Present, future, and past —all three can be found in Berlin. Whether it’s a free water playground once designed by an architect fascinated by space travel, or the Aquarium Berlin, which has fully reopened with new highlights after three years of modernization. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow converge in many places across the capital, often without us even noticing. One monument, however, embodies this interplay in a very special way: The Chapel of Reconciliation is located at Bernauer Straße 4 in Berlin-Mitte and is part of the Berlin Wall Memorial.
The Chapel of Reconciliation remains to this day a sacred place and, at the same time, an important site of remembrance for the division of Germany and the victims of the Berlin Wall. What makes it special is not only its location on the former border strip: today’s chapel stands exactly where the much larger Church of Reconciliation once stood. The original Church of Reconciliation was built between 1892 and 1895 according to plans by architect Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel. The neo-Gothic brick building became the center of a congregation that at times numbered around 20,000 members.
With the construction of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961, the situation changed fundamentally. The church suddenly found itself directly in the border zone and eventually in the so-called “death strip.” Although the church building continued to exist, the congregation could no longer enter their own church.
For more than two decades, the Church of Reconciliation stood isolated in the border zone. Its tall steeple, in particular, was visible from afar and towered over the Berlin Wall. In January 1985, just a few years before the fall of the Wall, the GDR finally had the church demolished. It is precisely this history that makes today’s chapel so extraordinary. Instead of reconstructing the destroyed neo-Gothic church after the fall of the Wall, the decision was made to build a modern new structure that deliberately incorporates the remains of the previous building.
After reunification, the Reconciliation Congregation regained ownership of the property in 1995, with the stipulation that it continue to be used for religious purposes. Planning for a new place of worship then began. Berlin architects Rudolf Reitermann and Peter Sassenroth were commissioned to design it. The current chapel was built in 1999 and 2000.
From the outside, the chapel initially resembles an oval wooden pavilion. In fact, the building consists of two nested oval structures. The outer shell is composed of vertical wooden slats, while behind it lies the actual church interior with solid walls made of rammed earth .
Austrian earthen architecture pioneer Martin Rauch was responsible for constructing the rammed-earth structure. The oval earthen wall reaches a height of about 7.2 meters and is up to 60 centimeters thick. A total of approximately 300 square meters of rammed-earth walls were erected. Today, the chapel is one of the most significant memorial sites along Bernauer Straße and is part of the Berlin Wall Memorial complex. At the same time, it continues to be used as a church. Among other things, services and memorials in honor of the victims of the Berlin Wall are held here. The chapel is located at Bernauer Straße 4, 10115 Berlin, and is currently open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Since the chapel’s operation is partly made possible by volunteers, opening hours are subject to change on short notice.
