Luther Church (Berlin-Schöneberg)
The Luther Church is a brick church on Dennewitzplatz in the Schöneberg district of Berlin . The three-aisled hall church with transept was built between 1891 and 1894 according to a design by Johannes Otzen in an exposed location in terms of urban planning and is a listed building . The sacred building , executed in the historicized Gothic style, with its slender side tower is axially aligned with the general procession of Hobrecht's plan .
history
The initiative to build a church went back to the neighboring Twelve Apostles parish. Around 1880, 31,000 Protestants lived in the catchment area of the community. Their own church had already become too small for that. An additional church should take into account the further increase in population. The census of 1895 showed 40,383 evangelical souls for the newly founded community.
Only after the fourth application did the Berlin city council approve the construction of the Luther Church on June 1, 1887 (the area around the church had already been reclassified as Schöneberger Vorstadt in 1861 from Schöneberg to Berlin). The construction cost was set at 473,000 marks , but was clearly exceeded at 580,000 marks. On April 18, 1891, the foundation stone was laid in the presence of Emperor Wilhelm II and his wife Auguste Viktoria , and on May 5, 1894, the Luther Church was inaugurated in the presence of the Empress and Prince Friedrich Leopold of Prussia . The construction manager of the church was Johannes Otzens employee Moritz Korn .
The church was badly damaged in World War II when it was hit by incendiary bombs during Allied air raids on the night of November 22nd to 23rd, 1943 . After the war, the damaged church was first restored using provisional measures. Later the interior was restored in a simple and modern way.
The Luther Church was initially rented to the American Church in Berlin for five years from November 2002 onwards and in 2007 it became their property.
Building
The Luther Church on Dennewitzplatz in Schöneberg , designed in a mixture of neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic by Johannes Otzen in 1889, was lavishly designed. Its centralized floor plan follows the common pattern of the Thomas , Zion and Holy Cross churches . The rectangular entrance porch lies in the main axis. The spacious interior, spanned by star vaults , made up of a wide nave and narrow aisle-like aisles, had 1,500 seats. The three-sided gallery is bent inwards twice. For urban planning reasons, the 88 meter high tower is arranged at an angle between the polygonal choir and a polygonal transept , so that it can be seen from afar in the axis between Wittenbergplatz and Südstern . In the Park am Gleisdreieck , which opened in 2011-2013 , the general train as an extension of Bülowstraße and the line of sight to the tower were restored.
Particularly typical for Otzen is his bold eclecticism with randomly strung together architectural motifs.
Otzen's buildings show a striking lack of proportionality of the individual components. For example, the tower looks too massive in relation to the polygonal transept. The building details from the repertoire of the late Romanesque and late Gothic are sometimes arbitrarily mixed up. However, the architect showed himself to be more flexible in the choice of different building types than most contemporary church builders. For this reason he was one of the busiest church builders of his time.
The masonry is covered with red bricks and dark glaze stones, decorative parts are made of sandstone . The exterior is richly structured. There are some eyelashes above the buttresses and the large pointed arch tracery windows . The main tower with its pointed octagonal helmet is adorned with statues. The high bells each have three-part pointed arcades . There are stair towers on both sides of the entrance porch .
After the war damage had been removed, the church was rebuilt from 1959 to 1960. The original side galleries were not restored, the altar area and the main portal were changed and the tower entrance hall redesigned. A restoration of the original condition was not possible due to limited financial resources. The number of seats was now around 400 in the main nave and 50 seats in the gallery for the organ . For the organ that was destroyed in the war, a new one was inaugurated in 1964, built by Detlef Kleuker .
Furnishing
The three cast steel bells , which were made by the Bochum Association in 1893, survived both world wars because the authorities were not interested in cast steel . The bell is located in a square bell chamber with the basic dimensions 5.6 × 5.6 m. The production cost 6,256 marks.
| Bell jar | Chime | Weight (kg) |
lower diameter (mm) |
Height (mm) |
inscription |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| greatest | h o | 2205 | 1789 | 1565 | A SOLID CASTLE IS OUR GOD. |
| middle | dis ′ | 1410 | 1490 | 129 | THE WORD YOU SHOULD LET STAHN. |
| smallest | f sharp ′ | 853 | 1255 | 109 | THE REICH MUST REMAIN US. |
literature
- Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin: Berlin and its buildings. Part VI. Sacred buildings. Berlin 1997.
- Günther Kühne, Elisabeth Stephani: Evangelical churches in Berlin. Berlin 1978.
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments. Band Berlin. Munich / Berlin 2006.
- Klaus-Dieter Wille: The bells of Berlin (West). History and inventory. Berlin 1987.
Web links
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List with further information
- Evangelical Luther Church Congregation ( Memento from April 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- American Church in Berlin (ACB) , accessed January 19, 2013
Individual evidence
- ↑ Information on the organ
- ↑ a b compilation of the bells delivered to Berlin and the surrounding area ; Bochum Association, around 1900. In the archive of the Köpenick Church of St. Josef, viewed on August 6, 2019.
Coordinates: 52 ° 29 '47.1 " N , 13 ° 21' 58.8" E