The Protestant St. Mary's Church (proper spelling of the parish of St. Marienkirche; church district Berlin Stadtmitte) is located on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße in the park at the TV tower in Berlin's Mitte district, near Alexanderplatz. It is the oldest urban parish church in Berlin that is still used for religious purposes, one of originally six medieval church buildings in the historic center of Berlin, in the formerly densely built-up Marienviertel.
On January 3, 1292, the church was first mentioned as a parish church
(ecclesia St. Marie virginis, "Church of the Holy Virgin Mary"),
according to architectural experts, it was built around 1270. It is
located in Berlin's Neustadt on the Neuer Markt - not far the older old
town parish church of St. Nicolai.
The foundation walls of the
Marienkirche consist of field stones, over which a hall church made of
red bricks was built in the Brandenburg brick Gothic style. The 48 meter
high spire has a substructure made of Rüdersdorfer shell limestone.
After fire damage, the church community renewed the tower structure in
the baroque style in 1663-1666 according to plans and under the
direction of Michael Mathias Smids.
A comprehensive restoration
and redesign of the sacred building was carried out in 1893-1895 by
Hermann Blankenstein. After the war damage of the Second World War had
been repaired, the GDR had the building restored again in 1969/1970 as
part of the complete redesign of Alexanderplatz and its surroundings. At
this time u. a. the entrance portals made of spatially embossed copper
were recreated by the Berlin blacksmith and metal sculptor Achim Kühn.
The cross symbol is artistically worked into the portals.
In
1938, the Protestant community in Berlin ceded the Nikolaikirche to the
city of Berlin, making the Marienkirche the oldest place of worship in
Berlin. After the Second World War it was one of the few large churches
that could still be used.
Since the end of the 20th century, the
Marienkirche has been the place of worship for the Evangelical parish of
St. Petri-St. Marys. At the same time, it is the venue of the Berlin
Stadtmitte church district and the Berlin regional church as well as a
place for university services, ecumenical services and church music
events. The organ concert with Bible readings that takes place around 10
p.m. on Christmas Eve has a special tradition. In the GDR in the 1980s,
participation in it was considered a commitment by the intellectual
blues scene to the peace movement (“swords to ploughshares”).
After the destruction of the war and the large-scale redesign of the
Berlin city center in the area between the Stadtbahn,
Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse, Rathausstrasse and the Spree in the 1960s, the
Marienkirche has been in a completely different urban planning situation
since the beginning of the 21st century. While it still dominated the
densely built-up urban space on the former Neuer Markt until 1945, it
now stands as a solitary building in a spacious open space surrounded by
multi-storey new buildings, which is dominated by the television tower,
which opened in 1969. After the old buildings in their vicinity, which
were not destroyed in the war, were demolished and the city layout,
which dates back to the Middle Ages, was abandoned, the Marienkirche in
this area is the only visible reminder that the historic city center of
Berlin is located here.
The church building stands at the
original height of the medieval ground level. The difference of about
1.50 meters at the entrance, which has been noticeable for decades, can
be traced back to a landfill in GDR times. During redesign work in the
vicinity of the church in 2014-2017, the originally ground-level
location of the church was made clearer again by partially lowering the
floor.
The church building is a three-nave hall church. In addition to the single-nave choir with a well-preserved star vault, it has a crypt with a two-storey crypt chapel. The nave has octagonal and bundled pillars whose capitals show no ornamentation. It is spanned by a cross and net vault.
The west tower was
begun in the early 15th century after an earlier tower collapsed.
Building research was able to distinguish five medieval building phases.
The substructure - about as wide as the nave and also three naves, but
slightly offset to the north - was built at a distance of more than two
meters from the nave and only connected to it after completion. The
masonry of the tower is double-shelled. On the outside it consists of
field stones with brick edges in the lower area and Rüdersdorf shell
limestone in the upper area. The interior masonry, on the other hand, is
largely made of brick below and entirely of brick above. The window
jambs are also made of limestone on the lower limestone floor, while the
rest are made of brick. The medieval west portal was replaced by a
neo-Gothic one in the 19th century, which was freed from some
historicist flourishes during the renovation of the church after the
Second World War (see web link).
