Ölbergkirche (Kreuzberg)
| Mount of Olives Church | |
|---|---|
_Kirche.JPG)
|
|
| address |
Berlin-Kreuzberg , Paul-Lincke-Ufer 29 |
| Denomination | evangelical |
| local community | Emmaus-Ölberg-Kirchengemeinde |
| Current usage | Parish church; Cultural place |
| building | |
| start of building | 1921 |
| completion | 1922 |
| inauguration | June 18, 1922 |
| reconstruction | 1950 |
| modification | 1958, 1965, 1993, 2014 |
| style | Art Nouveau |
| architect | Curt Steinberg |
The Ölberg-Kirche of the Evangelical Emmaus-Ölberg-Kirchengemeinde in the parish of Berlin Stadtmitte of the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia is on Paul-Lincke-Ufer 29 at the corner of Lausitzer Straße in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg in today's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district . The architectural style of the church building is to be assigned to Art Nouveau .
Church history
The Protestant Ölberg congregation was the youngest in what was then the Kreuzberg parish . It was separated from the Emmaus community as Emmaus-West on November 1, 1910 . The congregation rented a hall at Lausitzer Strasse 24 for the services, and later a factory hall in Forster Strasse. The church council and the community Emmaus West received permission to use the corresponding church seal. In March 1911, the parish council decided to obediently ask the “royal consistory to be allowed to use the name of the Mount of Olives parish”. The name was chosen for a number of reasons: the Mount of Olives brings back many memories from the life of the Savior , and a community that was previously separated from Emmaus bears the name Tabor after the Mount of Transfiguration . Therefore, the now branched off community is to receive the name of the Ascension Mountain. In addition, the Bethanien Deaconess House is in the immediate vicinity , just like in the " Holy Land Bethanien was at the foot of the Mount of Olives" and finally in 1910 the Mount of Olives Foundation was solemnly consecrated. The request was granted on July 24, 1911 by handing over a certificate.
Because of the strong growth of the community (around "19,000 souls" - mostly workers, craftsmen and civil servants - in the catchment area Manteuffelstraße, Wiener Straße, Forster Straße and K (C) ottbusser Ufer were named), especially due to the brisk construction activity in the area, it became necessary To practice numerous temporary arrangements including renting different rooms. In a contemporary newspaper article it is said of this situation: "a community without a church is like a family without a home". The problem of being able to build one's own church became more and more pressing.
In 1995 the Ölberg congregation merged with the Emmaus congregation to form the Evangelical Church Congregation Emmaus-Ölberg .
Building history
Planning for a representative church building
In 1915, Konsistorial- Oberbaumeister Curt Steinberg delivered a first draft for a complex of church buildings with an attached parish hall on the corner lot Cottbusser Ufer / Lausitzer Strasse, which the community had bought from the city of Berlin. The multi-storey church was to have a church tower on the northwest side with a pointed roof and a large clock tower, and the main hall was to offer space for 600 people. Together with the adjoining parish hall and a parsonage that was also attached, it was to be built in a closed construction method facing both Lausitzer Strasse and Cottbusser Ufer. The architectural drawing shows elements of Art Nouveau as well as borrowings from the Neo-Baroque . The street-side facade provided for the main church entrance through the tower, in the decorative gable of the nave two smaller entrances and three grouped semicircular window groups were planned. A pointed tower was to adorn the building on the southwest corner. Another entrance was planned on the south side. A cost estimate for the epochal church building had resulted in around 520,000 marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 1.57 million euros).
As a result of the First World War , it was not possible to build at first, then inflation led to a sharp devaluation of the money already accumulated for the construction.
Reorientation to a smaller building
The amount remaining in the 1920s was only enough for a much smaller church building, the design of which was again from Steinberg and was based on his first design plans. The foundation stone was laid on June 22, 1921. The inauguration took place on June 18, 1922. The address at that time was Cottbusser Ufer 29. The little church that was built corresponded in style to the later emergency churches built after the Second World War , it was born out of necessity.
