Garrison Church (Spandau)

View from the East (1890)

The garrison church was a church building in Spandau . It existed from 1887 (laying of the foundation stone) to 1950 and served as a place of worship for the Protestant military parish in the Spandau garrison .

history

Military pastoral care in Spandau

The services of the evangelical soldiers stationed in Spandau took place in the Moritzkirche from 1659 until it was converted by the French military in 1806 , and from 1709 also in the newly built castle chapel on the Spandau citadel . In the course of the 18th century, the St. John's Church was also increasingly used by the military community in addition to the Reformed community; the church was completely renovated from 1836 and had 493 seats. For the Catholic soldiers there was a chapel on the rifle plan and, from 1848, the newly built church of St. Marien am Behnitz .

With the expansion of Spandau into a fortress from 1873 onwards, the number of military personnel grew, so that the Johanneskirche was no longer sufficient as a garrison church for the Protestant military community; In 1876 the military community counted 3787 souls, the Johannesgemeinde around 2500. A relocation of the Johanneskirche as a community and military church was requested by the city of Spandau in order to be able to use the property of the church in the Jüdenstraße to expand the city schools. However, the military treasury rejected this. As a result, the parish was merged with the Nikolaigemeinde, and the Luther Church was built in Spandauer Neustadt in 1895/96 . The military treasury rebuilt the garrison church for the military community. The last service of the military community in the Johanneskirche took place on March 9, 1890, the Johanneskirche was demolished in the winter of 1902/03.

History of church building

The Garrison Church on a postcard (1909)

The excavation work for the garrison church began in May 1887, the foundation stone was laid on October 19, 1887. Because of the difficult building ground, caissons connected by arches had to be built for the foundations. The design of the church comes from the government master builder Ernst August Roßteuscher with the assistance of the secret senior building officer Gustav Voigtel and the directorate and building officer Emil Boethke . The construction of the church was led by the government builders Voelcker, Jansen and Afinger, the construction was carried out by master mason E. Müller from Spandau, master carpenter W. Sittel from Nauen , master locksmith Seebinger from Marburg (blacksmithing and locksmith work) and master mason Schöneseifer from Marburg (stone work) . The construction costs were 270,000 marks. The consecration of the church on March 16, 1890 was attended by Kaiser Wilhelm II , Empress Auguste Viktoria and Empress Friedrich .

A plaque with the following inscription reminded of the dedication of the church:

“By God's grace, in the year of salvation, 1890, on Sunday Laetare on March 16, this church was opened in the presence of Her two Majesties, our most gracious Emperor and King Wilhelm II and our most gracious Empress Victoria, Her Majesty the Empress and Queen Frederick, Royal Prince and Princesses, the Grand Duke of Baden and the first dignitaries in state and church. May our house of God always be and remain a holy source of blissful faith, unchangeable loyalty to the king until death, blessed brotherhood in arms. - May God do that. "

In October 1944 and March 1945 several segment arches of the foundations tore apart by bombs falling nearby and cracks appeared in the masonry of the church, some of which reached from the floor to the gallery; the tower leaned two feet to the side. Therefore, in 1946, it was decided to demolish the church, as the construction costs would have been 360,000 Reichsmarks and a garrison community no longer existed after the end of the Second World War . In 1947 consideration was given to converting the building into a parish hall for the Luther parish. On October 4, 1950, the garrison church was blown up and a green area was created on the spot. The last foundation walls were blown up during road construction on May 11, 1959.

The construction

The church was located on the former Hafenplatz on the western side of Neuendorfer Straße (which then ran more east than today) and south of the confluence with Bismarckstraße (until 1891 Spektestraße), at the level of the garrison washing facility, which is now the Brauhaus restaurant . The building was oriented in an east-west direction, the choir was in the west, the tower stood on Neuendorfer Strasse in the east because of the better effect in the street scene.

The statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I near the church

The building was a 12 m wide single-nave hall church with an 11 m wide transept in the neo-Gothic style . The apse with a narrow vestibule ended on three sides . The sacristy (left) and a confirmation room (right) were added to the side of the vestibule . The outer masonry consisted of deep red Rathenow hand-held stones in a block bond . The nave was divided into three bays with buttresses, each with a cross vault . The buttresses were partially drawn through the wall and also formed rectangular protrusions on the inside, the vaulting services and pillar templates for the girders were only developed from a height of 3 m. The one-yoke transept arms also had a cross vault, the square crossing a wide star vault . The transept arms were closed in arcades with galleries across the width of the nave , the organ gallery in the east was drawn into the tower. All galleries had a dwarf gallery on the parapets . The windows were three-part pointed arch windows ; In the arched field by the windows between the buttresses they showed one large and two smaller roses, and on the transept they were of the same size. A large round window was located above the two-door portal, from which three large and three smaller round windows formed from three-pass shapes were combined. The colored windows were designed by the Berlin glass painter L. Jessel, the choir window showed Jesus Christ in the mandorla .

The church tower as the eastern face of the church was 70 m high and had an octagonal brick top, surrounded by several small towers . The two facades of the transept had two corner stair towers on both sides , which were loosened up by panels.

The interior of the church was painted in bright colors according to “medieval principles”, namely not only wall surfaces, pillars and vaults, but also all column knobs , corbels , beginning ribs and keystones .

An equestrian monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I was erected south of the church in 1909 .

Furnishing

Bells

The church received three cast steel bells that were cast in 1890 in the Royal Gun Foundry in Spandau by gun caster Kirsch:

• 820 kg, diameter 118 cm, strike tone f
• 422 kg, diameter 94 cm, strike note a
• Only the inscription of the third bell is known:
  Praise the Lord you heavens, praise Him on high.
  Anno Domini 1889, cast in the Königl. Gun foundry in Spandau.

The first two bells were no longer available at the end of the First World War ; the third bell was removed on October 3, 1934 and replaced by two new bells, also made of cast steel , from the Otto bell foundry in Hemelingen near Bremen, which were replaced on November 4, 1934 were consecrated:

• 1600 kg, strike tone total , inscription:
  Jesus Christ, yesterday and today and the same forever. - 1934, when Reich President von Hindenburg died and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler was the leader of the German Reich and Lieutenant Colonel Freiherr von Gablenz, Pastor Radtke and Chief Inspector Zimmermann, Church Council and Building Councilor, complaint and Building Inspector Meyer were site managers.
• 800 kg, chime it , inscription:
  Be faithful until death, so I will give you the crown of life. Cast anno Domini 1934 in memory of the immortalized Reich President General Field Marshal von Hindenburg .

Other equipment

• The altarpiece showed the raising of Lazarus and was a copy after Peter Paul Rubens by Franzisca von Knobelsdorff.
• The organ came from the organ building company Schlag & Söhne ( Schweidnitz in Silesia) and had 25 registers . In 1913 it was rebuilt by the W. Sauer Court Organ Builders ( Frankfurt an der Oder ) and in 1931 it was re- voiced by the Orgelbau Gebrüder Dinse company .
• At the church there were two memorial plaques for those who fell in the wars of 1870/71 and 1914–1918 , which had been donated by the regiments stationed in Spandau.

literature

• Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1971, pp. 131-134.

Web links

Commons : Garrisonskirche Spandau (Berlin)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193, here p. 150.
2. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, p. 151.154.
3. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 150-155.
4. ^ Uwe Kieling: Berlin building officials and state architects in the 19th century . Kulturbund der DDR, Berlin 1986, p. 13 .
5. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, p. 134.
6. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, p. 132. According to other information: The church was blown up on October 4, 1949. ( [1] Clemens Kurz City Walks: Lost Places: the Garrison Church in Spandau , February 21, 2016.)
7. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, p. 133.
8. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, p. 133.
9. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, p. 133f.
10. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, p. 154.

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 27.5 ″  N , 13 ° 12 ′ 20.2 ″  E