Ku’damm stands for Kurfürstendamm, one of the most famous avenues in Berlin. The miniseries Ku’damm 56 is set in a mid-20th century Berlin dance school. Ku’damm is also the home of the KaDeWe, the landmark department store originally owned by the Jewish entrepreneur Adolf Jandorf. The hotel where we stayed was also located there, called the Hollywood Hotel. Each room honored a different movie star. Ours was Merle Oberon.
The hotel was in walking distance to the famous Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche.
The church was badly damaged in 1943 during an Allied air raid, and the ruined building has stood ever since in the middle of the bustling city as a symbol and reminder of the war’s horrors.
In 1956, the architect Egon Eiermann integrated the ruin in his design for a new church. The new design consists of concrete honeycomb elements with stained glass inlays.
The church was closed as we came back to our hotel in the evening. And these days a Fair Trade Shop sits across from its entrance doors.
Several doors on the old structure are in use.
But they are not as striking as the empty eye where the stained glass window once sat.
Or the arched spaces that have earned the nickname, der hohle Zahn or “the hollow tooth.”
Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post and then sharing it, between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American Eastern Time), on the linky list at Norm 2.0’s blog.
Follow my trip with this and previous posts:
A Thousand Finds 
I’ve heard of that store. It’s supposed to be quite something.
janet
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Ah… Merle Oberon. I remember seeing her in Wuthering Heights. I think the new facade of the church is not nearly as attractive. I tend to not like geometric designs.
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Integrating the old into the new is not an easy task, especially in cases like this. The ‘before the war’ photo of the church is wonderful. Keeping it as it is now is a sobering reminder of how devastating war is.
Thanks for this excellent post Karen 🙂
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Die Gedachtnis Kirche – too bad you don’t have a recent capture of it? Because we both know, it does not look like this anymore. On the steps of this church hubby’s job began – to work with drug addicts in the 70ties (I joined him, we married during his time in Berlin, and we lived only one year together here, till we went to the States for some more education:)
Still a pleasant memory of that intense time there!
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Most of the pictures, except for the first one from wikipedia showing the church before the bombing, are from June 2018, my recent trip. The featured picture for this post shows where the stained glass window used to be. The ruined building still looks like that. I hope there isn’t a problem with the Word Press images! Click through one of the links and you can see different, better angles of both the ruin and the newer structure together. Unfortunately I was not able to go inside because the building was closed in the evening.
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That’s a powerful reminder.
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Hi Karen – love the hollow tooth description … but also seeing Berlin – a place I’ve never been to … cheers Hilary
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I lived there for 9 months in 1983. It’s very interesting to have been back in 2018!
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