Gertraudenkirche (Berlin)

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Gertraudenkirche on Spittelmarkt, 1783, copper engraving by Johann Georg Rosenberg

The Gertraudenkirche was a church building on the Spittelmarkt in old Berlin , also written Gertrautenkirche and St. Gertraudt . It was created through expansion measures from the Catholic chapel built in the 15th century , which was dedicated to several church saints. Because of its proximity to the St. Gertrauden Hospital (Spital), the Berliners also called the church Spittelkirche .

history

From a chapel to a church

After the magistrate of Berlin decided and commissioned the construction of a church in the city center around 1405, the Bishop of Brandenburg consecrated the chapel to Saints Matthew , Marcus , Elisabeth and Gertraud (e) , the patron saints of travelers. With the Reformation , the chapel became Protestant in 1545 and was given the name church , the clergy were called preachers, pastors and deacons . (The Gertraudenkirche, as it was soon called by the residents, now reformed according to Lutheran principles, belonged to the parish of St. Petrikirche until 1680. )

In the course of the Thirty Years' War , the area around the church was pillaged, especially the neighboring poor house, the Gertraudenhospital , was badly damaged and was considered dilapidated by 1650. It was rebuilt after the Peace of Westphalia and inaugurated in 1655.

Gertraudenkirche before total renovation, 1690

After the city expansion Friedrichswerder was founded and developed in the area around the church on the order of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm from 1662 and the number of inhabitants ("Neu-Cöllner" and "Werdersche people") increased, the Gertraudenkirche received its own clergyman on October 2, 1710, for whose livelihood the believers were obliged to pay a fee. Before that, the chapel was alternately looked after by the clergy of the Petrikirche and the Trinity Church .

The new "Konsistorial-Rath" Haumannen took care of the renovation of the church interior. “Not a chair or window was entirely”, also “the churchyard had lost its wall and the stones had been taken away”. The preacher had spent the money he intended for his existence on the repairs and applied for city financial aid, which he was not granted. In spite of this, he performed his preaching office “for the people who live around” until 1720.

Renewal of the church building in baroque style

Line drawing of the church, 1760

In 1721–1723, the architect Friedrich Wilhelm Dieterichs made specific plans for a total renovation of the Gertraudenkirche, which now received an organ and a bell tower , among other things . This work under the direction of the builder Titus de Favre was completed in 1739 .

In 1814 August Wilhelm Bach, son of the organist Gottfried Bach at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche, was the organist at the Gertraudenkirche.

Demolition instead of new construction

In the years 1814/1815, with the redesign of the entire area of Leipziger Strasse and the Spittelmarkt, major renovation plans emerged, through which “the position of the Spittelkirche gains a new urban planning meaning. Located in the line of Leipziger Strasse, it forms the distant destination point of the nearly two-kilometer-long axis that begins in the west at Potsdamer Tor. "

For the new building of the Gertraudenkirche, which was to be aligned differently and initially to be built directly next to the old church , Karl Friedrich Schinkel provided a design that was also to be a memorial for the wars of liberation . Schinkel planned a three-aisled neo - Gothic building with a towering tower and pointed arches inside. Schinkel's draft, however, did not materialize. The reason given was succinctly: "The plans will not be implemented for cost reasons." In addition, the volume of traffic increased and in the immediate vicinity of the Spittelmarkt many residential and commercial buildings were built since the late 19th century, so that there was no longer any space to build a larger church .

The Berlin address book names the preacher G. F. Lisko as the clergyman at the Spittelkirche between 1828 and 1830 , C. H. Hiltmann was a sexton and cantor between 1834 and 1860 and the cantor and organist Mühlsteph is included in 1836.

In the middle of the 19th century the church got a painting by the painter Wilhelm Amberg , which showed a religious scene.

Tower laid down, 1868

After the demolition began around 1865, the address of the church is no longer listed in the Berlin address book , parcel number 9 is no longer a residential address.

In 1868 the church tower was already dismantled, as can be seen in the photo by Friedrich Albert Schwartz from that year. The church building continued to be used, however, with a cross on the top of the gable until it was finally demolished .

The church leadership was in 1876/1877 Consistorial Counselor Professor Steinert, Mühlsteph was still organist, the theologian Wilhelm Nowack worked as assistant preacher at the Gertraudenkirche. The board of directors of the St. Gertraudt Church included city councilor F. Hübner, privy councilor Müller as well as two merchants and a factory owner.

