The Roman Catholic St. Hedwigs-Cathedral (St. Hedwigs-Kathedral) is a
monument on Bebelplatz in the Mitte and part of the Fridericianum Forum.
It serves as a bishop's church in the Archdiocese of Berlin and as the
parish church of the cathedral community of St. Hedwig. The highest
Catholic church is also considered the most historically most important
Catholic Church in the city.
From 1747 on behalf of Frederick,
the round building was built in the style of the Frederizian Rococo on
behalf of Frederick the Great according to plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von
Knobelsdorff. Burned out in the Second World War, the cathedral was
restored in the style of post -war modernism from 1952 to 1963 according
to plans by Hans Schwippert. It has been closed for renovation and
renovation since 2018, and the services will take place in the St.
Josephs Church in Berlin-Wedding.
Frederick the Great initially had the idea of building a large
pantheon ("dedicated to all gods") of the Roman model to promote
tolerance. In the chapel niches, the religious communities should hold
their services. His consultant Charles Étienne Jordan, also a deacon at
the French church, finally brought him away from this thought. However,
the idea of the circuit was to be realized in a Catholic church
building, the first in Berlin since the end of the Reformation. It was
built especially for the new Roman Catholic residents of Berlin from
Silesia and therefore subordinated the patronal feast of Hedwig von
Andechs who were revered as a patron saint.
start of building
In the building form as a round central building, the church on the
Pantheon was based in Rome and thus became a representative part of the
Royal Forum Fridericianum. Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, the
leading architect of the Frederizian Rococo, delivered the decisive
plans.
The construction period stretched from 1747 to 1773. In
1753 the king had approved a lottery to get funds for the continuation
of the building. Cardinal Angelo Maria Quirini († 1755) calls the Latin
gable inscription as the main founder. But through the beginning of the
Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the construction work came to a
standstill. In 1765, the unfinished building with partly open dome
suffered more and more from the undesignation of the weather. The Berlin
Dominicans sent a cry for help to their superiors, because 64,000
thalers were still missing to complete the building. The Berlin Jews
offered the purchase of the unfinished building to make a synagogue. It
was not until the spring of 1773 that the construction work, thanks to
financial help from Rome and the king, could be continued. Nevertheless,
construction manager Johann Boumann d. Ä. For a lack of money, forced to
provide the wooden dome instead of the planned lead- only with a brick
cover and to do without the crowning lantern. These and the gable frieze
could only be completed at the end of the 19th century.
A
sacrament chapel was built in the form of a second smaller round
building directly to the back of the church circuit, now sacristy. The
bell room is located above. Ignatius Krasicki, Prince -Bishop of Warmia
and friend of the Prussian king, took the church consecration on
November 1, 1773.
completion
In the sense of the stitches made
by Jean Laurent Legeay in 1747 according to drawings by Knobelsdorff,
Max Hasak completed the church building 1886–1887. He covered the dome
with a copper roof and crown them with lantern and cross. The interior
received a neo -baroque equipment. While Wilhelm Achtermann had already
created the supraport reliefs with scenes of the New Testament according
to designs by Georg Franz Ebenhech, Nikolaus Geiger only completed the
gable relief with a scene of adling the kings in 1897 according to a
model by Achtermann. In 1927 the Pope of the Hedwigskirche awarded the
title of a Basilica Minor.
After the cathedral was raised, the
interior was renewed in 1930-1932 according to plans by the Austrian
architect Clemens Holzmeister. Using expressionist design features, one
of the most independent evidence of expressionist sacral architecture of
the late Weimar Republic was created. Holzmeister emphasized the
longitudinal axis by opening the main room to the then sacrament chapel,
today's sacristy. He cleverly included in the modern interior, including
the neo -baroque altar and the twelve apostle figures. On the side of
the now central central axis, he placed the cathedra of the bishop and a
passage to a newly built sacristy. He removed the ornamental council of
the Wilhelmine period in the interior, but without blurring the traces
of the various equipment layers.
During the Second World War, the
St. Hedwigs Cathedral burned down to the surrounding walls during an
Allied air raid on March 2, 1943. The dome was also destroyed.
Organs
From 1773 to 1930 St. Hedwig had a late baroque organ. In 1932
the Hedwigskathedral received an organ system with 78 registers, spread
over altar and gallery organ, built by the organ construction company
Klais (Bonn). The gallery organ had 44 registers on four manual works
and pedal. The altar organ was located above the bishopric and sacristy
entrance. She had 34 registers on two manual works and pedal and her own
gaming table in the choir stalls, but could also be played from the
general game table on the gallery. Both instruments were destroyed in
World War II.