In the years 1789 and 1790 the
church was extensively redesigned. According to a design by Carl
Gotthard Langhans, the tower was given a neo-Gothic spire and its
current total height of around 90 meters. The construction management
was in the hands of Carl Samuel Held and Georg Friedrich Boumann.
The church has five church bells in the striking tones g0, h0, cis1,
e1 and e2. The four large bells hang on cranked yokes.
One of the most important preserved medieval works
of art in Berlin is the Dance of Death fresco in the tower hall of the
church.
The mural, 22.6 meters long and two meters high,
shows a dance of spiritual and secular representatives of the estates,
who are in a step dance with a figure of death each. The representation
goes back to templates from previously created dances of death in Lübeck
and possibly also in Hamburg. There is no written record of the creation
of the fresco. For this reason, attempts have been made to gain
information about its origin through detailed investigations of the work
of art. Various conclusions allow a dating to about the plague year
1484.
The special feature of the depiction lies in its geometric
arrangement, which extends from the west entrance, then crookedly over
the pillar, the west wall and the north wall almost into the church. The
spiritual and secular representatives of the estates are separated by a
crucifixion scene, which forms the center of the depiction. The
accompanying text verses represent the oldest Berlin poetry. In the
verses, the estate representatives lament their suffering and ask death
for a postponement. The verses are in the Low German language, which
Berliners still spoke into modern times, and contain a
Franciscan-influenced world view, which is also reflected in the
separation of spiritual and secular representatives of the estates. The
round dance itself is opened by a preaching Franciscan - so it is
assumed that the artist of the mural commissioned by the Berlin
bourgeoisie was a Franciscan. This assumption is confirmed by the fact
that construction work was being carried out on the Gray Monastery of
the Franciscans in Berlin during this period.
The Dance of Death
was probably whitewashed over during the Reformation and only
rediscovered in 1861 by Friedrich August Stüler, the court architect. It
was restored by Heinrich Fischbach. Today the mural is not in good
condition. The depiction has faded considerably due to the wet masonry
and is protected by a glass wall.
The high altar was
created around 1762 by Andreas Krüger in the Baroque style. With its
monumental size, it separates the polygon from the rest of the choir so
that it can be used as a sacristy. The altar is decorated with three
paintings by Bernhard Rode framed by composite columns. On the left is
Jesus' prayer on the Mount of Olives, on the right the scene of Thomas
putting his fingers in Christ's side wound. In the pediment of the
altar, above the central image of the Deposition from the Cross, rises a
plastic representation of a reclining Salvator, supported on his cross,
who is being worshiped by two angels.
After the Second World War
numerous art objects from the destroyed Nikolaikirche and the also
destroyed Franciscan monastery church came to the Marienkirche. A Marian
altar from the Franciscan church, created around 1520, was lent to the
Stift zum Heiligengrabe monastery in 2004 with the approval of the
Monuments Office. After a public debate about the loan agreement, which
was initially concluded for an indefinite period, the return of the
altar to Berlin was contractually stipulated and the loan agreement was
limited in time accordingly. In February 2014 the altar was still in
Heiligengrabe.
In front of the
altar, in the middle of the chancel, is the Gothic baptismal font, a
bronze cast from 1437. It stands on four feet carved like dragons. The
body is adorned with 16 relief-like saints standing in tracery arches.
The alabaster pulpit, which was created by Andreas Schlueter in
1702/1703 and on which all the benches in the nave are aligned, is
artistically outstanding. The pulpit basket, which seems to float
between two angels, is attached to four marble columns with gilded Ionic
capitals that interrupt the original Gothic bundle pillar. Between them
the preacher can enter the pulpit. The canopy-like sound cover is
adorned with a halo of numerous putti and trombone angels worshiping the
Holy Scriptures.
The skill of old masters of blacksmithing is
expressed in the form of some of Berlin's extremely rare, original
forged Renaissance grilles in the interior and exterior of the church
building.
In front of the west facade, an atonement cross
commemorates the murder of the provost Nikolaus von Bernau in 1325 as a
partisan of Pope John XXII. by the citizens of Berlin and Cölln.
