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"The Fresh Breeze of a Modern Attitude towards Building": Christoph Hehl's Neo-Romanesque Rosary Church in Berlin Steglitz (1899–1900)
by Annah Kellogg-Krieg

In the fall of 1898 Engelbert Seibertz was mad, and rightfully so. A well-known Berlin architect and designer of fourteen churches, including the Dominican St. Paul's in Moabit (1892–93) and Catholic parish St. Matthew's on Winterfeldplatz (1894), Seibertz was under contract for a new Catholic church in the growing Berlin suburb of Steglitz—St. Mary, Queen of the Rosary—and had just spent a great deal of time preparing drawings for it.[1] Things seemed to be progressing without any difficulty until Seibertz discovered that Josef Deitmer, the parish priest, had shown Seibertz's designs to a recent Berlin transplant and relatively unknown architect, Christoph Hehl, to critique. Hehl had just completed his first Berlin commission, the Catholic church Heart of Jesus, in the working class district of Prenzlauer Berg.[2] Deitmer, who had been at the October 25 dedication of this monumental central plan church with its towering north-German Romanesque façade, referred to it later in the parish chronicle as "a glorious building."[3]

Deitmer's relations with Seibertz degraded rapidly and, on November 24, 1898, Seibertz wrote Deitmer a letter both to defend his artistic prowess, and to distance himself from what he saw as Hehl's derivative work: "When desired I work in a style just as authentic and old as Mr. Hehl. If I should hold slavishly to the old models, I would create from the same sources from which Mr. Hehl has created up to this point."[4] By spring 1899 Deitmer and the consistory awarded Hehl the commission and gave Seibertz 1,000 Marks for his troubles.[5]

Scholars today bracket both architects together in a group of significant architects working for the Catholic Church in Wilhelmine Berlin that also includes Max Hasak and August Menken. The differences in their approach to medieval models and in their reactions to liturgical developments has become subsumed within a universalizing narrative of medievalism. The moment of Seibertz and Hehl's stylistic confrontation, however, reveals much of what was at stake for the fledgling Berlin Catholic diaspora as it was building new parish churches. Deitmer's eagerness to break a contract with a well-established architect, and catapult a virtual unknown into the role of architectural spokesman for Berlin Catholics, demonstrates how the neo-Romanesque style found expression not only in kaiser-sponsored large-scale building projects, but also, altered and transformed, in the architectural language of Catholics. Furthermore, Seibertz's snide commentary on Hehl's supposedly "slavish" holding to historical building models and his "authentic and old" style tell us that the notion of neo-Romanesque architecture as merely imitative and uncreative is not an invention of recent architectural historiography, but has a long, full tradition.

Fig. 1, West front of the exterior. Christoph Hehl, Rosary Church, Berlin-Steglitz, 1898–1900.


Fig. 2, Exterior as seen from the southeast. Christoph Hehl, Rosary Church, Berlin-Steglitz, 1898–1900.

In a rapidly modernizing and industrializing world, religious groups sought a physical connection to their medieval past via the architectural language of medievalism. Yet by choosing neo-Romanesque for their churches and synagogues, Berlin congregations also aligned themselves with the strong nationalizing connotations of the style in the German empire. This contradictory, multi-layered, nature of neo-Romanesque—historicist yet progressive, sacred yet secular—was an inherent part of modernity in the Kaiserreich. The conflicts that it signals still echo in our society today—religious strife, identity negotiation, and the treatment of shared histories.

The work of German architectural historian Andreas Tacke has been fundamental to my understanding of Hehl's Rosary Church (fig. 1).[6] Tacke singles out building materials, notably the use of Klosterziegel (monastic bricks; see below), as the crucial religious signifier of Hehl's Catholic churches in the greater Berlin area. Yet, he fails to notice the concurrent use of this same material in Protestant churches in Berlin, which seems to strip the monastic brick of its specifically Catholic significance. Furthermore, his single-minded focus on the history and development of the two competing brick formats in the Berlin-Brandenburg region, Klosterziegel and Reichsziegel (imperial brick), has caused him to neglect Hehl's more vital contribution to late nineteenth-century Catholic architecture: the combination of a German Romanesque westwork with an Italian central plan interior (fig. 2).

In this article, I intend to highlight what I see as the truly inventive aspect of Hehl's hybrid designs, namely, their responsiveness to the shifting needs of a burgeoning Catholic congregation. Instead of characterizing Hehl as an "architect totally committed to historicism,"[7] I present him as a dynamic architect, who blends convention and innovation to serve a minority community in the process of transformation. By considering Hehl's building in the dual context of late nineteenth-century modernization attempts of the Catholic Church and contemporaneous secular developments in medievalizing architecture, I hope to highlight the originality of Hehl's variant of northern German Catholic architecture. Moreover, building on the work of Barbara Miller Lane, I intend to argue that Hehl's Rosary Church, like other contemporary neo-Romanesque buildings, is not merely an example of an imitative retrograde style revival but contains the germs of architectural modernism. Hehl's Rosary Church, as a medievalist structure that looks both backward and forward, functions as a precursor to the early twentieth century religious architecture of Theodor Fischer and his student Dominikus Böhm.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, as the Catholic Church sought to maintain its influence in an increasingly secular German world ruled by Prussian Protestants, it saw itself forced to modernize. Church officials changed the education of priests after the model of the more rigorous academic training of Protestant pastors, thus transforming Catholic clergy into a more unified constituent. The first parish priest at Rosary Church, Josef Deitmer (1865–1929), had studied theology at Münster and Innsbruck in the early 1880s and belonged to the new breed of well-educated clergymen.[8]

With a more educated, engaged clergy, sermons became more of a central feature of the mass. Congregations, which were seeking religious connection in a time of great social upheaval, were receptive. Elements of popular belief once scorned by the Catholic Enlightenment also became acceptable again. Pilgrimages flourished and the Marian cult gained strength in the 1850s and 1860s.[9] Yet another aspect of the revival and modernization of Catholicism was a turn towards an ultramontanism. Disappointed by the Prussian-dominated solution to the German national question, German Catholics looked beyond the Alps to Rome for strong papal authority.

