Kapelle der Versöhnung

The Kapelle der Versöhnung stands in Berlin on the site of the former Church of Reconciliation, within the Berlin Wall Memorial. Today a ring of wooden columns encloses an oval room built from clay and wood. It is wheelchair accessible and serves as a place of worship and remembrance.

The first church here was a Gothic revival design by Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel, finished in 1894. It survived the Second World War, yet after 1961 it stood in the middle of the Wall's death strip. In 1985 the East German government had the church demolished to improve border security. The ground lay overgrown until Rudolf Reitermann and Peter Sassenroth built the present chapel in 1999. Consecration followed on 9 November 2000, the eleventh anniversary of the fall of the Wall.

From outside, the oval outline echoes the shape of the old church. The interior keeps the traditional east-west alignment of churches. Its walls are pressed clay, a technique unused in German public buildings for more than 150 years. That clay carries chips of stone and glass taken from the rubble of the demolished church. The original altar sits in a niche rising above the roof, where daylight floods in. A replica of Coventry Cathedral's Statue of Reconciliation ties the place to cities that have come through conflict.