Kapelle Schwarze Madonna, Religious chapel in Remagen, Germany.
Kapelle Schwarze Madonna is an open-air memorial chapel on the bank of the Rhine, just south of Remagen's center. It holds a black clay Madonna figure and memorial plaques set behind grid screens, topped by a crown-of-thorns frame that leaves the sculpture visible from all sides.
The chapel was built in 1987 on the site of a former Allied prisoner-of-war camp where over 250,000 German soldiers were held after World War II ended. The camp had been one of the largest of its kind in postwar Western Europe.
The black Madonna figure was shaped from clay by someone who was himself a prisoner in the camp at the time. Today people stop here in silence, looking at the sculpture through the grid screens that frame it.
The chapel sits right by the riverbank and fits naturally into a walk along the Rhine. It is always open, so there is no need to plan around closing hours.
The open design of the chapel is deliberate: wind and rain pass through just as they did in spring 1945, when prisoners had no shelter. Professor Adolf Wamper, who shaped the clay Madonna, was himself one of those prisoners.
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