When the empire consolidated in 1871, it did not include Austria. The pan-German nationalists' more inclusive concept of the German nation, known as the grossdeutsch empire, would have greatly increased Catholic influence in the political sphere. Instead, the government of the kleindeutsch empire, as overseen by Prussia, was mainly Protestant. Although the Rosary Church parish and other German Catholics did not question their own national loyalty to the new German nation-state, their minority status encouraged a close relationship with the Vatican as a way to concentrate the social and political sway they had. The ultramontane perspective only grew stronger as Catholics witnessed Chancellor Bismarck's attempt to impose national-religious homogenization on the new German empire through the Kulturkampf. To Bismarck and other Prussian nationalists, recent Catholic dogma like the Immaculate Conception of Mary (1854), the Syllabus Errorum damning modern principles and institutions (1864), and papal infallibility (1870) represented a direct affront to their nationalizing project.

The Kulturkampf's barrage of anti-Catholic legislation began immediately in 1871 when Bismarck subsumed Catholic authority into the Prussian Ministry of Culture. The following year he introduced the "Pulpit Paragraph," a new addition to the Criminal Code forbidding clergy from discussing politics in front of their congregations. The School Oversight Law required religious schools to undergo government inspection and removed religious teachers from public schools. The Jesuits were expelled in 1872 and did not return until 1917. The government also severed diplomatic relations with the Vatican. The Bread Basket Laws of 1875 blocked the usual state subsidies provided to officially recognized churches, amounting to a loss of sixteen million Marks over the next few years. The first mitigating laws did not come until 1880, six years before the official retraction of all Kulturkampf legislation in 1886.[10]

Resentment and suspicion of Catholicism lingered in Berlin, surfacing most vehemently in the celebrations of the 350th anniversary, in 1889, of the introduction of Protestantism to Mark Brandenburg (and Berlin) in 1539 by Prince-Elector Joachim II.[11] Protestants had long occupied Catholic pre-Reformation houses of worship. Now they publicly presented their own Catholic-free version of local history. The Vossische Zeitung went so far as to suggest that Catholics had not in fact been the original bearers of Christianity in the region, erasing centuries of Catholic missionary work, education, and building achievement:

Catholicism never lost the Mark, because it never possessed it. The power to expand, inherent in the Catholic Church, was stemmed by the idiosyncratic, obstinate, and incomprehensible populations that inhabited the "blotting-sand box" of the German Empire. They may have adopted Catholicism, but they never accepted Catholicism in their hearts. They observed the external forms, but the old paganism persisted under this thin veneer with great tenacity. Only in the new form [Protestantism] did Christianity become palatable to the Markish peasants; they became Christian and Lutheran on the same day.[12]

Protestants capitalized on the fervor resulting from the 1889 celebration by dedicating seventy-five churches between 1889 and the outbreak of World War I.[13] These churches often contain imagery that overtly joins the rise of Prussia and the German nation with the triumph of Protestantism into one seamless narrative. In the Emmaus Church (1891–1893) in the district of Kreuzberg, sculptural reliefs on the chancel do not include the conventional motif of the Four Evangelists or Church Fathers, but rather the pre-modern exemplars of the union of Protestant church and state, Luther and Prince-Elector Joachim II, the latter a perfect precursor to the Protestant Hohenzollern emperors.[14] The monumental statue of Joachim II along the Siegesallee (Victory Boulevard) in the Tiergarten (zoo), completed in 1900, included not only a bronze relief portrait of Luther but also a representation of Matthias von Jagow, the Bishop of Brandenburg who performed Joachim II's first Protestant Eucharist. Representations of Luther, Joachim II, and other Reformers appear in many other Protestant churches in Berlin, including state-sponsored churches of national significance like the Berlin Cathedral (Julius Raschdorff, 1894–1905) and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Franz Schwechten, 1891–1895).

This aggressive stance of the Protestants heightened the consciousness of a distinct Catholic identity and spurred Catholic congregations to answer the Protestant's building spree with one of their own. August Soller's St. Michael's near the district border between Mitte and Kreuzberg, dedicated in 1861, was only the second Catholic church built in Berlin after the Reformation.[15] Then outlying districts and suburban communities confronted the Protestant challenge and their own community's crippling need for parish churches, schools, and hospitals.

From the middle of the nineteenth century onward, suburban areas like Steglitz, not officially incorporated into the metropolitan area of Berlin until 1920, had become increasingly appealing to city dwellers as they sought reprieve from the rapid industrialization and overcrowded conditions of the city center.[16] Steglitz became especially attractive after the opening in 1838 of the train route between Berlin and Potsdam, which connected the village to the neighboring urban centers. Its population ballooned from 648 in 1855 to 21,474 residents in 1900. On the eve of World War I, Steglitz had over 80,000 residents, making it the largest rural municipality (Landgemeinde) in Prussia.[17]

On October 12, 1891, Archbishop Kopp of Breslau established a parish for Steglitz and other small communities to the southwest of the city center along the train route to Potsdam.[18] In these rapidly growing communities outside of the city center, minority groups thrived. Demographic figures give evidence of a diverse religious population, including Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.[19] Deitmer, a young priest with strong connections to the Marian pilgrimage site of Kevelaer am Rhein, accepted the position of parish priest in Steglitz, leaving his post as chaplain at St. Matthew's on Potsdamer Street. Six thousand members strong, the Steglitz congregation needed not only a place to worship but also an architectural statement to present its version of regional and national history.

The Catholic Church made a bold move in declaring a Marian dedication for the first parish church in Steglitz since the Reformation; a church had not been dedicated to the Virgin in the Berlin metropolitan area since 1270.[20] The dedication of the church to Mary, Queen of the Rosary, was a particularly strong Catholic statement. Engelbert Seibertz seemed to be a dependable choice as the chief architect for the fledgling Steglitz congregation, which had no architectural model for its new church. His two major commissions in Berlin—Dominican St. Paul's in Moabit in 1893 and Catholic parish St. Matthew's on Winterfeldplatz in 1894—displayed a traditional neo-Gothic style with complex facades of brick patternwork, tracery, and a longitudinal plan. Seibertz's involvement with the Steglitz consistory, however, was short lived.

As we have seen, the Heart of Jesus Church of the recent Berlin transplant Christoph Hehl so moved Deitmer, that he called into question the validity and soundness of Seibertz's steadfast neo-Gothicism and called on Hehl to build the Steglitz church. When Hehl took over the project in the fall of 1898, he cast off the strict neo-Gothicism of his teachers in Hannover and colleagues like Seibertz. Instead, he embraced a more flexible approach toward layout and form, combining a locally resonant exterior form and materials with a more modern open-plan interior that recalled early Christian churches in Italy.

