Gustav-Adolf-Werk

The Gustav-Adolf-Werk (GAW) is a society under the roof of the Evangelical Church in Germany which has for its object the aid of feeble sister churches and congregations. It is responsible for the taking care of the Diasporawork of the EKD, in cooperation with the EKD itself, its member churches and congregations. The organization started with a focus on the diaspora, but has separate branches internationally in the meanwhile. The organization in Austria is still called the Gustav-Adolf-Verein, which was the original name in Germany as well. Further terms used for the GAW in the past include Gustavus Adolphus Union, Gustav-Adolf-Stiftung and Evangelischer Verein der Gustav-Adolf-Stiftung.

The Battle of Lützen (1632) was a decisive battle of the Thirty Years' War. It was a Protestant victory, but cost the life of one of the most important leaders of the Protestant alliance, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, which caused the Protestant campaign to lose direction later. Near the spot where Gustavus Adolphus fell, a granite boulder was placed in position on the day after the battle. A canopy of cast iron was erected over this “Swedes' stone” (German: Schwedenstein) in 1832, and close by, a chapel, built by Oskar Ekman, a citizen of Gothenburg (d. 1907), was dedicated on 6 November 1907. The fallen king is remembered every year in Sweden, on Gustavus Adolphus Day the 6 November, with serene celebrations and Gustavus Adolphus pastry.

The project of forming such a society was first broached in connexion with the bicentennial celebration of the battle of Lützen on November 6, 1832. A proposal to collect funds for a larger monument to Gustavus Adolphus having been agreed to. The existing memorial, a simple stone at a crossing where the King had died, was rather popular with the locals (and some newspapers), which didn't want to have it replaced by a more pompous statue. It was then suggested by Superintendent Grossmann that the best memorial to the great champion of Protestantism would be the formation of a union for propagating his ideas. It quickly gained popularity. Großmann and others of the time saw Gustavus Adolphus as a symbol for religious freedom and self-determination. It was sort of helpful to set a new goal for the Gustaph Adolphus Memorial. Before the GAW's foundation, Großmann had dealt, at the start of the 1830s, with problems of the Protestant community in Plesná (Cheb District), then Fleissen in Austria on the border to Saxony. The local congregation had been bullied by the Catholic (Austrian) administration and e.g. disallowed for the locals to join church services and schools of the neighbouring Bad Brambach as before.

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