Mount of Olives Church after the Second World War
At the end of World War II, in 1943 by beating by Allied bombing air mines , destroyed below the roof and the vaulted ceiling of the church building shelling the organ , so breaking pipes or lost. Overall, the church hall was no longer usable.
The community still had around 9,000 members. The services, the lessons and the community events took place first in the intact church anteroom. In addition, the faithful were able to use the church kindergarten, the cellar of the Emmaus church and a hall of the Melanchthon community in Graefestrasse. In 1949 arson destroyed large parts of the parish office and the church vestibule, so that reconstruction was delayed further. Experts put the total destruction of the church at around 75 percent. Now services were also held in the private apartments of parishioners. The city of Berlin did not include the small church in their list of urgent repairs, so the parish council had to raise the necessary sums itself and in some cases even lend a hand.
Reconstruction and alterations
The main repair work took place in 1950: the vault was reshaped using simple fibreboard, the badly damaged organ was dismantled, destroyed church windows could be replaced and the walls without paintings could be refreshed. New chairs were also purchased.
Instead of the organ, the organist used a harmonium that was initially borrowed , but the community then bought it. All in all, the equipment was greatly simplified, but the use of the Ölbergkirche was possible again. Bishop Dibelius rededicated the church on June 18, 1950.
The discovery of an unexploded 20-hundredweight bomb in the front garden of the church, which an ammunition recovery team defused on site in 1952, had no consequences.
A church building association was founded in 1957 to support thorough repairs and necessary renovation work . By 1958, enough donations had been raised to tackle the task. The most visible measure was the dismantling of the gallery on the east side and the construction of a new organ gallery in the west of the nave. A new altar wall was pulled through from floor to ceiling and whitewashed. A large wooden cross was placed in front of it . A new barrel vault was built in place of the temporary ceiling. Finally, more comfortable chairs could be purchased and 13 windows were fitted with colored glass inserts. The room under the gallery now served, among other things, as a meeting place for confirmands , which could be separated from the main room by a folding door . Further renovations concerned the floor of the main nave, which was covered with PVC panels, a wooden altar , an ambo in place of the old pulpit and a baptismal font were purchased. The main entrance came back on the southern long side on the Linckeufer. All of the above measures cost the community around 51,000 marks and ended with a festive service on September 14, 1958, at which Superintendent Kahle preached. Prominent guests at this celebration were, among others, the District Mayor of Kreuzberg, Willy Kressmann , representatives of the consistory and the city synod.
In the 1980s, a rail system was installed for more flexible lighting. In the course of further renovations in 1993, the damaged gray-blue, now very unsightly PVC floor was replaced by a noble oak parquet, which also brought it closer to the original plank floor from 1922.
The wooden altar steps and the large wooden cross on the east side have been removed, the altar and baptismal font can now be set up flexibly in the room. Since then, a smaller lectern has been used instead of the heavy wooden anvil.
Extensive reconstruction measures were carried out in 2013/2014.
Parish hall
The pastor of the Ölberg congregation at the time used the opportunity of the festive divine service in 1958 to bring up the missing rectory and the missing parish hall, which was supposed to house the church kindergarten, a nurses' station and other church groups. For the time being, however, these plans were suspended until in 1960 the synod wanted to buy the adjacent property on Linckeufer (“the property around the Ölbergkirche”), on which an older three-story house stood, the demolition of which had not yet been approved. The intention to purchase, however, led to the parish church council, together with the city synod, announcing an architectural competition for a parish and parish house, which Hansrudolf Plarre won. The jury did not like the jury's decision so much, the design by Erich Ruhtz from Lichterfelde was better received, but it was not implemented. The work envisaged two construction phases - first the parish hall was to be built on the church property, for which the foundation stone was laid on May 5, 1962. It took 15 months to build, and so on August 2, 1963, Superintendent Fritz Radicke inaugurated the very first community hall.
