German cathedral

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View of the German Cathedral from the Gendarmenmarkt

The German cathedral is a monument at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin district of Mitte . Built on behalf of Frederick II in the years 1780–1785 by Carl von Gontard in the Baroque style , it borders the German Church to the west and is opposite the French Cathedral . After being damaged in World War II , the German Cathedral was rebuilt from 1983–1996 true to the original and modern inside. Since 2002 it has housed the parliamentary history exhibition of the German Bundestag .

Origin of the term

As with the French cathedral , the term “cathedral” actually only refers to the dome tower built between 1780 and 1785 next to the existing church (French dôme “dome”). The towers had no sacred function and consisted of a simple tube for the entire height. In common usage, the term “cathedral” has been transferred to the entire complex of church building and dome tower.

history

Laying out the unfinished oil painting by Adolph von Menzel who fell in March , 1848
German Cathedral and Gendarmenmarkt, 1930

The German Cathedral was built as an interdenominational church for the German Reformed and the Lutheran congregation of the schedule under King I. Friedrich -scale Friedrichstadt. The church, built in the Baroque style in the years 1701–1708 by Martin Grünberg and Giovanni Simonetti on part of the Swiss cemetery , was given a floor plan that was a further development of that of the Parochial Church . Important graves inside were the Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorffs and Antoine Pesnes .

Carl von Gontard built the dome tower at the same time as the mirror-image opposite tower for the French Friedrichstadtkirche after an idea and at the expense of King Frederick the Great to beautify the Gendarmenmarkt. The buildings to the right and left of the French Comedy House were intended to symbolize religious tolerance with their Enlightenment- oriented sculpture program . The urban planning model for the symmetrical domed towers of the two cathedrals was possibly the Greenwich Hospital in London or the churches on the Piazza del Popolo in Rome . The design of the Palladian domed towers, which were initially planned as church buildings, was related to Friedrich I's older projects for a new building for the Berlin Cathedral . When the tower collapsed on July 28, 1781 during the construction work, King Gontard dismissed and entrusted Georg Christian Unger with the further construction.

The dome with a diameter of about 13 meters rests on a temple-like round building above the former church tower with a round floor plan . On top of it stands the gilded statue of an allegory of virtue , the original was made by the Swiss sculptor Heinrich Friedrich Kambly . Connected to the west is the main room of the former New or German Church on a pentagonal floor plan, over which a round dome also arches, which has a diameter of around 23 meters. The sculptural decoration with scenes from the life of Christ from Constantin Philipp Sartori's studio was based on designs by the painter Bernhard Rode .

After the March Revolution of 1848, 183 victims of the revolution, those who fell in March , were laid out on the steps of the German Cathedral on March 22nd. After a Protestant service in the church, short speeches were given in front of the church by a Protestant, a Catholic and a Jewish clergyman, before the coffins were brought to the cemetery of the March dead with great sympathy from the Berlin population and buried there.

A thorough redesign in the years 1881/1882 according to plans by the architects von der Hude & Hennicke in the neo-baroque style survived only the floor plan and spatial structure of the church building. Since then, the tower has served the Association for the History of Berlin as an office, archive and library.

An Allied air raid severely damaged the cathedral on November 23, 1943 by fire, which also destroyed large parts of the collections of the Association for the History of Berlin. In another bomb attack on 29./30. January 1945 burned down the entire building except for the surrounding walls.

The later backed ruin was 1983-1996 rebuilt . There was a full fire on the dome on around 200 m² during welding work on October 26, 1994. It was reopened on October 2, 1996. The building came into the possession of the state through an exchange of land.

  • New church with collapsed tower, drawing from 1781

  • German Cathedral and old theater, watercolor from 1815

  • Ruins after World War II, 1951

  • New or German Church from the West

  • Statue on the dome

use

Since its extensive reconstruction in the late 1990s, the building has served as an exhibition space for the German Bundestag . Since 2002 it has housed the Parliamentary History Exhibition on five levels. It is a further development of the exhibition Questions on German History, which has existed in the Reichstag building since 1971 and in the German Cathedral since 1996 . The exhibition has already been visited by several million people.

literature

  • Maren Krause: The use of the tower and church. On the history of the New Church on Gendarmenmarkt . In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin . 102nd volume, No. 1, January 2006, pp. 300-309.
  • Sibylle Badstübner-Gröger: French and German Cathedral Berlin . 3rd, revised. Edition. Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2005, ISBN 3-7954-5571-5 .
  • Jürgen Pleuser, J. Christoph Bürkle (Ed.): The German Cathedral in Berlin. Church, town sign, exhibition building . Photos by Ivan Nemec, Niggli , Sulgen / Thesen 1997, ISBN 3-7212-0302-X .
  • Götz Eckardt (ed.): Fates of German architectural monuments in the Second World War. A documentation of the damage and total losses in the area of ​​the German Democratic Republic. Volume 1. Berlin - capital of the GDR, districts Rostock, Schwerin, Neubrandenburg, Potsdam, Frankfurt / Oder, Cottbus, Magdeburg . Henschel, Berlin 1980, p. 7.
  • Richard Borrmann: The architectural and art monuments of Berlin. With a historical introduction by P. Clauswitz. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-7861-1356-4 , pp. 155–159 (= Die Bauwerke und Kunstdenkmäler von Berlin , Supplement 8. Unchanged reprint of the 1893 commissioned by the City of Berlin [published by Julius Springer ] published 1st edition).

Web links

Commons : Deutscher Dom  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For this and the following see Hans-Joachim Giersberg : Friedrich als Bauherr. Studies on architecture of the 18th century in Berlin and Potsdam . Siedler, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-88680-222-1 , p. 21 f.
  2. ↑ The dimensions were roughly measured using a tool on Google Earth .
  3. ↑ German Cathedral. In: List, Map, Database - Monument Database. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, accessed on August 16, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Götz Eckardt (ed.): Fates of German architectural monuments in the Second World War. A documentation of the damage and total losses in the area of ​​the German Democratic Republic. Volume 1. Berlin - capital of the GDR, districts Rostock, Schwerin, Neubrandenburg, Potsdam, Frankfurt / Oder, Cottbus, Magdeburg . Henschel, Berlin 1980, p. 7.
  5. ^ Berlin fire brigade - 1994 clouds of smoke over the Gendarmenmarkt. Retrieved April 15, 2019 .
  6. ↑ The German Cathedral opens its doors. In: Berliner Zeitung , September 30, 1996.
  7. ↑ Deutscher Dom on www.berlin-die-hauptstadt.de

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 46 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 34 ″  E