| Gethsemane Church | |
|---|---|
| Basic information | |
| Location | Prenzlauer Berg, a locality of Berlin |
| Affiliation | United Protestant |
| Province | Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia |
| District | Sprengel Berlin, Kirchenkreis Berlin Stadtmitte |
| Website | Northern Prenzlauer Berg Congregation (official website) (German) |
| Architectural description | |
| Architect(s) | August Orth |
| Architectural style | mixing Romanesque Revivalism and neo-Brick Gothic |
| Completed | 1893 |
| Specifications | |
| Materials | brick |
Gethsemane Church (German: Gethsemanekirche) is one out of four church buildings of the Evangelical Northern Prenzlauer Berg Congregaton (German: Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Prenzlauer Berg-Nord), a member of the Protestant umbrella organisation Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia.
Gethsemane Church is the best known church in the locality of Prenzlauer Berg, in Berlin's borough of Pankow. The church was named after the Garden of Gethsemane (Old Aramaic גת שמנא, transliterated Gath Šmānê, Hebrew: גת שמנים, translit. Gath Šmānîm, lit. "oil press", transliteration in Greek: ΓεΘσημανι Gethsēmani) at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Christians revere the place for the Twelve Apostles and Jesus of Nazareth having prayed there the night before his crucifixion. Church and congregation played a crucial role before and during the Wende (peaceful revolution) in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in autumn 1989. From 1891 to 1893 the building was erected following the plans of Baurat[1] August Orth.[2]
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The Zion's Church Congregation commissioned Orth to build a new parish church for a congregation of its own to be territorially disentangled from that of the Zion's Church. Due to the high number of new parishioners moving in at the end of the 19th c. Zion's Church grew too small for the congregants. On February 26, 1893 Gethsemane Church was inaugurated and on March 15 the same year the Gethsemane Church Congregation (German: Gethsemane-Kirchengemeinde) was constituted with its parish comprising the formerly northern part of the parish of the Zion's Church Congregation.[3] In 1907 again, the parish of the Gethsemane Church Congregation was divided to form the Paul Gerhardt Congregation on March 15 (comprising the northerly part of the parish), and the Elijah Church Congregation on March 16 (comprising the southerly part of the parish), both building their own churches in 1910.
Today's congregation emerged from the merger of four congregations (those of Elijah, Paul Gerhardt, Gethsemane and Church of the Blessing) in March 2001. Each congregation contributed – among other things – its church building, to wit Church of the Blessing (German: Segenskirche), Gethsemane Church, Paul Gerhardt Church, and Elijah Church (German: Eliaskirche, now a museum for children). In the former three and the Elijah Domed Hall the congregation provides services of worship. Its parish comprises the northeastern part of the Suburb towards Rosenthal (German: Rosenthaler Vorstadt), which was divided among Berlin's three former boroughs of Wedding, Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, following the formation of Greater Berlin by the Prussian Greater Berlin Act in 1920. The population in the parish of the Northern Prenzlauer Berg Congregaton underwent a change after 1990, with many young people and families moving in.
Gethsemane Church is located at the crossroads of Stargarder Straße with Greifenhagener Straße about 100 meters eastwards from Schönhauser Allee close to the homonymous combined S-Bahn and Underground station. The church building is oriented and its western tower forms a decorative façade towards the crossroads. Gethsemanestraße surrounds the quire at the eastern side of the building and its northern side, forming with the two other street a kind of a square around the church.
Stargarder Straße shows a slight curve at the crossroads so that Gethsemane Church forms a landmark to be seen from both ends of the street. The northern suburbs of Berlin comprise only few prestigious buildings, thus the school and Evangelical church buildings make up most of the sights of architectural interest.
Caroline Griebenow, a big real estate proprietor in the area, donated the site for the construction of a church. The site was first refused, because it lay in an area not yet built up.[4] Finally on March 20, 1891 the cornerstone was laid. In 1866–1873 the architect, August Orth, had also built Zion's Church, then serving the parishioners as place of worship. The Evangelical Association for the Construction of Churches (German: Evangelischer Kirchenbauverein), a charitable organisation then headed by Queen Augusta Victoria, financed the constructions. The Prussian King William II attended the inauguration of Gethsemane Church in his then function as summus episcopus (Supreme Governor of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces) and proclaimed the building to be named Gethsemane Church.
