Tabor Church - The Church Building

The Church Building

On 1 June 1903 the cornerstone for Tabor Church was laid. Baurat Ernst Schwartzkopff designed the plans. The church is inserted into the alignment of houses in Taborstraße, but facing Wrangelstraße, a long street directed northwest starting opposite of the church façade. The tower of originally 71 m height was built to be a landmark viewable through all of Wrangelstraße. Due to the position of the site inserted between neighbouring houses the quire of the church is not properly oriented, but directed to the southeast.

Schwartzkopff died before finishing his work and thus Baurat Adolph Bürkner accomplished the constructions. The Evangelischer Kirchenbauverein (English: Evangelical Association for the Construction of Churches), a charitable organisation then headed by Empress Augusta Victoria, financed the constructions.

The church was inaugurated on 20 December 1905. In 1906 the parish subsection Emmaus North was legally established as the parish Tabor Congregation, becoming the proprietor of Tabor Church.

The church is built from red brick stones in anachronistic neo-Brick Gothic style. A trass statue of Jesus of Nazareth by Julius Wucherer (a 1905-copy after Bertel Thorvaldsen) stands on top of the entrance portal. The street section of the building includes apartments. The prayer hall is built as a centralized auditory hall, typical for Protestant church architecture. The prayer hall is topped by a central stellar vault with a skylight.

The church weathered the Second World War with little damage. But the high conic spire of the tower had been shortened after considerable damage. The remaining stump consists of the massive brick stone construction of the lower parts of the tower.