Apache2 reload does an restart and stops accepting new connections

Hello,

I don't know if the behavior is normal, but I ask you to find out if it is.

My web server runs Apache2 (2.4.25) on the Debian 9 stretch with mpm_worker (formerly mpm_prefork).
My Apache2 configuration changes regularly and so every time the configuration changes I reload apache with /etc/init.d/apache2 reload because I don't want existing connections to be terminated or new ones not accepted.This worked fine with mpm_prefork.

With mpm_worker this changed. Now Apache, after I reload it with /etc/init.d/apache2 reload, does a graceful restart, which is problematic for me because I have a file hosting server & so active downloads or uploads can take several minutes to finish.
In /var/log/apache2/error.log the following message appears after the reload:
Quote:

AH00297: SIGUSR1 received. Doing graceful restart

(Same happens with mpm_event)

In an old logfile, where the server was still running with mpm_prefork, there was a similar message after the reloads, but active connections were still accepted as said:
Quote:

AH00171: Graceful restart requested, doing restart

In the other Apache log files I found nothing noticeable that has anything to do with this, but I'm happy to send you more excerpts.

Can anyone here help me?

Thank you very much,
dr-ing.