Gustav Adolph Lammers
1802–1878 · Norwegian priest, architect and politician
Gustav Adolph Lammers (Copenhagen, 1802 – Skien, 1878) was a Norwegian priest who also worked as an architect and artist and sat in the Storting. He is remembered for founding the country's first dissenter congregation, the first church to officially break away from the Church of Norway.
The son of a major general, he studied at the state craft and art school in Christiania while also training in theology. He served as priest at the Hospital Church in Trondheim from 1827 to 1835, a period when he came under pietist and Moravian influence. He later became parish priest in Bamble and represented Bratsberg in the Storting from 1839 to 1844.
As an architect he designed Bamble Church, built in Gothic revival style in 1845, as well as Hisøy and Tanum churches and a chapel in Skien. He also made altarpieces for several churches, including Bakke Church in Trondheim. After a religious experience in Germany, he left the Church of Norway in 1856 and founded the Free Apostolic Christian Congregation. It grew to groups in about twenty places, but after members began practising rebaptism, Lammers returned to the state church in 1860, and he devoted more of his life to the arts.
The Mission Covenant Church of Norway counts him among its founders, and Henrik Ibsen is said to have drawn on him for the character of Brand.