Construction work after the Second World War
From 1952 to 1963 the
cathedral was now restored in the capital of the GDR. The (West German)
architect Hans Schwippert redesigned the interior in collaboration with
artists and created an extraordinary room layout. In the sacred building
destroyed by the bombing, access to the Unterkirche with the newly
created eight chapels was created. The external architecture of the
central building, which is largely preserved in the substance, was
restored based on the historical appearance. However, the dome was
changed in the outline and received a paraboloid concrete shell
construction from 84 segments clad with copper. It has an inner diameter
of 33 meters. The lantern above the dome originally planned by
Schwippert was dispensed with in the construction design as well as the
figure group of Hedwig von Andechs at the top of the gable triangle.
Instead of the lantern, a three -meter -high gold -plated cross in
copper dispute was placed on the dome flattened above, designed and
executed in the studio by Fritz Kühn. Simple plaster cubes, high simple
arched windows and a surrounding main cornice are an expression of the
facade design of a cathedral corresponding to the time of
reconstruction.
Oberkirche
The redesigned interior of Hans
Schwippert was shaped by the sober room ideal of that time and was
referred to as the "masterpiece of architecture of the 1950s". In the
architecture of Hans Schwippert, the upper church was concentrically
referred to the altar, while later by the cathedra, a runner, the altar
and the organ, the axis and thus the symmetry of the circular space were
emphasized more. The glass railing along the opening to the Unterkirche
contributed significantly to the clear overall impression. Fritz Kühn
was carried out. The vertical structure of the altar of the Unterkirche,
which serves as a foundation, was striking with the stele and gilded
tabernacle, on which the main altar rested in the upper church.
The goldsmith Fritz Schwerdt and Hubertus Förster (1929–2020) from
Aachen designed the tabernacle in 1963 and the gilded altar cross with a
ivory from Kurt Schwippert. The designs of the carpet -like graphically
designed windows of the upper church come from Anton Wendling. In the
altar column that the two altars combined, a Petrus plastic was used, a
gift Pope John Paul II on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the
diocese in 1980. The viewer presented the vertical structure of the
altar design by the half-open crypt as remarkable Unity and connection
of the lower and upper church.
The cathedral holding included
three large -format wall carpets. Common to all is the motif of the
"City of God", the "Heavenly Jerusalem" from the revelation of John (Rev
21: 1–2 EU). The former Bauhaus student Margaretha Reichardt (1907–1984)
(Grete Reichardt) from Erfurt, created a large hand -woven gobelin in
1963, who shows the stylized Jerusalem. Anton Wendling (1891–1965) used
application technology used for its colored geometric composition. Else
Bechteler-Moses (* 1933) from Munich designed a three-part carpet, which
was created from 1979 to 1981 in cooperation with the Nuremberg Gobelin
Manufaktur. He represents God sitting on the throne, who is also close
to humans (Rev 4 EU).
Under the church
The crypt was reproduced to the martyr confessional basilica and
served-in addition to the function as a subconculation with a baptismal
chapel, confessional chairs and the burial of the Berlin bishops-also
the memory of the Catholic martyr of Berlin in the period of National
Socialism. There were - until the beginning of the cathedral in 2018 and
the associated conversion of the bones - the grave of the blessed
cathedral prophet Bernhard Lichtenberg, which died in 1943 on the
transport to the Dachau concentration camp in Hof, as well as a plaque
for the blessed Petro Werhun Pastor among the Ukrainians worked and was
deported to Siberia by the Soviet occupying powers in 1945.
For
the crosswalk newly created during the reconstruction in the sub -church
of the pastor Heinz Endres and the architect Hans Schwippert
commissioned the artist Josef Hegenbarth with the design of the 14 way
of cross. In November 1961, Hegenbarth finished the black and white
brush drawings a year before his death. The cycle belongs to the
extensive group of biblical representations, with which it dealt with
throughout his life. Notker Eckmann even saw "the old master of German
passion art" in Josef Hegenbarth. In the view, Hegenbarth's last leaves
are related to the passion, also from 1960/1961. In 1983 the Way of the
Cross of the youth was put together.
The Way of the Cross of the St. Hedwigs-Cathedral in Berlin is
the only work that Hegenbarth designed as part of a total work of
art and for permanent views in public space. It performed the
original drawings in slightly distinguished formats. The dimensions
of the originals vary in the height of 460 to 500 mm and in width of
310 to 370 mm. They were later exchanged for standardized
reproductions.
