Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster turns 450 | EUROtoday

Seit der Eröffnung vor fünf Jahren streben Hunderttausende Besucher durch die James-Simon-Galerie zu den Museen der Berliner Museumsinsel in der Mitte der Bundeshauptstadt. Die Baumwollhandlung „Gebrüder Simon“ des Namensgebers stand dort, wo heute der Fernsehturm steht. James Simon war einer der bedeutendsten Kunstmäzene des Kaiserreichs und der Weimarer Republik. Der Familienbetrieb und seine Zustiftungen in den Staatlichen Museen sind aber nicht die einzige Verbindung von Simon zur Berliner Mitte. Er war auch Absolvent des Berlinischen Gymnasiums zum Grauen Kloster, der ehemals vornehmsten Schule Preußens. Zusammen mit der zugehörigen Klosterkirche als bauhistorisch bedeutendstem Gebäude Berlins war die Schule ein kultureller Leuchtturm in der Mitte der Stadt.

Vor 450 Jahren, am 13. Juli 1574, stiftete der brandenburgische Kurfürst Johann Georg in den Räumen des säkularisierten Berliner Franziskanerklosters diese Schule, die die Geschicke Berlins und Deutschlands über Jahrhunderte beeinflusste. Das Jubiläum gibt Anlass, die lange Geschichte Berlins vor dem 19. Jahrhundert, vor dem Aufstieg zur Weltstadt, zu vergegenwärtigen. Denn Berlin hatte schon weit vor der Reichseinigung 1871 als Residenz eines der sieben Kurfürsten des Heiligen Römischen Reiches nationale Bedeutung.

In der Mitte Berlins bestehen von den ehemals mehr als 1000 Gebäuden aus der Zeit vor 1574 nur noch drei Kirchen und eine Ruine. Bei der Ruine handelt es sich um die ehemalige Kirche des Franziskanerklosters. Mit dieser Kirche kam die Steinsichtigkeit des Ziegelbaus nach italienischem Vorbild nach Brandenburg beziehungsweise Preußen. Der kleine Baustein, sorgfältig gebrannt und verfugt, ermöglichte gänzlich Neues: wetterfeste, durch spezielle Formsteine und Terrakotten detaillierte und zugleich vornehm-schlichte Architektur. Mit ihren eleganten, zurückhaltenden Formen könnte man die Klosterkirche mit einigem guten Willen als Bauhaus des Mittelalters bezeichnen.

Das Franziskanerkloster, nach der Kleidung der Mönche das Graue Kloster genannt, war im ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert zusammen mit der aula berolinensis (später Hohes Haus genannt), der Stadtresidenz der Markgrafen, in der späteren Klosterstraße angelegt worden. Kloster und Kirche wurden mit Unterstützung der Bauhütte des Klosters Chorin (heute Landkreis Barnim, Brandenburg) errichtet. Das Gelände grenzte an die gleichzeitig und unter tätiger Mithilfe des Klosters errichtete Stadtmauer, deren Reste heute noch vorhanden sind.

As was usually the case with monasteries, the monastery church was the middle of the world. Even after secularization, it remained structurally inseparably related to the location, which was now used as a college. Nevertheless, it fell into disrepair over the centuries. A college chronicler reported that on the faculty's 2 hundredth anniversary celebrations in 1774, the ground and benches of the church had been so dilapidated that they needed to be “supported and built.” The restoration of the monastery church from 1842, along with the partial restoration of the monastery advanced in Chorin and Marienburg in what’s now Poland, marked the start of Prussian monument preservation.

Among the upper colleges in Berlin and Prussia, the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster, based after the Reformation and secularization of the monastery – and the interim use as Berlin's first printing works by the Swiss Leonhard Thurneysser zum Thurn – stood out by far. Because the Prussian state universities had been intentionally not situated in Berlin, the Gymnasium was the capital's highest academic establishment for nearly 250 years, till the college was based in 1810. As a consequence, quite a few students and artists who formed Berlin, Brandenburg and Prussia studied and labored right here, such because the composer Johann Crüger, the poet Michael Schirmer, the geographer Anton Friedrich Büsching, the classical philologist August Boeckh, the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, the poet Karl Philipp Moritz, gymnastics trainer Jahn, the historian Johann Gustav Droysen and three well-known representatives of the Bellermann rector dynasty on the time. The most well-known college students had been Johann Gottfried Schadow, Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Otto von Bismarck.

Schinkel and Bismarck had been something however mannequin college students. Due to their later prominence, they had been – and nonetheless are – named on the high of the listing of well-known graduates. The Chancellor wrote in his memoirs that he left the Graues Kloster with the conviction that the republic was essentially the most wise type of authorities – ​​undoubtedly an incredible praise for his old fashioned.

The faculty on Klosterstrasse existed for greater than 370 years. After it was severely broken within the final weeks of the Second World War, faculty operations needed to be continued at different places within the metropolis heart, which was now a part of East Berlin. The faculty bore the identify Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster till it was renamed by the GDR authorities in 1958. Five years later, a West Berlin faculty, the Evangelisches Gymnasium, took over the custom of the Graues Kloster – and has been known as Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster ever since. A narrative that would solely have occurred in divided Berlin.

