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History of Nightfever

The beginnings

Nightfever exists since October 29, 2005. A few weeks before, the XX World Youth Day in Cologne had ended with about one million young Christians from all over the world. During these days, the cities of Cologne, Bonn and Düsseldorf were full of young people singing and praying day and night. The churches were well filled even after midnight and one could feel and see the young spirit of the church.

But a few weeks later, everything seemed the same again: the young people were at home, the churches relatively empty. Then two students in Bonn thought: "That can't be it. World Youth Day must go on!"

And so Andreas Süß (today leading pastor in Neuss) and Katharina Fassler (Community Emmanuel, today married, 4 children) started the first Nightfever in the St. Remigius Church Bonn. The concept is based on the Mercy Night of the Emmanuel Community. Nightfever is an initiative of young Christians (16-35 years) and is carried out as a collective effort of trainees, students of different faculties, pupils, young adults from parishes, different communities, seminarians and religious orders. Originally planned as a one-time evening, the great popularity of the visitors has led to Nightfever becoming a regular event.

Students in other cities heard about Nightfever and wanted to organize similar evenings in a church in their city. So in 2006, in close coordination and after prior training, Freiburg (in St. Martin's), Erfurt (in the Lorenzkirche), Cologne (in the cathedral) and Mainz (in the Augustinerkirche) followed. Today Nightfever takes place in over 80 German cities.


An initiative goes around the world

Even outside of Germany, there were young Christians who wanted to bring Nightfever into their churches and contacted the Nightfever initiative. Thus, the first Nightfever took place in Vienna in May 2008. In the meantime, more than 4,000 Nightfever evenings have taken place in over 200 cities worldwide. You can get a more detailed picture of this on our Nightfever world map.

In addition to Germany, Nightfever is now in 26 other countries: Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, England, Scotland, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Canada, Croatia, Australia, Brazil, USA, Belgium, Poland, Argentina, Thailand, Luxembourg, France, Slovakia, Mexico, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, India and Hungary.

Nightfever has also become a regular participant at several major events, such as the ecumenical Church Day, the Catholics Day or congresses.

Organization

Nightfever was founded by students and continues to be run by young adults. Everyone can get involved as their schedule permits. Each city, after being trained by the national team, conducts its Nightfever evenings independently, staying true to the essence of Nightfever. It is important to us that Nightfever is celebrated everywhere in the same spirit and that we know about and pray for each other. In order to keep Nightfever in unity all over the world and to preserve the vision and charisma, Nightfever groups are only allowed to begin after absolving their training with the international Nightfever team.

Once a year, the Nightfever teams from all cities meet for an international Nightfever Weekend to share, celebrate and pray together.