The Kreuzweg stations were attached to the
rounded wall surfaces between the chapels of the crypt
(Unterkirche). The first station is on the left opposite the statue
of St. Antonius of Padua. The first four stations were located
between the grave chapel of the Berlin bishops and that of the
blessed cathedral propstation Bernhard Lichtenberg:
Synophobia of Jesus: Ecce Homo (No. I)
Jesus takes on the cross
(No. II)
Jesus falls under the cross (No. III)
Jesus meets his
mother (No. IV)
On the following walls of the Unterkirche,
the stations followed five to twelve up to the Marienkapelle:
Simon von Cyrene helps Jesus wear the cross (No. V)
The Veronika
welding cloth (No. VI)
Jesus falls under the cross for the second
time (No. VII)
Jesus speaks to the complaining women (No. VIII,
left of the Altarstele)
Jesus falls under the cross (No. IX,
right of the Altarstele) for the third time (No. IX)
Jesus is
robbed of his clothes (No. X)
Jesus is nailed to the cross (No.
XI)
Jesus dies on the cross (No. XII)
Finally follow in
front of the treasury:
Jesus is taken from the cross (No. XIII)
Jesus is placed in the grave (No. XIV)
Hegenbarth adhered to the
usual order of the stations, but in the design he avoided everything
traditional. He told the passion process from highly unconventional
perspectives. Its cross -way representations have a meditative
visual character and have "psychologically expressive and parable".
Sabine Schulte describes this impression as follows: “The
seriousness of the choice of the artistic genre [drawing] impressed
for a crossroads related to the spatial conditions […]. Each single
sheet creates such an intensive and inner collection as it can only
be reached in this place. ”
From 1964, a one-manual organ from Alexander Schuke served as a
makeshift instrument, according to Schuke works directory, it was
the op. 352 with ten registers on two manuals and pedal.
In
1975–1977 the new cathedral ralorgel was built by the organ
construction company Klais as an Opus 1529 with 67 registers and
4630 whistles on three manual works and pedal, and inaugurated in
1978. The instrument has had 68 registers in 1997 since a general
cleaning and the additional installation of the swellwork trumpet 8
′. It hung as a swallow nest over the main portal and had a weight
of around 20 tons. Klais and the prospectus designers Josef Schäfer
and Paul Corazolla tried to train the organ by arranging the sub
-works as well as the (partially gold -plated) decor on the
prospectus pipes as a sculpture. The individual works were housed on
a total of three levels that can be seen from the brochure design.
The main work was in the upper organ housing that reached into the
dome. Below was the gaming table. The threshold, which was not
visible from the church, was on the middle level. Under the center
level was the back -positive revenue in the church area; The whistle
of the pedal work flanked the back positive or were behind it (so
-called "Hamburg prospectus"). The grinding store instrument had
mechanical play and electrical register tractures, was equipped with
a 5120-time electronic setting system including a floppy disk drive,
and had a keys for the main work and a registration bondage. After a
last concert in early September 2018 with cathedral organist Thomas
Sauer, who had played the organ for more than 40 years, and the
following closure of the cathedral the instrument was completely
dismantled and stored in July 2019.
The cathedral has four bells that are hung over the sacristy in the smaller dome. They were poured in Apolda in 1952 by the Franz Schilling bell foundry and have the slab tones e ′ (resurrection bell), G ′ (Corpus Christi), A ′ (Soli deo Gloria) and H ’(Holy Hedwig). Part of the bell bronze comes from a 3264 kg Bo-bell of a five-part ringing that the Otto from Hemelingen/Bremen had poured the St. Adalbert parish church in Aachen in 1896. Like thousands of other bells, the bells from St. Adalbert were confiscated in World War II.
Preparation
In November 2013, the Archdiocese of Berlin expressed
an architectural competition for redesigning the interior and the
structural environment because developments in liturgy and theology as a
result of the second Vatican Council (1962–1965) demanded corresponding
further developments and adjustments. 169 designs were submitted. On
June 30, 2014, the jury decided to draft the architecture firm Sichau &
Walter Architects GmbH from Fulda with Leo Zogmayer from Vienna as the
first award winner.
The draft provides for a closure of the
opening to the Unterkirche, through which a "normal center" should be
achieved, which is equally fair to the liturgical requirements and the
tradition of the building. According to this design, the altar will be
geometrically in the middle of the church area in the future. The
community celebrates church service in a circle, the benches are to be
arranged in concentric circles. On the homepage of the cathedral, it is
commented on as follows: “Liturgically, the draft concretizes the idea
of the second Vatican Council that the Eucharist celebrated at the altar
is the highlight and source of all church action. At the same time, the
altar in its hemispherical shape completes the spherical shape laid out
in the dome. ”On the context of these positions (effects of the second
Vatican and the liturgical reform on church construction), see also:
church architecture after the liturgical reform.