Deitmer does not make it clear in the parish chronicles what inspired him to break a spoken contract with a prominent local architect.[21] Nineteenth-century theorists and architects in Germany had long revered the Gothic as a sacred style whose soaring verticality and elaborate vaults reflected Catholicism's enduring achievement. Hehl's hybridized monumental neo-Romanesque churches, combining Italianate central plans with Berlin's local medieval building traditions, represented a clear break from convention. The contemporary architectural press noted Hehl's attempt at striking out beyond the neo-Gothic. An article in the Berliner Architekturwelt extolled the innovative design of the Rosary Church, "Not only does the light dispensed from the dome windows illuminate the entire church space, but it also achieves a picturesque effect of great appeal, which as yet is seen very seldom in modern church buildings."[22]

Hehl's training and early career had included work with the leading medievalist architects of his day who had also pushed historicist architecture in new directions. Hehl first trained with Protestant neo-Gothicist Georg Gottlob Ungewitter (1820–1864). It is likely that Ungewitter's highly successful Gothisches Musterbuch, which he wrote with Vincenz Statz in 1856, was Hehl's first introduction to medieval design.[23] The collaboration of the Catholic Statz and the Protestant Ungewitter in this part theory-part model book represented the expansion of the neo-Gothic debates from small regional centers like Hamburg or Cologne to the larger, national stage. By having such international architect-scholars and strong medievalist advocates as his teachers, Christoph Hehl, a Catholic from Prussia, was able to measure himself in the larger arena of medievalist building.

Between 1867 and 1869 Hehl lived in England, apprenticing under George Gilbert Scott during the latter's work on the interior of Hamburg's St. Nikolai Church.[24] The open competition for the church in the 1840s exposed the entrenched rivalry between proponents of Rundbogenstil and Gothic.[25] The conservative panel of judges first chose Gottfried Semper's classical-inspired Rundbogenstil design. Public outcry and Scott's own impassioned pamphlets forced the building committee to reconsider the jury's decision; a new panel of "impartial" judges reversed the design and Scott assumed control of the project. Although some claimed Scott to have merely transplanted English Gothic onto northern German, Protestant soil, his building was the outcome of a two-month intensive study trip throughout Germany aimed at determining the nature of German Gothic. In the end, an Englishman gave the German Gothicists their most important national symbol, alongside the freshly completed Cologne Cathedral. This push and pull between the two main camps of medievalist architects in Germany must have left an indelible mark on Hehl. After German unification in 1871 and throughout Hehl's career, he walked a line that criss-crossed between Romanesque and Gothic, German and "foreign"; ultimately, his varied experiences helped him to create modern forms.

Hehl completed his formal training in the early 1870s with northern German neo-Gothicist Conrad Wilhelm Hase, an architect who carried out the dreams of Ungewitter by establishing a neo-Gothic architectural school at the Hannover Polytechnic School.[26] After having studied the Rundbogenstil in Munich in the 1840s, Hase trained as a mason and bricklayer, later raising the status of medieval-inspired brickwork to the pinnacle of Hannover School design.[27] It is likely that Hehl first heard of Hase through Ungewitter, who had been Hase's classmate in Munich. As a teacher, Hase instilled in his students his dedication to German medieval brick construction and his contempt for modern building materials.

While a student at the Polytechnic, Hehl began working at Edwin Oppler's studio. Although separated in age by sixteen years, Oppler and Hehl shared a similar outsider perspective on the Hannover architectural world. Both had been born outside of northern Germany, Oppler in Silesia and Hehl in Hesse. Both had traveled extensively, even working abroad, during their careers. As members of religious minorities in Prussia (Oppler was Jewish), their social standing perhaps contributed to the development of their own particular brand of Hannoverian medievalism. At the time when Hehl was his employee, Oppler was working on the New Synagogue in Breslau. In designing its exterior, he drew heavily on one of the major monuments of the German Romanesque, Worms Cathedral.[28] However, Oppler did not match the New Synagogue's exterior with the corresponding interior one would imagine—a longitudinal hall with rounded arches and simplistic decoration. Instead, he based the organization of space in the New Synagogue on a central plan, while the interior of the eastern apse combines stylistic elements from Romanesque, Gothic and Islamic architecture. Hehl would later adapt Oppler's hybridized, compartmentalized approach to his designs for buildings commissioned by the Catholic diaspora in Berlin. Working for religious minorities in cosmopolitan urban centers dominated by Prussian Protestants, Oppler's and Hehl's buildings do not represent an abandonment of the functional and materialistic tenets of the Hannover School. On the contrary, their designs overtly display the fragmentary, multi-layered struggle of religious identity negotiation in modernizing Germany.

After serving in the army during the Franco-Prussian War, Hehl began working as an independent architect in Hannover.[29] Hehl's early churches display a regimented neo-Gothic style common to the Hannover School. In the Protestant Garrison Church of 1898, however, he cast off the sleek uniformity of Gothic verticality in favor of heavy, blocky construction. The imposing westwork and natural stone harken back to the imperial monasteries, churches and fortresses of the medieval Ottonian and Hohenstaufen rulers. Completed at the same time as Franz Schwechten's famous Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, the Garrison Church also represents a larger architectural trend of neo-Romanesque building promoted by Kaiser Wilhelm II. However, Hehl's turning toward the neo-Romanesque was not an act of stylistic allegiance to the kaiser or an unthinking show of patriotism. After his move to Berlin in 1894, the neo-Romanesque style became a springboard from which Hehl and Berlin Catholics could stake a Catholic claim to the architectural heritage of Berlin and Brandenburg.

After accepting a teaching position at the Royal Technical Academy in Berlin, Hehl began teaching four courses a semester focusing on medieval architecture.[30] Hans Schliepmann referred to Hehl in his obituary as, "a first-rate teacher, in the greatest sense of the word."[31] Hehl found particular enjoyment in leading excursions for his students. During his own initial trip to Italy in 1890 and subsequent trips with students, Hehl devoted a great deal of study to the Roman, early Christian and medieval architectural sites he visited in northern and central Italy.[32] On his first trip to Italy with students, in the spring of 1894, he led them through northern Italy, visiting the medieval churches of Milan, Pavia, Verona, and a small island in the Venetian lagoon, Torcello. It was on Torcello that one particular structure caught Hehl's eye. Santa Fosca, a small eleventh-century central-plan church, so captivated Hehl, that he quickly sketched the complete plan, partial perspective of the choir, and the elevation of the north side aisle to use in his Berlin designs

Fig. 3, Interior before paintings added. Christoph Hehl, Rosary Church, Berlin-Steglitz, 1898–1900.


