St. Markus (Berlin-Mitte)

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St. Markus Church, 1852
lithograph by Johann Gabriel Friedrich Poppel

The St. Mark's Church was a Protestant church in today's Berlin district of Mitte . It was located on the now defunct Weberstrasse near today's Strausberger Platz , on the border with Friedrichshain . Today, Weydemeyerstrasse is built over your location.

The church was almost completely destroyed in an American air raid in May 1944. The ruins were only removed in 1957 as part of the socialist redesign of the district.

architecture

The St. Mark's Church was built as a brick building by the architect Georg Erbkam based on a design by Friedrich August Stülers . The original Gotthilf Louis Runge design was significantly changed. The octagonal central building with apse takes the northern Italian Renaissance of the 15th century, in particular the Florence Cathedral, as a model. Divided vertically by pilaster strips and horizontally by broad, dark strips of bricks, the church was supplemented by a later added 59.63 m high tower in the west, which comprised five floors and had a flat roof. This bell tower was built at the request of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV , who paid part of the costs. Overall, the king contributed significantly to the change in the original building plans.

Inside, the central room was supported by eight sandstone pillars almost 13 m high . The approximately 47 m high dome was dominated by a vaulted dome with a diameter of almost 50 m. The altar niche was characterized by frescoes by August Theodor Kaselowsky , Julius Schrader and Karl Stürmer , which showed the four evangelists in addition to the blessing Christ. The dome, decorated with stars, contained allegorical figures of angels, created by Wilhelm Peters and Hermann Schultz.

In 1908 extensive renovations and redesigns were carried out under the leadership of Government Building Director Julius Kohte .

history

Construction of Stalinallee and Strausberger Platz, 1952. In the background the ruins of the Markus Church

The church was built between 1848 and 1855 as a place of worship for the daughter community of the Georgen community on the old Georgenkirchhof. The foundation stone was laid on October 16, 1848. On the same day, members of the vigilante group shot at insurgent workers; due to the uneasy situation, no one from the royal family was present when the foundation stone was laid. On December 11, 1849, the church roof with a dome was erected. In the period that followed, however, there were financial bottlenecks. The inauguration did not take place until October 28, 1855. Again without the king, who was in poor health.

Construction costs totaled 134,000 thalers, of which the Berlin magistrate contributed 69,000 thalers and the Prussian state 39,000 thalers. The congregation, located in the poorer part of the capital, was not always able to pay the pastors' salaries on time at the end of the 19th century, and Friedrich Wilhelm IV's original wish that the new suburban churches would promote a kind of re-Christianisation of the workers was not fulfilled either. In 1876 a rectory was built with funds from the city.

The Markus congregation grew so rapidly in the decades after the church was built that it finally comprised no fewer than 130,000 people. Therefore, it was decided to separate three new parishes, for which church buildings were also built in today's Friedrichshain district in the first half of the 1890s. These were the Samariterkirche on today's Samariterstraße , the Resurrection Church on Friedenstraße and the Lazaruskirche on today's Grünberger Straße. Meanwhile, the first two church buildings have been preserved, the new building of the Lazarus Church, built in 1905–1907 and later referred to as the “Cathedral of the East” because of its size, was blown up after severe damage in the Second World War in 1949 and was not rebuilt.

Between 1893 and 1913 the liberal theologian Max Fischer , a representative of cultural Protestantism , was pastor in St. Markus.

Badly damaged in the Second World War, like the entire area, the ruins of the church were torn down in 1957.

literature

Web links

Commons : Sankt-Markus-Kirche, Berlin-Mitte  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Map "Berlin around 1940". Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing; in the Berlin geographic information system FIS-Broker.
  2. ↑ Evangelical Church District Berlin City Center: St. Markus Church. Retrieved November 18, 2019 .
  3. ^ Partly to Berlin and its buildings , edition 1896, Volume II, p. 161.
  4. ↑ Quoted from the report on the municipal administration of the city of Berlin, 1863, p. 10.
  5. ↑ Volks-Zeitung , November 16, 1895, Morgenblatt, p. 5.
  6. ↑ Dirk Moldt : The cathedral of Friedrichshain . On: Friedrichshainer ZeitZeiger , June 1, 2017; accessed on March 4, 2019.
  7. ^ Walter Delius:  Fischer, Max Gustav Theodor Alexander. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 201 ( digitized version ).

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '11 "  N , 13 ° 25' 36.9"  E