Zehlendorf village church
Today's Protestant village church in Zehlendorf is located in the historic core of the Berlin district of Zehlendorf ( Zehlendorf Eiche ) and is one of over 50 village churches in Berlin . It was built in 1768 on the site of a medieval stone church first mentioned in 1264 . Its octagonal central building represents a very rare type of church among the village churches of the Mark Brandenburg . After the inauguration of the Paulus Church in 1905, no more services were held in the village church until 1953. The church is a listed building .
The medieval predecessor building
Zehlendorf was founded as a wide street village around 1230 . As usual, a wooden church was built in the center of the village on the western side of the village street. This first wooden building was followed by a stone village church around 1250. Because supposedly was in 1264 documented a village church mentioned, the one Klutturm had ( Low German Klut =, Klotz '). It is likely to have been a four-part apse church made of field stone blocks with a nave-wide transverse tower, built around 1250 .
History
In May 1732, Friedrich Wilhelm I , King of Prussia , greeted exiles expelled from Salzburg in front of the Zehlendorf village church with the words "MIR NEW SÖHNE - YOU'RE A MILD FATHERLAND".
Today's church
When the village was sacked in the Seven Years' War in 1760 , the church remained in ruins. After the war, Frederick II devoted himself to rebuilding his country. According to tradition, when he changed horses on the way between the residences in Berlin and Potsdam in Zehlendorf, the sight of the church ruins appeared to him as an eyesore. So he had it demolished in 1767 and built a new representative church under his patronage . In addition to the timber, the king also made 6000 thalers available. The new church, including the gallery, had almost 300 seats. At that time, fewer than 300 people lived in the entire village.
The replacement building of the Zehlendorf village church, built in 1768, had a very unusual floor plan for a village church in the Mark: a central building in the shape of an octagon . It is not known why the king chose this type of floor plan. The church appeared so unusual and small that a legend grew up around it. The builder had embezzled the money with which he had fled, so that the remaining money was only enough for a small building. The legend is justified to the extent that it was actually embezzled, but in terms of seating capacity (300 seats) the church is no smaller than conventional buildings. The floor plan type of the central building (here: octagon) had become more common for new buildings after the Reformation. In Protestant worship, the sermon (the word alone!) Had gained greater importance than the mass or the Lord's Supper. For better audibility of the sermon, the benches were arranged around the pulpit, which was moved more into the middle, which led to a central building. In Schöneberg, too, the king had the village church that had been destroyed in the war renewed; but here he chose the floor plan of a classic hall church (with square tower and sacristy).
After the exterior plastering of the church had almost completely fallen off in the Second World War , a large proportion of field stones came to light in its brickwork , which had already been used in the previous church and were used again in this new building. The architect of the octagonal baroque church probably came from the royal building office in Potsdam. Octagonal floor plans were already used as the basis for some central churches in the Mark Brandenburg in the Middle Ages, but rectangular hall churches with three window axes were usually built in the villages .
In view of the growing population, the village church was no longer sufficient. The Zehlendorf parish built the large Pauluskirche in Kirchstrasse from 1903 to 1905. The village church no longer served as a place of worship. The community promoted the village church, although it no longer had a function with the inauguration of St. Paul's Church. After a renovation in 1912, the village church was used as the parish hall of the Paulus community until the building on Teltower Damm was completed in 1930.
In the late 1930s, the church was intended to restart because it by the then Nazi ideology as a national church was considered. The parish council provided budget funds for renovation measures. The renovation work should also be subsidized by the state and the entire interior should be modeled in baroque form. It was planned to take over the baroque pulpit altar from the village church of Lankwitz . In early 1939 the authorities withdrew their financial commitments. The village church remained a construction site that had been started during the war years. The deterioration that was visible after 1945 was not caused by the effects of the war. The first repair work was carried out in 1951. Fundraising campaigns and the help of the Berlin Senate provided a financial basis for the rescue of the village church, which was consecrated by Bishop Otto Dibelius on the 1st of Advent 1953 .
