Church of the Redeemer, Sacrow
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Located south of the Brandenburg village of Sacrow, Germany, the Protestant Church of the Redeemer (German: Heilandskirche) lies on shore of the Havel. Because of its place and architectural style it's extraordinary. It was built in the Neo-Romanic-style with a freestanding campanile (bell tower) in 1844. The design was based on drawings by the Romantic on the Throne, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Ludwig Persius, the Architect of Kings, received the commission for the project.
The church lies around 100 meters below the small Palace of Sacrow and belongs to its park, which was greatly expanded in the 1840s by landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné. The church and castle were both restored in the 1990s and are part of the Potsdamer Havellandschaft, a recreation area, which stretches from the Pfaueninsel (Peacock Island) to Werder. Along with the palaces and gardens of Potsdam, the Sacrow complex has been recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The village of Sacrow, surrounded by woods and the Sacrower See, has belonged to nearby Potsdam since 1939. The Fuchsberge divide the park from Kladow district of Spandau, around three kilometers to the northeast.
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[edit] Earlier Churches in Sacrow
Little is known about the first church at Sacrow. The walled church was made of stone, stood in the middle of the town, and more than likely collapsed during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). The first description comes from a chronicle written in 1661, when the priest from Fahrland became responsible for the community's pastoral needs.
In 1694 a half-timbered church was erected at the same location; the arches of the previous building's crypt were still located underneath it.
The Fahrländer Pastor from 1774 to 1794, Johann Andres Moritz, gave a detailed description of life in the village and of the changing owners of the farmhouse built in 1774 in his diary. In Theodor Fontane's Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg (Hikes through the Mark Brandenburg), these records were repeated in their simplest form. In 1790, Father Moritz also wrote down the feelings that he had against caring for the parish (repeat by Fontane): "Meine Pfarre ist eine beschwerliche Pfarre. Sakrow (nur Filial) liegt eine Meile ab...es ist in allem betrachtet ein verdrießlich Filial, und doch muß ich es alle 14 Tage bereisen. Gott! Du weißt es, wie ich dann...bis Abend fahren und reden muß, wie sauer es mir jetzt wird...." ("My parish is an exhausting parish. Sakrow (only Filial) lies a league away...it can only be viewed as an irksome Fillial, and of course I must travel all of it every 14 days. God! You know it, how I then...must drive and speak until evening, how angry it now makes me become....") After Father Moritz's death, Sacrow was transferred to the care of [[St. Nikolai Church, Potsdam, in 1794, and was returned to Fahrland after 1808.
The small half-timbered church was unusable after 1813 and had to be torn down in 1822 because of its dilapidated state. The Christian community arranged to meet in a prayer room in a house near the manor, which later became the palace. This was the state of affairs until the Church of the Redeemer was finished in 1844.
[edit] The Church of the Redeemer
[edit] Parish History
Over the centuries the village of Sacrow and its manor changed hands many times. In October 1840, Friedrich Wilhelm IV bought the estate for 60,000 thalers and added it to his lands in Potsdam a month later. Long before the purchase, the king had sketched out a church building for Sacrow. The new building was appropriate for a cove, a port where fishermen on the Havel could seek shelter with their boats during storms. For the king, the location quite symbolic: he saw the nave as a bulwark against the storms of life. The church seal alludes to this with its Latin inscription: S. Ecclesiae sanctissimi Salvatoris in portu sacro (Church of the Most Holy Redeemer in the Sacred Port).
Ludwig Persius, the court architect, turned the king's sketches into a building and put his colleague, Ferdinand von Arnim, in charge of the construction process. The church extends into the water and gives the impression of an actual ship anchored near the lakeshore. This design took up a third of the actual overall construction cost of 45,234 thalers and 27 silver grosch. The palace was used as the church's parsonage. Construction began in 1841, and the church's festive dedication took place three years late on July 21, 1844.
Beginning in 1842, the landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné designed the church grounds, the cove, the Sacrow Palace's park, and a rented house in the Italian style (1843/44) by Persius called "Zum Doctor Faustus", which stood farther to the east. In his usual fashion, Lenné designed wide walking paths and a wide view of the Parks of Glienicke and Babelsberg, of the Potsdam New Garden, and of the City of Potsdam itself. Through his transformation of the landscape, the over 24 hectare (c. 60 acre) Sacrow Park was incorporated into the Potsdamer Havellandschaft.
