Article content
Congregants of St. John’s Lutheran Church were left with their heads spinning after two bronze plaques disappeared from the church’s entrance sometime overnight Sept. 11 and 12. The plaques had been set into the concrete, which was broken so they could be removed.
“That would’ve been quite the endeavour to take down the plaques,” said Katherine Gohn, the church’s pastor. She said she doesn’t know why someone would go through so much trouble to steal them. “There was no value in the metal itself.”
Article content
“I don’t really know what the motive is,” Gohn said. “I think it was just ‘cuz.”
The two plaques were installed about 30 years ago, said David Schulze, chair of the church committee. The plaques were engraved with welcome messages in German and English as well as an image of Luther’s rose, a Lutheran symbol representing the Gospels.
Ewald Stranzl, the church’s property manager, admitted the situation was frustrating and said he found it “heartbreaking.” After noticing the plaques were gone, he said, he walked down surrounding streets looking for them in garbage bins.
He and Gohn both gave statements to police. Stranzl said the church didn’t have a security camera to capture the incident and that he didn’t know of any witnesses.
Montreal police declined The Gazette’s request for an interview, but in an emailed statement, a spokesperson said that while there had been cases of bronze plaques and even statues stolen in the city in the past, police weren’t aware of any other bronze thefts this year.
Selling bronze plaques would be difficult, said François Gagné, who works at M.M. Métal, a scrapyard in St-Eustache. “In my opinion, nobody would buy it,” he said, since most would assume it to be stolen property.
Article content
Schulze said he can’t think of a reason someone would vandalize this particular church. “We’re not a church associated with anything controversial,” including not having made public statements on political issues. The church has not been targeted in the past.
He said the church will probably end up replacing the plaques and will have to repair the walls. The church doesn’t yet have an estimate for the total cost, but Gohn said it would probably be thousands of dollars. “We have other things we’d rather spend our money on,” Schulze said.
Aside from the financial loss, Gohn said, the loss is also sentimental. “This is a sacred place for those of us who continue to worship here. So that doesn’t feel very good.”
St. John’s Lutheran, at the corner of Jeanne-Mance and Prince Arthur streets, is a fixture of Montreal’s historic German community. It was founded in 1853 and welcomed German immigrants who moved into the neighbourhood in large numbers in the 1920s and 1950s after the two world wars. Though many eventually settled in island suburbs, some continued to return to the neighbourhood to attend services.
Weekly services alternate between German-English bilingual and English only. The church continues to offer a fully German service every Christmas Eve.
Gohn said she doesn’t expect the plaques to be returned, but holds out hope someone might come across them. “It would be nice to get them back,” she said.
Share this article in your social network