Fig. 4, Plan of Christoph Hehl, Rosary Church, Berlin-Steglitz, 1898–1900.

Hehl's interest in the central plan was unusual for a Catholic architect. At the Second Congress of German Architects and Engineers at Bamberg in 1843, participants had deemed the central plan church most suitable for Protestant worship.[33] A central plan, it was thought, offered more people a better view of the service (figs. 3, 4). By the last decade of the nineteenth century, German clergy and architects had come to associate the central plan with the Protestant building reforms resulting from the Wiesbaden Program of 1891, which called for the unified placement of altar, pulpit, and organ in a centrally-planned place of worship.[34] Profoundly anti-hierarchical and, thus, anti-Catholic, the central plan provided Protestants with a bold counter-statement to the neo-Gothic, cathedral-like churches of their Catholic peers.

Although the Wiesbaden Program was a conscious attempt by Protestants to create their own architectural language, one that did not rely on the model of High Gothic Catholic churches, its approach to religious design suited some of Hehl's Catholic clients in Berlin. In response to their desire to provide their growing congregations with an open view of the Mass, Hehl, in his central-plan Catholic parish churches in Berlin, created more democratizing, open church interiors, thus following the Wiesbaden Program but ignoring its anti-Catholic rhetoric. In his first church in Berlin, Heart of Jesus, the architect adapted an Italianate central plan and Byzantine dome to a large parish church near the Berlin city center. A little later, in the Rosary Church in Steglitz, he did not place the altar in a chamber elevated above the pulpit and nave, accessible only to clergy, as was the rule in longitudinal Catholic churches, but he brought the altar down into the open expanse of a wide nave, removed from the pulpit by only a few steps.

Financing such building projects were Olympian tasks for these young congregations. The total cost of the Rosary Church was approximately 150,000 Marks, compared to over 300,000 Marks for St. Matthew's in Steglitz or over three million Marks for the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church completed at the same time in Berlin.[35] In a show of generosity towards a Catholic community, the kaiser presented the Rosary parish with 10,000 Marks to aid their cause.[36] Although he held very conflicted beliefs about the role of Catholics in his empire, Wilhelm II did, at times, move beyond the Kulturkampf impasse and reach out to his Catholic countrymen.[37] Another 20,000 Marks came from Archbishop Kopp in Breslau, who visited this site in January 1899.[38]

Despite these large solicited donations, Deitmer relied primarily on grassroots fundraising that he organized for the four Hehl-designed churches he commissioned. Deitmer, and later other priests who worked with Hehl, sent series of "begging letters" (Bettelbriefe) to German Catholics throughout the Reich. The letters pleaded, in the words of Maximilian Beyer (1872–1937), priest at Holy Family in Lichterfelde and contractor of Mater Dolorossa in Lankwitz, "Ach, help, please, help just this once, don't reject the bothersome beggar. Believe me, it hurts, year in and year out to beg and to find so many closed doors and hard hearts. Not for me, no, for your poor fellow brothers and sisters in the diaspora, in the dangers of the big city."[39] Catholic associations (Vereine) also played a large part in organizing fundraisers of all sorts to support these building projects. However, Deitmer amassed, pfennig-by-pfennig, donations that earned him the name, "beggar priest" and led to his receipt of critical letters from the Protestant majority in Steglitz, such as one which cried, "Close your begging snout, you dear, pious begging bastard." [40] One writer told Deitmer, "I will give nothing for this sow pen! You will not pollute beautiful Steglitz with your Roman stink!"[41]

Specifically for the Rosary, the congregation put on a Passion play in Steglitz in 1896, similar to the well-known event in Oberammergau, in which actors depicted the Passion of Christ and the corresponding Old Testament stories in acted scenes and living pictures.[42] Held at the Albrechthof near the Steglitz train station, parish members reenacted the Passion story from the procession into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. A narrator introduced each scene and gave commentary while the choir provided musical accompaniment.[43] By bringing Catholic ritual out into a public square, this Passion play fit into a much more complex, unstable context than the Oberammergau plays ritually performed for centuries in the small Bavarian town.[44] The Steglitz passion plays also draw on the medieval tradition of religious displays and processions that make use of the public sphere. Despite backlash from the mail fundraising campaigns, the Rosary's public performances received little negative reaction from the Protestant majority.[45]

With the necessary funds assembled, groundbreaking commenced on June 10, 1899 and on August 20, Assumption Day, the congregation celebrated the laying of the cornerstone.[46] Festivities began in the small provisional chapel in the adjacent street in the afternoon. A procession marched to the construction site for the religious celebration. Catholic processions on public property and open streets were forbidden in Berlin throughout the entire Wilhelmine period, but in Steglitz the Rosary congregation generated no great outcry for their public demonstration of faith.[47] Tickets sales for the public secular celebration in the Albrechthof served as another building fundraiser. The ten-pfennig programs detailing the military band's performance also aided in the endless collection efforts. Regional Catholic newspapers like Germania, the voice of the Berlin Catholic association of the same name, and the Germania-owned Märkische Volkszeitung as well as the local Steglitzer Anzeiger and Steglitzer Zeitung, extensively covered the festivities.[48] Besides the clergy, monks, and diocesan representatives, the Steglitz mayor, school directors, and over forty Catholic associations participated in a parade to the Albrechthof and the ensuing secular celebration. The capping of the day with the military band concert and dance, as well as the presence of local officials and the press, indicate that the groundbreaking of a large Catholic parish church was accepted by the immediate community. The absence of larger secular Berlin newspaper coverage also points to a lack of interest, or even awareness, of the major events of the Berlin-Brandenburg Catholic diaspora. As with the Passion play in 1896, the 1899 groundbreaking ceremonies were part fundraiser, part religious festival, and part community event that does not fit neatly into modern categories of public/private or secular/religious.

