Cathedral Candidate Foundation (Berlin)
The Domkandidatenstift was a seminary in the Berlin district of Mitte , which was opened in Friedrichstrasse in 1854 under King Friedrich Wilhelm IV . From 1858 Friedrich August Stüler built a separate building for the Cathedral Candidate Foundation in Oranienburger Strasse , which was completed by Rudolf Stüve by 1874 . After the war damage and the demolition of the ruins in 1972, nothing remains of the monastery building and its chapel.
Historical background
Supported by industrial development and promoted by the emergence of rail-based mass transport by regional and later urban railways, the first half of the 19th century saw dynamic growth in what had been the medium-sized city of Berlin, with a population of almost 330,000 by 1840 grows.
While the population explosion seems to be unstoppable - combined with increasing industrialization, rural exodus and urbanization , the emergence of tenements and requirements accompanying development such as the building plan by James Hobrecht from 1862 - the church of the nascent metropolis cannot keep pace with growth.
Friedrich Wilhelm IV., King of Prussia since 1840 and often associated with the attributes “romantic on the throne” and “amateur architect” (he calls himself “Flounder”), is strongly influenced by religion and worried about this emerging trend. Bruno Doehring writes about this in a historical review of the centenary of the monastery in 1954:
"Convinced of the unsurpassable value of the faith in Christ for the inner health of the people's life, he spent sleepless nights looking for a way to open up this source of strength for his nation."
And 50 years earlier it said in a commemorative publication: “The thought had lived in the soul of Friedrich Wilhelm IV for a long time, something for deepening the young clergy, for working on the neglected communities, for bringing the church to life and internalizing it Berlin to do. "
The king is quoted (in 1851 from the tower room of the Berlin Palace pointing through the window) with the words: “See this great sinful city; Recently there was still a parish of 80,000 souls in it and there are still those of 50,000. "
The king receives support in the implementation of his goals mainly from the Tübingen professor and Ephorus general superintendent Wilhelm Hoffmann , whom he got to know while planning the reconstruction of Hohenzollern Castle in Hechingen, which was carried out by Friedrich August Stüler , and who was then hired as court and cathedral preacher in Berlin. (According to the Duden, the term Ephorus is the official title for the head of a Protestant seminary and is derived from Ephor , the highest official in ancient Sparta .)
The basis of the plans for a renewed seminary for preachers is the cathedral alumnate established in 1714 by the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I. It offers space for only four to six reformed and later also uniate candidates, endowed with a scholarship of 500 thalers and accommodated with "honorable people of the cathedral parish". A life together besides learning, the “ Vita communis ”, is completely missing.
Content improvements and changed framework conditions also warned Friedrich Wilhelm III. in a cabinet order in 1816: “More attention must be paid to candidates in theology when they leave university. I want spiritual seminaries to be established for this important purpose, in which the candidates, after they have left the university, are to be trained to become excellent pastors under the guidance of worthy clergy. "
Friedrich Wilhelm IV. And Hoffmann see in the seminary for preachers no mere continuation of university studies in the academic sense and also no exclusive focus on technical questions of church service, but rather try “by deepening in the Holy Scriptures and the dogmatic and practical-theological questions resulting from it bring about frank discussion about what moved the candidates. And that with the ultimate goal of developing one's own theological convictions while constantly taking into account the office awaiting the future clergy. "(B. Doehring)
The structural framework for this should initially consist of a temporary arrangement. On April 7, 1854, the newly founded monastery was opened in silence and without public notice, in the rented rooms of a house belonging to the Provincial School College at Friedrichstrasse 208. Today, there is a building by Rem at this point not far from the former Checkpoint Charlie Koolhaas / OMA.
Since the building turned out to be unfavorably located for the tasks and the rooms were damp, Hoffmann soon turned to the king with a request for a new building elsewhere. He agrees and provides a parcel of the Monbijoupark for this purpose.
Urban environment and religious character on Oranienburger Strasse
For the location Oranienburger Straße 76a in the north-western corner of Monbijoupark, the proximity of some facilities speaks at the time of its founding: The (still Schinkelsche) Cathedral , where the candidates practice liturgy in morning and evening services , the cathedral school at the current Hackescher Markt station , in the they are to give religious instruction , the seminar for city school teachers next to the synagogue , in which they are instructed pedagogically, or the cathedral hospital, where devotions are to be held. (Later there will also be morning devotions with the widow Queen Elisabeth in Charlottenburg Palace ). Today, the nearby theological faculty of the Humboldt University in Anna-Luise-Karsch-Straße can be added.
As in the middle of the 19th century, in this area of the Spandauer Vorstadt there are not only the aforementioned institutions of Christian character, but also those of the Jewish faith, which are now the center of religious life again. The focus is on the synagogue , which was built almost at the same time as the Cathedral Candidate Foundation. Designed by a friend of F. A. Stüler's, Eduard Knoblauch , but executed by Stüler due to his illness and designed in the interior. After the partial reconstruction, the Centrum Judaicum is located here today . The Jewish Cultural Association and the Anne Frank Center can be found at Oranienburger Straße 25/26, directly opposite the property available.
Not far from here in Sophienstrasse, which is particularly connected to the fate of the Jewish population due to the deportation assembly point there, there is also a Jewish school.
According to the pastor of the neighboring Ev. Sophiengemeinde, everyday life is more of a coexistence than one with one another, and the cultural exchange takes place at most on a culinary level in the Jewish restaurants.
The seminary with an open meeting center, for example as the seat of the working group “Judaism and Christianity”, could offer a possible place to build up and maintain such relationships.
