The first wave of German settlers in London were merchants. The second wave brought artisans, mainly in SUGAR REFINING, confectionery and later the meat trade, but there were also bookbinders and sellers. Many settled in East London, remaining until the First World War: at one time there were 16,000 Germans in the area. Most were Protestants (Lutheran and Reformed), but some were Roman Catholics [see below] and later, of course, Jews fleeing poverty and persecution.

German Lutheran Church: St George's

Georgenkirche (St George's) Alie Street is the the oldest surviving centre of German worship, but was the fifth London congregation to be founded. The first was the Hamburg Church (Hamburger Lutherische Kirche), granted a royal charter by Charles II in 1669 (when non-Anglican churches were still banned), which met in Trinity Lane in the City until 1874, when it moved to Dalston. The second was Marienkirche, the church of St Mary-le-Savoy, meeting by William III's permission from 1694 at his chapel in the Savoy Palace in the Strand (near the site of the Savoy Hotel), and eventually moving to Bloomsbury as part of a student centre. The third was the Reformed congregation of St Paul, whose members were fleeing from religious perecution in the Palatinate, and who also met at the Savoy from 1696: see below. And in 1700 the Deutsche Hofkapelle, the German Court Chapel, was founded in St James' Palace by Prince George of Denmark, the husband of the future Queen Anne. When George I, who spoke little English, came over from Hanover in 1714, he installed his court preacher as incumbent, and this continued with George II. Thus it served mainly the royal household; it was subject to the Bishop of London and used parts of the Book of Common Prayer in German. This odd tradition continued until the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, when a successor congregation was established in South Kensington.

There were few links between these congregations, which were 'little republics', though the two Savoy congregations exchanged preachers and had an annual church feast in which followers of Luther and Calvin joined together so peacefully and cheerfully that you would think they were one congregation.

St George's was founded in 1762 by Dietrich Beckmann, a wealthy sugar refiner. His workers formed most of the original congregation, together with East End merchants from the Hamburg church. Most of the original interior of the Alie Street church survives, including the ground floor and gallery box pews and the double-decker pulpit and sounding board. On the wall above hangs a pre-1801 coat of arms of King George III and two carved timber Commandment Boards in German. The Royal Arms, obligatory at the time in Anglican churches and adopted by others as a mark of loyalty, recall the connection with Queen Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent, who was patron of the schools from 1819 (see below).

The first pastor (1763-99) was Gustav Anton Wachsel, Beckmann's cousin, appointed at the age of 26. He was born in Halberstadt in East Frisia, on the eastern edge of the Harz (in former East Germany) around 1735. His father was a partisan against the 'French invaders' of the area and was shot by them in 1761. At the conclusion of the Seven Years War (1756-63), a committee in London petitioned Waschel's alma mater, the Georg August University of Göttingen, for a recognition of the help he had given to escaping refugees:

Wachsel published an edition of Luther's Shorter Catechism in German and English. In 1767 the church had 430 members. A school was established in 1765, aiming to populate the congregation in the future; it became St. George's German and English Elementary School in 1805, offering a full range of subjects, and supported by voluntary contributions. There was a tension here: many German settlers assimilated quickly, marrying English wives and generally becoming 'British'. When Wachsel attempted to introduce English services for second generation and 'mixed' families (as did the other German congregations) there were protests: his wages were stopped, he was locked out, and a 25-year battle ensued, ending with a court verdict that he could only hold services in German. There were also struggles about the church constitution: he was conservative and autocratic, but his north German members wanted rules and participation. And they also objected to music in worship, fearing that the church might become a 'playhouse' [see GOODMANS FIELDS]. So numbers fell.

His successor, from 1799 until his death in 1843, was Dr Christian A.E. Schwabe, who rebuilt the congregation, to between 400 and 500. He was Queen Victoria's German tutor. In 1806 a Society of Friends of Foreigners in Distress was established. There was also a Ladies' Clothing Society, providing clothing for nearly a hundred poor German children a year.