Fig. 5, West façade. St. Mary’s Monastic Church, Lehnin, begun 1185.

Under the supervision of Hehl's on-site manager, building progressed rapidly until the winter break between December and February. Deitmer diligently kept track of the construction in the parish chronicle. For him and his congregation it must have been inspiring to see a church emerge that resembled the architecture of their religious forebears in the region, Cistercian monks. After Ottonians established bishoprics in the Mark Brandenburg during their colonization of the eastern territories in the tenth century, the Cistercians were the first monastics to institute missions in the Mark Brandenburg in the late twelfth century. The parish council had specifically called for the church to be executed in the style of the Markish brick architecture the Cistercians had used to build their first monastery at Lehnin.[49] For Berlin Catholics, the twelfth and thirteenth-century monasteries of Lehnin and Chorin in the Mark Brandenburg legitimized their contribution to the region, for it was Catholic monastics who had converted the Slavic and Germanic peoples in northeast Germany long before the Protestant Reformation (fig. 5).

This historical fact did not prevent the Hohenzollerns from attempting to capitalize on the history of Lehnin. Founded by Otto I, Margrave of Brandenburg, the monastery at Lehnin had been the burial ground of Otto's House of Ascania, and later also of the House of Hohenzollern. On January 18, 1871, from the palace of Versailles, Kaiser Wilhelm I ordered the dilapidated monastery at Lehnin to be restored so it could be used for Protestant church services.[50] It seems puzzling that the Hohenzollern dynasty would be interested in Lehnin and its pre-Reformation history to such an extent that the kaiser called for its reconstruction the on the very day of the declaration of the German empire. But this project held the utmost importance for the kaiser.[51] In an effort to legitimatize his family's right to the new imperial throne, he co-opted the medieval Lehnin monastery and transformed it into a national memorial commemorating not the religious and cultural achievements of the Cistercian monks, but the political prowess of their medieval secular rulers: the Ascanian rulers and the Hohenzollerns.[52] Represented by Crown Prince Friedrich III, the Hohenzollerns celebrated the dedication for the completed renovation on June 24, 1877.[53]

Berlin Catholics sought a different method of honoring the monuments of their forbears. For many Catholics, the reinvigoration of northern German Catholicism in the late nineteenth century was a sign that the Lehnin Prophecy, a popular foretelling of the downfall of the Hohenzollerns and the rise of the Catholic Church, was coming to fruition. Although written in the mid-seventeenth century, it was believed at the time to have been written in the fourteenth century by a monk named Hermann. The prophecy began with Joachim II, who took Communion according to the Protestant ritual in 1539, and it foresaw the downfall of the Mark and its dukes in the eleventh generation after the Reformation, and its rebirth under a rejuvenated Catholic Church. This transition would have occurred after the rule of Prussian king Friedrich I in the early eighteenth century. The renewed interest in the Lehnin Prophecy was initially spurred by the discovery in 1693 of its inclusion in a manuscript, "Vaticinium beati fratris Hermanni," in the library of Martin Ferdinand Seidel, an advisor at the Superior Court of Justice (Kammergerichtsrat).[54] The post-1848 disillusionment with the failed revolution, coupled with the ferocity of the Kulturkampf a few decades later, created a population of democrats and Catholics alike eager to read signs of the downfall of the house of Hohenzollern anywhere they could find it. And despite the highly questionable authenticity of the manuscript, the Lehnin Prophecy provided further incentive to reinvest the Catholic churches of Berlin with the spirit of Lehnin, a quiet affront to the Hohenzollerns.

Fig. 6, Detail of the Monastic Brick on the façade. Christoph Hehl, Rosary Church, Berlin-Steglitz, 1898–1900.

With Lehnin figuring prominently in Catholic discourse, Hehl traveled to the monastery twice before beginning work on the Rosary Church.[55] He was not looking at the twelfth and thirteenth-century brickwork through the eyes of a historicist, calculating which pieces he could incorporate into a new design. Rather, Hehl sought to understand the essence of Markish Romanesque architecture in order to reduce historicist formalism to its most important elements. At the Rosary Church, one of these elements took the shape of a rust-colored brick whose face was 9 by 28 centimeters, the so-called Klosterziegel (monastic brick; fig. 6).

Monastic bricks retained the wider format of pre-modern bricks similar to those used in the construction of Lehnin and Chorin.[56] Despite the adoption of a new mass manufactured brick format in the empire in 1871, the Rosary congregation used the medieval brick form in the traditional Markish Gothic bond that alternated between long and short sides of bricks in each row on the face of the wall.[57] The new Reichsziegel (imperial brick), with its narrower shape of 6.5 by 25 centimeters, was better suited to the modern cross or block bond in which full rows of exposed long sides of the brick alternate with full rows of the short sides.

The monastic bricks came from the small Brandenburg town of Rathenow, known for its brick manufacture. Although they were particularly expensive, because they needed to be transported over many miles to Steglitz, for Hehl and Deitmer these bricks connoted a golden age of Catholic architecture—before the existence of Protestantism. With every new Catholic church in Berlin, the Catholic press noted the use of the bricks of their "ancestors," the same bricks used for the monastic church of Lehnin.[58] However, the use of the Romanesque style brick could not fully express this struggle to maintain a distinct religious-national identity because of its simultaneous use in Protestant churches. Remarkably, the first display of monastic bricks in a Protestant church was in Schwechten's St. Simeon's Church, completed in 1897, the year Hehl began work in Berlin. The kaiser specifically called for the use of monastic brick.[59] The Protestant Church Building Association, led by the Empress and close advisors to the kaiser, oversaw the entire project. Imperial advisor and insider, Paul Seidel, noted in his text on the kaiser's involvement in the visual arts, "With the approval of the Kaiser, the large medieval brick format was used again for the first time [since the Middle Ages] at St. Simeon's Church. Its powerful architectural effect [of the brick] prompted its choice for later buildings in Berlin and its surroundings."[60]

What is striking about Hehl's use of monastic bricks is that he used a decidedly antimodern building material to create a definitively modern centralized Catholic parish church with a hybrid Markish Romanesque and Italianate interior design and spatial arrangement. The monastic brick was one of many tools Hehl employed in a composite design that evoked different layers of Prussian Catholic identity. The westwork quotes the region's medieval architecture, while the interior models the earliest Catholic structures from the Italian peninsula as well as new approaches to sacred space that sought to embrace a modern, mass audience. With a Germanic façade and Italianate interior, the Rosary Church defies categorization as a purely historicist building, instead pointing to a more flexible approach to design that accommodates both innovation in form and the needs of the urban community.

