"The construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is making such very good progress, the ignorant populace never cease to be amazed."
How charmingly-put by architect Franz Schwechten, writing in 1894 of the stately centrepiece of a vast church-building programme, lofted in unbashful tribute to the late Kaiser Wilhelm I on the orders of his grandson Wilhelm II.
And yet, after being battered by Allied bombs in 1943, the still-just-about-standing ruins have been transformed into a symbol, not of vainglory, but of humility - a ravaged reminder of the horrors of war, set in a self-sufficient square at the tip of the department store-dominated Kurfurstendamm.
The "broken tooth", as it's now nicknamed, is quite a sight - more raggedly beautiful now than in its once-epic glory, pictured in stills which suggest a neo-romanesque masterpiece suddenly plonked in lonely yet awesome isolation on a roundabout.
Inside stands a tiny, gleaming cross gifted by the similarly ill-fated, similarly defiant Coventry Cathedral - while the same cathedral has donated a cross made of nails to the now-next-door squat, decahedronal "replacement" church - where iris-dazzling cyan streams through tiny squares of stained-glass, and a grim-eyed, golden Christ tips awkwardly above the altar.
The brief must have been: build something as different as can be, from what once stood - now totters - alongside. The effect of both is unnerving - yet touching too.
The contrast is certainly strong, and deliberate.
ReplyDeleteI think we Londoners could learn something from the way Berliners give their iconic buildings colloquial names - if I remember right, "lipstick and powdercase" for this unlikely pair on the K-damm.
I suppose "the Gherkin" is a start. But we must be able to find more.
"Lipstick and powdercase" - hadn't heard that - that is good.
ReplyDeleteThough I was also reading that early attempts at nicknames for the TV Tower just hadn't caught on at all.
Sadly, Frank Gehry's bizarre plans for a new development down in Hove look unlikely to overcome the Nimby opposition on the seafront, so posterity may miss out on Gehry's suggested nickname of "Four Maidens" - or the more widely-used alternative, "Trashcan Towers".