St. Adalbert Church (Berlin)
The St. Adalbert Church is a Catholic church building in the suburb of Spandau in Berlin district of Mitte . The listed church was designed by the architect Clemens Holzmeister and was inaugurated in 1934.
Location and naming
The St. Adalbert Church, a branch church of the Church of the Heart of Jesus , is located at Torstrasse 168. The entrance is in the middle of the row of houses to the west and can only be recognized by the bronze letters above the courtyard entrance. The greater part of the church building extends over the courtyard. From Linienstraße , where there is also an entrance to the church, the building can easily be identified as a Christian sacred building .
The St. Adalbert was chosen as the patron of St. Adalbert parish since a majority of the community members to start up times from Silesia , East and West Prussia came. The Bishop of Prague, canonized in 999, was venerated there. His feast day is April 23. In addition, Adalbert was the patron saint of the former diocese of Lebus , whose diocesan territory came to the Diocese of Berlin in 1930 and in whose tradition it stood by a. took over the Lebuser diocesan coat of arms in a field of the Berlin diocese coat of arms.
history
1927 to 1945
In 1927 the parish of St. Adalbert was founded. With a parish membership of 7000 it was a subdivision of the Catholic parish of St. Sebastian . Until the current land on which the church is located was acquired in 1932, the parish masses were held in a nearby school sports hall. The foundation stone of the church was laid on September 18, 1932. On April 22, 1934, St. Adalbert was consecrated by Bishop Nikolaus Bares . The church was designed by the Austrian architect Clemens Holzmeister .
In 1943 part of the benches and the organ were damaged by an incendiary bomb , after which services continued to take place at alternative locations. It was not until Pentecost 1944 that celebrations could take place again in the church. In 1945 a second bomb hit the church and the sanctuary became unusable. Although two bombs and a grenade hit the church during World War II , it was little damaged compared to other Berlin churches, due to its location in a dense residential area and its inconspicuousness.
Post War and the Missionaries of Charity
After the conquest of Berlin, the Red Army used the church as a horse stable from May 1945. Liturgical implements and some valuables had previously been hidden or buried by parishioners to protect against robbery. Between 1946 and 1948 the church was repaired and could be consecrated again. It was restored again in the late 1980s.
From 1981 to 1991 sisters of the Order of Missionaries of Charity worked in the parish of St. Adalbert.
Consolidation with the congregation Herz Jesu
In 2001 the parishes of St. Adalbert and Herz Jesu were merged into a loose parish association. In 2003, however, St. Adalbert lost his independence through an archbishop's decree and was assigned to the Herz Jesu congregation. The Chemin Neuf Community , an ecumenically oriented institution, established the ecumenical center Net for God in the church in 2004 . This center offers space for prayer, training and encounter. The community was founded by a French Jesuit . She sees her task in daily prayer and in spiritual accompaniment.
Every Sunday and public holiday, Holy Mass is celebrated at 9 a.m. in St. Adalbert's Church, and at 11 a.m. in the extraordinary form of the Roman rite.
architecture
Clemens Holzmeister, the church's architect, once said: “The building of St. Adalbert remains one of the most beautiful memories in my life”.
Construction details
It is an expressionistically shaped brick hall building . The semicircular apse is symmetrically integrated into the facade of the residential buildings. The altar niches with a rectangular floor plan are supplied with daylight by narrow semicircular windows extending over three floors. The choir, on the other hand, only has five bright semicircular windows at a height of about 15 meters, which create a mystical lighting inside. The church building does not have a bell tower.
interior
The raised altar apse is divided into the main choir and two altar niches. The baptismal font is in the left niche, the right one contains a side altar. The sanctuary was equipped with two bronze doors, which formerly served as delimitations for knee benches. It contains the relics of St. Dominic , the founder of the Dominican Order . Above the altar , the seven sacraments are symbolically represented in the form of a cross. Mosaics from Egbert Lammers' studio decorate the choir room. Under the four saints (Sebastian, Petrus, Adalbert and Hedwig) the following inscription “Haurietis de fontibus salvatoris” ( Latin for “Draw from the sources of the Savior”) can be read.
On the left side of the church there is a large wooden cross that was made by Adlhardt, a woodcarver from Tyrol , as a film set for the film The Rebel . After filming was completed, the parish received the cross as a gift.
The church has had a Steinmeyer organ with 1132 pipes since 1942 . Also worth seeing is the Way of the Cross created by Rudolf Hettzel, which runs along the right wall of the church building. The sacristy houses a Pietà carved in late Gothic style , which dates from the beginning of the 16th century.
literature
- The architectural and art monuments of the GDR , Berlin, I. Ed. Institute for Monument Preservation at Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 303.
- Franz Prechtl: St. Adalbert in Berlin-Mitte , Berlin: Lukas 2019, ISBN 978-3-86732-285-0 .
Web links
- Catholic Parish Herz Jesu - St. Adalbert Church
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List with further information
swell
- Information brochure from the community of St. Adalbert
- Conversation with the parish sexton
- Congregational letter Herz Jesu, May / June 2008. Ed .: Katholische Pfarrgemeinde Herz Jesu
Individual evidence
- ↑ Illustration: Coat of arms of the diocese of Lebus
- ↑ St. Adalbert Church (Berlin). In: arch INFORM ; Retrieved December 1, 2009.
- ^ Website of the worship group for the extraordinary Roman rite in Berlin
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '42.6 " N , 13 ° 23' 44.7" E