Stern Church in Potsdam: 50 years full of history and anniversary celebration!

Stern Church in Potsdam: 50 years full of history and anniversary celebration!

The Stern parish in Potsdam is facing a very special event: the congregation's 50th anniversary will be celebrated from June 27th to 29th, 2025. A festival weekend that offers numerous activities and moving memories of an eventful time. Particularly prominent: Former Federal President Joachim Gauck will give a lecture on the opening evening, June 27th, which is only open to invited guests. The speaker will shed light on the historical context of the community, which was founded in 1975, and the challenges that believers had to face during the time of the SED dictatorship. Tagesspiegel reports that the community today includes around 1,300 Protestant Christians in the Am Stern and Schlaatz districts.

Pastor Martin Rothe describes the last 50 years as “a time full of challenges and turning points”. The founding of the Stern Church came at a time in which the atheistic Marxism of the GDR had a strong influence on the religious landscape. Many believers were confronted with tensions that strained the relationship between the churches and the socialist government. From the 1960s onwards, the SED had taken an increasingly critical stance towards the churches, which led to conflicts over issues such as religious education and youth ordination Wikipedia explains.

Festival program in detail

The celebrations begin on June 27th and the community has put together an exciting program. An exhibition on the history of the parish will open on June 28th at 2 p.m. Immediately afterwards, visitors are invited to the “Café of Remembrance”, where they can reminisce over coffee and cake. At 7 p.m. Fabian Vogt will provide entertainment with a musical cabaret The Potsdam church district particularly highlights this.

Sunday, June 29th, begins with a celebratory service at 10 a.m. led by Potsdam's superintendent Angelika Zädow. There is certainly a lot of anticipation in the room, because afterwards visitors can expect a community festival from 11.30 a.m. to 3 p.m. with lots of offers for young and old. Highlights include the music-participatory theater “Pampelmuse” and the performances by the Stern Choir and the Babelsberg Trombone Choir. The Tagesspiegel describes the festival as a diverse offering for the whole family.

A piece of history

The Stern parish was founded in June 1975 as one of the first new congregations in the GDR and shows that faith and community can thrive even in difficult times. The construction of the Star Church, which took place from 1987 to 1990 with support from the West and the community's own contributions, is symbolic of the solidarity and determination of the believers. After a fire severely damaged the church in 1997, the community managed to rebuild it with an octagonal tent roof and thus create a sustainable community center. The community has also been involved beyond the Am Stern district, for example with the “Church in the Neighborhood” project, which promotes social cohesion and the common good This is how the Potsdam church district describes it.

For many people in the region, the Stern Church is not only a place of faith, but also a cultural center with a colorful program that ranges from gospel and choral singing to cinema screenings. It will be exciting to see how the community will link its history and its future on the festival weekend, as the anniversary should not only be a look back, but also an outlook.