Structurally, the area surrounding the cathedral candidate monastery has been subject to a number of changes during the almost 90 years of its existence. Initially designed as a completion of the continuous development along the south side of Oranienburger Straße, with a free-standing chapel facing the park, further residential buildings will later be built directly to the east. With the construction of today's Bode Museum, Monbijoustraße will be laid to the west , which will later turn the building's original fire walls into gable facades. Reconstruction plans from 1908–1910 allow this to be understood. In 1885, the Anglican Church of St. Georg under Julius Carl Raschdorff (a little later architect of the new cathedral and for the interior construction of the TU main building) and in 1911 the residential building for royal court officials on Monbijoustraße are built on the park area .
The former main telegraph office, built between 1900 and 1913, is comparatively huge and beyond the scope . At best, the importance that it held as the center of the dense pneumatic tube network of the Reich capital justifies the volume.
Today it is mostly empty, except for its current use for nightlife and, like the entire “Motz Block” (named after the surrounding streets Monbijou, Oranienburger, Tucholsky and Ziegelstraße), it is waiting for an investment of millions.
Construction of the monastery building
After Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Transferred the “superficies” to the monastery, which remains the property of the “Kron-Fidei-Kommisses” (and is now owned by the state), construction can begin in 1858. This is based on Stüler's plans, documented in the state archive.
The building ensemble consists of the actual seminar building, divided in an H-shape into two bars along Oranienburger Strasse and south of it, connected by a central part with a prayer and dining room between a nearly 20-meter square atrium and a courtyard with later access from Monbijoustrasse . The monastery building is consecrated on October 16, 1859. As the fourth atrium wall to the east, Stüler is planning a likewise square chapel, which can accommodate around 725 people with a floor area of 380 m² with three galleries . This will probably have rarely happened. The high construction costs of this large church space - specified in "Berlin and its buildings" in 1877 as exactly 142,278 marks - also mean that initially only the foundations can be laid (on which the candidates go for a walk during their breaks) and the execution of the Baus can only be realized under the direction of Stüve after the death of the founder of the monastery and the first Ephorus in 1871–1874. Only at this point in time, the third element of the design, the 35-meter-high bell tower will be completed.
In its overall design and shape of Basilica and Campanile Stiller goes to the ideas of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. One who through employment with the architecture of Italy "Monuments, marked by his first trip to Italy in 1828 and inspired by the 1822 to 1828 by Cotta in Munich published engravings of Christian religion, recorded by the architects Johann Gottfried Gutensohn and Johann Michael Knapp ”, seeks to implement forms of antiquity and renaissance in the“ Prussian Arcadia ”.
The king also sees a way out of (church) political problems in the return to early Christian motifs, the “primitive church” and its liturgy. As the campanile of Santa Maria in Cosmedin acts as a direct model for the Friedenskirche in Potsdam, there are also other examples of this kind. Stüler took over the construction management of the Friedenskirche after the death of Ludwig Persius . Through his joint trip to Italy with Friedrich Wilhelm IV. In the winter of 1858/1859 (as well as with Eduard Knoblauch as early as 1829/1830), Stüler himself was influenced by the buildings of the Italian Middle Ages and Quattrocento . Ideas for cast-iron columns (used in the chapel of the cathedral candidate pen) or the techniques used in the Neues Museum are more likely to go back to his study trip to England initiated by the king in 1842. The classic form of the early Christian basilica with a raised central nave and lower aisles, the semicircular apse in the east and an atrium in front of the narthex in the west is thus essentially implemented in the cathedral candidate monastery.
Models varying more or less freely, the shape of the detached bell tower at Stüler can also be found in other church buildings in Berlin, for example in the Jacobikirche in Oranienstrasse, built between 1844 and 1845. With the rectory and school building on the atrium along the street, the brick building also gives a vague impression of the appearance of the cathedral candidate monastery. Only externally restored, the interior redesigned in the 1950s by Paul and Jürgen Emmerich no longer conveys the “early Christian spirit” on which the design based on the model of S. Quattro Coronati in Rome was originally based.
Further history of the Domkandidatenstift
The Monbijoustraße, built in 1904 for the newly built Monbijoubrücke , separated the western part of the property. The two wings were given gables on the west façades now facing the street and the courtyard was closed with a wall and a gate facing the street.
The building burned down during World War II . The ruin, which is still in good condition and can be restored, was demolished in 1972.
Public officials
Ephors of the pen
- 1854–1873: Wilhelm Hoffmann
- 1873–1896: Rudolf Kögel
- 1898–1922: Ernst Dryander
- 1924–1925: Ernst Vits
- 1925–1927: Paul Conrad
- 1927–1933: Georg Burghart
- 1937– ?: Johannes Hymmen
Directors of Studies
- 1929–1937: Wilhelm Schütz (1895–1970)
- 1937–1945: Ferdinand Cohrs (1893–1966)
literature
- The Evangelical Cathedral Candidate Pen in Berlin . Schulze, Berlin 1859 (special print from "Neue Evangelische Kirchenzeitung")
- Paul Conrad: The Royal Cathedral Candidate Foundation 1854-1904. Festschrift for the 50th anniversary of the monastery. Reminder sheets . Warneck, Berlin 1904.
- Bruno Doehring: The cathedral candidate pen in Berlin. A historical look back at the centenary . Also contains: Ulrich Seeger: The tasks of the seminary today . Publishing house "Die Kirche", Berlin 1954.
- Eva Börsch-Supan, Dietrich Müller-Stüler : Friedrich August Stüler. 1800-1865 . German Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-422-06161-4 .
Web links
- Diploma thesis “Predigerseminar in Berlin-Mitte - The Cathedral Candidate Foundation by FA Stüler” with pictures
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '27 " N , 13 ° 23' 43" E