POINT OF INTEREST

Helligåndkirken

Große Straße 43, 24937 Flensburg

Built in 1386, Helligåndskirken is today the main church of the Danish-speaking protestant Lutheran congregation[1] (about 6,500 members[2]). It has celebrated events with other congregations for a long time now – for example the 150-year anniversary of the congregation of St. Mary’s in 2014. That was not always the case. More

From 1588, Helligåndskirken (Church of the Holy Spirit) was the church of the Danish inhabitants of Flensburg and services were regularly held in Danish by a former teacher of the Latin School[3]. The small congregation recruited its members above all among seafarers, workers and servants from Jutland. However, the Church of the Holy Spirit was not a parish church, but was attached to St. Mary’s, the city’s principal church[4]. A period marked by change and frequent uncertainty for the Danish-minded Christians in Flensburg began. This changed after the war of 1850/51. Flensburg became Danish. A Danish congregation was established and grew steadily – until the Schleswig-Holstein flag fluttered above the Church of the Holy Spirit again after Prussia’s victory in 1864[5]. Once again, the Danish people in Flensburg were dependent on the benevolence, or lack thereof, of the German church authorities. Complaints about unilateral reductions in Danish church services and petitions for greater independence proved futile. The Danish citizens of Flensburg suffered massive discrimination[6]. In 1905, the sale of their church’s pulpit to the new St. Jürgenskirche was viewed as a blow and led to calls for the Flensburg “Friends of Danish Church Services” to establish a new association, which resulted in the establishment of the “Kirkeligt Samfund for Flensborg og Omegn” (Church Society for Flensburg and Surroundings)[7]. However, it was not until after the end of World War I and the plesbiscite in 1920 that new opportunities arose. In 1921, the association established a new Danish congregation. The meeting took place in Flensborghus and the invitation appeared in the Flensborg Avis [8]. The congregation used an old hotel in Toosbüystrasse as a church hall. In 1927, it was able to return to the Church of the Holy Spirit, after negotiations with the owner, the German congregation of St. Mary’s. In 1997, it was donated to the congregation[9].