Chapel of Reconciliation A STORY BEHIND LOUVERS RUDOLF STEGERS
Architektur AKTUELL 3/2001, S. 66-75, Fotos: Bruno Klomfar
Chapel of
Reconciliation in Berlin, Germany On Sundays the chiming of the bells is so
loud that one would suppose that there was a large church nearby, but along the
streets there is no sign of a nave, transepts or a tower. In fact as one
hastens past there are only a greenish metal fence and two brownish blocks to
be seen. Only the cross on the wooden cladding of the element at the rear
provides an answer to the question as to what this building actually is. The
chapel is intended as atonement for an episode of essentially German history:
the transition from idealism to barbarism that led to the building of the
Berlin Wall in 1961. The young Berlin architects Reitermann and Sassenroth have
created an impressive symbol here, while the Tyrolean Martin Rauch was able to
realise yet another of his loam mas-terpieces.
Von Rudolf
Stegers The drama began with the partition of Berlin. After 1961 the
Evangelical Church of Reconciliation lay in the dead strip between the
Elisabeth cemetery with the "hinterland wall" in the east and Bernauer Strasse
with the foreground wall in the west. In 1985 the Neo-Gothic church designed by
the Mecklenburg architect Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel was blown up in order "to
improve safety and orderliness. The building quite simply stood in the way of
soldiers on patrol. Since the abolition of the border in 1990 the districts
Mitte and Wedding have lain cheek by jowl. Neighbours? Friends? Block and
courtyard on the one side, rows and saw tooth pattern on the other separate
just as definitely as the sloping terrain between the districts. On this
terrain where Hussitenstrasse meets Bernauer Strasse at a precise right angle
and where the Recon-ciliation church previously soared towards the heavens, a
great deal has been set in motion over the past few years. At the front on the
left three bells from the old church hang in a flat frame, their peals escape
outwards through horizontal louvers. On the ground one sees not only the plan
of the tower and nave of the wilfully destroyed House of God but also the
concrete path laid for the postillion. A fragile oval shape about nine metres
high and with a maximum width of eighteen metres stands behind to the right:
the Chapel of Reconciliation. Whereas the community building dat-ing from the
mid 1960s designed by Harald Franke and Horst Haselhoff resembles a grey
housing block, i.e. avoids the phenomenon of the sacred, the young architects
Rudolf Reitermann and Peter Sassenroth had no inhibitions in creating a space
de-voted to religious services alone.
Their design began by closing the circle. By
revolving and creating niches in a ring once defined by Rudolf Schwarz as the
most concentrated form of gathering, they created the suggestion of a narthex
and choir. The enormous dynamism of the chapel is based on the intersection of
two straight lines: On the one side is the west-east axis traditionally of
significance in church build-ing, on the other is the north-west-south-east
axis parallel to the centre axis of the destroyed church. Along the former of
these two lines, on the upper part of the west wall, is the square of 'a rose'
of white glass and in front of the east wall, at the bottom, is the cube of the
altar made by Martin Rauch of compounded loam in a brownish red colour. At the
end of the second of the two axes is a bright tall niche in which a dark
artwork depicting Christ and his disciples stands. The attentive eye wanders
between the vanishing points of these two axes as it moves from the altar table
to the right below the reredos and the reredos to the left above the altar
table.
From the rear, i.e. from the entrance
box and the organ loft, this separation of these religious objects is
particularly noticeable. Symbols of the fragmented history of religion and
politics? In this respect the niche provides us, above all, with a difficult
lesson: Below the artwork (a not particularly fine 19th century piece) a window
in the ground allows a view into a small section of the basement of the old
church, directly after the erection of the wall the border troops closed up the
entrance from outside with concrete blocks. Several figures of the crudely
carved Last Supper were later decapitated. Is perhaps the condition of the
reredos, vandalised by people who had earlier blown up the church, a distorted
reflection of the iconoclasm of the Reformation? This appropriation of history
using contemporary means does not stop at the choice of building materials. The
floor is of compounded loam and the shell, a good half a metre thick, is
enriched with brick fragments and strengthened with flax fibres. Much as in
the case of Abbot Suger, who regarded the stones of St. Denis as relics and
ordered that they be should be saved from the old basilica to be used in the
new cathedral, the reconciliation church lives on in the Chapel of
Reconciliation. One sees layer upon layer of compressed loam and stone in the
one bare rounded wall. Erected under the supervision of Martin Rauch, a loam
specialist, the grainy material strengthened by the addition of bricks from the
destroyed church is a product of the ecological logic, motivated by Franciscan
idealism, of the client. "The loam and the brick are healed earth", says the
Pastor Manfred Fischer, while the southern wall slowly changes colour in the
sloping light from grey to green-yellow and brown. The nucleus of the chapel,
from which only the anthracite coloured boxes of the entrance and the niches
protrude, is protected at a distance by a second shell. The floor of poured
asphalt, nine frames with uprights and beams of pine and a curtain of
horizontal louvers of Canadian Douglas fir, which will turn a silvery grey
colour through the effect of sun and rain, form this oval. The vertical wooden
structure swings freely around the horizontal loam structure: a loose exterior
around a solid inner core. Between them is an airy space, at places larger at
others smaller, that invites everyone to steal away for a moment from everyday
space and time. When in 1995 the community was able once more to call the site
of the old church their own, members were confronted with the task of finding a
function for the plot, which was none too small. The organic qualities of the
victorious competition design by Reitermann and Sassenroth - the relationship
between the elements is like that between the white and the yolk of an
egg-relate to the concept of a "forme forte", both monumental and monolithic,
influenced by Martin Steinmann.
All were quickly of one opinion as
regards the form, but for a long time the clients and the architects argued
about the building materials, whether they should be concrete and steel or wood
a nd loam. The decision to build a loam structure by Martin Rauch was doubtless
the correct one in view of the auratic harmony between form and
material.
Rudolf
Reitermann born in Nuremberg in 1965. Studied architecture at the
University of Technology in Stuttgart and at the University of Fine Arts in
Berlin (graduated in 1990). 1991-94 ran his own studio in Berlin. Since 1994
academic assistant to the chair of Architectural con-struction and design,
Berlin UT. Since 1995 joint architectural studio with Peter Sassenroth.
born in
Paderborn in 1963, studied architecture at the Berlin University of Technology
and at the Polytechnic of Central London (graduated in 1988). 1987 worked at
the studio of lan Ritchie Architects, London. 1989-95 managed his own
architectural studio. Since 1995 ran a studio jointly with Rudolf Reitemmann.
1996-98 professor for design and building construction at the University for
Speelalised Studies in Kiel.
