St. John Evangelist Church (Berlin)
The St. Johannes Evangelist Church is a Protestant church in the Mitte part of Berlin's Mitte district , which was built between 1898 and 1900. It belongs to the Evangelical Church Community am Weinberg in the church district of Berlin Stadtmitte . The addition to the name indicates that it is dedicated to John the Evangelist , not John the Baptist .
location
The church is located in the Spandauer Vorstadt district and is located at Auguststrasse 90, directly in line with the houses.
history
Since 1825, Friedrich-Wilhelm-Stadt, west of the Spandauer Vorstadt, developed so quickly that it received the St. Philip Apostle Church as a branch of the Sophienkirche in 1851/1852 . In 1856, not only was this part of the community independent, but at the same time the area between Ziegelstrasse (today: Tucholskystrasse) and Friedrichstrasse was assigned to the newly founded Johannes-Evangelist- Congregation by the still large Sophien- Parochie .
At first she did not have her own church. Only in 1859 was through private initiative, a small brick chapel with a roof turret and a rectory are on the property Auguststraße 90 built. In 1897 these buildings were demolished again.
According to the design of Max Spitta and under the direction of the Bürkner building council, the church that still stands today was built on this property between 1898 and 1900. It was inaugurated on September 19, 1900.
However, the parish of the Johannes Evangelist congregation was very tight from the start. When the advancing expansion of the inner city around 1900 also encompassed northern Friedrichstrasse and displaced the resident population, the number of parishioners also decreased again.
During the Second World War , an incendiary bomb hit the decorative gable on the street side and the roof turret. After a simplified restoration in the 1950s, the church was consecrated again in 1957.
Since numerous ruins and fallow land determined the area of the community and the number of members was thus further decimated, the parish was dissolved in 1978 and divided among the three neighboring communities. The legal succession and thus ownership of the building was transferred to the Sophiengemeinde. However, at this point in time the church was no longer used for sacred purposes, as it had previously been transferred to the Humboldt University by means of a lease , which it used as a book store for the nearby university library.
When the lease expired, the university magazine cleared the St. John Evangelist Church in the summer of 2002 and returned it to its owner. On January 10, 2003, it was re-inaugurated by Bishop Wolfgang Huber . Somewhat unusual, the dedication service took place in the evening at 10 p.m. However, this was intentional, because initially there will only be services here on the last Friday of the month at this time.
Since November 2010, regular Sunday church services have been taking place in the St. Johannes Evangelist Church for the first time, which are organized by the Evangelical Culture Workshop in Berlin-Mitte.
In addition, the building is mainly used as a cultural church for events such as exhibitions and concerts (vocal music).
In August 2020, after a morning prayer, the holy and divine liturgy of the parish of St. Georgios of the Antioch-Orthodox Metropolis of Germany and Central Europe of the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch with the celebrant Bishop Hanna Haikal will take place every Sunday . The congregation also keeps the church open to visitors from Tuesday to Friday. An Orthodox iconostasis is built into the altar area .
Building description
Exterior
Auguststrasse 90 is a typical house plot that was actually intended for the construction of a simple residential building with a side wing and rear building. Thus, the building is completely characterized by the given, for a church building, very modest property conditions. Although it was no longer unusual for church buildings around 1900 that they did not stand in prestigious places, but rather had to be integrated into the suites of houses, the space was rarely as cramped as here. Therefore, the area was almost completely built over. The longitudinal walls run along the fire walls of the neighboring properties, which means that there is no window through. Therefore, the interior could only be given light from above through a glass roof.
The church shows itself in neo-Romanesque forms. The clinker-clad facade is characterized by a porch decorated with Wimperg - including a Christ medallion - which is set into the street front with the two flanking two-storey staircases. In the wall behind it, above the entrance hall, there is a window rosette , which is crowned by a gable field with three sound arcades that towers above the eaves . There was no space for a separate tower, only a tall, slate-covered roof turret - which was not restored after being destroyed in the war - had towered over the gable.
Interior
The church space is designed as a longitudinal structure and divided into three arched bays . These are carried by bundles of pillars that stand in front of drawn-in buttresses so that stitch caps are created on the sides . The organ gallery is located on the entrance side, further galleries run on the sides between the buttresses. The altar niche is designed as an apse , which used to be decorated with a mosaic . Arches, vault ribs and buttresses are brick-faced, pillars and capitals are made of sandstone . In total, the church originally offered space for 736 seats. In the three bays the light falls through skylights with a diameter of five meters each. These glass domes used to be decorated with colored ornamental glass.
Since these colored skylights created the incidence of light from domed buildings, the room together with the lost apse mosaic should have made a mystical-sacred impression.
literature
- Institute for Monument Preservation (ed.): The architectural and art monuments in the GDR. Capital Berlin I ; Henschelverlag: Berlin 2nd edition 1984; P. 289.
- Günther Kühne / Elisabeth Stephani: Evangelical Churches in Berlin ; CZV-Verlag: Berlin 2nd edition 1986; ISBN 3-7674-0158-4 ; P. 391.
Web links
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List with further information
- Description of the construction on the website of the Sophien-Gemeinde ( Memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
Remarks
- ↑ Berlin. Congregation St. Georgios on the website of the Antiochene Orthodox Metropolis of Germany and Central Europe of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch (accessed on August 6, 2020).
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '34 " N , 13 ° 23' 27" E