1940 - 1945

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

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The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is a Protestant church affiliated with the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia, a regional body of the Evangelical Church in Germany. It is located in Berlin on the Kurfürstendamm in the centre of the Breitscheidplatz.

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The original church on the site was built in the 1890's. It was badly damaged in a bombing raid in 1943. The present building, which consists of a church with an attached foyer and a separate belfry with an attached chapel, was built between 1959 and 1963. The damaged spire of the old church has been retained and its ground floor has been made into a memorial hall.

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The Memorial Church today is a famous landmark of Western Berlin, and is nicknamed by Berliners "der hohle Zahn", meaning "the hollow tooth".

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In the north apse are 16 display panels which tell the story of the old church and its destruction. At the opposite end of the hall are three items which symbolise the history of the church. In the middle is a damaged statue of Christ which originally stood on the altar of the old church. To its right is the Cross of Nails which was made from nails in the roof timbers of Coventry Cathedral, which had been severely damaged in a German air raid on 14th November 1940. To the left of the statue of Christ is an icon cross which was given by the Russian Orthodox Church and handed over in 1988.

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In December 2007, Charles Jeffrey Gray, a former British pilot who carried out World War II bombing raids over Germany, joined a campaign to rescue the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church from decay. After reading about the condition of the Church, Gray contacted Wolfgang Kuhla, the chairman of the church's advisory board, urging that its tower be restored. In response, a fund was launched to help raise the costs of its repair.

The old church around 1900.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the 1950's.