Berlin Cathedral (1536–1747)

former Berlin Cathedral
The Berlin Do (h) mkirche before 1747.
Data
place	Spree island Berlin-Mitte
Client	Joachim I. & successor
Construction year	1536
demolition	1747
Coordinates	52 ° 30'59 "  N , 13 ° 24'7"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 30'59 "  N , 13 ° 24'7"  E
Projection of the cathedral church (olive green) and its bell tower (blue) in a modern city map. The floor plan of the current cathedral can be seen further north.

The former Berlin Cathedral was the first cathedral church in Berlin from 1536 to 1747 . It was located in the historical center of the city at the southern portal II of the former Berlin City Palace , where a medieval riding tournament facility, the Stechbahn, existed next door . Projected into the current city location, the church stood on the southern part of the Schloßplatz , roughly between the State Council building later built by the GDR (today: Management School ESMT ) and the Marstall building used by the Hanns Eisler School of Music .

Subsequent constructions of a cathedral were made from 1747 to 1750 and in the shape of the current Berlin cathedral from 1894 to 1905. These cathedral structures were not built at the original location, but about 300 meters further north between the Lustgarten , Altes Museum , Spreeufer and Liebknechtbrücke .

From the Erasmus Chapel to the Cathedral Church

View from the south of Berlin's Schloßplatz around 1690: On the left you can see the rear part of the cathedral church with the bell tower next to it, in the middle the electoral Renaissance castle.
Graphic by Johann Stridbeck the Younger.

View of the Berlin Schloßplatz , seen from the east, with the cathedral church (center), the Long Bridge (left) and the Renaissance castle (right).
Engraving by Pieter Schenk, around 1700.

The history of a cathedral on the Spree island in Alt-Kölln goes back to the 15th century.

Dominican monastery Kölln

There was a Dominican monastery in Kölln since the second half of the 13th century . In accordance with the rules of their order, the monks erected a towerless church and monastery building on the Spree island of Kölln, without any architectural splendor made of brick (first mentioned in 1345).

Erasmus Chapel in the castle

In 1443, the new palace of the Brandenburg Elector Friedrich II (Eisenzahn) was built in the immediate vicinity of this complex .

In this recently completed electoral palace, a chapel was set up in 1450 and consecrated to St. Erasmus († 303 AD). The Erasmus Chapel was used for worship by the electoral family and the court servants.

It was raised to a collegiate foundation by Pope Paul II in 1465 . This chapel, which is located inside the electoral palace (the rooms of which existed until the city palace was destroyed in World War II ), could not, in the long run, meet the growing demands of the Brandenburg electors for public representation.

Cathedral church in the cathedral monastery

After Elector Joachim II took office in 1535, he took over with the permission of Pope Paul III. the neighboring church of the Berlin Dominican Monastery, immediately south of the palace, and made it a cathedral monastery, which he endowed richly. The Dominicans were resettled in the St. Pauli monastery in Brandenburg an der Havel . The new cathedral was inaugurated in 1536.

In 1539 Joachim II converted to the Lutheran faith: the cathedral monastery became Protestant around the 1550s. The clergy working at the cathedral held the title of court preacher and until 1608 collegiate dean and were appointed by the elector alone. The first court preacher was Johann Agricola from Eisleben. In 1608 the cathedral chapter was dissolved, the cathedral became the highest parish church of the Berlin sister city of Kölln and was given the new name Zur Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit .

Elector Johann Sigismund officially converted to the Reformed faith in 1613 , whose followers were allowed to use the cathedral alone from then on. The court preacher Simon Gediccus , who spoke out roughly against this conversion of a Lutheran cathedral monastery into a reformed church, was dismissed by the elector. A "cleansing" of the cathedral according to Calvinist criteria led to the Berlin tumult in 1615 .

Representative expansion of the cathedral church

The medieval three-aisled brick church of the Dominicans in Gothic style, which probably already existed in the 13th century, was gradually expanded by the Brandenburg electors to a representative cathedral church and richly decorated. The previously adorned Dominican church was given two prominent towers on its west side. The elector was able to get directly from the palace area into the cathedral church through a specially designed connecting corridor.

As old pictures of the building show, the Berlin Cathedral has undergone various alterations over the years, especially the towers. For example, the two west towers were removed in the middle of the 17th century and rebuilt in 1717.

Bell tower

On the east side of the church, an existing free-standing older tower was converted into the bell tower of the cathedral and equipped with a bell. The ten bells required for this were made available on request by the elector of neighboring communities in Berlin. These were among others the Wilsnacker and Bernauer bell . Two of the bells were used in the above-mentioned rebuilt western towers after the tower was demolished in the 17th century.