After the dedication on July 21, 1844, Sacrow remained an independent church community for only four years. Then it became part of the parish of the Church of Peace at Sanssouci, and after 1859, it was assigned to the parish of Bornstedt. The final change came in 1870, when the Church of the Redeemer was merged with the Parishes of Klein-Glienicke (later part of Neubabelsbern) and the District of Stolpe (now Berlin-Wannsee), and the Church of Ss. Peter and Paul on Nikolskoje.
[edit] Architecture
[edit] The Nave
As with the later Church of Peace in Sanssouci Park, the Church of the Redeemer used early Christian buildings, as well as Roman markets and forums, as inspiration for the final design. The builder based his design on common prayer houses and created a simple, shallow roof in comparison to the soaring arches of the popular Neo-Romanic-style. The early-Christian style building was, for Friedrich Wilhelm IV, an architectural reminiscence of early Christianity, whose unified community of the faithful inspired him.
The over 9 meter high, 18 meter long, and 8 meter wide church building, with its eastern apse, is surrounded by a covered arcade. This gives the church the visual impression of a three-aisle basilica. Since the arcade protrudes onto a semi-circular platform in the Havel, to those in the river or in Wannsee-Berlin on its opposite shore, the church looks like it an old ship anchored near the bank. From a distance, the bell tower looks like the chimney of a Mississippi steamboat, an impression the reflection in the water only enhances.
The fluted columns have a palmette ring of cast zinc instead of capitals. At the front entrance the row of columns is broken by two wide pilars of sandstone. On them are Bible verses carved into the stone: the Gospel of John verses 1-16 and 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Light enters the church's interior through the round arched window in the clerestory and the rose window on the western gable. The outer walls, with their yellow-rose bricks, were striped with blue varnish broken by yellow tiles. The church resembles a Greek temple from pre-Christian times with its pitched roof and different devices. On the roof's peak is a pediment cross made of the same cast zinc as at the front.
[edit] The Campanile
On rectangular forecourt with its exedra on the narrow side, stands the over 20 meter high campanile (from Latin campana = bell). The tower has the same mixture of bricks and tiles as the rest of the church. The arched windows rise to the top and end in the last story with an open belvedere. The tower culminates in a shallow pavilion roof with a ball and cross atop it.
The Church of the Redeemer campanile contains an c. 600 year old bronze bell. Its traditional casting date is 1406, although this is impossible to prove. It was first mentioned in 1661. The bell presumably comes from the old stone church. A second bell was confiscated for armament production in 1917 and its replacement suffered the same fate in 1944.
In the summer of 1897, the bell tower was used by the physicists Adolf Salby and Georg Graf von Arco to try to perfect Marconi's radio technology. It was the site of the first German antenna for wireless telegraphs. On August 27, their signal transmission arrived at the imperial seaman station Kongsnaes on the opposite side of the Jungfernsee at Swan Alley in Potsdam 1.6 km away . A commemorative plaque was erected in 1928 by Hermann Hosaeus over the entrance door to the Campanile alludes to this incident (see the picture in the links). In the middle of the plaque, which is made of green dolomite, is Atlas supporting the globe, surrounded by lightning and the commemoration: "An dieser Stätte errichteten 1897 Prof. Adolf Slaby und Graf von Arco die erste Deutsche Antennenanlage für drahtlosen Verkehr." (At this spot in 1897, Profs. Adolf Slaby and Graf von Arco erected the first German antenna for wireless communication.)
[edit] Church interior
The simple church hall is dominated by Byzantine-style frescoes in the apse. On it glazed gold underside is Christ enthroned holding the Book of Life, surrounded by the Four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with their symbols of the lion, eagle, man, and bull. Angels float in a half-circle above their heads. At the peak of the half-circle is the dove representing the Holy Ghost. Adolph Eybel undertook the painting in 1845, basing his work on a sketch by the most important German romantic painter, Carl Joseph Begas. In the half-circle of the bema, the color sequence of the church hall, gold stars on a blue background, returns.
