St. Luke Church (Berlin)
The St. Lukas Church is a church in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg . Together with the vestibule and campanile , it is built into the closed street front of Bernburger Strasse. The church was built from 1859 to 1861 as a nave with crossed arms under building inspector Gustav Möller . The design in the style of the royal basilica concept came from the head of the Prussian court and state building system, Friedrich August Stüler . The church was consecrated on March 17, 1861. It was destroyed on April 29, 1945. The church has been a listed building since 1953 and was rebuilt under the direction of the architect Georg Thofehrn . It was inaugurated on December 19, 1954. The church belongs to the parish of Berlin Stadtmitte . In 1960 the architect Henry Ziemendorf created the new administration rooms.
history
King Frederick William IV. , That of Stüler on his Italy was accompanied travel in winter 1858/1859, were the early Christian basilicas of Rome as models for his architectural ideas. For the king, the church buildings should not only be representative of the ruler, but at the same time combine pastoral care with diakonia . With this religious and charitable provision of the subjects, the secularized people should be led back to the faith. As part of Friedrich-Wilhelm’s church concept with the ongoing development of Berlin, eight large churches were built between 1844 and 1861 to complement Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s suburban churches, the last being the St. Luke’s Church. It was initially created as a branch of the neighboring St. Matthew Church , before the Luke parish became independent in 1865. From 1888 to 1891 the composer and organ virtuoso Wilhelm Middelschulte worked as a choirmaster and organist at the Lukaskirche.
The community grew rapidly until around 1890, because this part of the city quarter was one of the best addresses in the city. In the following years it decreased again with increasing urbanization of the area. In 1897, the churchyard of Saint Simeon and Saint Luke was set up for burials. Before the First World War the church had around 13,000 members, at the beginning of the Second World War it had around 6,000 and at the end only around 1,000. During the First World War, the bronze bells had to be handed in for armament purposes. They were replaced by cast steel bells , cast by the Bochumer Verein .
| Bell jar | Pouring year | Chime | Weight (kg) |
Diameter ( cm) |
Height (cm) |
inscription |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | 1926 | fis' | 1000 | 132 | 105 | STAY WITH US. ONE IS NECESSARY. |
| 2. | 1961 | g sharp ' | 440 | 108 | 90 | PEACE BE GOD ON HEIGHT, AND PEACE ON EARTH AND HUMANS A COMFORTABLE. |
| 3. | 1961 | ais' | 360 | 98 | 87 | COUNTRY + COUNTRY + COUNTRY + HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD. |
The first bell did not have to be made available to the war economy during World War II .
At the end of World War II, the church was badly damaged by Allied air raids . In 1950, the Office of Urban Planning set the degree of destruction of the church at over 70 percent, which would have meant demolition. In 1951 the pastor at that time obtained a recalculation of the degree of destruction at the building authority. With the value reduced to 48 percent, the church could be rebuilt. The construction work began in 1954 and ended on the 4th Advent of the same year. In 1987 the rest of the parish of the Trinity Parish, half of which is in the eastern part of the city , whose church had been destroyed in World War II, was merged with the St. Luke Parish.
In March 2001, through the merger of the Friedrichswerder congregation in Berlin-Mitte , the Trinity and St. Luke congregation in Kreuzberg, and the Jerusalem and New Church congregation in Kreuzberg, the Evangelical Church Congregation in Friedrichstadt was created , which among others uses the French Friedrichstadtkirche . The Evangelical Church offered the Berlin City Mission , whose headquarters were founded in Kreuzberg in 1884, the St. Lukas Church. The Stadtmissionsgemeinde Kreuzberg had a hall building at Johanniterstraße 2 since April 10, 1968, which was due for renovation after 40 years. But it did not get to that. On April 1, 2009, the Kreuzberg City Missionary Congregation started its work in St. Luke's Church. A leasehold contract was signed with the Protestant church .
building
In the design for St. Luke's Church, Stüler used the royal basilica concept with northern Italian, early Christian- Byzantine shapes. In the tightly enclosed property, Stüler thought windows in the upper storey were necessary. However, the costs were too high, so Möller carried out the construction as a single-nave nave . The nave had a double gallery and a transept . The short, low choir was closed off by an apse . Only the hall with arcades designed by Stüler , flanked by two-story functional buildings, and the tower on the street front, he retained. Moving away from the round arch style of early Christian Italian churches favored by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, Möller now used elements of the high medieval Romanesque . The nave was set back from the street by the width of the arcade. Its front gable behind the arcades had a group of three windows, a rose window above and a cross on the roof ridge . The gables of the side houses, which had three full storeys, also adorned rosettes and small crosses made of terracotta on their ridge. The roofs of the side houses and the roof of the nave had the same angle of inclination. The pedestals on the eaves of the church gable carried figures of the evangelists Luke and Matthew .
When it was rebuilt by Georg Thofern, the church was given a simple exterior, in contrast to the representative old church. The completely destroyed old nave was rebuilt in a similar shape, but much smaller. The side wings on the street were given one floor less. The small apse of the choir was taken over for the new church interior; there is no longer a transept. The tower, now hidden behind the continuous, transverse gable roof , was authentically restored up to the bell chamber. The spire was changed to take into account Stüler's design. The steep top, previously covered with slate, was given a blunt tent roof with a simple cross. The figures of the namesake of the own and the mother congregation, the evangelists Luke and Matthew, and the marble cross of the old altar are now in the vestibule.
Furnishing
Today's church hall is smaller than the old one and is relatively simply furnished. Crucifix , candlesticks and baptismal font from the baroque Trinity Church adorned the St. Luke Church from the time it was merged with the St. Luke congregation in 1987 until it was handed over to the Berlin City Mission in 2009. Siegmund Hahn , who had received the art prize of the city of Berlin in 1954 , depicted the evangelists Lukas and Matthäus on the left and right side wall of the church hall as plaster graffiti , a very old but inexpensive technique. Siegmund Hahn also designed the windows and mosaics; they were manufactured in the August Wagner workshops in 1957 . The organ , built by EF Walcker and Cie. , stands on the left in front of the choir arch . Your disposition can be viewed at the Organ Database .
literature
- Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin: Berlin and its buildings. Part 6: Sacred buildings. Ernst, Berlin a. a. 1997, ISBN 3-433-01016-1 .
- Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz: Old Churches in Berlin. Berlin 1991.
- Günther Kühne, Elisabeth Stephani: Evangelical churches in Berlin. Berlin 1978.
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments . Berlin. 3rd edition, reviewed and supplemented by Michael Bollé. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin a. a. 2006, ISBN 3-422-03111-1 .
- Klaus-Dieter Wille: The bells of Berlin (West). History and inventory (= The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. Supplement 16). Mann, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-7861-1443-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. Gisbert Schneider , "Wilhelm Middelschulte: Orgelwerke" (published: 1998), on: Cybele Records , accessed on May 2, 2017.
- ^ Organ Database
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 18 ″ N , 13 ° 22 ′ 48.5 ″ E