Buckow village church, Stone church in Neukölln, Germany.
Buckow village church is a fieldstone structure in the Neukölln district of Berlin, built following regional construction methods. The building displays typical Brandenburg ecclesiastical architecture with its rough stone walls.
Built probably between 1245 and 1255, as a dendrodate from the wooden locking bar at the west portal indicates, the church was a early Gothic hall with a west tower as wide as the nave. The village had a tavern and a windmill by 1375, and the costly tower points to its prosperity. The Reformation made the congregation Protestant, and on 2 September 1943 an Allied air mine collapsed the roof; after the war the original state, including the main entrance through the tower, was restored.
The parish became Protestant at the Reformation and today numbers about 5,600 members in the Neukölln church district. A community centre by architect Hardy Treger was dedicated on 4 March 1973, and the congregation runs youth work, church music and occasional cultural events. The oldest bell, undated but attributed to the 13th century, is rung only by hand and rope as the Vaterunserglocke.
The church stands at Alt-Buckow 36, on the historic village green near the pond, with its axis turned slightly from the street because it is oriented strictly east. A fieldstone churchyard wall with a brick gate pillar, built after King Frederick William I's decree of 1719, encloses the site. The congregation numbers about 5,600 members and runs a community centre consecrated on 4 March 1973.
The oldest bell in the four-bell peal is undated but attributed to the 13th century and considered the oldest in Berlin; it is rung only by hand and rope as the Vaterunserglocke. The second oldest, the Christusglocke, bears the date 6 May 1322. Both were confiscated in World War II for melting, found intact in 1948 in a Hamburg bell depot, and returned during the Berlin Blockade via the airlift.
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