Benedikte church

The Danish Seamen’s Church stands in Hamburg’s Neustadt quarter, near the western end of Ditmar-Koel-Straße. It is one of four Scandinavian seamen’s churches grouped along this short street, with the Norwegian and Finnish churches next door and the Swedish church a little further on. The building combines a church and community hall under one roof and has been protected as a cultural monument since 2007. The present church was completed in 1952 after the previous structure was destroyed in the 1943 air raids. Pastor Gustav A. Højlund led the rebuilding effort, and the new design by Otto Kindt places the parish flat above the entrance with its own open roof terrace. The open reinforced-concrete bell tower, clad partly in brick, was inspired by a Copenhagen church of the 1940s and shows a cross pattern in its masonry. Inside, the worship space was refurbished in 2007 by artist Erik A. Frandsen and renamed Benediktekirken after Princess Benedikte. The four-storey red-brick building still houses offices, meeting rooms and the pastor’s flat, all arranged around a single entrance. From the street the tower rises above the surrounding rooftops, marking the spot where Hamburg’s skyline once ended at the ruined church after the war.