The original free-standing, cedar altar table was wantonly destroyed in 1961. Since a reconstruction was not possible because of missing documentation, a stylistically similar one now stands in its place. The nave has a coffered ceiling with secure timber-frame construction. The unique fields are covered with blue cloth and painted light blue stars. Between the clerestory windows stand statues of the Twelve Apostles made of linden wood. The were carved from 1840 to 1844 by Jacob Alberty. He used the apostle statues made by Peter Vischer for Sebaldus' Grave at St. Sebald in Nuremberg (c. 1500) and Christian Daniel Rauch's finished models for the Berlin Cathedral as examples.
The pews originally stood parallel to the long walls but are now arranged in blocks of four in the direction of the apse. The pews' very high backs and the similarly high doors between rows of benches prevent distraction and keep the parishioners' gaze raised to the three stages of worship: the altar, chancel, and lectern.
The only aisle in the church lies on the western side. The area on the other side is divided into a small sacristy and the steps to an organ gallery above. The original organ of 1844 had only five registers with an attached pedal. It was expanded in 1907 with more pipes, which gave it six manual and one pedal registers. It was destroyed by vandals in 1961. Until recently, the parish could not afford a new organ. The new instrument will be eqipped with two manuals, a pedal, and 14 registers on slider chests. In order to complete the general view of the gallery, at present the organ space is held by a deceitfully real looking paper mockup.
[edit] Destruction and Restoration after 1945
The building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 led over the following decades to the almost complete destruction of the Church of the Redeemer. The border between East and West Germany ran straight through the church property and the campanile was used as part of the protective wall and a high concrete slab was attached to it. The church building stood in the "no man's land" near West Berlin. In spite of these circumstances, regular services were still held until Christmas Eve 1961. A few days later, the church's interior, which stood in territory closely watched by the GDR border troops, was destroyed with some certainty by the troops. This made further use of the building impossible. With this action, the border authority sought and found a reason to completely seal off the church and forestall the eventual escape attempts at that part of the border.
When, years later, the ruinous condition of the church's outer structure could no longer be ignored by the West Berlin side of the Havel, they tried with political means to stop further decay. Through the initiatives of the then Mayor of West Berlin, Richard von Weizsäcker, and after long drawn-out negotiations between the church and GDR governmen's positions, the church's outer structure was restored. However, the donations from the Tagesspiegel Foundation and from the West Berlin Senate never arrived at the representative of the Potsdam companies to which they were sent.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, after almost three decades, services were held at the church on Christmas Eve 1989. The still destroyed church interior of the Church of the Redeemer received its current look after an extensive restoration, which lasted from 1993 to 1995. The enquiries on this matter began in 1990. The architects assigned this mission worked together with the Monument Commission and the Church Building Authority. They used some still existent drawings and black-and-white photos to reconstruct the architectural details and to restore the original structure as much as possible. However, the consoles under the apostle statuettes are freely modeled after the historic originals, and knowledge of the statuettes' original order has been lost as well.
Eight hectares of the garden areas designed by Peter Joseph Lenné were completely destroyed in the course of fortifying the border and the Sacrow Palace Park was diverted from its intended use though the building of garages and kennels, as well as the typical border interface for the training of customs dogs. The park's rebuilding took place beginning in 1994.
Since the parish was dissolved in 1977, the community has belonged to the Church of the Pentacost Parish in Potsdam and since its restoration in 1995, regular services and concerts have taken place there.
[edit] References
- The information in this article is based on that in its German equivalent.
- PEDA-Kunstführer: Potsdam-Sacrow. Heilandskirche. Ev. Kirchengemeinde Potsdam-Sacrow (Ed.). Kunstverlag PEDA, Passau 1998 ISBN 3-930102-33-1
- Theodor Fontane: Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg . Part 3. Havelland. (1st Edition 1873.) Here, the version published by the Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, München 1971, Frankfurt/M, Berlin. ISBN 3-485-00293-3 Quote Chapter Sacrow, pg. 223-234
[edit] External links
- (English) Sacrow Park
- (German) Heilandskirche Sacrow
- (German) ars-sacrow.de