Gethsemane Church, like Zion's Church, harmonically combines the outside impression of a longish shape, as typical for traditional (Roman Catholic) churches, due to their long inside nave and the centralised auditory hall, as typical for genuine Protestant church buildings.[5] Inside the crossing is extended to a wide octagon, including the side naves, allowing the congregants a good view and listening. The pulpit originally stood in the centre of the octagon.[6] Due to the high number of congregants at the time of its construction lofts hang around the octagonal prayer hall except of its eastern side, which is open to the quire. On the western side of the octagon the lofts are even double storied with an additional upper organ loft. The building weathered the Second World War intact. In 1961 the interior was renovated. On this occasion the altar was drawn from the apsis into the prayer hall.[7]
According to the style, Orth oscillates between forms of Romanesque Revivalism with round arch windows and neo-Brick Gothic with traceries and rib vaults. The eastern quire is formed like a polygonal apsis, illuminated by three coloured windows of stained glass (as of 1893) and surrounded by an ambulatory, which houses the sacristy and other rooms for purposes of the congregation.[8]
The western tower of a square ground plan, topped by a steep copper-roofed spire of 62 m height, comprises a vaulted entrance hall. The outside façades are built from red bricks and structured by buttresses and pinnacles.
The lofts are confined by stone parapets of little Romanesque columns and glased terracotta. The organ is a modern instrument by the company Sauer from Frankfurt upon Oder. The relocated altar is decked by a crucifix and candlestick by Fritz Kühn (as of 1961).[9] In the southern transept there is the expressionist wooden sculpture Praying Christ by Wilhelm Groß (as of 1923).[10] The sculpture commemorates Jesus of Nazareth in the garden of Gethsemane, praying before his arrestment: "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." (Gospel of Matthew 26:39). The sculpture displays this moment, when Jesus begged for his life, in a touching way. The sculpture was donated in honour of the parishioners, who died in the battlefields of First World War.
The statue of the Benedictive Christ, rescued from the Church of Reconciliation (German: Versöhnungskirche), before it was exploded in 1985 by the GDR government in order to clear more space along the Berlin Wall, now (since 1993) stands outside in front of the western portal of Gethsemane Church. A bronze statue of the Benedictive Christ (after Bertel Thorvaldsen) originally shown at the western entrance is now presented on the cemetery of the congregation in Berlin-Nordend.[11]
Since 1994 a copy of the expressionist statue of the Geistkämpfer (spiritual fighter) by Ernst Barlach[12] (original of 1928, created for the Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit in Kiel) stands in front of the southern façade in order to commemorate the activists fighting for democracy in the GDR.[13]
In the churchyard directed to Stargarder Straße a plate commemorates the resistants against the Nazi government by Karl Biedermann. The GDR government denied it to be displayed on its provided site, for lacking heroic symbols of the fight, and was thus erected on church ground on October 3, 1990.
In the 1980s the Gethsemane Church Congregation, like many other congregations, turned into meeting points of opponents of the GDR regime (see also Monday demonstrations in East Germany) and the independent peace movement. This was because congregations, though infiltrated by agents, were the only non-streamlined organisations in the GDR, where opponents could meet. So people, attending rogation prayers for arrested opponents, peace prayers or public discussions, were not necessarily parishioners or even congregants. In 1987 the congregation participated in the Protestant Church Convention, attracting people from all over East Germany. The opposition intensified after on January 17, 1988 demonstrators, showing banners with Rosa Luxemburg's quotation "Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently" (German: Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden), were arrested during the annual, communist-party organised memorial march in honour of Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Opponents unveiled the electoral fraud during the municipal elections in the GDR on May 7, 1988 and more people joined after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 started. From October 2, 1989 on, on the eve the 4oth anniversary of the foundation of the GDR, Gethsemane Church opened its gates day and night true to the motto Be vigilant and Pray (German: Wachet und betet, Gospel of Matthew). Thousands attended public discussions and illuminated candles on the esplanade of the church. On October 7, the national day of the GDR, the police of the GDR and secret Stasi units violently crackdowned on demonstrators in Schönhauser Allee, some of whom managed to flee into Gethsemane Church. However, 500 persons were arrested and kept in captivity for several weeks.
On October 9, Gottfried Forck, then presiding the eastern section of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, called for democratisation and lawfulness of the GDR government in a speech held in Gethsemane Church.[14]
After the resignation of the old GDR regime Gethsemane Church became a centre of the civil rights movement. In March 1990 representatives of the first, freely elected Volkskammer attended a service in Gethsemane Church on the occasion of their first session.
There are still activists of the peace movement among the congregants. Starting with the Second Gulf War in 1991 regular peace prayers are held in the church. During the Roman Catholic and Protestant Ecumenical Church Convention in 2003 Gethsemane Church took centre stage. As announced earlier and then explicitly forbidden by Pope John Paul II, the Roman Catholic priest Gotthold Hasenhüttl from Austria administered the Eucharist in Gethsemane Church, knowingly that Protestants were among the communicants. Thousands wanted to communicate and lined up outside in the street. In the course of the same ecumenical convention the Catholic priest Bernhard Kroll participated in the Lord's Supper the Protestant way. Both priests were suspended or had to resign.