At the General
Assembly of the Diocescent Council of the Catholics in the Archdiocese
of Berlin in February 2016, 78 percent of the delegates spoke out for
the conversion of the cathedral on the basis of the winning design,
which, however, had to be developed further. As of November 2016,
ownership of the cathedral was transferred from the cathedral community
to the archbishopric. After all the bodies and councilors of the
Archdiocese had voted for a redesign, Archbishop Heiner Koch announced
his decision on the redesign of the interior of the cathedral on
November 1, 2016 on the basis of the design of the award winners with
closing the floor opening.
The renovation costs are estimated at
43 million euros. At the same time, the neighboring
Bernhard-Lichtenberg-Haus is to be renovated for 17 million euros and
take a "science center" for a dialogue about ethical or interreligious
questions, and the company's headquarters of the Berlin Archbishop and a
"low-threshold caritas offer" are also accommodated there. Construction
should begin in 2018. A fifth of the total costs are covered by the
federal government. At the beginning of March 2018, the Archdiocese
announced that in the period of the renovation measures from September
of the same year, cathedralliturgy in St. Joseph in Wedding will be
celebrated as a replacement location. Archbishop Heiner Koch celebrated
the last pontifical office before the renovation on August 15, 2018 in
the cathedral; From September 1, 2018, no more services were held in the
church.
During the renovation phase of the St. Hedwigs Cathedral
in Berlin-Mitte (since 2018), cathedralliturgy in the St. Josephs Church
is celebrated as a replacement location.
First work
At the end
of May 2020, the renovation of the damaged dome roof began, the
historical condition of which is not restored with lantern.
The
building application for the renovation and redesign of the cathedral
was approved on July 16, 2020 on February 27, 2020 and has been
available on July 16, 2020 and has been available to the Archdiocese of
Berlin since July 29, 2020. Previously, on July 14, 2020, the district
court of Berlin had rejected several copyright lawsuits by artists or
their legal successors against the Archdiocese of Berlin, who had been
involved in the design of the reconstruction of the cathedral and wanted
to prevent the interior of the interior with their complaints. The judge
stated that the archbishopric's right of ownership had priority to the
artist's copyright, because the renovation of the previous artistic
design of the interior was not only changed, but also eliminated, so
that the artists could no longer assert copyrights. A lawsuit by artists
or their legal successors before the Berlin Administrative Court at the
withdrawal of the monument law approval for the cathedral reduction was
already rejected on January 9, 2019 due to a lack of a complaint.
The plans for the redesign led to a public debate when becoming
known. The monument authority was represented in the jury, but did not
recognize a monument -friendly solution in any of the designs, which
takes into account the existing double church character of the
Schwippertsch construction with the clasping of the lower, the memorial
level, with the church space. The monument protection foundation
criticized the project, although it was represented in the selection
committee.
The architectural critic Jürgen Tietz assessed the
redesign plans as a conversion of the St. Hedwigs Cathedral into a
cathedral of the 21st century in Berlin-Mitte. The building historian
Adrian Buttlar campaigned with other personalities in an open letter to
Archbishop Heiner Koch for the preservation of the monument in the
Schwippertsch architecture. The decision of the Archdiocese for a church
area who also addresses people who "are foreign to Christian symbols"
was described as "tragic" in public. The art scientist Nikolaus Bernau
expressed in the article conversion east that with the redesign of the
Schwippertsch church room, "the résumés of a generation of East German
Catholics" would be ignored. The critics, who have come together under
the motto "Kreuz" to form the citizens' initiative friends of the St.
Hedwigs Cathedral, called on a protest demonstration on Bebelplatz, in
which around 60 people took part.
On September 13, 2019, the
competent district office imposed a construction stop in the interior of
the cathedral due to "unimaginated or not coordinated or monument law
under monument law" after it had received corresponding "information
from third parties"; What was meant was an advertisement by the
"Initiative Friends of the Hedwigskathedral". The district office took
back the construction stop on September 27, as after a tour it turned
out that the allegations were unjustified. The high altar was canceled a
few weeks later. In the course of the renovation of the Hedwigs
Cathedral, the bell chair is to be renewed and the bell system is
expanded.
In the French road running behind the cathedral, there was already a utility building for the Pröpsten of the St. Hedwig community from the start. The architects Kremer & Wolffenstein had rebuilt this Propstei building at the end of the 19th century. There were rooms for the sexton, the church servant and the porter in the basement, on the first main floor the delegation, business premises, the apartment of the cantor, above the second floor, was the apartment of the provost, in III. The main floor lived three chaplains, a spiritual secretary and a vicar. Finally, some rooms on the attic could be used for the candidates. On the main facade towards the French road, a survival -sized sculpture of St. Hedwig was attached above a representative balcony.