Rectory
The second construction phase, in which the rectory with a parish office was to be built, did not come about. The construction site at Lausitzer Strasse 30, which a coal trader had leased from the district for an unlimited period, could not be acquired. The rectory project was put on hold again until 1965. At that time the house on Paul-Lincke-Ufer (as the street was now called) was demolished and construction of the rectory, this time according to Ruhtz's plans, could have started . But now there was no money for a permanent building and it stayed that way until 1967. To solve the urgent problem, the parties finally agreed to set up a prefabricated rectory and a confirmation room of the same type from the manufacturer Terrapin, the composite one , right next to the church Manufactured prefabricated buildings and cells assembled from individual parts. This work lasted from February to August 1968, cost 260,000 marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 494,000 euros) and on October 1, 1968 the pastor's family was finally able to move into their own church house.
architecture
The plastered masonry building is a rectangular hall church , covered with a mansard roof , which originally had a small turret on the west side , today there is a simple cross there. Access to the nave was either through the portal on the south side or through the portal covered with sheet copper in Lausitzer Straße 28. There was an arched window on both sides of the portal in Lausitzer Straße . Both were bricked up during the reconstruction in 1950, one was opened again later. The gable in the facade has a high, round-arched panel offset with plaster . There are three arched windows in it, the middle one is higher than the two on the side. A cross of the same color is worked into the plaster directly under the top of the gable . During the work in 2013/2014, the side entrance on Paul-Lincke-Ufer became the new main entrance. He received a vestibule and a glass canopy. The stairs to the no longer used entrance on Lausitzer Strasse were demolished. The demolition of the entire portal was not approved. That is why it remains as a decorative element. Instead of the door, a window was installed. In the annex on the south side at the height of the altar area, the door originally led to the sexton's house . It was widened and the access made barrier-free . The parish logo is emblazoned above the door .
When it opened in 1922, the church had a barrel vault made of plaster of paris , which rested on pillars attached to the wall on the long sides between the windows. The barrel vault, which was rebuilt in 1958, begins on the floor. Above the altar wall with the altar niche rose the gallery on which a historical organ was placed. Their pipes were arranged in groups of three. The organ was built by Alexander Schuke and provided with an electric drive. On both sides of the altar niche was the pulpit for the church choir . The walls below had a painted frame. There was a saying painted over their doors. The builder and head of the church building authority Curt Steinberg painted the altarpiece himself.
In 2013/2014, far-reaching structural changes were carried out inside the church in order to be able to use the building both as a church and as a recording studio and thus to ensure the preservation of the building. The sacred character of the room was largely retained. In order to improve the room acoustics when used as a recording studio or concert room , the barrel vault was given several diffusers , including a. in the form of a "counter-arching". The former altar wall was moved forward in order to enlarge the rooms behind it. The sound engineers have their place of work on the upper floor, where the gallery was located in 1922 and later a children's room . As in the 1980s, the space under the new gallery serves as an anteroom and church café and is no longer separated from the main room by a folding door, but by a glass wall.
Furnishing
altar
The altar stood in front of the east wall until the church was rebuilt in 1993. In order to dissolve the rigid longitudinal alignment in the service and because the acoustics of the barrel vault was very problematic in this alignment, the church, which can now be flexibly arranged after the removal of the wooden altar steps, was mostly used in a diagonal alignment in the service (altar in the north-east -Corner).
Since the renovation in 2013, the altar with the autographed Bible donated by Theodor Heuss has stood on the north side of the church during church services and the chairs are set up in a semicircle.
window
The three lead glass windows in the facade, i. H. behind the gallery, could not be saved during the last renovation. The same applied to the leaded glass windows in the vestibule. The eight lead glass windows on the long sides of the nave were preserved. They have been renovated and inserted between new insulating glass panes .
lighting
In 1922, wrought iron chandeliers were hung with chains under the barrel vault: a smaller one above the altar area, a larger one in the middle of the hall. They were retained in the temporary ceiling built in 1958. After the barrel vault was restored in 1960, they were not hung up again. Instead, lights were attached to the side pillars. In the 1980s, rail systems for headlights were installed below the barrel vault. They allow the greatest flexibility in lighting design . Around 2010 the wall lights were rebuilt for better illumination of the room, whereby the appearance of the lights was retained.
