Deutscher Dom
Encyclopedia
Deutscher Dom is the colloquial naming for the New Church located in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 on the Gendarmenmarkt
Gendarmenmarkt
The Gendarmenmarkt is a square in Berlin, and the site of the Konzerthaus and the French and German Cathedrals. The centre of the Gendarmenmarkt is crowned by a statue of Germany's poet Friedrich Schiller. The square was created by Johann Arnold Nering at the end of the seventeenth century as the...

 across from Französischer Dom
Französischer Dom
Französischer Dom is the colloquial naming for the French Church of Friedrichstadt located in Berlin on the Gendarmenmarkt across from the Deutscher Dom , formerly a church of German-speaking congregants. Louis Cayart and Abraham Quesnay built the first parts of the actual French Church from 1701...

 (French Cathedral). Its parish comprised the northern part of the then new quarter of Friedrichstadt
Friedrichstadt (Berlin)
Friedrichstadt was an independent suburb of Berlin, and is now a historical neighborhood of the city itself. The neighborhood is named after the Prussian king Frederick I.-Geography:...

, which until then belonged to the parish of the congregations of Jerusalem's Church
Jerusalem's Church
Jerusalem's Church is one of the churches of the Evangelical Congregation in the Friedrichstadt , a member of the Protestant umbrella organisation Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia. The present church building is located in Berlin, borough Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, in...

. The Lutheran and Calvinist (in German Reformed Church) congregants used German as their native language, as opposed to the French-speaking Calvinist congregation owning the French Church of Friedrichstadt
Französischer Dom
Französischer Dom is the colloquial naming for the French Church of Friedrichstadt located in Berlin on the Gendarmenmarkt across from the Deutscher Dom , formerly a church of German-speaking congregants. Louis Cayart and Abraham Quesnay built the first parts of the actual French Church from 1701...

 on the opposite side of Gendarmenmarkt. The congregants' native language combined with the domed tower earned the church its colloquial naming. The church is not a cathedral
Cathedral
A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...

 in the actual sense of the word.

Church and Congregations

In 1701-1708 Giovanni Simonetti built the first church after a design of Martin Grünberg. It was the third church in Friedrichstadt, established in 1688, which was a town of princely domination, while the neighbouring old Berlin and Cölln
Cölln
In the 13th century Cölln was the sister town of Old Berlin , located on the southern Spree Island in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Today the island is located in the historic core of the central Mitte locality of modern Berlin...

 were cities of town privileges
Town privileges
Town privileges or city rights were important features of European towns during most of the second millennium.Judicially, a town was distinguished from the surrounding land by means of a charter from the ruling monarch that defined its privileges and laws. Common privileges were related to trading...

. The Prince-Elector originally only provided for a Calvinist congregation, since they - the Hohenzollern - themselves were Calvinists. But also more and more Lutherans moved in. Therefore in 1708 the New Church became a Calvinist and Lutheran Simultaneum
Simultaneum
A shared church, or Simultankirche, Simultaneum or, more fully, simultaneum mixtum, a term first coined in 16th century Germany, is a church in which public worship is conducted by adherents of two or more religious groups. Such churches became common in Europe in the wake of the Reformation...

.

The site for the church was disentangled from the so-called Swiss Cemetery, which had been provided for Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

s, who had come to Berlin between 1698 and 1699 from their intermittent refuge in Switzerland. The original building had a pentagonal groundplan with semicircular apses. The interior was characterised by a typical Protestant combined altar and pulpit leaning against the eastern central pillar opposite to the entrance.
In 1780-1785 Georg Christian Unger modified the church and added the eastern domed tower after a design by Carl von Gontard
Carl von Gontard
Carl von Gontard was a German architect; he worked primarily in Berlin, Potsdam, and Bayreuth....

. His design of the domed towers followed the Palladian tradition and received the shape of the Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

ian Church of Sainte-Geneviève (now the Panthéon), then still under construction by Jacques-Germain Soufflot
Jacques-Germain Soufflot
Jacques Germain Soufflot was a French architect in the international circle that introduced Neoclassicism. His most famous work is the Panthéon, Paris, built from 1755 onwards, originally as a church dedicated to Sainte Genevieve.- Biography :Soufflot was born in Irancy, near Auxerre.In the 1730s...

. Together with the domed tower next to the French Church Gendarmenmarkt was meant to resemble the Piazza del Popolo
Piazza del Popolo
Piazza del Popolo is a large urban square in Rome. The name in modern Italian literally means "People's Square", but historically it derives from the poplars after which the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in the northeast corner of the piazza, takes its name.The piazza lies inside the northern...

 in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

.

