Construction of the Luther Church

The number of active churchgoers continues to decline during the NS era. However, the Luther congregation led by the German Church is considered exemplary by the Lübeck church leadership. In his function as a member of the High Consistory, Johannes Sievers, who has been the chairman of the parish council for many years, advocates that the congregation should finally have a representative church. With the only church building in Lübeck during the Nazi era, he wants to set an example. In 1936 the church hall, built in 1914, is demolished. In its place, the new church is built.

The Luther Church is clearly influenced by the architectural ideals of the time, such as the “Heimatschutzstil” and the neo-Romanesque. “The whole building clearly bears the character of a Nordic fortified church and wants to announce defence and protection at the same time,” states a contemporary description. Prominent guests from church and politics attend the inauguration on Reformation Day 1937.

In his sermon, Bishop Balzer refers to the eponym of the church, Reformer Luther: “German was Luther in his piety, German must be our piety if it is to be true and genuine. For God created us as Germans, namely as Germans in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich; as Germans who are privileged to experience the fulfilment of the thousand-year-old longing of the German people: the unification of the Germans in a united German Reich. Therefore, no Jewish Christianity can be proclaimed to the German people in this church.”

Accordingly, the Jew Jesus finds no place in the Luther Church either. The big oak cross remains empty. Instead, under the cross a group of figures is placed: The sculpture, created by Otto Flath in 1937, shows an ideal-typical German family according to National Socialist ideas.