Niederlehme Church
The evangelical church Niederlehme was built in 1913/1914 in Niederlehme . It is a creation of the royal building councilor Otto Hetzel (Berlin-Charlottenburg) and was under the supervision of the royal building council and head of the church building authority for the province of Brandenburg Georg Büttner . The church consists of a building complex connected to the parish hall and the rectory, which is an architectural unit. The sacred building shows features of Neo-Baroque (Wilhelminian style) and Art Nouveau within the framework of the reform architecture of the time . On February 13, 2007, the building was included in the list of architectural monuments of the state of Brandenburg.
background
With the establishment of industry towards the end of the 19th century, Niederlehme grew very quickly. A settlement was created that today extends over 7 km in the Dahmetal . Niederlehme owes its rapid blossoming to the sand mountains on its lands. The sand deposits were extracted for the manufacture of mortar and artificial stone. Many people found work in the sand conveyor systems of the United Berlin Mortar Works and the Berlin Sandstone Works Robert Guthmann GmbH and settled in Niederlehme. In 1914 the place already had 2300 inhabitants, including over 2100 Protestant Christians.
From 1907 an assistant preacher was sent to Niederlehme. As a result, services have been celebrated in Niederlehme since this year. Since there was no church, services were held in the schoolhouse. The desire for a place of worship grew louder and louder and was supported by a will in which the parish was left with 50,000 marks for building a church.
In order to plan the construction of a new church, contact was made with the Berlin architect Otto Hetzel . He envisaged a connected building complex consisting of a church, parish hall and rectory. The cost estimate totaled over 90,000 marks. After minor changes to the design by the architect Georg Büttner, who had been the head of the ecclesiastical building department for the province of Brandenburg since 1906, construction work began on May 7, 1913. The topping-out ceremony was celebrated as early as August 18, 1913 and a certificate was walled into the altar foundation. On April 5, 1914 ( Palm Sunday ) the Evangelical Church in Niederlehme was inaugurated with a solemn service.
architecture
"... the construction of a church, a confirmation hall and a rectory, in simple modern baroque ...", it says in the building project description from 1912. It is precisely this "simple modern baroque" that marks the change and the beginning of a new era in Protestant church building in Berlin-Brandenburg Beginning of the 20th century. The example of the Evangelical Church of Niederlehme shows a clear replacement of the otherwise common clinker-clad, neo-Gothic or neo-Romanesque sacred buildings of historicism . In keeping with the changed zeitgeist, Otto Hetzel and Georg Büttner, as representatives of the village church movement, developed an ensemble of church, parish hall and rectory in neo-baroque forms. The Niederlehme church is a plastered hall building made of sand-lime brick with a retracted rectangular choir and a bell tower attached to the southwest. The tower dome, covered in slate, houses the staircase, the access to the attic above the nave, the bell storey, the clock storey and the bell house above. The lantern, which is crowned with a cross, forms the end. The 28 meter high tower has dominated the townscape since the topping-out ceremony on August 18, 1913. The entrance portal on the west side with side pilasters and triangular gables consists of Rüdersdorfer shell limestone . Above it is an arched window, behind which the organ is hidden. The surrounding plinth of the building is faced with gray-blue limestone, only on the west side in the lower part of the building there is lateral granite bosswork . The nave has a hipped roof with bat dormers .
inner space
There is room for 350 people inside the church. There is a gallery on the south side and the organ gallery on the west side. The room height up to the stucco coffered ceiling is 9 meters. The pulpit is on the left side of the choir arch, at the point where the nave and choir adjoin. Pulpit, altar, organ and stalls were created in a uniform style.
“Come to Me, all of you who are troublesome and burdened, I want to refresh you!” - The person entering is greeted with this Bible phrase from the Gospel of Matthew at the entrance portal of the house of God. The interior of the church behind it was once dominated by a uniform painting in the Baroque Art Nouveau style. Pastor Hans Rehfeldt wrote the following in 1926 in the “Evangelical messenger of the Königs Wusterhausen church district”: “The church also has many special features inside. The painting of the ceiling and the walls, designed by the church painter Professor Linnemann / Frankfurt am Main, is kept in calm colors and adapts perfectly to the uniqueness of the room. ”The artistic ornamental painting, which was created by Rudolf and Otto Linnemann in 1914, fell into place victim of the puristic taste of the time and was painted over in 1971.
The pulpit is a precious piece and a foundation of the entrepreneur Robert Guthmann. It consists of massive sand-lime blocks made in the artificial stone factory and worked by the sculptor. Four short columns carry the heavy sermon chair, decorated with angel heads and Bible verses.
The altar decoration consists of a huge crucifix with a gold-plated body and two tall, artistically forged candlesticks. Altar candlesticks such as the crucifix were donated in 1914 by the "Evangelical Women's Aid Niederlehme". In the north wall of the choir there is a window with colored glazing from Atelier Linnemann (Frankfurt am Main) depicting a floating white dove, which symbolizes the Holy Spirit . The rest of the interior furnishings of the church building have largely been preserved in their original form, with the exception of the changed color scheme of the walls and inventory.
organ
On the west gallery, opposite the altar, is the originally preserved organ from 1914. It is an instrument from the organ building workshop Gebrüder Dinse (Berlin) and has 12 registers , which are distributed over two manuals and a pedal . The sound of the work is in the tradition of late romantic organ building in Germany and is characterized by a sonorous, caressingly warm sound. The technical system consists of a pneumatic tube in the form of the so-called pneumatic cone chest . The organ has been preserved almost unchanged, only the pewter prospect pipes fell victim to the war industry. These were replaced by zinc prospect pipes after the First World War. In 1924, for the 10th anniversary of the church, an electric organ fan was installed. As part of the church interior renovation in 1971, the organ case was also given a new color, so the original ornamental painting on the case was painted over. The instrument was spared a tonal rearrangement .