Christian Bernhard Rode created the statues, representing characters from the Old
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

 and New Covenant
New Covenant
The New Covenant is a concept originally derived from the Hebrew Bible. The term "New Covenant" is used in the Bible to refer to an epochal relationship of restoration and peace following a period of trial and judgment...

, which are added to the tower. The dome was topped by a statue symbolising the victorious virtue (now a post-war replica). The gable relief depicts the Conversion
Conversion of Paul
The Conversion of Paul the Apostle, as depicted in the Christian Bible, refers to an event reported to have taken place in the life of Paul of Tarsus which led him to cease persecuting early Christians and to himself become a follower of Jesus; it is normally dated by researchers to AD 33–36...

 of Sha'ul Paul of Tarsus
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...

. In 1817 the two congregations of the New Church, like most Prussian Reformed and Lutheran congregations joined the common umbrella organisation named Evangelical Church in Prussia (under this name since 1821), with each congregation maintaining its former denomination or adopting the new united denomination.

The New Church became famous as a place of Prussian history. On 22 March 1848 the coffins of 183 Berliners, who had been killed during the March Revolution
Revolutions of 1848 in the German states
The Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, also called the March Revolution – part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many countries of Europe – were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire...

, were shown on the northern side of the church. After an Evangelical
Prussian Union (Evangelical Christian Church)
The Prussian Union was the merger of the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church in Prussia, by a series of decrees – among them the Unionsurkunde – by King Frederick William III...

 service within the prayer hall outside an Evangelical pastor, a Catholic priest and a rabbi, one after the other, shortly addressed the audience, before the throng accompanied the coffins to the graves.

In 1881 the dilapidated prayer hall was torn down and Hermann von der Hude and Julius Hennicke replaced it with a new one on a pentagonal groundplan, according to the neobaroque design of Johann Wilhelm Schwedler
Johann Wilhelm Schwedler
Johann Wilhelm Schwedler was a German civil engineer and civil servant who designed many bridges and public buildings and invented the Schwedler truss and the Schwedler cupola.-Life and career:...

. Otto Lessing designed the six statues on the attic of the new prayer hall. On 17 December 1882 the new prayer hall was inaugurated.

In 1934 the congregations of the New Church had united with that of Jerusalem's Church and have become - after further mergers - today's Evangelical
Prussian Union (Evangelical Christian Church)
The Prussian Union was the merger of the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church in Prussia, by a series of decrees – among them the Unionsurkunde – by King Frederick William III...

 Congregation in the Friedrichstadt (as of 2001). For services it uses the French Church on the opposite side of Gendarmenmarkt and Luke's Church in Berlin-Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg, a part of the combined Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte since 2001, is one of the best-known areas of Berlin...

.

In 1943 the New Church was almost completely destroyed in the bombing of Berlin in World War II and was subsequently rebuilt from 1977 to 1988. Meanwhile the German government acquired the building and the site. The church building was updated, profaned and reopened in 1996 as the Bundestag
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

's museum on German parliamentary history (Milestones - Setbacks - Sidetracks, The Path to Parliamentary Democracy in Germany).

The two congregations of the New Church maintained cemeteries with the two congregations of the neighbouring Jerusalem's Church
Jerusalem's Church
Jerusalem's Church is one of the churches of the Evangelical Congregation in the Friedrichstadt , a member of the Protestant umbrella organisation Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia. The present church building is located in Berlin, borough Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, in...

 (another simultaneum), three of which are comprised - with cemeteries of other congregations - in a compound of six cemeteries altogether, which are among the most important historical cemeteries of Berlin. They are located in Berlin-Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg, a part of the combined Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte since 2001, is one of the best-known areas of Berlin...

 south of Hallesches Tor (Berlin U-Bahn)
Hallesches Tor (Berlin U-Bahn)
The underground station Hallesches Tor is part of the Berlin U-Bahn network at the intersection of the east-west bound U1 and the north-south bound U6 in the Kreuzberg district.-Overview:...

 (Friedhöfe vor dem Halleschen Tor).

Noteworthy Parishioners

  • E. T. A. Hoffmann
  • Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff
    Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff
    Hans Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff was a painter and architect in Prussia.Knobelsdorff was born in Kuckädel, now in Krosno Odrzańskie County. A soldier in the service of Prussia, he resigned his commission in 1729 as captain so that he could pursue his interest in architecture...

    , originally also buried in the Church, later translated to the cemetery south of Hallesches Tor.
  • Antoine Pesne
    Antoine Pesne
    Antoine Pesne was the court painter of Prussia. Starting in the manner of baroque, he became one of the fathers of rococo in painting....

    , originally buried within the Church, later translated to the cemetery south of Hallesches Tor.

External links

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