parish, but due to immigration from the Lutheran states around Bremen, time by time it became the largest religious group in the city. In administrative matters, the Lutherans that joined the services in the cathedral, at the same time were members of the Calvinist parishes of the municipal districts, where they lived. To get space for the increasing audience of the services, some galleries were built inside the central nave and the northern aisle. Between 1693 and 1698, Arp Schnitger installed a huge organ that would be played until 1847, one of the most valuable equipment, Bremen Cathedral ever had. in the same period, in 1694/96, the Lutheran church received a new main altar with a canopy, resembling St. Peter's Baldachin in Vatican Basilica. About 80 years later, the western rose window had to be changed (for a simpler one), in order to prevent damages of the organ caused by humidity. Municipal rule In 1803 the cathedral immunity district with St Peter's, meanwhile an extraterritorial enclave of the Electorate of Hanover, which had gained the duchy of Bremen-Verden in, was incorporated into the Free Imperial City of Bremen. Its burgomaster Johann Smidt, a devout member of the Reformed (Calvinist) church, confiscated the considerable estates of the Lutheran congregation. The representatives of the Lutheran congregation, led by the cathedral preacher Johann David Nicolai, started to fight for its right to exist. In 1810, facing the annexion of Bremen by the French Empire, the city council agreed to the establishment of a cathedral parish, this way preventing a French confiscation of the church's properties. But the new parish wouldn't gain full equality of right with the Calvinist parishes before 1830, asserted by a majority of Bremen's Calvinist senators (government members) against the expressed will of Smidt. [In 1873 the Calvinist and Lutheran congregations in Bremen reconciled and founded a united administrative umbrella, the still existing Bremian Evangelical Church, comprising the bulk of Bremen's citizens.] In 1817, the city council ordered the withdrawal of some small houses, attached to the northern wall of the cathedral. But the consequent reparations of the wall had to be paid by the parish's construction fund. After more than two centuries of economic decline, for the free city of Bremen investments in its nautic and other transport infrastructure had priority to the reconstruction of the cathedral. Therefore, during the 3rd to 9th decades of the 19th century, urgent