In the Church of the Rosary, Hehl expressed a truly forward-looking Catholic identity that looked to include a new growing urban congregation in an open central-plan interior space while still referencing the community's distinctive connection to local medieval religious and building traditions. A large central dome sits on pendentives, making the Rosary Church the first central-plan church in the area since St. Hedwig's. While Hehl does not reference St. Hedwig's specifically in discussing his use of a central plan, Hedwig's iconic dome on Unter den Linden, a boulevard in the heart of the Hohenzollern's Berlin, had been a symbol of Catholic resilience deep in the Prussian, Protestant capital since the late eighteenth century. Although the Rosary Church's central dome is obscured by a massive westwork, the centralized space immediately triggers connections to St. Hedwig's. Hehl's rejection of a longitudinal arrangement in favor of a central plan is especially significant for Catholic architecture in Berlin, and represents a more democratic, inclusive concept of a Catholic parish church. Neither Max Hasak nor August Menken, prominent Catholic architects, used central plans in their Catholic church designs in and around Berlin, but opted, instead, for more traditional, hierarchical spatial organizations that followed a longitudinal plan.

Hehl's ability to juxtapose seemingly incongruous design elements won him favor during his lifetime for producing what contemporaries saw as modern buildings. Writing about his Berlin Catholic churches, a critic for Die christliche Kunst proclaimed, "Through them also blow the fresh breeze of a modern attitude towards building."[61] One later observer noted the difference between Hehl's innovations in medievalism and the earlier, more direct mimicking of medieval churches: "With Hehl no one can speak of a straightforward imitation of medieval church styles."[62] Contemporary press noted this same freer approach towards design and style in the Rosary Church, and hailed the "great allure of its picturesque affects."[63] Hehl's reputation as an innovator followed him throughout his career. His 1911 obituary in Berliner Architekturwelt summed up Hehl's career as having taken a truly modern path, stating, "However, he never made poor imitations of historical buildings but newly designed works, precisely to meet modern requirements."[64]

The dedication ceremony on November 11, 1900, was a day of celebration not only for Berlin Catholics, but also for the Church, its architect, and its directors, who received recognition from regional and national secular leaders. Besides Archbishop Kopp from Breslau, government officials Minister of Culture Studt, Oberpräsident von Bethmann-Hollweg, Government President von Moltke, and Provincial Counselor Stubenrauch participated in the services. Minister Studt awarded Father Deitmer the highest Order of the Red Eagle, and Hehl was named privy councillor (Geheimen Regierungsrat).[65] Rosary Church was also hailed by the press; an article from the Deutsche Bauzeitung extolled, "After its completion it can be counted among the most exceptional churches of the last years."[66]

At the dawn of the twentieth century and at the height of German imperial strength, a group of Catholic parishioners in Steglitz admired the monastic bricks of the façade of their new church and stood amazed under the great Italianate dome of their nave, thinking, perhaps, that they were fulfilling the Lehnin Prophecy in their creation. Christoph Hehl had responded eloquently to the exceptional needs of their community by creating a design that drew from local Romanesque traditions to highlight the historical place of Catholics in northern Germany, created a holy realm in the interior that looked beyond the local to the European origins of the faith itself, and today challenges us to reconsider the political, social, and religious axes of meaning in the neo-Romanesque architecture of the Kaiserreich era.

 


 

[1] The Virgin Mary is the official patron of the church; however, the name in formal records and colloquially is simply Rosary. Pope Pius XII elevated the church to a basilica minor in 1950.

[2] Andreas Tacke, Kirchen für die Diaspora: Christoph Hehls Berliner Bauten und Hochschultätigkeit (1894–1911) (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1993), 102–18.

[3] "ein herrlicher Bau." Pfarrchronik, 1:34, Pfarramt Archiv Rosenkranz-Basilika, Berlin-Steglitz, Germany. The Pfarrchronik are the parish chronicles. The church's archives, Pfarramt Archiv Rosenkranz-Basilika, Berlin-Steglitz, Germany, will hereafter be cited as Church Archives).

[4] "Ich arbeite auf Verlangen genau so echt und alt wie Herr Hehl. Wenn ich mich knechtisch an die alten Vorbilder halten soll, schöpfe ich aus denselben Quellen aus denen Herr Hehl bisher geschöpft hat." Seibertz to Deitmer, November 18, 1898, Files 1898–1900, Kirchenbau und Ausmalung, Church Archives.

[5] Bank Deposit Slip from March 29, 1899 for 1000 Marks to Seibertz, Files 1898-1900, Kirchenbau und Ausmalung, Church Archives.

[6] By Andreas Tacke, see Kirchen für die Diaspora: Christoph Hehls Berliner Bauten und Hochschultätigkeit (1894–1911) (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1993); "'jung wie ein Parvenü': Auswirkungen der Reformation auf die Baugeschichte Preußens," in "Es thun iher viel Fragen…" Kunstgeschichte in Mitteldeutschland (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2001), 239–44; "Von der mittelalterlichen Klosterkirche zum national-dynastischen Denkmal im 19. Jahrhundert," in Von Berlin nach Weimar: Kunstgeschichte und Museum, ed. Michael Bollé and Thomas Föhl (Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2003), 62–83; "Klosterziegel contra Reichsziegel: Überlegungen zur Ikonographie und Ikonologie der Berliner Architektur und bildenden Kunst des späten Historismus," inAnzieger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 1995, 141–59.

[7] "gar dem Historismus verpflichtet gelieben." Tacke, "Klosterziegel contra Reichsziegel," 145.

[8] Thomas Raus, "Chronik der Rosenkranz-Gemeinde in Kirche und Welt," in 100 Jahre Rosenkranz-Basilika Berlin Steglitz (Berlin: SERVI-Verlag, 2000), 48.

[9] David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a Nineteenth-Century German Village (New York: Knopf, 1994).

[10] For a general history of the Kulturkampf, see Wolfgang Altgeld, "German Catholics," in The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Rainer Liedtke and Stephan Wendehorst (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 100–121; Ronald J. Ross, The Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf: Catholicism and State Power in Imperial Germany, 1871–1887 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998); Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 19–49; Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 207–52.

