St. Nikolaus (Berlin-Friedrichshain)

Church hall of St. Nicholas

The St. Nikolaus Church is part of a building ensemble at Hildegard-Jadamowitz-Straße 25 in Friedrichshain , the location is opposite the confluence with Kadiner Straße. The church has more of the character of a small chapel and is located in the basement of the side wing of the ensemble. The patron saint of the church is St. Nicholas of Myra .

history

The St. Nikolaus building near Frankfurter Tor , erected in 1898, served the congregation of the Sisters of St. Elisabeth as a church. It was so badly damaged during World War II that it had to be demolished. Only a rebuilt, small church service room reminds of the old church.

During the GDR era, St. Nicholas was the center of the Catholic student community “Maria sedes sapientiae” in the eastern part of the city . The Bread of Life community has been based here since 2004 . The Catholic community hopes to rebuild the Church. The existing two-story house is to be expanded by three floors. It should therefore be brought to its original size before the war damage . In the future, the chapel will be under the roof and therefore closer to the sky.

For the parish are now the churches of St. Pius , St. Anthony and the worship site of St. Nicholas.

Social context

→ Main article : Christians and churches in the GDR # post-war period

The developments in St. Nikolaus after the Second World War cannot be understood without the social context . In many cities in Germany churches were destroyed or badly damaged during the war. After the division into four zones of occupation and four sectors in Berlin, as well as the coexistence of two German states between 1949 and 1990, the development was very different. While many churches were rebuilt in the west, the relationship between state and church in the east ( SBZ or later GDR ) was more problematic. Therefore, far fewer churches were rebuilt, some of the ruins were demolished or (as with St. Nicholas) the remainder was only poorly secured and preserved. This is reflected directly in the Friedrichshain church landscape. Numerous churches that characterize the cityscape (Markuskirche, Lazaruskirche, Andreaskirche , Elimkirche) have completely disappeared from the cityscape, here some of the parish houses are now also used for church services. Modest emergency churches have been built in side streets at two locations ( Christ Church / Wooden Church , Revelation Church ). Thus the different presence of Christian buildings in the city also reflects the changed social status. While some preserved large churches, such as the Samariterkirche , still dominate their neighborhood and important street axes with high towers and some axial alignment, churches such as St. Nicholas or the wooden churches appear in modesty or ostentatious poverty: as places of silence and prayer on Roadside, as well as meeting places of the congregation for the preaching and praise of God.

Building description

The church is pretty hidden today. It can only be reached via Hildegard-Jadamowitz-Straße and is part of a building ensemble consisting of a front building and side wing as well as a high wall surrounding the courtyard. The church itself is located in the inner / back courtyard of the building and can therefore only be reached by walking through the front building from Hildegard-Jadamowitz-Straße. It has more of the character of a small chapel. Access via Karl-Marx-Allee is no longer possible as the buildings on the former Stalinallee cordon off the entire area from the avenue. Seen from the Frankfurter Tor and from Karl-Marx-Allee, the facility is apparently in the back yard behind the southern tower of the Frankfurter Tor . The ensemble can be reached through a colonnade at Frankfurter Tor integrated into the buildings on Karl-Marx-Allee, as if through the eye of a needle. Looking closely through the colonnades, the ensemble can be seen in the background, but not recognizable as a church.

The ensemble does not have a tower or other features that indicate from the outside that it is a church. The facility is also very inconspicuous, as it is lower and less complex than all of the surrounding buildings. In addition, it looks like a foreign body because it is the only remaining building on the street.

Until the end of the Second World War, a church stood here in the courtyard in a district of the Wilhelminian era . However, with the construction of Stalinallee in the 1950s, the area was completely redesigned. A small inconspicuous two-story house was built on the foundation walls of the old St. Nicholas Church. The worship room is located in the side wing, which is reached through the hall of the front building. A sign on the front door on the street indicates the church.

Furnishing

Despite the small room there is an altar , benches and a mural depicting the Way of the Cross , executed in 1984 by Wolfgang Wiesinger. A late Gothic, wooden sculpture indicates the patron saint of the church. A round mosaic on the altar wall was created by Bernd Schmidt in 1955. The chancel was redesigned in 1967.

literature

• Christine Goetz , Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz: Churches Berlin Potsdam. More publishing house, Berlin 2003
• Hilde Herrmann: Development and expansion in the diocese of Berlin. More publishing house, Berlin 1968

Web links

Commons : St. Nikolaus (Berlin-Friedrichshain)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Description on the website of the Catholic parish of St. Antonius
• Description on "All churches in Berlin"
• Description under "Church under roof"
• Sisters of St. Elisabeth

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '55.2 "  N , 13 ° 27' 5.4"  E