Through My Lens: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche

Fourteen years after my first visit to Germany, I was back. Once again, I was hopping on and off trains, but this time I was on a European walkabout with my dad.

Two significant events took place between my first two trips to Germany. The first was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the second was the reunification of Germany. My dad and I stopped for just two nights in Berlin, so my impressions of the city are fleeting, but one image stayed with me. That would be the long line of construction cranes where a string of building projects were madly underway to fill the space where the Wall used to exist.

Another image that struck me was the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church), located in the centre of what used to be West Berlin. A church was first built on this site in the late nineteenth century. The kaiser at the time, Wilhelm II, named the Neo-Romanesque building after his grandfather, Kaiser Wilhelm I.

After being badly damaged during World War II, a new church was constructed, but the remnants of the original building were left as a memorial to the devastation of war. The photo above shows the original spire behind the bell tower of the new church.

The Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche is my photo choice for today, the Second Sunday of Lent.