Dorfkirche Dahlem, Gothic church in Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Germany.
The St.-Annen-Kirche, long called Dorfkirche Dahlem, is a fieldstone and brick church with a rectangular nave and a square west tower. The tower's plastered lower section is pierced by small round openings, above which a dark wooden boarded section carries a steep grey slate pyramidal spire. Rough red and dark stone walls with lighter patches and buttresses line the nave, lit by tall arched windows and entered through a pointed arched doorway; a small shed dormer sits on the red tiled roof.
A wooden church was probably built here between 1215 and 1225; around 1300 it was replaced by a stone building on a fieldstone base. About 1490 a late-Gothic choir was added, and in 1504–1507 a burial chapel with Berlin's oldest half-timbered gable. Burned in the Thirty Years' War, it was renovated 1671–1679 under Cuno Hans von Wilmersdorff, and rebuilt after 1945, work finished in 1953.
The name St.-Annen-Kirche, used officially only since 1913, honours Saint Anne, mother of Mary, seen as an image of divine grace and maternal love. The church belongs to the Protestant Dahlem congregation, which still holds Lutheran services here; its other church is the Jesus-Christus-Kirche. In the cemetery, the student-movement leader Rudi Dutschke is buried.
The church stands at the corner of Pacelliallee and Königin-Luise-Straße 55, with the St. Annen cemetery beside it; the former parsonage at Pacelliallee 61 is now the Martin-Niemöller-Haus. The nearest U-Bahn stop is Dahlem-Dorf on line U3. The south portal was walled up in 1905–1907, so entry is not through the pointed arched doorway shown on the south side.
From 1832 to 1849 the wooden roof turret served as the second relay station of Prussia's optical telegraph line between Berlin and Koblenz; a square room was built above the bell chamber, topped by an open platform with a signal mast carrying six vanes in three pairs. After the technology became obsolete, a small turret was placed on the former operators' watch room after 1853.
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