Chapel of Reconciliation

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Chapel of Reconciliation

The Chapel of Reconciliation is a church on Bernauer Strasse in the Mitte district of Berlin , which was built in clay on the foundation of the Reconciliation Church until 2000 . It belongs to the Berlin Wall Memorial .

history

View from the chapel
Service on the occasion of the 52nd anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall in 2013

The construction of the Berlin Wall also divided the reconciliation community. From 1961, the Reconciliation Church, built in 1894, was no longer accessible to the community in the western part of the city because it stood on the “death strip” between the inner and outer walls. The GDR government finally ordered the demolition in 1985 in order to have a clear field of vision on the border strip. After the reunification of Germany , the parish received the property back in 1995 with the condition that it was used for sacred purposes.

The architects Peter Sassenroth and Rudolf Reitermann designed an unusual church building from June 1996 on behalf of the Evangelical Reconciliation Community. On the foundations of the presbytery an oval church of artist Martin Lehmbau smoke was from June 1999 rammed earth manner built the outside with wooden rods from Douglas is encased. It has been the first publicly built earth building in Germany for more than 100 years. As far as possible, materials from the Church of Reconciliation were reused in the building. The wall thickness is up to 60 centimeters with a height of seven meters and a length of 43 meters. A total of 390 tons of rammed earth were processed.

The rescued bells are hung in a bell frame outside the chapel. They come from the Bochumer Verein and were made in 1894. The largest of them weighs 1,300 kilograms and is 150 centimeters in diameter. This is followed by two smaller copies with 850 and 500 kilograms and 130 and 110 centimeters in diameter. A walkway with seating connects the interior of the church with its surroundings. The floor plan of the Reconciliation Church is marked around the chapel and serves as the church square. The construction costs amounted to 971,454  euros .

The Chapel of Reconciliation was dedicated on November 9, 2000. It is part of the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse. The associated documentation center is located in the parish hall, which was built in 1965 to replace the inaccessible church.

Furnishing

The resulting reredos were integrated into the simple interior, and parts of the rubble were ground up and added to the clay mass. Up until 2017, an organ from the Walcker company from 1965, which was moved here and has two manuals and a pedal, was installed in the chapel . This instrument was developed in the summer of 2017 and a music school in is Russian St. Petersburg made a gift, be formed in the young organist. The Berlin organ building company Karl Schuke built and installed a completely new instrument for the Chapel of Reconciliation . As a special feature, at the request of the community, the organ was equipped with a "sound of reconciliation". This means that each of the four former occupation powers USA , Great Britain , France and the Soviet Union is represented with a register that represents music from the respective country. For example, there is a register added by a special workshop in Saxony that sounds like a Russian button accordion . The new church musical instrument was born on September 29, 2017 inaugurated . It has a total of 552 pipes in 27 registers . The production costs of a total of 239,000  euros come mainly from private donations.

I Hauptwerk C – g 3
01. Drone 16 ′
02. Open diapason 08th'
03. Reed flute 08th'
04th Reconciliation (from g⁰) 08th'
05. Viola da gamba 08th'
06th Octava amabile 04 ′
07th Flûte à cheminée 04 ′
08th. Gambetta 04 ′
09. Nasard 02 23
10. Octavine 02 ′
11. third 01 35
12. Basson-Hautbois 08th'
II Swell C – g 3
13. Reed flute 16 ′
14th Aeoline 08th'
15th Vox Coelestis 08th'
16. Flûte à cheminée 04 ′
17th Nasard 02 23
18th Octavine 02 ′
19th third 01 35
20th Basson Hautbois 08th'
Bayan
Pedal C – f 1
21st Sub bass 16 ′
22nd Octavbass 08th'
23. Dacked bass 08th'
24. cello 08th'
25th Octave 04 ′
26th Basson 08th'
  • Pairing :
    • Normal coupling: II / I, I / P, II / P
    • Sub-octave coupling: I / I, II / I, II / II
    • Super octave coupling: II / II

Devotions for the dead on the Berlin Wall

Since August 13, 2005, a 15-minute prayer has been held in the Chapel of Reconciliation every day from Tuesday to Friday at 12 noon, during which the biography of someone who died at the Berlin Wall is read out. The résumés are the result of a collaborative project between the Berlin Wall Association and the Center for Contemporary History Research in Potsdam, in which historians research the biographies of victims of the Wall.

Web links

Commons : Church of Reconciliation / Chapel of Reconciliation  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Information document: Chapel of Reconciliation, Berlin-Mitte / Bernauer Straße , without date, display in the church in June 2015.
  2. Sounds of Reconciliation . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 29, 2017, p. 11 (print edition).
  3. News on the organ in the Chapel of Reconciliation , accessed on October 8, 2017.
  4. Disposition on the website of the organ building company

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 9 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 31 ″  E