Monument from 1672 with inscriptions (erected by
son-in-law Martin Weise):
Joachim Berchelmann (1562–1631), Land
Rentmeister in Berlin
His wife Rosina, née Steinbrecher (1592–1666)
Their daughter Katharina Weise, née Berchelmann (1612–1671)
Further:
Johann Berchelmann (1595–1655), Land Rentmeister in Berlin
His daughter Catharina Berchelmannin Pancovius (1631–1683)
Her
husband Thomas Pancovius, Churfürstl. (1622–1665)
The physician
Martin Weise (1605–1693), Brand. Councilor, personal physician to the
Electors Georg Wilhelm, Friedrich Wilhelm and Friedrich III., 1st Dean
of the Collegium Medicum ibid., "Marchiae nostrae Hippocrates"
Otto
Christoph von Sparr: The field marshal was buried in the church in 1663.
Tomb of Arthur Quellinus I.
Carl Hildebrand Freiherr von Canstein,
the founder of the oldest Bible institute in the world, the Canstein
Bible Institute, was buried in the church in 1719.
The organ of the Marienkirche was created in 1720-1722 by Joachim
Wagner, who had previously studied with Gottfried Silbermann for two
years. The inauguration took place in 1723. The case is by Johann Georg
Glume and was completed in 1742 by Paul de Ritter. In the years that
followed, the instrument was modified several times. In 1800, for
example, Friedrich Falckenhagen had 1,400 organ pipes removed from a
total of 2,556 according to plans by Georg Joseph Vogler, because he
felt they were “superfluous”. Further conversions, also to restore the
range of sound, were carried out by Johann Simon Buchholz in 1829 and by
Heinrich Schlag & Söhne in 1893/1894. Wilhelm Sauer increased the number
of votes to 57 and installed cone shutters with tubular pneumatics.
As one of the few organs, the "most beautiful organ in Berlin"
largely survived the destruction of the Second World War. In the years
1947-1949, the Alexander Schuke organ building workshop replaced the
pneumatic action with an electro-pneumatic one and brought the
disposition back closer to the baroque sound principle. Further changes
took place in 1957, 1970 and 1985 with the same goal of further
approximating the original sound.
When severe damage to the organ
was discovered in the winter of 1996, the community decided instead of
reconstructing the original condition for a new building, which was
realized in 2002 by the organ building workshop Alfred Kern & Sons
(Strasbourg) in accordance with Wagner's overall concept and disposition
from 1721 became.
In the new building, all 40 of Wagner's
registers were reconstructed true to the original using the existing
historical pipes, as was the baroque case prospectus by the Berlin
sculptors Johann Georg Glume and Paul de Ritter, while retaining the
monument-worthy changes from 1908. All wind tunnels, shutters and the
bellows system are Manufactured exactly according to the model of a
Wagner organ that has been preserved.
Compared to Wagner, the
arrangement of the manuals and the extension of their range of keys to
f3 have been changed to adapt to today's musical practice. A historical
intonation was set (Neidhardt III), albeit with a modern pitch of 440
Hz. Finally, the organ was given five additional registers, which are
faithfully reproduced in Wagner organs. Added a pedal coupler.
The main preacher of the Marienkirche is Christian Stäblein, Bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia. The Marienkirche was the main church of the parish of St. Marien, which had formed from the four former parishes around the Nikolai, Georgen and Parochial Churches. On January 1, 2006, it merged with the St. Petri-Luisenstadt parish to form St. Petri-St. Marien parish in the Berlin Stadtmitte church district. The university services of the Humboldt University in Berlin occasionally take place in the Marienkirche during the semester. The first church wedding of a same-sex couple in Berlin took place in the church on July 22, 2017.
When setting up a uniform coordinate system for the German national survey, the Rauenberg was chosen as the fundamental point and the astronomically determined azimuth to the Marienkirche was used to orient the network.
In the Middle Ages, the
Marienkirche was one of the two starting points of the pilgrimage route
from Berlin to Wilsnack, along with the Heilig-Geist-Spital.
In
September 1964, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and African-American civil
rights activist Martin Luther King preached in St. Mary's Church and
said, among other things: "No border can separate the children of God."
The first breeding pair of peregrine falcons settled in Berlin since
1944 at St. Mary's Church in 1986. The unsuccessful breeding of 1986
took place in an old hooded crow's nest. In later years they bred in a
nest box. Later, the peregrine falcons bred at Berlin City Hall.