What is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church?
Q: What is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church?
A: The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, also known as the Gedächtniskirche, is a ruined church in Berlin that belongs to the Protestant Evangelical Church in Germany.
Q: Who ordered the building of the church?
A: Emperor Wilhelm II ordered the building of the church to honour his grandfather Wilhelm I.
Q: When was it built?
A: The old church was built between 1891 and 1895 according to plans by Franz Schwechten.
Q: How did it get destroyed during World War II?
A: During World War II, the church was destroyed during a British RAF bombing raid in 1943.
Q: When was a new church built next to it?
A: From 1951 to 1961, a new church was built right next to the site of the old one.
Q: What symbols are inside this new church? A: Inside this new church there is a cross made of nails from Coventry Cathedral which was destroyed by German Luftwaffe bomb attacks, as well as a cross from the Russian Orthodox Church and a design known as Stalingrad Madonna created in December 1942 in Stalingrad (now Volgograd). These symbols represent peace between three countries that were once at war.
Q: Who started a campaign for restoring this memorial church? A: In December 2007 Charles Jeffrey Gray, former British pilot who carried out World War II bombing raids over Germany, joined a campaign to rescue and restore Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church from decay.