The exterior of the church resembles the design from 1768, smooth plastered surfaces between pilaster strips on the edges of the octagon. During the restoration, the corner pilaster strips were plastered in a cuboid shape. In 1953 high were Segmentbogen drawn windows and the portal system with the Bull's Eye provided the church door. The facade axes, divided into two storeys, with an ox-eye above and a low segmented arched window below, have only been around since the restoration.
In 2017 the roof structure was damaged by dry rot or beams were missing entirely. The weight of the roof pushes the walls apart, resulting in cracks in the masonry. The roof structure threatens to break apart. In addition to the renovation of the masonry, the cemetery should also be made accessible again.
The temporary tower
Until 1788, the eight-sided tent roof ended with a lantern-like central tower in which two bells hung. A bronze bell that bears neither the year nor an inscription is decorated with a Romanesque frieze of figures and ribbons, which is why it is dated to the early 13th century. It has been in the Johanneskirche in Schlachtensee since 1912 . The other bell dates from 1270. However, the tower was insufficiently integrated into the roof structure of the church, it did not withstand the vibrations of the bell, so that in 1788 it had to be demolished. A thatched bell carrier made of open half-timbering was erected in the churchyard. The top of the hood of the former tower, the pommel , wind vane and cross, complete the current tent roof.
The inner
The old fixtures were missing during the reconstruction. When it was converted into a parish hall, the organ and pulpit altar were given to a parish near Züllichau in Neumark . In the redesign, based on the historical division, circumferential galleries were created , which rest on an inner column wreath. Above the entrance is an organ built in 1991 with a Franconian baroque prospect from around 1720 . The disposition of the organ can be viewed at the organ database . His place was once in the destroyed Trinity Church in Berlin. In the area of the altar, the gallery was interrupted to give the room enough space. Today's wooden altar is framed by two altar side wings from the Berlin monastery church, painted on both sides around 1480. Since the 1950s, there have been eleven panel paintings on the walls dating from 1577 to 1646, which were originally in the former Heilig-Geist-Kapelle. The village church today has a wealth of works of art that it never had before.
Attached sacristy
Commemorative plaque for the arrival of the Salzburg exiles
literature
- Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin: Berlin and its buildings. Part 6: Sacred buildings. Ernst, Berlin et al. 1997, ISBN 3-433-01016-1 .
- Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz: Old Churches in Berlin. Berlin 1991.
- Günther Kühne, Elisabeth Stephani: Evangelical churches in Berlin. Berlin 1978.
- Kurt Pomplun: Berlin's old village churches. Berlin 1984.
- Hans-Joachim Kuke: 100 years of Pauluskirche - a look back. Berlin 2005.
- Hans-Jürgen Rach: The villages in Berlin. A handbook of the former rural communities in the urban area of Berlin 2nd, revised edition. Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-345-00243-4 .
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments . Berlin. 3rd edition, reviewed and supplemented by Michael Bollé. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin et al. 2006, ISBN 3-422-03111-1 .
Web links
- Evangelical Paulus Congregation Berlin-Zehlendorf
- Information page for the 250th anniversary
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List with further information
Coordinates: 52 ° 26 '8 " N , 13 ° 15' 35.5" E
- Alte Dorfkirche Zehlendorf on the homepage of the German Foundation for Monument Protection , last accessed on October 21, 2017
Remarks
- ^ As in Marienfelde and Buckow . Such a large "chunky" tower accounted for almost 50 percent of the construction costs.
- ↑ The Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin, suggested by Friedrich II and still under construction, was also a central building; but this was based on the classical form of the pantheon .
- ↑ a b Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen: Old village church Zehlendorf. Steglitz-Zehlendorf district, Berlin. The German Foundation for Monument Protection, accessed on October 21, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen: Leave the church in the village - and keep it . Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen on the old village church in Berlin-Zehlendorf. In: German Foundation for Monument Protection (Hrsg.): Monuments . Magazine for monument culture in Germany. No. 5 . Monuments publications, 2017, ISSN 0941-7125 , p. 8th ff .
- ^ Organ database