Friedrichswerdersche Kirche: Schinkel's Gothic Gamble
Why is it significant?
In front of you rises a tall church of bare red brick, with two square towers and long pointed windows. It looks as if someone had lifted it out of a medieval English college town and set it down in the middle of Berlin. That someone, once again, was Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
Key Facts
| Place | Friedrichswerdersche Kirche: Schinkel's Gothic Gamble |
|---|---|
| Address | Werderscher Markt, 10117 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.51590, 13.39750 |
| Part of Walk | Kings, Domes and Empty Shelves: Museum Island & Prussian Berlin |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you rises a tall church of bare red brick, with two square towers and long pointed windows. It looks as if someone had lifted it out of a medieval English college town and set it down in the middle of Berlin. That someone, once again, was Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
You have now seen Schinkel the classicist, with his Greek columns and Roman domes. So why Gothic? The story is that Schinkel offered several designs for this church in the 1820s, including classical ones, but the crown prince, the future Frederick William the Fourth, the same romantic you met on Museum Island, loved the Middle Ages and wanted Gothic. The church was finished in 1831, and it became one of the first important neo-Gothic buildings in the city.
Schinkel was a man of astonishing range. Before he built anything famous, he painted stage sets, and his starry night sky for a production of Mozart's Magic Flute in 1816 is still reproduced on stage today. Across the road stood his most modern building, the Bauakademie, a brick school of architecture that pointed straight towards the twentieth century. East Germany demolished it in 1962. Today you can see a reconstructed corner and plans to bring the rest back.
The church has had its own troubles. Badly damaged in the war, it was restored and later used as a Schinkel museum. Then, in 2012, it had to close: the digging for a row of expensive new townhouses right next door had cracked its walls and vaults. After years of repairs it reopened in 2020 as a gallery of nineteenth-century sculpture, white marble figures standing under brick Gothic vaults.
A royal whim, a damaged masterpiece and a museum again: Schinkel's churches seem to survive everything. Now walk south-west along the quiet streets for a few blocks, and you will come out onto the most beautiful square in Berlin, between two domed churches.