Jerusalem's Church - Ruined State and The New Building of 1968

Ruined State and The New Building of 1968

After long negotiations with the People's Republic of Romania the Senate of Berlin bought the site with the ruins of Jerusalem Church, which were afterwards demolished (March 1961). The site was cleared and integrated into the wider crossroads of today's Axel-Springer-Straße (from northeast), Lindenstraße (from southwest), Oranienstraße (from the southeast) and Rudi-Dutschke-Straße (from the west). The access of Jerusalemer Straße (from the north) was blocked by the new office building of Axel Springer Verlag publishing house (1959–1966). The publishing house paid for a little memorial for the church and the setting of cobble stones, laid into the asphalt of the crossroads, to indicate the contour of the former outside walls.

With the erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, the parish district of Jerusalem and New Church congregation was divided, with the New Church being in the politically eastern old Mitte borough, and the geographically southern Friedrichstadt in the politically western borough of Kreuzberg. The politically western section of the congregation under the presbyters Werner Gericke, Günter Heyder, Erwin Köhn and Georg Schmidt decided to erect a new church building.

On the first Advent 1967 (3 December) General Superintendent Hans-Martin Helbich, competent for the Sprengel I (the then diocese of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg comprising Berlin {West}), laid the cornerstone on a site somewhat more south on Lindenstraße at the corner of Markgrafenstraße, diagonally opposite to the now Jewish Museum Berlin (whose entrance building comprises the Collegiengebäude). The architect Sigrid Kressmann-Zschach built the new Jerusalem Church after her designs. Pastor Herbert Kriwath inaugurated the new church building on the fourth Advent 1968 (22 December). Axel Springer donated the campanile and the bells. The walls of church and campanile are from concrete and partly covered with red bricks.

Since the creation of the Congregation in the Friedrichstadt in 2001, a merger of three prior congregations, the congregation does not hold services any more in Jerusalem Church, but in two other functioning churches, Luke's Church and French Church of Friedrichstadt, out of its four church buildings altogether. Jerusalem Church is now used as a convention centre for groups active in Christian Jewish dialogue. Since 2002 the church also hosts the Dutch Oecumenical Congregation of Berlin, which regularly celebrates its services there.