Marienkapelle (Berlin)

Lady Chapel
Chapel building
address	Berlin-Mitte , Grosse Hamburger Strasse 43
builder	Vincent Statz
Denomination	Roman Catholic
local community	St. Mary
Current usage	Hospital church
building
start of building	1851
inauguration	1854
Renewals	u. a. in the 1970s and from the 1990s
style	Neo-Gothic
Dimensions	Stair tower: 3 m × 3 m Nave: length: 15 m, width: 12 m

The Marienkapelle is a chapel in the structural network with the Catholic St. Hedwig Hospital in Berlin city center . The main hospital building including the chapel has been a listed building since the 1980s. The chapel serves as a place of worship for the Borromeo sisters, hospital employees and patients . It is open all day.

History and description

The chapel was built together with the construction of the main building for the large St. Hedwig hospital in the years 1851–1854 according to plans and under the direction of the church builder Vinzenz Statz . As an eastern building, it is attached to the main house and clearly led out of the structure. Because of its compact design, it has only a few large, high-rise windows. The slender stair tower with a hexagonal floor plan on the southeast corner of the chapel is covered by a pyramid roof .

View of the church interior: chandelier, altar podium with figure of Mary, altar table and altar window with a crucifix in front of it and an ambo

Inside the chapel there is a carved figure of St. Mary on the altar podium with the baby Jesus on her lap. The Pietà , which was originally set up here , was given a new place at the beginning of the 21st century in a window niche next to the main staircase in the main house. Both figures date from the mid-18th century, so they were brought here from other institutions.

The wooden pews are arranged in two parallel rows of eight one behind the other and offer space for around 150 church visitors.

The Berlin church painter J. P. Nowag colored the ceilings and walls of the chapel in 1874 based on designs by the Cologne artist Kleinert. The colored surfaces were painted over white at the latest during a renovation at the end of the 20th century.

The whitewashed east wall with the altar is interrupted by a four-part high-rise, colorfully ornamented window in a nested pointed arch format. A symbolic representation of the Eye of Providence extends over several glass surfaces . Under the window and in the field of vision of the church visitors, a pointed arch niche with wall candlesticks on both sides with a simple, unadorned altar table and an ambo in front of it forms the service area. A wooden crucifix hangs in front of it .

In a shaped, pointed apse of the transept, there is a slightly raised organ . A waist-high wooden wall, decorated with garlands of leaves and lettering, separates the church from the interior.

A wrought iron chandelier hangs down from the vaulted ceiling of the chapel . In one corner of the church there is a simple copper holy water kettle.

On both long sides of the chapel there are colored panels that illustrate the Way of the Cross .

The floor is covered with colored mosaic tiles from Villeroy and Boch . In the center aisle between the benches they are designed as a carpet on which the four so-called basic elements fire (“Ignis”), water (“Aqua”), air (“Aer”) and earth (“Terra”) are symbolized. In the corridor in front of the altar street, on the other hand, the evangelists are represented by their symbols as well as Jesus Christ as mosaics.

earth
water
air
Fire

Marcus (lion)
Matthew
(The Man)
Lucas (bull)
Johannes (eagle)
Jesus christ
(pelican)

There are several pictures on the walls in the anteroom, including a. the subject of the Good Shepherd (author presumably Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld ; signed 1852), the namesake of the nursing facility St. Hedwig (painter E. Hammacher; 1867) and ten portraits of Superior General of the Borromeo Order from the 19th and 20th centuries. Century.

In the neighborhood

Near the chapel on the hospital grounds is the smaller early profaned Anna Chapel . It is also connected to neighboring buildings, and a wrought-iron cross is emblazoned on its spire . It stood empty in the mid-2010s, but according to an explanation board on the building it will serve as an open studio. A glass window created by the artist Charles Crodel is installed here.

Web links

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

Views from the Marienkapelle in St. Hedwigs Hospital with information about the services

Individual evidence

↑ Roughly measured all dimensions with the tool from Google Earth .
↑ ^a ^b ^c St. Hedwig Hospital: Part of the main building and Marienkapelle, Große Hamburger Str.
^ ^A ^b Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin-I . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 319 ff .
^ Ida Luise Krenzlin: Healthy through the clinic . In: Berliner Zeitung , 2./3. February 2019, pp. 18/19 (print edition).
^ Nowag, JP, painter> Oranienstr. 187 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1875, I, p. 632 (Church, portrait and history painter [as shown in the 1880 address book]).

52.526116 13.397238Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '34 " N , 13 ° 23' 50.1" E

[1] Roughly measured all dimensions with the tool from Google Earth .

[Denkmal-2] St. Hedwig Hospital: Part of the main building and Marienkapelle, Große Hamburger Str.

[BKDB-3] A ^b Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin-I . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 319 ff .

[Gesund-4] Ida Luise Krenzlin: Healthy through the clinic . In: Berliner Zeitung , 2./3. February 2019, pp. 18/19 (print edition).

[5] Nowag, JP, painter> Oranienstr. 187 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1875, I, p. 632 (Church, portrait and history painter [as shown in the 1880 address book]).