Hauptkirche St. Petri – Azania Front Cathedral
City churches on two continents. The towering bell tower in front of the palm trees and the blue shimmering coast of East African Tanzania became the symbol of the city partnership between Dar es Salaam and Hamburg. “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you,” reads the Bible word, carved into the altar, of the church built in the German colonial period in 1899. Today’s “Azania Front Cathedral” (AFC) is the administrative seat of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, which together with Catholics and Anglicans comprises around 16 million Christians (a total population of around 43 million).
“We are united in this partnership project by faith and confidence,” says Bishop Alex Malasusa, “to be able to do something for internal and external peace in both countries.” Hamburg’s main church St.Petri on Mönckebergstraße and the Azania Front Cathedral in Tanzania’s port city Dar es Salaam have a few things in common: the central location in the business districts of the megacities as “city churches”, the affiliation with the Evangelical Lutheran denomination and the proximity to the political administration and the Senate as “town hall churches” for the city partnership. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
The two parishes are working to build the “spiritual foundation” of this partnership, which was formally established in 2010, through a variety of direct initiatives. This is less about financial support than about living partnership, which the late promoter of the church and city partnership and honorary consul of Tanzania in northern Germany, Jürgen Gotthardt, described as a task for “future generations”.
The choirs of both churches have a long-standing friendship, and at the Hamburg Marathon, the congregation has been organizing relays of the twinned cities for many years.
In 2020, the twinning anniversary was opened with a church service in St. Peter’s Church. Dr. Alex Malsusa, the Bishop of the Diocese of Dar es Salaam, gave the sermon and two moving and informative film evenings were also held in the church.
