Church and Architect
Due to the high number of new parishioners moving in during the first third of the 20th c. the existing three churches, to wit Auenkirche, High Master Church, and Church of the Cross, never sufficed to contain the congregants of the Evangelical Wilmersdorf Congregation (German: Ev. Kirchengemeinde Berlin-Wilmersdorf).
In 1927 the then wealthy congregation, whose parish then comprised the locality of Wilmersdorf, therefore decided to build an additional church in the north of its parish. The congregation tendered a competition and the architecture firms of Otto Bartning, Hellmuth Grisebach, Fritz Höger, Otto Kuhlmann (German), Leo Lottermoser and Hans Rottmayr handed in their projects.
Höger prevailed with the design of the architect Ossip Klarwein (Hebrew), who started to work with Höger by 1921, with the design altered by the latter. Klarwein was chief designer (German: Hauptentwurfsarchitekt) in Höger's firm and – according to his contract – all his designs were issued under Höger's name.
The congregation commissioned the Hamburg-based architecture firm of Höger. So Klarwein moved to Joachim-Friedrich-Straße No. 47 (Berlin), shortly before the constructions started, in order to supervise the realisation of the design. The construction lasted from 1930 to 1933. On 19 March 1933 the church was inaugurated, soon after Klarwein, his wife and son Mati emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, because of the Nazi takeover (Machtergreifung).
Read more about this topic: Kirche Am Hohenzollernplatz
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