The
Church of Reconciliation was built on
Bernauer Straße in the late 19th century. It happened to be on the south side of the street, so when the border closed, the church was in the east. Most of the congregation just happened to be in the west, and eventually no one was allowed to go there from either side. For decades it sat in the death strip and border guards went around it, but in 1985 the East German government did this:
Which, I mean, talk about your terrible PR. Everybody could see that happening, idiots.
This is the church that is there now:
It's really lovely, made mostly of wood and packed earth. They have a service every weekday in honor of one of the people who died trying to escape.
2 comments:
Wow, that architecture is really striking!
Sophist, it's *so* cool! The wooden part you can see is like a screen around the sanctuary, which is made from packed earth - the walls don't have any adobe-like protection, so I assume the outer wood part is to shade it from the rain. It's really lovely on the inside, too, a cave-like feel. But the good kind of cave.
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