St. Lawrence, Catholic parish church in Wismar, Germany

St. Laurentius is a Catholic parish church in Wismar, built of red brick in Romanesque Revival style with arched friezes and pilasters. Its 37-meter square tower has a steep pyramidal spire and a white clock face. The nave, 32 meters long and 14.5 meters wide, has tall round-arched windows and dormers; inside, white walls and dark wooden beams frame a chancel with three stained-glass windows.

The church was dedicated in 1902 and was only the fifth Catholic church built in Mecklenburg after the Reformation. It received its first bells just a few years later from Countess Mary von Bothmer as a gift.

The name Laurentius refers to the Roman martyr who was Wismar's patron saint until the Reformation. The three round-arched windows of 1948, designed by A. Annys of the Weimar glass-painting workshop, depict the Trinity and point to the sacraments. A sandstone baptismal font carved in 1964 carries an Old Testament relief, and its bronze lid shows Christ's baptism and crucifixion.

Inside you will find a Marian chapel from 1979 that offers visitors a quiet place for reflection. There stands a statue of Mary from 1450 circled by a radiating halo.

The organ, installed by the Potsdam firm Schuke in 1991–92, has two manual divisions of seven stops each and a pedal division of five, with pipes of copper, tin and wood; it was consecrated on 26 January 1992. The tower bells tell a separate story: the 1904 set donated by Countess Mary von Bothmer was requisitioned in 1914 and again in 1942, replaced in 1958 by three cast-iron bells, and in 2009 by four bronze bells cast in 1960 for the Christ-König church in Kiel-Dietrichsdorf.