Protestant Church of Plötzensee

The Protestant community center Plotzensee is an ecclesiastical center in Berlin's Charlottenburg- Nord. It was inaugurated in 1970 as a second location of the Evangelical church Charlottenburg- Nord. Because of the proximity to the memorial Plotzensee the worship area of the community center was designed as a memorial church for the victims of National Socialism. Its special character learns the space through the Plötzensee Totentanz by the Viennese artist Alfred Hrdlicka.

Construction and Architecture

The community center was built in the years 1968 to 1970 for the residents of the new housing estate, Paul Hertz settlement. The design was by the architect Gerd Neumann, Dietmar Grötzebach and Günther Plessow. The ensemble includes include a church, a daycare center, community rooms, a youth club, apartments and offices.

The church room was designed from the outset as a memorial church. Alfred Hrdlicka designed for him Plötzensee the dance of death. On 16 panels Hrdlicka takes up the motif of the medieval dances of death, referring to the current threat to human and peoples by force, power and arbitrariness.

In its architecture, the space for a kirchenreformerische ideas of the 1960s takes on: The benches are arranged in a square around the centrally placed altar, the church is to be so experienced as a community and be involved in the worship event. Secondly, it gives the reference to the Plötzensee prisons: The windowless concrete dome reminiscent of a cell. Only top light falls on the altar.

Ecumenical memorial work

With the neighboring Catholic Memorial Church of Maria Regina Martyrum and the local Carmelite Regina Martyrum is a close ecumenical cooperation in the memorial work. The largest ecumenical commemoration of the neighboring churches, the event series " Ecumenical Plötzensee days." Since the summer of 2009 produced on the premises of the community center, the Ecumenical Memorial Centre Plotzensee "Christians and resistance."

In July 2010 it was recognized by the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior as a starting point for the memorial service.