[11] Tacke, Kirchen für die Diaspora, 47. The Margraviate of Brandenburg was an independent state through the Middle Ages that became the core of the Prussian state in later centuries.

[12] "Der Katholizismus hat die Mark niemals verloren, weil er sie niemals besessen hat. Die ausbreitende Kraft, welche der katholischen Kirche innewohnte, fand ihre Schranke an dem eingentümlichen, hartnäckigen und hartverständigen Volksschlage, der die Streusandbüchse des deutschen Reiches bewohnt. Er hatte den Katholizismus wohl angenommen, aber nicht in sich aufgenommen. Er beobachtete die äußere Formen, aber unter einem dünnen Firnis erhielt sich das alte Heidentum mit grosser Zähigkeit. Erst in der neuen Form wurde das Christentum dem märkischen Bauern Geschlecht annehmbar; es wurde an dem selben Tag christlich und lutherisch." "Die Reformation in der Mark," Vossische Zeitung, November 1, 1889.

[13] Tacke, "Klosterziegel contra Reichsziegel," 143.

[14] Ibid., 144.

[15] The first Catholic church after the Reformation did not appear until the mid-eighteenth century: the neo-classical St. Hedwig's Cathedral tucked behind the imperial ensemble on Unter den Linden.

[16] Under the Greater Berlin Act of 1920, the Prussian government greatly expanded the area of the city to incorporate surrounding towns and villages and officially separated the city from the state of Brandenburg.

[17] Gebhard Streicher, Berlin: Stadt und Kirche (Berlin: Morus Verlag, 1980), 306.

[18] Tacke, Kirchen für die Diaspora, 30.

[19] In nearby Wilmersdorf, only 81.8 percent of the municipality was Protestant in 1905, with 10.4 percent Catholic and 6.8 percent Jewish. In the bordering town of Schöneberg 10.7 percent of the residents were Catholic and 4.9 percent were Jewish. See Heinrich Silbergleit, Preußens Städte (Berlin: C. Heymann, 1908), 66, quoted in Horst Matzerath, "Wachstum und Mobilität der Berliner Bevölkerung im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert," in Kaspar Elm and Hans-Dietrich Loock eds., Seelsorge und Diakonie in Berlin. Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Kirche und Großstadt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), 215.

[20] The one exception is St. Mary's in Spandau-Behnitz, dedicated in 1848 with the blessing of the "Romantic on the Throne," Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Streicher, Berlin: Stadt und Kirche, 306.

[21] In the parish chronicles, Deitmer notes, on October 25, 1898, the dedication ceremony at Heart of Jesus Church, designed by Hehl. Six days later, Seibertz delivered the floor plan of the Steglitz church. By mid-December, however, Hehl had submitted his designs, without any explanation in the chronicle of Seibertz's dismissal. "Aus verschiedenen Gründen hat der Kirchenvorstand einem vom Prof. Hehl in Charlottenburg vorgelegten Skizzen für den Neubau der Kirche den Vorzug gegeben und am 13 Dez. 1898 mich zum Abschluss einer Vertrages mit genannten Herrn ermächtigt." Pfarrchronik, 1:34–35. Besides the chronicle, separate files concerning the building and decoration of the church are also extant, as well as Festschrifte from important anniversary celebrations, which detail various aspects of the building and its history. These resources are particularly useful, as the majority of Hehl's personal papers, drawings, and watercolors are now lost. The few remaining plans are in the collection of the Technical University of Berlin.

[22] "Nicht nur, dass das von den Kuppelfenstern gespendete Licht alle Kirchenräume bis in die entferntesten Ecken erhellt, so erzielt es auch malerische Wirkungen von grossem Reiz, die bei modernen Kirchenbauten bisher sehr selten gewesen sind." A. R., "Die Rosenkranzkirche in Steglitz bei Berlin," Berliner Architekturwelt 6, no. 2 (1901): 48.

[23] Vincenz Statz and Georg Gottlob Ungewitter, Gothisches Musterbuch, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Weigel, 1856).

[24] Hans Reuther, "Die Sakralbauten von Christoph Hehl" Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 8 1969): 214.

[25]Rundbogenstil (round arch architecture) is a nineteenth-century German architectural movement based on classical and Romanesque architecture. On the Rundbogenstil, see Kathleen Curren, The Romanesque Revival: Religion, Politics and Transnational Exchange (University Park: Penn State Press, 2003). For a more detailed account of St. Nicolai, see Michael J. Lewis, The Politics of German Gothic Revival: August Reichensperger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 99–110.

[26] See Günther Kokkelink and Monka Lemke-Kokkelink, Baukunst in Norddeutschland: Architektur und Kunsthandwerk der Hannoverschen Schule, 1850–1900 (Hannover: Schlütersche GmbH & Co., 1998).

[27] Lewis, Politics of German Gothic Revival, 212.

[28] Peter Eilitz, "Leben und Werk des königl. Hannoverschen Baurats Edwin Oppler," Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter 25, (1971): 127–310; Harold Hammer-Schenk, "Edwin Oppler Theorie des Synagogenbaus: Emanzipationsversuche durch Architektur," Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter 33 (1979): 101–17.

[29] Hans Schliepmann, "Christoph Hehl," Berliner Architekturwelt 14, no. 5 (1911): 168.

[30] Tacke, Kirche für die Diaspora, 13.

[31] "ein erster Lehrer im schönsten Sinne des Wortes." Schliepmann, "Christoph Hehl," 168.

[32] Tacke provides a complete list of Hehl's excursions based on records at the Hochschularchiv at the library of the Technical University of Berlin in Kirchen für die Diaspora, 309–11.

[33] Kathleen Curran, "The German Rundbogenstil and Reflections on the American Round-Arched Style," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 47, no. 4 (December 1988): 364–65.

[34] The Wiesbaden Program contained a series of guidelines for the construction of Protestant churches by Wiesbaden pastor Emil Veesenmeyer published in the Deutsche Bauzeitung. In contrast to the prevailing 1861 Eisenach Regulation which stipulated longitudinal, neo-Gothic plans for new church construction, the Wiesbaden Program conceived of the church less as a performative space and more as a democratic meeting house. Communion was to be celebrated in full view and congregants were meant to be included in the same space as the celebration of Mass, not separated by rood screens or long choirs and transepts.

