Eglise Luthérienne

Allemande

(Deutsche Evangelische Christuskirche)

25, rue blanche, 75009 Paris 1963 - Detlef Kleuker

II/20 - mechanical traction - stoplist

The "Christuskirche - German Protestant Church of Paris" is attached to the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD). The beginnings of the German Protestant community date back to the 17th century (official establishment in 1679), when Protestants were still forbidden to celebrate religious services in Paris. It was not until 1806 that freedom of religion was granted by Napoleon. In the mid-19th century, nearly 70,000 Germans lived in the city, most of them in poor conditions. The present church was built in 1894 by the German parishioners of Paris who had previously gathered in the Lutheran churches of the Redemption and the Billettes. Immediately, the need to have an organ to accompany the Lutheran liturgy, dear to Martin Luther, was felt. Confiscated during the First World War, it was returned to the German community in the 1920s and its interior was completely renovated in the taste of the time.

Photo: Victor Weller The installation of its first organ was the starting point of an intense musical life. This organ was the opus 219 of the German manufacturer Gebr. Link in Giengen-sur-Brenz. The instrument was built to be included at the Universal Exhibition in Antwerp (Belgium) in 1894 where it was awarded the Medal of Honor. Purchased by the parish, its transfer was carried out by the same factory. With tubular pneumatic transmission, it possessed a romantic stoplist of 12 real stops spread over two keyboards and pedals. During the First World War, the instrument was dismantled and reinstalled in the Lutheran Church of Ascension, Rue Dulong in Paris, in 1919, where it is still present, although silent. Between the two wars, the project of a new instrument was developed with the support of Dr. Albert Schweitzer who advocated the construction of a new organ by Fritz Haerpfer, but the Second World War put an end to the project. In 1964, the German builder Detlef Kleuker of Bielefeld then built the current organ. Its layout was inspired by German Baroque instruments and was partly financed by German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Shortly after its completion, an expansion project was formulated, but that was never completed.