Der Berliner Dom

Built in 1905 according to plans by the architect J. C. Raschdorff, embodied the person of its builder Wilhelm II in his three functions: German Emperor, King of Prussia and head of the Protestant Church. After considerable war damage during the Second World War, the preservation of the Berlin Cathedral was controversial for a long time. Its reconstruction only began in 1975 - at the request of the GDR government, but financed by the West German EKD. The socialist and atheist state had a large church rebuilt in the centre of its capital, representing the unloved legacy of the imperial era. The resulting controversies characterised the planning process and its outcome in many ways. Charlotte Hopf was Berlin Cathedral's master builder from 2011 to 2016. Her work reconstructs the history of ideas behind the reconstruction without gaps for the first time. In addition to this abstract level of observation, she illustrates the history of construction and building technology using concrete examples of execution. Numerous previously unpublished photographs support this endeavour. As a result, the author honours the Berlin Cathedral as a multi-layered testimony to the times and as a joint German-German work in the centre of Berlin, which clearly differs from other reconstruction projects due to its significance, the special framework conditions and the quality achieved.