Evangelische Pfarrkirche Wasserhorst

The Evangelische Pfarrkirche Wasserhorst stands on a natural dune, six metres high, in Bremen's Blockland district. The old village of Wasserhorst once surrounded it, and the hill itself carries the name Up'r Horst. High ground mattered here, because floods came often. A document first records it in 1185, and the original dedication went to Simon Peter and Judas Thaddeus.

The west tower dates to the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Monastery-format brickwork supports a tent roof, and round arches frame the early Gothic sound openings. A bell that Ghert Klinghe cast in 1474 still hangs there, and the tower clocks keep wrought-iron dials. In 1743 the local Reformed congregation rebuilt the church in Baroque style. Its elongated red-brick nave under a high gabled roof holds six tall rectangular windows, with two more on the east wall. The nave's western bricks match the tower in format and weathering, while the eastern part uses a modern bond. Inside, the preaching arrangement places pulpit and altar on the southern cross wall. Bremen councillors paid for the eighteenth-century coat of arms windows, and lively vine work covers the flat wooden ceiling. The loose seats bear traditional house marks, ownership signs of long-settled farming families.

The congregation keeps small but active, with discussion groups, playgroups, a women's choir and a brass choir. Between 1952 and 1958 its pastor was Jürgen Moltmann. Hermann Eule built the present organ in 2003, the fourth in Wasserhorst, with eight registers on one manual and pedal. Out on the dune the cemetery is still in use, and some gravestones date to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.