Gartenkirche St. Marien

Gartenkirche St. Marien stands in Hannover’s Mitte district, surrounded by the Gartenfriedhof and its nineteenth-century classical grave monuments. The Evangelical Lutheran church rises from a garden cemetery. Its origins reach back to 1746, when small farmers outside the city walls supplied Hannover with fruit and vegetables. They became known as the Gartenkosaken. The present neo-Gothic hall church was designed by Rudolph Eberhard Hillebrand and completed in 1891. A nearly 85-metre tower once marked the skyline, with a distinctive moon clock that remains.

An air raid in October 1943 brought the burning tower down onto the cemetery, but the vault, altar, pulpit and baptismal font survived. Reconstruction began in 1945, followed by re-consecration in 1949 and later restoration of the neo-Gothic interior. Ruth Margraf’s stained-glass windows illuminate the altar area. A 2016 Lenten veil by Constanze Rilke evokes biblical gardens and the Passion of Christ. Inside, a late Gothic Chrysogonos relief from an earlier chapel stands alongside a modern icon created in 2015. Five bells cast in 1960 bear the names Love, Faith, Hope, Peace and Eternity.