page_title: Stade (region)
section_title: Reorganisation of religious bodies in the Stade region
hierarchical_section_title: Stade (region) / History / Reorganisation of religious bodies in the Stade region
caption_attribution_description: Sealing stamp Title: Koeniglich Preussische Landrostei - Stade Description: blau, weiß, geprägt Place: Stade size: 4 cm
context_page_description: The Stade Region emerged in 1823 by an administrative reorganisation of the dominions of the Kingdom of Hanover, a sovereign state, whose then territory is almost completely part of today's German federal state of Lower Saxony. Until 1837 the Kingdom of Hanover was ruled in personal union by the Kings of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
  The official title of the Region was High-Bailiwick of Stade and then Governorate of Stade. The High-Bailiwick of Stade, being a mere administrative unit of the integrated Kingdom of Hanover, was named after and seated in Stade, Bremen-Verden's former capital, taking over its staff, installations and buildings. The territory of the Stade Region was combined by the territories of the Land of Hadeln, the Duchies of Bremen and Verden, all Hanoverian dominions, which were collectively administered. The territory belonging to the Stade Region covered about the triangular area between the mouths of the rivers Elbe and Weser to the North Sea and today's German federal states of Hamburg and Bremen.
context_section_description: Two Lutheran consistories, one for the Land of Hadeln in Otterndorf (founded by Hadeln's Estates in 1535, integrated into Stade's consistory in 1885) and one in Stade (founded by Swedish Bremen-Verden's government in 1650) for the rest of the High-Bailiwick supervised the Lutheran cult and clergy. A general superintendent chaired each consistory. Lutherans made up by far the majority of the population. Among Lutherans revivalism played a major role in the 1850s. In 1848 the Lutheran parishes were democratised by the introduction of presbyteries (parish councils), elected by all major male parishioners and chairing each parish in co-operation with the pastor, being before the sole chairman. This introduction of presbyteries was somewhat revolutionary in the rather hierarchically structured Lutheran church.
  The Lutheran church was the state church of the Kingdom of Hanover with the king being summus episcopus (Supreme Governor of the Lutheran Church). In 1864 Carl Lichtenberg, Hanoverian minister of education, cultural and religious affairs (1862–1865), persuaded the Hanoverian parliament to pass a new law as to the constitution of the Lutheran church. The constitution provided a state synod (parishioners' parliament, German: Landessynode). But its first session only materialised in 1869, when after the Prussian annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover (1866) the Hanoverian Lutherans desired a representative body separate from Prussian rule, though it was restricted to Lutheran matters only.
  After the Prussian conquest in 1866, on 19 September 1866, the day before the official Prussian annexation took place and with the last king, George V of Hanover, in exile, the Kingdom's six consistories joined to form the still existing Lutheran State Church of Hanover. An all-Hanoverian consistory, the Landeskonsistorium (state consistory), was formed with representatives from the regional consistories. The Lutheran state church became a stronghold of Hanoverian separatism and therefore somewhat politicised. It opposed the Evangelical State Church in Prussia, comprising the Protestant parishes in the Prussian territory prior the 1866 annexations, not only for its being a stronghold of Prussian patriotism, but for being a united church of formerly Lutheran and Calvinist parishes, with a preponderance of Calvinism because the Calvinist Hohenzollern dynasty wielded its influence in the unification of Lutherans and Calvinists in then Prussia in 1817. The Hanoverian Lutherans managed to maintain their independence and the Evangelical State Church in Prussia stayed abreast of the changes and renamed in 1875 into Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces.
  The Calvinist communities were in a somewhat sorry state. They emerged in the 1590s, when the Calvinist city of Bremen actually possessed some area around Bederkesa and Lehe (a part of today's Bremerhaven) at the lower Weser stream. In 1654, after the First Bremian War, the city ceded the area to Swedish Bremen-Verden, which subjected the Calvinists there to supervision by the Lutheran consistory. Under Lutheran pressure only six congregations stood fast to Calvinism. In the municipalities, where they were located, Calvinists made up the majority of the population, later Lutheran migration outweighed the Calvinist preponderance. The rest of the Stade Region was and is a Calvinist diaspora.
  In 1848 Hanoverian law also provided for presbyteries in the Calvinist parishes in the Stade Region, which exactly fit the presbyterian structure of Calvinism. But only in 1882 – long after the Prussian annexation of Hanover – the inappropriate supervision by Lutheran consistorials ended, when King William I of Prussia decreed the creation of the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Province of Hanover comprising all the Calvinist communities in the prevailingly Lutheran Province of Hanover. The simultaneously Lutheran and Calvinist consistory in Aurich was made the consistory of that church body, becoming an exclusively Calvinist body only in 1922, following the constitutional reorganisation of th
caption: Sealing stamp of the Stade Region, years from 1866 to 1885
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