St. Aegidien in Hanover, Lower Saxony

About

Get directions Aegidienkirchhof, 30159 Hannover, Deutschland

Coordinates: 52.36963, 9.73902
Cemetery ID:

Members have Contributed

About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

Photos

See 2 more

The Aegidienkirche was built in the mid-14th century as a Gothic hall church. Alongside the Marktkirche and the Kreuzkirche, it was one of the three churches in the Hanoverian Old Town. It was named after Saint Giles, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

In 1347, the still-existing three-aisled Gothic hall church with choir and nave was constructed using sandstone from the nearby Deister. The tower received a Baroque facade designed by Sudfeld Vick between 1703 and 1711. In 1826/28, the interior of the church was renovated by Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves, who used cast-iron columns. Architect Conrad Wilhelm Hase further modified the church's interior in 1886.

During the night of October 8 to 9, 1943, the church was almost completely destroyed by bombs. Its exterior walls and the remaining tower stump were preserved as a memorial to the victims of war and violence. The burned-out ruins of the Aegidienkirche became Hanover's central memorial for the victims of war and violence in 1952. Since 1985, a peace bell has been placed in the tower entrance as a gift from Hanover's partner city, Hiroshima. It is struck every year on August 6 in remembrance of the atomic bombing. Annually on October 9, a ceremony is held in the Aegidienkirche to commemorate the destruction of Hanover during bombing raids in World War II.