St. Michael's Church, Parish church in Berlin-Mitte, Germany
St. Michael's Church is a three-aisled brick hall church, 55 metres long and 30 metres high, with a 56-metre copper-clad dome on a drum above the crossing. Its front has a bell storey with three arched windows and a figure of the Archangel Michael by August Kiß. The nave is 19 metres wide, and the surviving transept serves as the present worship space.
Frederick William IV approved the church in 1846 as a garrison church for Berlin's Catholics; the foundation stone was laid on 14 July 1851. August Soller died in 1856 and was buried inside; Andreas Simons, Martin Gropius and Richard Lucae completed the building, consecrated on 28 October 1861. USAAF raids on 3 February 1945 destroyed the organ and interior; the transept was rebuilt and services resumed in 1953.
The parishioners were long called "Michaelites"; by 1900 the parish counted nearly 20,000 Catholics. Marist sisters from Breslau ran the Marienstift from 1909 to 1995, with a kindergarten and care for servant girls. Bernhard Lichtenberg, later a prominent opponent of National Socialism, was chaplain here from 1903 to 1905.
Since the wartime destruction, services are held in the rebuilt transept, and the eastern side entrance now serves as the main entrance, with the organ gallery above it. The rest of the ruined nave is a garden, and the dome can be seen through the portal window below the bell storey. The church stands on Michaelkirchplatz by the Engelbecken pond, a short walk from Köpenicker Straße.
Soller first drew a double-tower Gothic front, then dropped it; because the facade was left without a profile, he replaced the planned heavy octagonal cupola roof with a domed tower, as Frederick William IV wished. The dome is clad in copper and rises 56 m above the crossing.
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