St. Sebastian (Berlin)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
St. Sebastian, view from Ackerstrasse

St. Sebastian (also called Sebastiankirche for short ) on Gartenplatz in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen is a Catholic church in Berlin . It was built in the neo-Gothic style in the years 1890-1893 and originally designed for 1,000 seats and 3,000 standing places. In its current design, it has around 600 seats and is used jointly by the St. Sebastian community and the Croatian-speaking community of Berlin. The sacred building is on the Berlin State Monument List.

history

Main entrance

The Hedwig Church has been available to Catholics living in Berlin since 1773 . Their number grew so strongly in the 19th century as a result of industrialization through immigrants from the eastern provinces of Prussia that on January 1, 1861, the parish of St. Sebastian was founded. It went back to the Catholic parish of the Invalidenhaus, which had existed since the end of the 18th century, and was the second Catholic parish in Berlin after the simultaneous incorporation of Weddings and Gesundbrunnens. The services continued to be held in the St. Sebastian's Chapel of the Invalidenhaus, donated by Friedrich II. In 1748, as the necessary funds had to be raised for the construction of a separate church.

In 1890 a neo-Gothic church was built on the garden square, which had served as a place of execution ( Galgenplatz ) until 1837 , based on a design by the architect Max Hasak, based on the model of the Elisabeth Church in Marburg . The church was consecrated on June 26, 1893 by Prince-Bishop Georg von Kopp von Breslau .

The church musician Carl Thiel worked as organist and choir director from the beginning of the congregation until 1910.

Due to the increase in the population at the industrial site Gesundbrunnen, the community had 50,000 members after the turn of the 20th century, so that several subsidiary communities were parished out in the first few years.

On November 16, 1943, Provost Bernhard Lichtenberg, who had died a few days earlier while being transported to the concentration camp , was carried to his grave from St. Sebastian. 185 clergymen and thousands of believers accompanied the funeral procession to the old cathedral cemetery of St. Hedwig in Liesenstrasse .

Allied bombardments destroyed the church on November 22, 1943 by incendiary bombs. The fire departments of the neighboring Szczecin train station and the AEG were prevented from extinguishing by the authorities, so that the church burned out in three days.

After the Second World War , the services were initially held outdoors, and the reconstruction of the church building, which was completed in 1950, did not begin until 1946. Until 1963, the Sebastiankirche was a replacement for the not yet rebuilt St. Hedwig's Cathedral . The Berlin bishops Wilhelm Weskamm (1951) and Julius Döpfner (1957) were enthroned here , Konrad Cardinal von Preysing (1950) and Wilhelm Weskamm (1951) were carried to their grave from here.

The construction of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961 cut up the congregation and pushed the church into a geographical peripheral location. The demolition of the tenements and the construction of modern high-rise buildings in the district led to many people moving away and moving in in the 1970s.

Another renovation took place in 1990–1993 on the occasion of the centenary.

Architecture and church interior

Interior of the church, view from the main entrance towards the altar

The representative building with a cross-shaped floor plan was clad with sandstone. The main nave is 21 to 23 meters high and there are three side chapels in each of the two side aisles. The star cross vault has a tension of 16.5 meters. The 87 meter high square tower is finished with a pointed helmet. On the tower there is a stone image of a crab, which is a reminder of the impressive donation made by a parishioner named Krebs for the construction of the church building. The amount provided was enough for the construction of the roof and a piece of the tower.

A rose window on the transept gable serves as the facade decoration and a relief of St. Sebastian from the workshop of the sculptor Nikolaus Geiger above the main portal .

The colorful choir windows were made by the Linnicher Kunstanstalt von Oidtmann & Co. The wood sculptor Gustav Kuntzsch , Wernigerode, created the altars and the case for the organ supplied by the Dinse brothers in Berlin .

In 1929 the high altar was erected and the church was painted. After the liturgical reform , the interior of the church was simplified in 1973/1974: an altar island was added to the crossing, and the tabernacle took the place of the high altar . The tabernacle, ambo and stalls are works by the blacksmith Bergmeister from Ebersberg .

literature

Web links

Commons : St. Sebastian  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Architectural monument Sebastiankirche on Gartenplatz
  2. ↑ On the civil parishes of the Invalidenhaus see Laurenz Demps : Das Königliche Invalidenhaus zu Berlin. History and development of its site . Sandstein, Dresden 2010, ISBN 3-940319-43-0 , p. 155
  3. ↑ In detail: Matthias Blazek: The execution of Henriette Meyer 1837 - The light in the Sebastiankirche in Berlin . In: Yearbook of the Berlin State Archives 2011 . Gebr. Mann, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-7861-2652-2 , pp. 37-45.
  4. ↑ The Sebastian Church . In: The Stralauer Fischzug. Legends, stories and customs from old Berlin. Verlag Neues Leben Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-355-00326-3 , pp. 176–177.
  5. ↑ Kathrin Chod, Herbert Schwenk, Hainer Weisspflug: St. Sebastian . In: Hans-Jürgen Mende , Kurt Wernicke (ed.): Berliner Bezirkslexikon, Mitte . Luisenstadt educational association . Haude and Spener / Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89542-111-1 ( luise-berlin.de - as of October 7, 2009).
  6. ↑ Information on the organ
  7. ^ The Catholic St. Sebastian Church in Berlin. In: Blätter für Architektur und Kunsthandwerk , 8th year 1895, Julius Becker Verlag, Berlin 1895, p. 70, plates 85–86, 105–106, 117–118.
  8. ↑ Catholic parish of St. Sebastian (ed.): From our history. In: Der Gemeindebrief St. Sebastian - April 2018, p. 10 f., St-sebastian-berlin.de, accessed on June 2, 2018.

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 '16.5 "  N , 13 ° 23' 0.9"  E