Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

On the night of November 23rd, 1943 Allied bombers destroyed much of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church at the heart of Charlottenburg, Berlin. Built by the Kaiser at the end of the 1800s in honour of his father, the church lay largely entombed by its own fallen stone. All that remained was a shattered shell and the bell tower. The church’s priest , persecuted for his steadfastly anti-Nazi beliefs throughout the regime’s reign, conducted a Christmas service at the end of the war, the parishioners congregating beneath the barely suspended arches of an open-air ruin. Soon after, however, the church was condemned as too dangerous for continued use and a decision was made to retain what remained of it as a memorial to the futility of war and to construct a new church beside it.