The circular dome
The only church of this form in the city.
Unknown authorUnknown author — Public domain · Oliver Kloss — CC0 · Jean-Laurent Legeay (1710–1786), Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff (1699–1753) — Public domain · Königlich Preußische Messbild-Anstalt — CC0
Because Frederick the Great had annexed largely Catholic Silesia to Prussia by war, and needed to reassure his new subjects and show his kingdom would not persecute them. The gesture was genuine by the standards of its time but also political — and he was famously quoted as saying everyone must find salvation in their own fashion.
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St Hedwig's is Berlin's mother Catholic church, and the story of its construction is thoroughly political: Frederick the Great ordered it in 1747 for the city's Catholics in Protestant Prussia — a gesture of religious tolerance rare in that century's Europe, though aimed chiefly at the Catholic Silesians he had recently annexed by war. Its form is unique in Berlin: a hemispherical dome on a circular building behind a columned portico, drawn directly from the Pantheon in Rome. That makes it the only church in the city in this circular classical manner, and it stands on the edge of Bebelplatz within the Forum Fridericianum ensemble. It was destroyed completely in a 1943 raid and rebuilt in the 1950s with a controversial modern interior. It then closed again for years for a further comprehensive redesign that changed the inside radically — check whether it has reopened before visiting. The crypt holds the tombs of clergy including Bernhard Lichtenberg, who died on the way to Dachau after praying publicly for the Jews.
The only church of this form in the city.
The tomb of Bernhard Lichtenberg, who resisted.
Bebelplatz, 10117 Berlin