Rahnsdorf cemetery
| Rahnsdorf cemetery | |
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| South-west side of the cemetery chapel | |
| Basic data | |
| place | Berlin |
| District | Rahnsdorf , Fürstenwalder Allee 93 |
| Created | 1876/1877 |
| Surrounding streets | Fürstenwalder Allee , Heidelandstraße |
| Buildings | Funeral hall (cemetery chapel) |
| use | |
| User groups | pedestrian |
| Technical specifications | |
| Parking area | 10,150 m² |
Coordinates: 52 ° 26 ′ 16.7 " N , 13 ° 41 ′ 47.3" E
The Rahnsdorf cemetery in the Berlin district of Treptow-Köpenick , locality Rahnsdorf , was laid out in the 1870s and inaugurated in 1877. It has been in municipal ownership since 1904 . The cemetery chapel built on the site is a monument . A specially founded citizens' initiative has been taking care of the restoration of the building since 2010 .
history
Rahnsdorf near Berlin developed from a fishing village on the eastern tip of the Great Müggelsee . Because more and more families moved here in the 19th century, the road and path network was expanded to create building land for further residential buildings. In addition, the medieval church and almost all fishermen's houses were destroyed after a great fire. The house of worship and the houses were rebuilt in the 1870s. The church burial site around the old village church was also no longer sufficient. The new cemetery area on Fürstenwalder Allee (entrance to Heidelandstraße) came about through donations from some fishing families. The burial of the family members of the donors was free for a few years.
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Funerals have been held here regularly since 1877. In 1904 the community bought the area. As is customary in German cemeteries, a mourning house is part of it, and so in 1911/1912 a dignified chapel was opened in the center of the cemetery complex . The walls inside were painted light gray, underneath was a dark gray panel . Dark blue ornaments adorned the wooden beam ceiling . The apse walls were decorated with painted columns and colorful leaf tendrils. The furnishings included a harmonium and stained glass windows.
Over the years, the walls were repeatedly repainted, so that an investigation by the restorer Thoralf Herschel in 2013 found three to four layers of paint, and the apse images had also disappeared under a layer of white paint. One of the windows was probably broken during the Second World War and replaced with simple emergency glazing.
According to the district office, the chapel should be listed, but is not on the Berlin list of monuments (as of September 12, 2013). However, it was already listed as a monument during the GDR era in the 1970s. In 2010, several residents of Rahnsdorf, including the Jutta Benedix-Ulrich and Bodo Benedix family, founded a citizens' initiative to restore the cemetery chapel. They collected private donations, visited archives and evaluated old photos to find out, above all, the original condition. After contacting the district office, they managed to have the roof and facade repaired in 2011.
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A historical tombstone was uncovered in front of the south facade. A local glazier replaced the destroyed window with the original motif Expulsion from Egypt , as the research had shown. The initiative used the first 4,300 euros for this, and the glazier did the work at half the price. In the same way, an organ builder from Werder (Havel) took care of the repair of the harmonium. To the delight of all involved, the 100th anniversary of the chapel inauguration could take place in the house in August 2012. It is equipped with 65 upholstered chairs.
Architecture of the chapel
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According to the Senate, the architects Peter Jürgensen and Jürgen Bachmann provided the construction plans for the chapel building. The plastered building has a floor plan of around 150 square meters. A nave and a transept penetrate each other at almost the same height. They are provided with steep pitched roofs covered with tiles and on the eastern gable there are four-part narrow church windows that vary in height. The polygonal apse is on the north side of the chapel. The apse windows are decorated with stained glass based on biblical motifs. On the west side there are two outbuildings, each with a cross-pointed gable. The outer surfaces in the gable triangle are decorated with curved ribs and have four small narrow windows.
The main entrance to the celebration hall on the south side is framed with striking, powerful romanized stone columns.
outlook
Since the first renovation, concerts, lectures and exhibitions have been held in the chapel, for which a donation has been requested. The citizens' initiative plans regular harmonium concerts and has already established contacts with the Konzerthaus Berlin on Gendarmenmarkt. These charity events are intended to bring in the missing money for further repair work. Because it was customary in the early years to incorporate the names of the donors for the construction or furnishing on the lower edge of the church window, this tradition is now being continued: a name plaque will be attached for all donors. The interior renovation began in 2014, the cost of which amounted to more than 130,000 euros. First the wooden ceiling was renewed, then the ornamentation was exposed and partially redesigned. Even in 2017, the work was not completed, now it was the turn of the side rooms. In addition to the already mentioned donations from companies and private individuals, the Treptow-Köpenick district office bears half of the costs.
More in the cemetery
The visitor finds a small memorial for the victims of a railway accident that occurred in 1916 in Rahnsdorf. 19 Silesian female forced laborers were hit by a train during track construction work and killed. The dead were buried in a communal grave near the celebration hall with great sympathy from the population.
On the main corridor along Heidelandstraße, several wall grave markings from the 1890s have been preserved in historicizing forms.
Literature and source
- Rahnsdorf Cemetery ( Memento from February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- Karin Schmidl: Concert for the cemetery chapel. A Rahnsdorf initiative ensures that a monument is restored. The harmonium is already playing again. In: Berliner Zeitung , February 13, 2014, page 21.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin-II . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 345 .
- ↑ Rahnsdorfer Friedhofskapelle is being renovated further , Berliner Woche , December 29, 2017, accessed on March 4, 2018.
- ↑ Rahnsdorf cemetery with information on the common grave for the victims of the 1916 railway accident ( memento from February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive )