmann's workshop, and the galleries carry 14 Old Testament paintings after the Merian Bible plus 32 New Testament scenes, about half after Matthias Scheits.

The church stands on a flood-safe terp in Ochsenwerder, surrounded on all sides by its cemetery and an outer ring of lime trees. The 1914 portal house with its equipment and laying-out rooms faces south toward the Alte Kirchdeich. The oldest surviving grave slabs, dating back to the 1650s, are set into the exterior and interior walls.

The oldest gravestones still on the site are set into the church's outer and inner walls and date back to the 1650s; some may have stood inside the nave before the restorations of 1892 and 1910. Near the entrance, look for the angel figure on the Peters family grave.