page_title: Capernaum Church
section_title: Building
hierarchical_section_title: Capernaum Church / Building
caption_attribution_description: English: Zerstörte Kapernaumkirche nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg
context_page_description: Capernaum Church is one of the two places of worship of the Lutheran Capernaum Congregation, a member of the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia, an umbrella comprising Lutheran, Calvinist and united Protestant congregations. The church is located on Seestraße No. 34 in the locality of Wedding, in Berlin's borough of Mitte. The church was named after Capernaum, today Kfar Nachum כפר נחום in today's Israel.
  Christians revere the town of Capernaum, since on Sabbaths Jesus of Nazareth used to teach in the local synagogue. The synagogue where Jesus possibly taught is a handsome, standing ruin open to visitors. Therefore, it is likely that the town has been the home of Jesus, at least for some time. In Capernaum also, Jesus allegedly healed a man, and a fever in Simon Peter's mother-in-law.
context_section_description: Due to the location of the site the church is not oriented, but directed to the southeast. The building consists of three longish naves on an asymmetric ground plan. While the northeastern nave is large and harbours a loft, in order to place more seats, the southwestern nave to Antwerpener Straße is narrow, rather resembling an aisle.
  The outside structure of Romanesque Revivalism, built from red brick, with its Lombard bands and the entrance hall to Antwerpener Straße rather resembles a basilica. Siebold's design is inspired by Romanesque architecture of Rhenish churches such as St. Apostles, and Great St. Martin Church (both Cologne).
   
  The quire is highlighted by two octagonal towers, which are connected by a columned gallery of arcades (German: Zwerchgalerie). The room underneath the elevated quire was designed for the instruction of confirmands, thus being an early example of a structure combining church and community centre functions.
  The tower at the crossroads of Seestraße with Antwerpener Straße, topped by a typical Rhenish steep rhombohedral spire, was built to form a landmark. Siebold designed it after the towers of St Mary's Assumption Church (for a picture see Andernach). The façade to Seestraße showed a great rose window. A second, considerably smaller tower connects the church building to the alignment of houses in Seestraße. In 1909 August Dinklage, Olaf Lilloe, and Ernst Paulus added a rectory in Rundbogenstil with round-arched windows in Seestraße #35, finished on 1 April 1911, thus inseriating the church with the alignment of houses. The rear wing of the rectory confines the backyard of church and rectory as a semi-closed court.
caption: The interior in ruins and filled with rubble, 1944
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