Bornstedt Church, Lutheran church in Bornstedt, Potsdam, Germany
Bornstedt Church is a brick building with characteristic rounded arches and a 34-meter-tall campanile tower that displays typical features of 19th-century German church architecture. The structure sits within grounds that connect closely to the adjacent cemetery, forming a unified architectural ensemble.
A first church on the site was renewed in 1689 and 1769; its 1805 replacement by Carl Friedrich Quednow showed damage by the 1840s. Friedrich August Stüler designed the present building, erected in 1854/55 under Johann Heinrich Haeberlin using the old foundations, with Stüler's 1849 arcade hall and campanile. Reinhold Persius added the eastern choir in 1881/82.
The church belongs to the Evangelical Church District of Potsdam within the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia. Its two medieval bells still hang in the campanile's bell chamber. A plaque placed at the tower base in 2005 recalls Henri de Catt, who served Frederick II as private secretary and reader; his grave, once inside the first Bornstedt church, was moved to the cemetery in 1805 and is not preserved.
The church stands west of Ribbeckstraße on the Bornstedt cemetery, opposite the former village schoolhouse and next to the Krongut Bornstedt. The grounds lie lower than the street and are entered from the south through a chapel-like building with a small bell gable, up an outside stair; a nine-arch arcade with open roof truss separates the cemetery from the road. The 34-metre campanile rises at the arcade's north end.
The two medieval bells still hanging in the campanile are older than the church itself. A plaque at the tower base, added in 2005, commemorates Henri de Catt, Frederick the Great's private secretary and reader, whose grave was moved here from the first Bornstedt church in 1805 and has not survived.
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