Wittenau village church

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Nave of the village church in Wittenau

The village church Wittenau ( listen ? / I ) on the village green Alt-Wittenau is one of over 50 village churches in Berlin . The simple hall church was built between 1482 and 1489 in the former Dalldorf, today's Berlin district of Wittenau . The church, which is a listed building, was restored in 1956/1957, the tower in 2000. Audio file / audio sample

Building history of the village church

In 1322, Dalldorf was first mentioned in a document as Daldorff , namely as a church village, whose village church became the branch church of Tegel . In the Landbuch Karls IV. (1375) four parish hooves are mentioned for Doldorff / Daldorp out of a total of 39  hooves . Dalldorf must have had a village church by 1322 at the latest. Like the neighboring villages, Dalldorf was founded around 1230 and, like them, got a simple wooden church as quickly as possible. Since the church was not built in stone until the end of the 15th century, i.e. 250 years later, it can be assumed that the original simple wooden church was replaced by a higher quality half-timbered church. Neither document nor archaeological details are known about the appearance of the church about the time before 1482.

Mixed masonry on the south-east corner of the Wittenau village church

Between about 1482 and 1489 ( Dendrodaten ) a simple hall church was built from field stone masonry , that is, without a choir or even an apse ; the church bell dated 1484 fits this. The multi-colored building material is an example of the relatively rare village churches made of mixed masonry. At the turn of the 14th century a change in the way the village churches were built: the field stone blocks were less carefully cuboid for cost reasons, but were still laid in continuous layers. From the 15th century, the reading stones were no longer hewn, but only split so that they could no longer be laid in exact layers (e.g. Reinickendorf village church ). In order to still be able to form clean edges, bricks were increasingly used from 1300 to frame portals and windows as well as for building edges. Bricks were used for church construction as early as the 12th century (e.g. Brandenburger Dom ), but brick production was too expensive for village building projects. Field stones had to be removed from the fields in any case on the occasion of the cultivation of the fields; they were available as free building material as far as the village boundary had clay soils. The strikingly stark contrast between unusually large and small fieldstones in Berlin only exists in this form at the Wittenau village church. As in Dahlem and Stralau, the bricks were only used in small proportions between the field stones outside the frames of openings and building edges. The late Gothic ornamental gable with blind arch niches was built with bricks that correspond to those of the nave . The tracery in the two niches of the gable triangle is divided into two narrow pointed arch fields and a rose window above, in accordance with the usual design of Gothic windows .

As is customary in the Baroque era , only bricks were used in later renovations , and the brick masonry was plastered in light tones. There is evidence that the church was partially destroyed in the Thirty Years' War . A major change came with the purchase of a pulpit altar (dated: 1722), which was apparently initially placed on the north wall of the nave, but was placed in front of the east wall in 1779. In this context, the middle window of the east wall (still about its original size) was added because it was covered by the pulpit altar. All other windows were enlarged on this occasion and received a flat arch, as well as the new larger south portal. The original entrance portal on the south wall of the church was walled up. Its stepped round arches were preserved. During the conflagration in 1796, the majority of all buildings in the village were destroyed, most of which were covered with straw or reeds . Presumably the roof and the tower of the church were not spared either, as the repair work on the tower in the years 1797 (dendro date) to 1799 (wind vane) suggests. In 1830 an additional west portal was built, neo-Gothic and with stepped brick reveal . The tympanum was originally windowed; Today there is a stone relief with a lamb and a flag.

The tower

The lattice tower , initially clad with wooden shingles, could be dendrodated to 1489 . As a roof tower without its own foundation walls, it is integrated into the slightly older roof structure of the high pitched roof above the nave. The two bronze bells in the bell house correspond to this . Two more bells were added later.

Caster Pouring year Chime Weight
(kg)		 Diameter (
cm)		 Height
(cm)		 Crown
(cm)		 inscription
unknown 1484 b ' 204 70 59 15th M CCC L XXX IV REX GLORIE XPE VENI CUM PACE.
Hans Zydler and Yorg Behem 1583 it" 380 88 67 no crown YACOB WAITING BERCK SCVLTZ PAVL STEYN YN DALDORF MARTYNVS HEVBT PFHAR HER. PETER FYSCHER HANS HAWER STRO DYSE ZWN GOCZLEVT MO L XXX III. BIN YCH FLIPPED YM NAME GOTES. HANS ZYDLER AND YORG BEHEM HAVE MYCH GOSEN.
Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock 1964 c ″ 220 67 58 12 no
Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock 1964 f ″ 220 67 58 12 no
Tower of the village church in Wittenau

The tower was also damaged by the village fire of 1796, because it had to be repaired in 1797. The tip preserved in the "classic arrangement" of the knob, wind vane and star dates from 1799 (date on the wind vane). The wooden shingles of the tower and the wooden cladding of the west gable were replaced by slate roofing in 1894 .

The inner

A winged altar was erected in the church around 1500, of which only the carved figures of St. Nicholas and the third of Anna , d. H. of St. Anne and Mary with the child on a crescent moon. Today there is a Baroque pulpit altar from the 18th century in the church.

During the renovation of the only slightly damaged village church from 1956 to 1957, the flat ceiling of the hall was replaced by a wooden arched barrel so that the baroque pulpit altar becomes more effective; however, this change destroyed the lower part of the late medieval roof structure. On the occasion of the Prussian exhibition in 1982 , the colors of the altar were renewed. The figure of Christ the Risen above the south portal did not come to the church until 1966. Their creation is assigned to the Renaissance . A small organ built by Karl Schuke in 1958 stands on the gallery under the tower .

Literature (chronological)

  • Günther Kühne, Elisabeth Stephani: Evangelical churches in Berlin . 1st edition. CZV-Verlag, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3-7674-0158-4 .
  • Kurt Pomplun : Berlin's old village churches . 6th edition. Haude & Spener, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-7759-0261-9 .
  • Klaus-Dieter Wille: The bells of Berlin (West). History and inventory . Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-7861-1443-9 .
  • Renate and Ernst Oskar Petras (eds.): Old Berlin village churches: Heinrich Wohler's drawings . Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-374-00543-8 , p. 24 f .
  • Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz, Harry C. Suchland: Old churches in Berlin: 33 visits to the oldest churches in the western part of the city . 2nd, revised edition. Wichern-Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-88981-048-9 .
  • Matthias Friske : The medieval churches on the Barnim. History - architecture - furnishings (=  churches in rural areas . Volume 1 ). 1st edition. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-931836-67-3 .
  • Christel Wollmann-Fiedler, Jan Feustel: Old village churches in Berlin . Berlin Edition, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-8148-0089-3 .
  • Markus Cante: Churches until 1618 . In: Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin (ed.): Part VI: Sacred buildings (=  Berlin and its buildings ). DOM publishers, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-433-01016-1 , pp. 349 .
  • Georg Dehio : Berlin (=  handbook of German art monuments ). 3rd, revised and supplemented edition. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2006, ISBN 3-422-03111-1 .

Web links

Commons : Dorfkirche Wittenau (Berlin)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ The polygonal choirs of the village churches of Dahlem and Stralau also show mixed masonry.
  2. ↑ The only exception in Berlin is the Weißensee village church , which shows unusually large brick surfaces.
  3. ↑ The boulders were washed out of sandy soils due to ice age melting processes.

Coordinates: 52 ° 35 ′ 32.1 ″  N , 13 ° 19 ′ 31.6 ″  E