Bismarck's church reforms strengthened the autonomy and self-rule of the state church, which in 1875 renamed as "Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces" (Evangelische Landeskirche der älteren Provinzen Preußens), since in Prussian provinces annexed since 1866 their regional Protestant church bodies had remained independent of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia. The reform laws strengthened the parishioners' participation through elected presbyteries and provincial synods in matters of the Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania. In 1892 the Consistory of Pomerania Province moved into its new building on Elisabethstraße (today's ulica Kaszubska in Szczecin). With the end of the the church lost its status as state church and assumed independence. With its new church order and name, "Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union" (as of 1922, Evangelische Kirche der altpreußischen Union; APU), it accounted for these changes.