Dorfkirche Giesensdorf, Medieval village church in Lichterfelde, Germany.
Dorfkirche Giesensdorf is a medieval church in Lichterfelde featuring an eastern section built with precisely cut stones and a western portion constructed from rough fieldstone. The building combines different materials and techniques that come from various periods of its long existence.
The village of Giesensdorf was founded around 1230, when immigrants likely built a wooden chapel; the stone church followed, with the eastern half begun around 1250 and the western half added in the second half of the 14th century. The village was plundered repeatedly between 1632 and 1646 during the Thirty Years' War. The church burned out in 1943 and was rebuilt between 1955 and 1956 under architect Ludolf von Walthausen, without reconstructing the tower or the interior galleries.
Until the Reformation in 1539, men and women followed Mass separated by the central aisle, with a barrier before the priest. Between 1600 and 1615 the interior gained a masonry altar table, fixed pews, wooden floorboards and a stone-paved central aisle. The wider windows of 1609 were made so the congregation could read the new Reformation hymnals.
The church stands at the corner of Ostpreußendamm and Giesensdorfer Straße in Lichterfelde, set back from the road behind a low fieldstone wall. The main entrance is the late-Gothic arched portal on the north side, west of the sacristy; the south side has a restored 14th-century pointed-arch window. The interior is reached at ground level, without steps.
The open fieldstone bell gable above the west facade was added during the 1955–1956 reconstruction by architect Ludolf von Walthausen, replacing a wooden roof turret removed in 1953. The bell hanging there, 55 cm across, 40 cm high and weighing 94 kg, came from the early classicist Berlin Garrison Church demolished in 1962; its inscription names the caster Gustav Collier of Zehlendorf.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 94,642 contributors worldwide.