Talk:St. Olaf's Church, Tallinn

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Height[edit]

List of tallest churches says it's the fourth tallest church in the world. If this is correct (should be fact-checked), then it should be mentioned in the article. PeepP 14:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Denomination[edit]

Is this really a Baptist Church? And what do they mean by "continues to be"? I'm a bit incredulous...Deliverance 19:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thought it was a Lutheran church, but was corrected at the Tallinn talk page. "Continues" in this context is just a form of expression. If your incredulity has a factual basis - edit. And, as a courtesy, please sign your contributions with four tildes (~). Folks at 137 22:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok thanks I didn't know the tildas showed who I am Deliverance 19:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated the text to reflect the changing denominational usage through history. Timothy Titus ^{Talk To TT} 11:08, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(I hope the use of "continues" may be less ambiguous now, also). Timothy Titus ^{Talk To TT} 11:09, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Eventually proving surplus to the requirements of the Lutheran Church in Tallinn"?

I am not an expert on this so please correct me if I am wrong. It is my understanding that it became "Baptist" because it was assigned that status by the Communist Party. It was Soviet policy to close churches, forcing all church denominations to merge into one church. Each unity church was then assigned arbitrary denomination. The churches in Tallinn were merged and given St. Olaf's as their church building, they were assigned the denomination, "Baptist". Stephen Simpson 10:51, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You are entirely correct. The St. Olaf's facilitates a fully functioning parish under the Union of Free Evangelical and Baptist Churches. Jaan Pärn (talk) 17:23, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jaan Pärn. Do you think we should alter the text? I think it reads wrong, "Eventually proving surplus to the requirements of the Lutheran Church in Tallinn". This is not really true, its became Baptist because of Soviet policy. I do not have any references for this though other than the word of Estonian friends. Are there any good documents that highlight this particular policy that can be referenced? Stephen Simpson (talk) 09:27, 14 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well I would not link the shift to the Baptist church with the Soviet policy as it did not favour Baptism over Lutheranism. I can read here that the church belonged to the Baltic German parish until 1940. Since Baltic Germans were resettled to Germany during 1939-1940, it is likely the church had only a nominal congregation during 1940-1950. This is probably the main reason it was given to a functioning congregation. Jaan Pärn (talk) 10:46, 14 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Never the world's tallest?[edit]

I see from this edit and other edits by Jaan, than the source states St. Olaf's was never the worlds tallest. One question immediately comes to mind: how reliable is the source http://www.imelineajalugu.ee/article/2012/11/14/oleviste_korgus_on_muut ? From what I can tell with machine translation, Ants Hein (a Senior Research Fellow in History at Tallinn University) says it is his opinion that the tower reached only 115-125 m, apparently by comparing it to other buildings in medieval drawings and a possible confusion over the true size of the Estonian "fathom". However, I believe there are many other (reliable) sources which do state St Olaf's was 159 m. Maybe this is worthy of further discussion or perhaps including both heights in the article along with reliable sources. Quite where that will leave the various "list of tallest ..." article that Jaan also edited, I don't really know for now. Astronaut (talk) 19:51, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I can capture the material of this article for you. Indeed, the 19th-century German researchers cited the letter from a medieval craftsman found from the St. Olaf claiming the church was rebuilt as 74 fathoms tall in 1625 while it had allegedly been 10 fathoms taller before it. The researchers used Rhineland fathoms to conclude it had been 159 m tall. However, a Revalian craftsman would mean the local fathom which is considerably shorter, making it 134 m as the asserted height. A fortiori, no other data supports this single claim, while reliable images of the contemporary Reval skyline show the tower was no taller or of other proportions than today. Hence, the question is quite the opposite from Astronaut's: how reliable are the sources using the Rhineland fathom (or the Hamburg or the Russian one, for that matter) to assume a height of 159 m (or 161 or 179 m, respectively), or simply referring to each other without any comment? Jaan Pärn (talk) 11:00, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

RE: the burst of opposition towards Hein (2012) by the user at IP 195.50.209.60. I can see the IP's first edit summary claims Hein (2012): 1) is a conjecture, 2) has no sources within, and 3) invents the Tallinn fathom. Let me start from 3). Dr. Ants Hein did not invent the Tallinn fathom. Just pick up Entsüklopeedia Tallinn, look up süld (fathom in Estonian) and see that medieval Tallinn had two parallel official fathom standards: the Tallinn fathom 1.607 m and the Iron or Town Council fathom commonly 2.25-2.27. Dr. Hein uses the Tallin fathom as the standard probably used by the designer of the church. Now, claim 2) is incorrect. Dr. Hein cites 5 sources. Most of them are primary historical documents, which is actually the material of his paper. This makes the paper original research and can be disproved only by other original research based upon the same or better historical material. All this disproves the IP's claim 1), as Dr. Hein's paper is based on valid original historical material interpreted in a sound way. Jaan Pärn (talk) 07:31, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]