Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

It was just a few blocks beyond KaDeWe, and we needed to stop at the MediaMarkt on the way, so we visited the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Briefly, the church was built at the close of the 19th century to celebrate Wilhelm I, King of Prussia and Kaiser of the Reich, placed on a small square in the middle of a boulevard. British bombs* wrecked it the night of November 23rd, 1943, and it stayed wrecked for some years after the war. Eventually a replacement church was built nearby, but the wreck, now mostly the spire and narthex were cleaned up and left as a memorial to war losses. There are of course similar memorials in Coventry and elsewhere. Inside the narthex are the remains of some interesting mosaics as well as historical displays and models.

As it appeared before...sort of neo-Gothic

Helpful model of before

After the war

As we saw it

Mosaics, reconstructed from the rubble; mostly about the Kaiser

Model of the current area, memorial, and the octagonal new church

Interior of the new church; Chartres blue blocks

*The British mostly did night bombing, the Americans insisting on the more accurate (so it was argued) but costly day-light "precision" bombing.