Chapel of Reconciliation
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The Chapel of Reconciliation (german: Kapelle der Versöhnung) is a place of worship in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
,
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. It stands on the site of the old Church of Reconciliation ( de) (german: Versöhnungskirche), on
Bernauer Strasse Bernauer is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Agnes Bernauer (1410–1435), the commoner wife of Albert III, Duke of Bavaria * Anna Bernauer (born 1986), Luxembourgish figure skater who competed for her entire career for Luxembou ...
in the Mitte district.


Church of Reconciliation

The church was completed in 1894 as an imposing brick-built building by the architect Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel, in the Gothic revival style. It sustained some damage in the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, and still had a deactivated American bomb in the basement discovered during its reconstruction in 1999, but the church survived the war. With the
Division of Berlin The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the governmen ...
in 1945, the church building found itself within the
Soviet sector The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
, with most of the parishioners in the neighbouring French sector. This meant that when the Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961, it ran directly in front of the church on its western side and behind it on the eastern side, preventing access to everyone except the border guards, who used its tower as an observation post. The church building was demolished in 1985 in order ‘to increase the security, order and cleanliness on the state border with West Berlin’ according to the official justification by the East German ( GDR) government. The cross on the tower fell off the church when it was blown up and the members of the church hid it from the Soviets until the end of the Cold War. Four years later in 1989, the Wall fell. File:Versöhnungskirche Berlin 1899.jpg, The Church of Reconciliation, pictured in 1899 File:Bernauer strasse luftbild.JPG, The Church, and the border zone: aerial view, 1970 File:Versöhnungskirche Bernauer Straße.jpg, The Church as it appeared in 1978


The rebuilding project

In the summer of 1990 the removal of the border fortifications began, leaving the land where the Church of Reconciliation had once stood overgrown with grass and shrubs. While the general trend was to get rid of the physical evidence of Berlin’s division, the Reconciliation Parish considered the most suitable use for the site, in a way that commemorated its past whilst looking towards the future. The result was to build a chapel on the site; a modern construction that considered ecological and historical concerns as well as the needs of its parishioners. The Berlin architects Rudolf Reitermann and Peter Sassenroth were commissioned to design the chapel. Wooden columns were used for the outer oval wall, which recreates the shape of the chapel’s predecessor and the inner oval of the chapel is made from pressed clay and follows the usual east-west
orientation of churches Within church architecture, orientation is an arrangement by which the point of main interest in the interior is towards the east ( la, oriens). The east end is where the altar is placed, often within an apse. The façade and main entrance are acc ...
. The chapel was constructed in 1999 under the leadership of the Austrian clay artist Martin Rauch. Volunteers from Open Houses (a German charity founded in 1989 that specialises in preserving endangered historical monuments in east Germany, with the help of foreign volunteers) came from fourteen eastern and western European countries to support the building project. To construct the walls, 30 cm of moist clay was put into position and then compressed by 8 cm, giving the wall’s structure its strength. Within the clay, pieces of stone and even glass are visible and these came from the rubble of the previous church. It is the first clay-built public building to be built for over 150 years in Germany and the first clay-built German church. On 9 November 2000, on the eleventh anniversary of the
fall of the Berlin Wall The fall of the Berlin Wall (german: Mauerfall) on 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, was a pivotal event in world history which marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain and one of the series of eve ...
, the Chapel of Reconciliation was consecrated. The chapel unites architectural and ecological modernity with remembrance, standing as a triumph against its predecessor's destruction. Its memorial and reconciliation roles are recognised by the chapel being part of Berlin Wall Memorial (''Gedenkstaette Berliner Mauer'') and with it being included in Coventry Cathedral’s Community of the Cross of Nails: a world symbol for reconciliation and peace. The chapel also has a replica of Coventry Cathedral’s Statue of Reconciliation, a gift of the Cathedral found in Hiroshima and
Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...
too – also places emerging from the destructiveness of war. After helping with the construction, Open Houses has continued its involvement with the chapel. Every year volunteers from around the world work at the chapel and help the parish with their work.


Gallery

File:La chapelle de la Réconciliation (Centre d'information du Mur, Berlin).jpg, Exterior of the chapel File:Versoehnungskapelle 2.jpg, View from within the outer chapel wall File:Versoehnungskapelle 4.jpg, Interior of the chapel File:Altarretabel in der Kapelle der Versöhnung.jpg, Detail of the altarpiece File:Versoehnungskapelle 5.jpg, Chapel's replica of the Coventry Cross of Nails


See also

*
List of deaths at the Berlin Wall There were numerous deaths at the Berlin Wall, which stood as a barrier between West Berlin and East Berlin from 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989. Before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented ...


External links

*
openhouses.de
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kapelle der Versohnung 19th-century churches in Germany Berlin Wall Buildings and structures in Berlin Churches completed in 1894 Churches in Berlin Former churches in Germany Mitte