Disposition:
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- Coupling : II / I; I / P; II / P.
- Playing aids : Mezzoforte, Fortissimo.
Bells
Originally the church of Niederlehme had a bronze bell from the court bell foundry Franz Schilling Söhne Apolda (Thuringia) . The triad bell lasted only 4 years, because in 1917 the community lost its precious bronze bell. As was customary at the time, two of the three bells for war production during World War I were confiscated and melted down. The smallest bell was retained by the community for worship.
Bronze bell 1913-1917 (1922):
| Bell jar | Nominal | Dimensions | Lower ø | inscription |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | G' | 610 kg | 1.02 m | Blessed are those who suffer; for they are to be comforted. (Matthew 5,4) |
| 2 | b ' | 374 kg | 0.85 m | God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew 22:32) |
| 3 | d " | 178 kg | 0.67 m | Jesus Christ yesterday and today and the same forever. (Hebrews 13: 8) |
After the First World War there was in the Ev. Parish Niederlehme received a large amount of donations with the aim of getting a new bell ringing. This could be financed through numerous individual donations, endowments from the local industrial companies and the sale of the smallest still existing bronze bell (d "). The new bell consisted of 4 chilled cast iron bells from Ulrich & Weule (Apolda / Bockenem) and could be in. On Easter day 1922 The company Friedrich R. Plagens / Berlin-Niederschönhausen installed electrical chimes as early as 1938. Because the chilled cast iron bells were only partially durable, the bell system was desolate and the volume of sound had decreased significantly, the municipality decided to purchase one new chimes.
Chilled cast iron bell 1922-2012:
| Bell jar | Nominal | Dimensions | Lower ø | inscription |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | G' | 818 kg | 1.27 m | Vivos Voco-Mortuos Plango-Fulgura Frango |
| 2 | b ' | 527 kg | 1.07 m | no |
| 3 | c " | 330 kg | 0.93 m | no |
| 4th | cis " | 265 kg | 0.87 m | no |
Mixed chimes since 2012:
| Bell jar | Nominal | Dimensions | Lower ø | material | inscription |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | G' | kg | m | Cast steel | Peace to the coming (reference to Luke 24: 36-48) |
| 2 | b ' | kg | m | Cast steel | Joy for those who remain (refer to Acts 2:42-47) |
| 3 | c " | kg | m | Cast steel | Blessing the departing (reference to Luke 24: 50-51) |
| 4th | d " | 281 kg | m | bronze | Jesus Christ yesterday and today and the same forever. (Hebrews 13: 8) |
War memorial
On the south side of the church is the memorial for those who fell in the First World War (1914–1918) from Niederlehme. The monument in the form of a granite obelisk was created with funding from the local residents, the Landwehr Association and the local industrial companies and was inaugurated on October 11, 1925. A certificate with a dedication and a list of those involved in the construction was built into the foundation. In the lower third of the obelisk there are stone tablets on three sides with the names, days of death and places of death.
Pastor of Niederlehme
| Surname | Life dates | Term of office in Niederlehme |
|---|---|---|
| Heinrich Otto Hans Rehfeldt | * June 9th, 1884; † September 25th, 1935 | 1909-1930 |
| Gerhard Wilhelm Martin Friedrich Zademack | * January 27, 1896; † April 25, 1945 | 1931-1945 |
| Otto Richard Willy Fischer | * 06/27/1884; † January 19th, 1968 | 1946-1956 |
| Willi Hans Erich Balzer | * May 28, 1910; † November 20th, 1977 | 1956-1968 |
| Heinz Milkereit | * August 9, 1929; † October 24th, 2009 | 1968-1994 |
| Cornelia Marquardt | * August 5th, 1962 | 1994 - 2008 |
| Gottfried Hülsen | * August 29th, 1953 | 2008-2019 |
| Rebekka Wackler | * 1987 | since 2019 |
local community
On December 1, 1908, the Evangelical Church Community Niederlehme was established. It remained independent until 2007, when the communities in Niederlehme, Senzig and Zernsdorf merged to form the Evangelical Lukas Church community in Königs Wusterhausen . The parish is incorporated into the Berlin-Neukölln parish. Gottfried Hülsen has been the parish priest in Niederlehme since December 2008. About 250 Protestant church members belong to the Niederlehme parish. In the church or in the parish hall there are regular services, concerts, various cultural events as well as the gathering of parish groups.
Support association
Since July 4, 2009 there is the development association Ev. Church Niederlehme eV , which is specifically committed to the maintenance and renovation of the Evangelical Church of Niederlehme. The association sees its task, among other things, in organizing regular benefit events for the benefit of the church in order to provide financial means for the renovation measures.
Individual evidence
Web links
- Entry in the monument database of the State of Brandenburg
- Friends of Ev. Church Niederlehme eV
- Ev. Lukas parish in Königs Wusterhausen
- Support group old churches Berlin-Brandenburg eV
Coordinates: 52 ° 19 ′ 2.9 ″ N , 13 ° 39 ′ 2.6 ″ E