Bell and cross
In the dismantled roof turret hung a small bronze bell that had been cast in 1905 for the Holy Spirit Church in Moabit . After the turret was dismantled, it was given a place in a wooden belfry placed at ground level next to the church , which came from the Galilee church , but was later replaced by a simple concrete bell support . The bell weighs 520 kg, has a diameter of 102 cm, a height of 80 cm and sounds on the strike note g '. Her inscription in two rows on her shoulder reads: "FOR WHOSE THE SPIRIT OF GOD DRIVES, THEY ARE GOD'S CHILDREN." ROME. 8.14.
The roof ridge of the church building is crowned by a high metal cross that was erected in place of the previous ridge turret.
organ
The historical organ, which was moved to the Ölbergkirche by Alexander Schuke , had the following disposition :
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
- Coupling : II / I, I / P, II / P
It was badly damaged in World War II. An expert opinion from October 1945 gave the following assessment: the action was only slightly damaged, numerous tin pipes and the upper half of the organ front were missing - the experts believed that a restoration was possible. After it was further damaged by arson, it was dismantled.
_Orgel.JPG)
The new organ from the Berlin organ building workshop Karl Schuke has two manuals and twelve registers . It cost 23,000 marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 55,000 euros) and was inaugurated on September 14, 1958. Your place is on the gallery on the west side. Since then, the organ has been used again at church celebrations and church concerts. After a renovation by Dieter Noeske, it has the following disposition:
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pastor
First pastor's position (chronological)
|
|
- Source: Chronicle
In addition to the people mentioned above, there were “second pastors”, and since 1928 there were also some deacons , sextons , deaconesses and church servants in and for the community.
Organists
The following were active in the community for playing the organ and leading the choirs:
|
|
- Source: Chronicle
Kindergarten, needy help, community work
The facilities of the Emmaus-Ölberg parish mentioned here are located at Lausitzer Strasse 29/30 and the parish rooms in the Emmaus church. The Küsterei is located in the Emmaus Church at Lausitzer Platz 8a. Two adult choirs, a children's choir, a flute group and a trombone choir also belong to the community.
literature
- Marina Wesner: Kreuzberg and its places of worship: churches - mosques - synagogues - temples . Berlin 2007
- Christine Goetz , Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz: Churches Berlin Potsdam . Berlin 2003
- Berlin and its buildings. Part VI. Sacred buildings . Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin, Berlin 1997
- Klaus-Dieter Wille: The bells of Berlin (West). History and inventory . Berlin 1987
- Günther Kühne, Elisabeth Stephani: Evangelical churches in Berlin . Berlin 1978
Web links
- Homepage of the Emmaus-Ölberg-Congregation
- Description of the Mount of Olives Church
- The Ölbergkirche in photos from 1922, 1950, 1960
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Pastor Johannes Bluhm: Chronicle of the Ölberggemeinde (PDF; handwritten) September 14, 1958 with subsequent additions from 1969.
- ↑ Cottbusser Ufer 29 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1925, IV, p. 179. “Church of the Oelberggemeinde”.
- ↑ a b Music in Churches ; accessed on January 22, 2015.
- ↑ In the interior photo from 1922 there are no pews, only chairs.
- ^ Website of the company Terrapin ( Memento of July 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Terrapin (and Terranova) named in connection with a judgment of the Federal Court of Justice from 1977 , accessed on January 23, 2014.
- ↑ Detailed description of the structural changes in 2013/2014 on the church website , accessed on January 24, 2015.
- ↑ The organ is missing from the interior photo from 1950.
- ↑ schuke-berlin.de: Opus list
- ^ Günther, Hans . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1916, part 1, p. 924. “Pfarrer, SO 36”.
Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 41.2 " N , 13 ° 25 ′ 36.4" E