Interior work

Princely burial places were laid out inside the church. For this purpose, in the mid-1550s, the bones of several electors were transferred from the Lehnin monastery , where they had previously rested, to Berlin and reburied in the cathedral church. In 1705 the funeral ceremonies for the late Queen Sophie Charlotte took place in the cathedral . On this occasion, the western main portal of the cathedral church and the interior of the church were festively decorated according to the occasion.

Demolished in 1747

A number of repairs have been carried out since 1667 at the latest. The bell tower was completely demolished in 1716. Due to its dilapidation, King Frederick the Great ordered the final demolition of the brick cathedral in 1747 . At the same time he had a new cathedral built north of the palace on the Spree side of the pleasure garden, at the current location. In 1749 most of the electoral and royal coffins were reburied in the new building. The architects of this new cathedral, consecrated on September 6, 1750, were Johann Boumann the Elder from the Netherlands . Ä. , who represented a very sober conception of the baroque , and Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff .

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  The city map of the twin cities Berlin - Kölln by Johann Gregor Memhardt (north on the left edge of the map) shows the location of the older cathedral church (F) south of the castle area (A).

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  Interior view of the older Berlin Cathedral on the occasion of the funeral ceremony for Queen Sophie Charlotte, 1705.
  Engraving by GP Busch based on a design by Eosander von Göthe.

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  The older Berlin Cathedral on a Merian engraving from 1652, seen from the north-west

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  The Berlin cathedral church was expanded by the Brandenburg electors.
  Border image of the city map of La Vigne, 1685.

literature

• Torsten Dressler: Excavations on Schloßplatz - The former Dominican monastery in Alt-Cölln, Berlin-Mitte. In: Archeology in Berlin and Brandenburg 1997. published by the Archaeological Society in Berlin and Brandenburg e. V., in cooperation with the Brandenburg State Museum for Prehistory and Early History and the Berlin State Monuments Office. Konrad Theiss Verlag, 1998, online ( Memento from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ).
• Albrecht Geyer: History of the palace in Berlin. Berlin 1936 (2 vols.). New edition (of volumes 1 and 2 in one volume) by Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89479-628-0 .
• Guido Hinterkeuser: The Berlin Palace. The renovation by Andreas Schlueter. Siedler Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-88680-792-4 .
• Karlheinz Klingenburg: The Berlin Cathedral. Buildings, ideas and projects from the 15th century to the present. 1st edition. Union Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-372-00113-3 .
• Friedrich Gustav Lisco : To the church history of Berlin. A historical and statistical contribution. Published by AW Hayn, Berlin 1857.
• Adolph Müller: History of the Reformation in the Mark Brandenburg. Hermann Schulze publisher. Berlin 1839.
• Friedrich Nicolai : Description of the royal residence cities Berlin and Potsdam. (3 vols.). 3rd edition Berlin 1786.

Web links

• Hansjürgen Vahldiek: How did we get to the Berlin Cathedral? December 2, 2016. Retrieved October 12, 2017 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Friedrich Gustav Lisco: To the church history of Berlin. A historical and statistical contribution. Published by A. W. Hayn, Berlin 1857, p. 26 f.
2. ↑ Erasmus Chapel Architecture and History
3. ↑ cf. Karlheinz Klingenburg: The Berlin Cathedral. Buildings, ideas and projects from the 15th century to the present. Union Verlag Berlin, 1st edition 1987, p. 15 ff.
4. ↑ cf. also Friedrich Nicolai: Description of the royal residence cities Berlin and Potsdam. (3 volumes). 3rd edition Berlin 1786, Volume 1, p. 83.
5. ↑ cf. Lisco, p. 27.
6. ↑ cf. Adolph Müller, History of the Reformation in the Mark Brandenburg. Hermann Schulze publisher. Berlin 1839, p. 172, note **.
7. ↑ cf. Lisco, p. 28.
8. ^ Thomas Buske: The Berlin Cathedral as an iconographic total work of art . Schwerin 2000, p. 1.
9. ↑ cf. Müller, p. 239.
10. ↑ cf. Nicolai, Volume 2, p. 607.
11. ↑ cf. Lisco, p. 28; there is also an overview of the preachers working at the cathedral monastery.
12. ↑ cf. Nicolai, Volume 1, p. 83.
13. ↑ Hansjürgen Vahldiek: How did we get to the Berlin Cathedral. In: Berlin and Cölln in the Middle Ages. Books on Demand. Norderstedt, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8448-8699-3 , p. 86.
14. ↑ cf. Klingenburg, p. 23. For more information on the bell tower, whose original function is unclear, see: Hansjürgen Vahldiek: Vom Berliner Glockenturm. Retrieved January 28, 2018 . 
15. ^ Josef Mörsdorf: Church life in old Berlin. More publishing house. Berlin, 1962, p. 48 f.
16. ↑ Hansjürgen Vahldiek, ibid.
17. ↑ cf. Klingenburg, p. 22.
18. ↑ cf. Klingenburg, p. 23.
19. ↑ cf. Lisco, p. 27.