The church finally fell victim to the expansion of the transport network: "In order to enable a rail link from Leipzigerstrasse to Seydelstrasse," it had been bought by the Great Berlin Horse Railroad Company and had to give way. In 1881 the demolition of the nave of the Gertraudenkirche began, and an oval traffic island was built in its place after 1882.

The parish handed over valuable items of equipment from the Spittelkirche to the new Kreuzberg hospital chapel .

In 1910 you can read in the address book that the hospital was demolished in 1872 and the Gertrauden or Spittelkirche was also demolished by 1885.

The traffic island disappeared with the new design of the entire quarter from the end of the 1990s. At the corner of Beuthstrasse and Axel-Springer-Strasse (formerly Lindenstrasse), the Spittelmarkt office and business center has stood on the site of the former Gertraudenkirche since 2006.

architecture

The church, which was built after the complete renovation by 1739, was in the baroque style. It was a hall church with a semicircular apse , a steep pitched roof and a newly built church tower with a square floor plan. There was a lantern over an open walkway of the tower , which ended in a kind of Welsch hood .

Fantasy view of the Berlin Gertraudenkirche, around 1900; Excerpt from the mentioned AK

The Gertraudenkirche on a postcard from the end of the 19th century is apparently a fantasy building of the draftsman. The use of this map is documented from 1911, thirty years after its final demolition! The church building to be recognized in the drawing, small, in the building line and with the roof design adapted to the existing houses on the Spittelmarkt, never existed in this form. Even the church tower falsely shows an onion dome .

literature

Web links

Commons : St. Gertraudenkirche  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin-I . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 130 .
  2. ↑ Haumann: Gertrautenkirche …, pp. 3–5.
  3. ^ A b Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin-I . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 125 .
  4. ↑ Haumannen: Gert diamond Church ..., p 7/8.
  5. ↑ Quoted in: Stefan Hirtz: Borders and City Gates of Berlin. Positions of the gate systems in the ground plan and their influence on the cityscape . P. 105 footnote 706.
  6. ↑ Treasure from our Archives - Musical Quote by August Wilhelm Bach, 7th of July 1807 (Treasure from the archives of Yale University - Notes from August Wilhelm Bach of July 7, 1807; English); accessed on January 10, 2015.
  7. ^ A b c Stefan Hirtz: Borders and city gates of Berlin. Positions of the gate systems in the ground plan and their influence on the cityscape. Pp. 105/106. Google Books.
  8. ↑ Three design sheets for the Gertraudenkirche by KF Schinkel, 1819; published in 1858 in the Architekturmuseum der TU Berlin
  9. ↑ Lisko . In: General housing gazette for Berlin, Charlottenburg and surroundings , 1828, I.
  10. ↑ Hiltmann . In: General housing gazette for Berlin, Charlottenburg and surroundings , 1834, I.
  11. ↑ Spittelmarkt 8 and 9 . In: Allgemeiner Wohnungs-Anzeiger together with address and business manual for Berlin , 1860, II, p. 137.
  12. ↑ Mühlsteph . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1836, I, p. 244.
  13. ↑ Spittelmarkt 8, 9 . In: Allgemeine Wohnungs-Anzeiger together with address and business handbook for Berlin , 1870, part II, p. 242.
  14. ↑ Representation of the Spittelkirche on a colored picture postcard, ran in 1899. accessed on January 11, 2015.
  15. ↑ Provincial Authorities . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1876, IV, p. 65.
  16. ↑ Biographical information on Wilhelm Nowack. zeitlebenszeiten.de; accessed on January 11, 2015.
  17. ^ Joseph Fischer-Dick: Twenty-five years with the great Berlin horse-drawn railway . Wiesbaden 1898, p. 11.
  18. ↑ Spittelmarkt . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1910, II, p. 578 (Immediately under the name Spittelmarkt there is a reference to the demolition of the Gertrauden Hospital and the Spittelkirche.).
  19. ↑ Modeled view of the first Gertraudenkirche from an exhibition shown by Thomas Jung in 2000 in Berlin around 1800 , accessed on January 10, 2015.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '39.3 "  N , 13 ° 24' 1.9"  E