The Church of St. Augustine of Canterbury in Wiesbaden, Germany (also known as the "English Church") is a parish of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe. It occupies a Gothic Revival church building at the corner of Frankfurter Straße and Kleine Wilhelmstraße and is named for Augustine of Canterbury, a Germanic missionary, who founded the Archbishopric of Canterbury. The red brick building is located next door to the Villa Clementine and is thus directly across from the park Warmer Damm in close proximity to Wilhelmstraße.
The church was built in 1863 for British subjects taking the waters at the international spa of Wiesbaden. In the First World War, when the British spa visitors of whom the parish was composed, had left the country, the church was no longer used for worship services. During the National Socialist period, the property, which the Kurhausaktiengesellschaft had put at the disposal of the (no longer existent) congregation, was expropriated by the state. After the end of the Second World War the U.S. military used the building as a military chapel until the current facility at "Heinerberg" was constructed in 1955. Then the property was deeded to the Bishop of London to return to its original purpose as an Anglican house of worship.
Because a large portion of the congregation continued to be made up of members of the US military and civilian DOD employees and their dependents, the church began to take on an increasingly American character. It has used the American Book of Common Prayer since this point in time, and the Convocation of American Churches in Europe (a jurisdiction of the U.S. Episcopal Church, renamed the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe in 2009) has held the responsibility for the calling of clergy.
In January 1966, a major fire, caused by a malfunction of the heating system, gutted the building. The church was restored through donations from the congregation and insurance proceeds. The new church organ, which had been recently delivered, but not yet installed, was therefore not covered by insurance and posed a major financial loss to the parish.
During the 1970s, the Episcopal Church appointed Edmond Lee Browning as bishop-in-charge of the congregations in Europe; Browning attended worship at St. Augustine's and lived in Wiesbaden at that time, before becoming Bishop of Hawaii and later Presiding Bishop. In 1980, when the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe was formed to oversee the Continental chaplaincies of the Church of England previously under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe formally transferred his episcopal authority to his US colleague in Paris for as long as the US church would be responsible for the maintenance and operation costs of the parish. The end of the Cold War and the resulting decline in the presence of American troops in Germany has led to an increasingly civilian and multi-national character in the parish since 1990.
In the mid-1970s Pastor Martin Niemöller and his wife, Sybil, were communicants at St. Augustine's.
In 2003, the parish called its first woman rector, the Rev. Martha Hubbard, who previously served in the parish of St. Mark's in Penn Yan, New York in the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester. The vestry presently includes three British subjects, five German citizens and four U.S. citizens. Other members of the congregation include Canadian and Australian subjects as well as South African, Italian or Nigerian citizens.
In addition to the regular Sunday morning worship services (10 a.m.), which are usually Holy Eucharists, there are also two home groups currently active.
Norman, Hilary. The English Church in Wiesbaden: A History, Druckerei Dierks, Taunusstein: 2003.
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