Louis Cappel was the next pastor. In his time the churchyard and crypt were closed (1853) and there were no further burials. In 1864 he ministered to Franz Müller [pictured right], a tailor who was convicted of the murder of Mr Briggs on the North London Railway. The trial, and public execution, aroused great public interest. He denied the charge, and a 'German Protection Society' was created to plead for clemency. Cappel was with him on his last day when he went to the scaffold, at which point he confessed; reports say that a fuller confession would have followed if the hangman had not been so anxious to proceed. See further George H. Knott Trial of Franz Müller (Read Books 2006).

School numbers swelled in this period, and a new building [above] was opened in 1877, financially supported by Wilhelm Heinrich Göschen, and others such as George Frederick Vorwerg whose will created a charitable trust (and who also left an engraved picture of the creation of the world, and £5 for a mourning ring, to Louis Cappel). It was the only German school with a nursery, for children over the age of two, to enable poor mothers to work. Relying on donations from wealthier members, it survived until 1917.

A new, and characteristically German, organ was installed the the firm of Walcker in 1886, using the 1794 case by John England. It was rebuilt in 1937, and restored in 2004, and is used for regular recitals.

Goerg Mätzold was the pastor from 1891 to 1930. He brought nurses from Germany in 1903 (when the church claimed 166 members), and founded Ostdiakonieverein, a social welfare organisation for the East End. The school canteen provided meals for pupils and also some parents. Julius Rieger followed him (1930-53); during the Nazi period he set up a relief centre for Jewish refugees from Germany who were provided with references to travel to England. He founded the church magazine Der Londoner Bote.

Sunday worship was transferred to St Mary's in Bloomsbury in 1996, though there is a monthly midweek service and special events - including a 2006 BBC Songs of Praise to mark the centanery of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's birth, and the premiere of Richard van Schoor's Mass, on texts by Bonhoeffer.

The third German congregation in London, meeting at the Savoy Palace (see above) was formed of immigrants from the Palatinate who were of the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition. In 1715 there were only 20 paying members, and 60 others; the pastor's stipend was provided by their patron, King Friedrich I of Prussia. Numbers increased, to between three and four hundred, under Dr Carl Gottfried Woide (1768-90): he was an eminent orientalist, on the staff of the British Musuem, and also chaplain of the Dutch Court Chapel. In 1771 a new church was built in Duchy Lane, Savoy, on the site of a former French church.

When the Savoy Palace was vacated for the building of Waterloo Bridge, this church was demolished in 1816, and a new church in Hooper Square, off Leman Street, was consecrated in 1819 [see recently-restored Pump House, Hooper Street].  This brought them into the heart of the German working class colony - artisans, tailors, butchers and cobblers from Westphalia, the Rhineland, Hessen and Frisia: the businessman disappears, and German craftsmen, living under difficult conditions in the East, arrive. This move, plus attachment in 1822 to the Prussian church union, merging the Calvinist and Lutheran traditions, ended its purely Reformed tradition.

The pastor from 1822 to 1858 was Johann Gerhard Tiarks (1794-1858), who published A Practical Grammar of the German Language (1834). He came from a large and distinguished family and studied at the University of Heidelburg, and married an English wife; several of his descendants became Anglican clergy, and Captain Mark Philipps was his great-great-grandson. In his time schools for boys (1832) and girls (1852) were established. Sunday worship was advertised for 10.45am and 6pm, with the Lord's Supper at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday and the first Sunday in October - seats to be had in the vestry.

During Theodor Kübler's time (1858-75) butchers, from the Würtemberg area, predominated in the congregation. In 1887, railway works forced another move, when the bridge over Leman Street into Fenchurch Street was constructed, and the congregation moved to Goulston Street, Aldgate. German assimilation proceeded apace, and the schools were closed in 1896, and sold to the Jewish Missionary Society.

Heinrich Deicke was pastor from 1905-??. The sugar factories had closed, and their workers moved away, but continued to 'commute' back to church; in his time St Paul's claimed 175 members. From 1933-35 the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer [right] was pastor at St Paul's [see above]. The church was bombed in 1941, and it merged with St George's Lutheran Church. The Goulston Street site is now part of London Metropolitan University, and in 2009 a blue plaque commemorating Bonhoeffer was unveiled there in memory of Bonhoeffer, who is commemorated in the Anglican calendar as 'Lutheran pastor and martyr' on 9 April.

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