The Lutheran Evangelical Church of Saint Paul is one of the biggest historical monuments in Odesa. Local people call it simply kirkha and often add the epithet “long-suffering.”
The construction of the church was financed by German immigrants in 1828. The building was designed by the architect Franz Boffo. In 1893 the church was reconstructed. In Soviet times the cross was demolished from the church, and it was used as a library. After the war it served as a gym and then as a storehouse. Still this was not the end of the church’s sufferings. In 1976 it was destroyed by fire. People say that the fire was started on purpose, and moreover, it was inspired by well-known departments.
The thing is that in the mid-1970s Germans raised, on numerous occasions, the issue of assigning a status of a cultural or religious place to the church. By the end of the 1990s the overall wear of the building was over 80 percent. In 2000 Germans took over the restoration of the church. The restoration work is being managed by the church senior advisor Klaus-Jurgen Repke, who came to Odesa from Munich on the instructions of Bavaria Church.
“It is hard to give any dates for the restored church opening with any degree of certainty. It will most likely be ready in April after the Easter festivities,” said Repke. The Germans set an obligatory condition for the workers to use stones of the old building when working on the restoration. The church was greatly damaged by the fire in 1976, the materials of the original building were not enough, and some additional materials had to be purchased. The old stones were used for the altar, the baptistery place, and the place for preaching.
The building of the church had to shrink by nearly one-third. There will be a German culture center functioning at the church. The Regensburg Roman Catholic Church sent decorations for the church: old sculptures of Jesus Christ, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. These sculptures have been already placed above the altar. Some icons have been sent even by private owners; some of them are not from Odesa.
The walls and the ceiling have been painted by a young Bavarian artist, Tobias Kammerer. He has worked on some churches in Germany and Ukraine. Kammerer painted on the ceiling the sea and a ship shaped as a church with sails. Its masts form a cross. Repke called the painting symbolic as Paul traveled a lot by sea. There is also a direct connection with Odesa, a city of sailors. Only two workers who are restoring the building are Lutherans, while the rest are Moldavians and residents of Odesa. Germans say that the main thing is the professional skills and not the religion one belongs to.
