St. Alfons (Berlin)
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The Catholic Church of St. Alfons , designated on January 31, 1932 , is located at Beyrothstrasse 2 at the corner of Emilienstrasse 23 in the Marienfelde district of Berlin in what is now the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district . It belongs to the pastoral area of Lankwitz-Marienfelde in the Archdiocese of Berlin . The basilica was the architect Josef Bischof designed . The New Objectivity continues to have an effect in his architectural style .
history
Two Catholic settlements, the Mariengarten settlement near the former Vom Guten Hirten monastery and the Marienfelde suburban settlement, are the starting points for the formation of a Catholic parish in Marienfelde. In 1928 the Redemptorist Order found itself ready to establish a branch in Berlin and to take over pastoral care for this area. Despite the severe economic depression of those years, he built the building complex of monastery and church in Marienfelde and chose the founder of the order, Alfonso Maria de Liguori , as the patron saint . In 1942 St. Alfons became an independent curate . The building complex was damaged in the Second World War . The church was poorly restored in 1945, the monastery was not rebuilt until 1952.
In 1974 a community center was built next to the monastery . From 1949 to 1961, the Redemptorists were entrusted with pastoral care for the refugees from East Germany in the Marienfelde emergency reception center. In 1965 St. Alfons became financially independent from the mother parish Maria Frieden . A small part of the curate was given to the new parish of the Church To the Holy Martyrs of Africa in 1967 . In 1970 the newly founded parishes of The Good Shepherd and Of the Resurrection of Christ are spun off. The Curate of St. Alfons becomes a parish in 1995 . In 2005 the parishes of St. Alfonso and Vom Guten Hirten merged. The congregation has been part of the Lankwitz-Marienfelde pastoral area since 2017 .
In 2020, on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Marienfeld, the church became part of the art project Paste Up History - Marienfelde Goes Street Art by the artist duo Maria Vill and David Mannstein. A photograph of a Redemptorist who writes the text "Mercy rises above judgment" was attached to the facade above the main entrance ( James 2.13 EU ).
Building description
The St. Alfons Church, built between 1931 and 1932, is one of the historicist buildings of the late 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, the architect Josef Bischof also designed essential parts of the offset row- built settlement. Bishop was not really convinced of his design of the church because at the request of the client he had to build a basilica with Romanesque echoes. The difficult task for the architect was, on the one hand, to meet the client's wishes and, on the other hand, to adequately correspond to a contemporary sense of form. The plastered masonry was built as a three-aisled basilica without a transept , with a slightly retracted choir and semicircular apse and low additions for the chapel and sacristy . On the garden side, a cloister connects the choir with the former monastery building.
The gabled roof of the raised central nave rests on a ceiling of concrete . The choir has a gable roof with a skylight on the outside and a flat ceiling with a skylight on the inside . The side aisles are covered with pent roofs. The upper aisles are very high, so that the interior in the nave receives a lot of light. The cross-vaulted five yokes of the side aisles, which are separated by arched arcades on simple pillars, are all the more compact .
A chapel for the baptismal font is added to the third yoke of the arcade of the right aisle .
In the middle of the gable of the nave there is a wheel window . The window glazing from the time of construction shows seven works of mercy . In 1981 the church was changed in line with the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council , and a new popular altar was erected.
Paul Brandenburg created an ambo , a tabernacle on a stele and an altar cross . The bronze reliefs of the stations of the cross also come from him . Naschitzki painted a portrait of the founder of the order. In 1959 the church received an organ from the Stockmann brothers .
The high bell tower , divided into four floors by cornices with a frieze below, was placed asymmetrically on the right side of the facade . Behind the romanized sound arcades of the tower only a bronze bell hangs in the bell room, which was cast in 1930 by Petit & Gebr. Edelbrock . The rest were melted down during the war. The bell, which survived the Second World War, weighs 300 kilograms, has a diameter of 85 and a height of 65 centimeters, and bears the inscription “ST. JOSEPH 1930 “and sounds on the strike note h '.
literature
- Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin: Berlin and its buildings. Part VI. Sacred buildings. Berlin 1997.
- Christine Goetz and Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz: Churches Berlin Potsdam. Berlin 2003.
- Klaus-Dieter Wille: The bells of Berlin (West). History and inventory. Berlin 1987.
- Gerhard Streicher and Erika Drave: Berlin - city and church. Berlin 1980.
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 25 '28 " N , 13 ° 22' 5.7" E