The Chaple of Reconciliation

The first Church of Reconciliation was built in 1894 was destroyed by the GDR, East German border guards in 1985. The church had stood on the border of East and West Berlin, with the building falling within the Solviets’ sector and most of the parishioners in the neighboring French Sector. After the Berlin wall was built in 1961, the church was in the “death zone,” inaccessible to everyone except the border guards. Between 1961 and 1985 the church tower was used as an observation post, but otherwise the church was abandoned until it was destroyed in 1985 “to increase security, order, and cleanliness on the state border with West Berlin.” Less than five years after the church was destroyed the wall fell, and the Reconciliation Parish had considered the future of the site where its church had once stood. The parish was aware of the responsibility to keep the site as a symbol of remembrance for Berlin’s division and particularly to those that had lost their lives.

The result of these concerns is the Chapel of Reconciliation, which as completed in 1999 with help from the volunteers of Open Houses. The Chapel stands on the site of its predecessor and returns the bells and alter which were saved from destruction, to their former positions. The chapel itself is a rammed-earth constructionand so remains cool in summer and requires no heating in winter. At midday from Tuesday to Friday, there is a service for the victims of the wall, in which a biography of one of them is read.