[35] Gröning [Seibertz's lawyer] to Deitmer, March 4, 1899, Files "1898-1900, Kirchenbau und Ausmalung," Church Archives.

[36] Tacke, Kirchen für die Diaspora, 84.

[37] See Stefan Samerski, ed., Wilhelm II. und die Religion: Facetten einer Persönlichkeit und ihres Umfelds (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001).

[38] Pfarrchronik, 36.

[39] "Ach, hilf, bitte, hilf nur noch einmal, weise den lästigen Bettler nicht zurück, glaub mir, es thut weh, Jahr aus, Jahr ein, zu betteln und so viel verschlossene Thüren, so viel harte Herzen zu finden. Nicht für mich, nein, für Deine armen Glaubensbrüder und Schwestern in der Diaspora, in den Gefahren der Großstadt." Sammlungen für den Kirchenbau (D V, 1), Pfarramt Heilige Familie, quoted in Tacke, Kirchen für die Diaspora, 90.

[40]Festschrift zum Silbernen Jubiläum der Rosenkranzkirche zu Berlin-Steglitz (Berlin: Gemeinde der Rosenkranzkirche Berlin-Steglitz, 1925), 5.

[41] "Halten Sie Ihre Bettlerschnauze, Sie lieber, frommer Bettelsack. Für den Gaustall gebe ich nichts! Verpsten Sie doch das schöne Steglitz nicht mit Ihrem römischen Gestank!" Ibid.

[42] Tacke, Kirchen für die Diaspora, 81.

[43] Ibid., 82.

[44] While Tacke notes the importance of these performances, he does not situate them in the complex multi-religious context. Ibid., 81–93.

[45] A review of the contemporary press found no negative commentary.

[46] Pfarrchronik, 39–52.

[47] Hans Reuther, "Die Sakralbauten von Christoph Hehl," Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 8 (1969), 238. There is no evidence in the parish chronicle or in the contemporary press of any criticism of the procession.

[48]Germania: Zeitung für das deutsche Volk, August 22, 1899; Grundsteinlegung der Rosenkranz-Kirche" Märkische Volkszeitung, August 22, 1899; "Lokales und Provinzielles" Steglitzer Anzeiger August 21, 1899; Steglitzer Zeitung, August 21, 1899;

[49] See "Gebete und Ceremonien bei der Consecration der katholischen Pfarrkirche zu Steglitz" Church Archive, and "Die neue katholische Kirche für Steglitz bei Berlin," Deutsche Bauzeitung 33, no. 68 (August 26, 1899): 425–29, 438.

[50] G[eorg] Sellos, ""Lehnin," Zeitschrift für Preußische Geschichte und Landeskunde 19 (1882): 219.

[51] Kaiser Wilhelm II had a model of Lehnin in his personal collection; it was found after his death. Tacke, "Klosterziegel contra Reichsziegel," 153.

[52] As a reaction to the Prussian-led reconstruction of the Lehnin monastery, local Catholics did attempt to organize the erection of a new Catholic parish church in the village, but to no avail. See Tacke, "Klosterziegel contra Reichsziegel," 66n158.

[53] Tacke, Kirchen für die Diaspora, 66.

[54] Andreas Tacke, "Lehnin: Von der mittelalterlichen Klosterkirche zum national-dynastischen Denkmal im 19. Jahrhundert" in Michael Bolle and Thomas Föhl, eds., Von Berlin nach Weimar: Kunstgeschichte und Museum, Beiträge zu Ehren Rold Bothe (Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2003), 63.

[55] Tacke, Kirchen für die Diaspora, 279.

[56] The importance of building material as an expression of national character has a long, full tradition in Germany. Curran notes the interest in brick construction amongst the Rundbogenstil architects of the mid-nineteenth century as a practical and economical means of construction which also remained true to the locally available materials in northern Europe (Kathleen Curran, "The German Rundbogenstil and Reflections on the American Round-Arched Style," Journal for the Society of Architectural Historians 47, no. 4 (1988): 354. The theorization and implementation of brick and local stone like granite or limestone continued into the Weimar Republic and under National Socialism. See Christian Furhmeister, Beton, Klinker, Granit, Material, Macht, Politik: Eine Materialikonographie (Berlin: Bauwesen, 2001).

[57] Tacke, "'jung wie ein Pavenü'," 242; Tacke, Kirchen für die Diaspora, 150.

[58] Tacke, "Lehnin," 64, 66.

[59] Paul Seidel, Der Kaiser und die Kunst (Berlin: Schall, 1907), 82. Tacke makes no reference in his scholarship to the use of monastic brick at St. Simeon's, declaring there are no Protestant churches in Berlin that use monastic bricks. Kirchen für die Diaspora, 154.

[60] "Bei der Simeonkirche wurde mit Genehmigung des Kaisers zum ersten Male wieder das große mittelalterliche Ziegelformat verwandt, dessen kräftige architektonische Wirkung auch für die Wahl bei späteren Bauwerken in Berlin und Umgegend bestimmend war." Ibid., 82.

[61] "Durch sie weht auch der frische Zug moderner Baugesinnung." W. Rave, "Christoph Hehl und seine letzten Kirchen," Die christliche Kunst 11 (1912/1913): 55.

[62] "Von einer bloßen Nachahmung mittelalterlicher Kirchenstile kann bei Hehl gar keine Rede sein."Josef Limburg, Christliche Bildwerke und Tagebuchblätter aus der Schaffenszeit (Munich: Gesellschaft für christliche Kunst, 1928), 113.

[63] "Malerische Wirkungen von grossem Reiz." A. R., "Die Rosenkranzkirche," 48.

[64] "Hat er doch niemals – eben weil es sich um moderne Anforderungen handelte – den Abklatsch geschichtlicher Bauten gegeben, sonder neu empfundene Werke." Schliepmann, "Christoph Hehl," 168.

[65] Raus, "Chronik der Rosenkranz-Gemeinde,"50. The Order of the Red Eagle was a order of chivalry awarded in Prussia to both military personnel and civilians.

[66] "nach ihrer Vollendung zu den eingenartigsten Kirchenbauten der letzten Jahren zählen dürfte." "Die neue katholische Kirche für Steglitz bei Berlin,"Deutsche Bauzeitung, 1899, 425.