Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is the most prominent ruin among the Berlin sites that stand as monuments to World War II bombing. The damaged church, and its post-war additions, are now an invitation to peace.

More than any city, Berlin stands for endurance through the conflicts of the 20th century. But the ruins of the Neoromanesque Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche) and its modern companions represent this better than most sites.

The Protestant church, designed by Franz Schwechten, had stood at Breitscheidplatz at the head of the boulevard Kurfürstendamm since 1895 and was meant to be a showpiece. It was the tallest building in Charlottenburg, now Berlin’s western city centre.

The church’s symbolism changes

The church had five towers and the west tower, known as Alter Turm, was 113 metres high. Its opulent scale is preserved in a concept drawing by Schwechten from 1893. The style was considered reminiscent of the medieval Bonn Münster.

The church was a memorial long before World War II. As well as being medievalist in the Romantic spirit of the age, it was to many a symbol of national pride as a monument to the first Prussian-German emperor. The emperor’s life was depicted in mosaics that were interwoven with Prussian legend and, in the body of the church, Biblical images.

But, after World War I, the second German emperor known as Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and fled. Sentiment among parts of the Berlin community soon favoured demolition as Germany became a republic.

Bombing in 1943 badly damaged the tower and ruined the rest of the building. The significance of the church, as with some other Berlin buildings, was about to change.

A new memorial church

The architect Egon Eiermann won a competition with his design for a replacement church, but his plan for demolition of the once-controversial Alter Turm, now wrecked and known as the “hollow tooth”, now met opposition. This contrasts with the fate of the also badly damaged Berliner Schloss at the eastern end of the city.

An innovative compromise by Eiermann envisaged a mixture of preservation and new buildings.

Eiermann’s designs included a low, flat-roofed octagonal church hall, sometimes called the “prayer gasometer”, a hexagonal bell tower, and a square chapel to replace some of the church’s missing pieces, as well as a small vestry building. He laid out the new buildings as separate components, reflecting their predecessors but as if blown apart.

The minimalist shapes of Eiermann struck a contrast with the intricate Romanticism of the original church, but used the shattered tower, still 70 metres tall, as a centrepiece. The project was completed in 1961, the year of the Berlin Wall.

Church of suffering and hope

War remembrance and reconciliation were the new themes of the church.

The new structures are full of symbols. The glass bricks of the new buildings came from Chartres, site of the iconic medieval cathedral.

The Gedenkhalle beneath the tower ruin now tells the story of both churches and the Hohenzollern emperors and features mosaics and fragments salvaged from the old church’s ruins.

A cross made of nails from the beams of the former cathedral of Coventry in the UK shows that the conduct of bombing and the suffering of cities was a burden on both sides. Coventry cathedral’s ruin also stands as a memorial today.

The cross of nails was granted as a symbol of reconciliation to more than a dozen German churches after World War II. A stonemason noticed the roof beams had fallen in a cross shape after the Coventry bombing and crosses of nails appear in many cities as part of a bond of peace.

In a side chapel is the charcoal sketch known as the Stalingrad Madonna, drawn by the German doctor and pastor Kurt Reuber in 1942 during the battle for the Soviet city, which was also destroyed and rebuilt.

The glass bricks, created from fragments, refract and filter a blue daylight into the new structures, inspired by a colour used in a window at Chartres. They were designed by the Chartres artist Gabriel Loire and fitted into a steel grid in walls sufficiently thick to exclude noise from the central traffic zone. At night globes throw the broken blue light outside the church in a similar effect to stained glass.

Take S5, S7, S75 or U2 to Zoologischer Garten or bus 100 or 200 to Breitscheidplatz.

Raven Travel Guides Europe offers in-depth information and detailed insights on Berlin's landmarks in its Berlin travel guide. Check out the significance of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, the wonders of Museum Island, or the city’s great palaces, Schloss Charlottenburg and Berliner Schloss.