Lichterfelde village church
The Evangelical village church of Lichterfelde in today's Berlin district of Lichterfelde is one of over 50 village churches in Berlin . The first simple hall church , built in the first half of the 14th century from less carefully worked stone blocks, was badly damaged in the Thirty Years War . In 1701 the church was restored as a plastered building. It received a half-timbered roof tower, which was changed in 1735. In the following time the church was renewed and enlarged several times. The church is a listed building .
Building history of the exterior
The village of Lichtervelde was founded in the first half of the 13th century (probably around 1230) by the descendants of Flemish settlers as a street green village . The first church on the village green will have been a wooden church, because the less carefully hewn stone masonry of today's village church is typical of the 14th century. The inadequate ashlar was still enough to lay the stones in layers. Nothing is known about the previous wooden building.
The stone village church is an aisle church, which was supplemented by later additions (burial chapels, vestibule and sacristy).
After the destruction in the Thirty Years War, except for its surrounding walls, the church was unused until 1701. Then the Royal Prussian General War Commissioner Daniel Ludolf von Danckelman , now the patron of the church, had them restored with a baroque plaster skin, on the one hand to keep up with the times, but probably also with the secondary intention of covering the unsightly repaired areas. Instead of the previous pointed arch windows, the church now has larger windows with segmental arches , because after the Reformation more light was needed for reading the newly introduced hymn books. After the windows had temporarily regained pointed arches, they were given the current round arches in 1939 - on the occasion of the restoration, to which the church essentially owes its present appearance - although the church was not built until the 14th century. It should be marked as a former fortified church , the alleged tradition of which was sought exclusively in the Romanesque , but this is a problematic conception of local history .
The extension in front of the north wall of the church was built in 1776; it bears the coat of arms of the von Bülow family above the portal . This small mausoleum has been restored several times, but has remained unchanged to this day. A porch, which covered less than half of the west gable of the church, was built as a burial chapel in 1789 by Nicolaus von Beguelin, the tutor of Friedrich Wilhelm II . The sacristy in the southeast was added in 1939.
When the church needed more space for the growing number of parishioners towards the end of the 19th century, the old east gable of the village church behind the altar was demolished in 1895 and moved a few meters to the east. This expansion to the east was combined with the ship during a restoration in 1939 and the extended sacristy annex was also brought under one roof. A new beam ceiling was installed in the nave . The baroque western extension, originally the crypt of the von Béguelin family, was extended to the south and converted into a vestibule, the coffins were placed in the floor below. The old pointed arch portal in the west wall, probably the only authentic detail from the time the church was built, has not been visible from the outside between the vestibule and the church since then.
Roof tower
The church probably didn't have a tower in the Middle Ages, at least not one made of stone. There is no evidence of a wooden roof tower dating back to the Middle Ages. The patron saint of the church and the village, the Royal Prussian General War Commissioner Daniel Ludolf von Danckelman, who financed the reconstruction in 1701, provided the first verifiable tower made of timber framing, which is "saddled" to the structure, i.e. has no foundation walls of its own: a roof tower. There are two bells in the tower; the old bell from 1590 was replaced in 1963.
| Caster | Pouring year | Chime | Weight (kg) |
Diameter (cm) |
Height (cm) |
Crown (cm) |
inscription |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unknown | 1491 | b ′ | 400 | 87 | 77 | 13 | HOC VAS DULCE SONAT ET VOS SUPER AETHERA PONAT. |
| Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock | 1963 | G' | 670 | 103 | 86 | 18th | ANNO 1590 / NOMEN DOMINI BENEDICTUM SIT / ANNO 1963. |
This half-timbered tower did not seem to please the following patron. He had it demolished in 1734 and rebuilt in the old outline and crowned with a curved hood. The framework and the external shape of this tower have been preserved to this day. He also had a tower clock installed for the first time, which, however, was replaced by a new, better one in 1747 by the subsequent patron. The pommel, wind vane and star adorn the tower. A crane , Danckelmann's heraldic animal, is depicted in the wind vane, these parts are from the first tower built in 1701 by the patron Danckelmann. In 2000 the church tower was renovated.
Interior design
The interior of the church was furnished in the years 1725/1726 by the then patron, the Prussian War Commissioner Heinrich Cunow. He donated a pulpit altar, that is, the pulpit was above the altar table. He also provided baptism and silver sacrificial implements. The pulpit and the corresponding altar were only removed during the renovation at the beginning of the Second World War. In 1941, the Berlin consistory transferred an altar from the church, which was located in the Döberitz military training area , to the Lichterfeld village church. Three high medieval carved figures were lost. The baptism of 1726 was also lost. A baptismal bowl from the historicist era rests on a new stand . The first organ was installed in 1817. Today's organ was installed in 1941 on the newly built gallery in front of the west wall by the Alexander Schuke Potsdam Orgelbau company . Its prospectus could have been from the early 18th century, but is a reproduction of a baroque organ case, as the year "1941" shows in the large cartouche under the prospect pipework amid rich carvings. The last renovation of the interior took place in 1960, the ceiling beams, which were painted in color in 1939, were painted over in gray. In 1993 the altar area was redesigned.
Paul's cemetery
There are numerous graves in the forecourt and backyard of the church, 39 of them of victims of war and tyranny . Today there are still burials of members of the Pauline congregation.
After the Second World War , a memorial cross was erected in memory of lost parishioners. The inscription on the front reads “Before God. 1945. "and on the back" Who knows where? "
Others
The feature film Shots , which portrays the attitude towards life in Berlin at the turn of the millennium, was shot in the village church in 2002 .
Literature (chronological)
- Kurt Pomplun : Berlin's old village churches. Berlin 1962, 6th edition 1984.
- Günther Kühne, Elisabeth Stephani: Evangelical churches in Berlin. Berlin 1978.
- Klaus-Dieter Wille: The bells of Berlin (West). History and inventory. Berlin 1987.
- Hans-Jürgen Rach: The villages in Berlin. Berlin 1990.
- Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz: Old Churches in Berlin. Berlin 1991.
- Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin: Berlin and its Buildings, Part VI. Sacred buildings. Berlin 1997.
- Christel Wollmann-Fiedler, Jan Feustel: Old village churches in Berlin. Berlin 2001
- Ernst Badstübner : Field stone churches of the Middle Ages in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Rostock 2002.
- Ernst Badstübner: Cistercian churches in northern Central Europe. Rostock 2005.
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments. Band Berlin. Munich / Berlin 2006.
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ The only known exception in medieval Berlin is the village church in Wittenau .
- ↑ Lichterfelde (cemetery at the old village church, Hindenburgdamm 22), Steglitz-Zehlendorf district, Berlin. Retrieved August 29, 2020 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 26 ′ 13.01 ″ N , 13 ° 18 ′ 53.4 ″ E