In addition to the church, the chapter home, in-built 1474, shaped the center of the advanced. Its higher ground shaped a single giant corridor during which the monks gathered for the order's convent, referred to as the chapter. The medieval cloister ran by way of the southeast nook of the constructing. In 1865, an exterior staircase was added and the constructing was prolonged by a ground with two halls, together with the well-known singing corridor. Although it was badly broken within the Second World War, the GDR authorities categorised the constructing as a monument and carried out safety work. However, as a part of the redesign of the middle of East Berlin (“development of the city center of the capital of the German Democratic Republic” – as determined by the SED Politburo in 1967), it was demolished in June 1968. An eight-lane principal street was then constructed throughout the varsity grounds. With that, one of the essential architectural witnesses to medieval Berlin had disappeared.

From at this time's perspective, it’s incomprehensible that the brand new principal street handed proper previous the chapter home. The constructing may have been preserved regardless of the street building – however occasions weren’t like that. So aside from the ruins of the monastery church, there may be nothing at this time to point that there was as soon as an previous city and the distinguished highschool right here in the midst of Berlin.

The ensemble of college buildings additionally included an essential Berlin Baroque constructing, the three-story director's residence from 1786. The duo of the monastery church and director's residence shaped the principle facade of the varsity for 150 years. In the nineteenth century, the director's residence was related to an arcade constructed within the model of Schinkel, which shaped the doorway to the world.

The Streit Foundation was housed on the higher ground of the director's residence. This basis, one of many oldest nonetheless present foundations in Berlin, can be one thing you wouldn’t actually anticipate in Berlin, which supposedly solely grew up due to the Industrial Revolution. At the flip of the seventeenth and 18th centuries, a scholar named Sigismund Streit attended the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster. Although he left faculty with out a highschool diploma and settled in Venice as a service provider, he fondly remembered his faculty days. Towards the top of his life, the service provider, who had made his fortune on the “Trading Court of the Germans”, determined to donate cash, books and artworks to his previous grammar faculty. The core of the library that was donated – not like the director's residence itself – survived the Second World War. It is now housed as an impartial assortment within the Central and Regional Library of Berlin.

Among the virtually 50 work that Sigismund Streit gave to his former faculty had been 4 large-format cityscapes of Venice by Giovanni Antonio Canal, referred to as Canaletto. From then on they hung within the faculty auditorium. They additionally survived the conflict. As a everlasting mortgage from the Streit Foundation they’re on show within the image gallery of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

The monastery church was not assigned to a parish, however was owned by the varsity for hundreds of years. It was not till 1938 that it was transferred to the parish of St. Nikolai and St. Marien on the insistence of the Protestant church. The church was badly broken in a bombing raid in direction of the top of the Second World War. This marked the top of the monastery church's historical past as a church – as a damage it continues to have a second life to this present day.

During the World Festival of Youth and Students in 1973, the Cultural Association of the GDR initiated a photograph exhibition within the church ruins. This introduced the church ruins into the main focus of political officers: “From the point of view of state church policy, it can be stated that the decision to hold an event or exhibition in this church ruin is not a good one. For years we have been working against the church's attempts to use the ruins for church purposes, church concerts and trombone concerts.” The officers' conclusion was: “After the World Festival, it will be necessary to examine whether this ruin … will be purchased.”

And so it occurred. In 1978, the church neighborhood offered the ruins to the East German state for a really small sum. The regional church, which had not given its consent, doubted that the GDR authorities had paid an acceptable buy worth, but it surely may now not forestall the sale. A great ten years later, after the political change within the GDR, the church neighborhood tried to get the ruins again. The Berlin State Office for the Regulation of Public Property Issues refused as a result of the acquisition contract from 1978 was not topic to the Property Act. Since then, the church ruins have been owned by the state of Berlin, which has assigned them to the Mitte district, which makes use of the ruins for modern artwork exhibitions.

The 450th anniversary of the inspiration of the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster can be a chance to look into the long run. At the second, the previous faculty grounds are an inhospitable space, with solely the ruins of the monastery church giving them environment. In current years, the state of Berlin has narrowed the eight-lane principal street, which was constructed on the finish of the Nineteen Sixties, to 6 lanes and diverted the street. This signifies that your complete former faculty grounds can be found once more.

Three elementary questions will decide how this a part of Berlin's medieval core will likely be designed sooner or later: Who owns the world, how will it’s used, and the way ought to it’s constructed on?

The clarification of possession of the Graues Kloster land has turn out to be a nationwide problem: In Berlin, the Graues Kloster land is the final open GDR restitution process, maybe even one of many final procedures in all of East Germany. The state of Berlin is registered because the proprietor within the land register. The restitution software was submitted by the Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Graues Kloster Foundation, which has at all times expressed its willingness to achieve an settlement with the state of Berlin. But the clarification of possession and the interwoven query of the long run use of the location are nonetheless pending.

In 2016, the state of Berlin established a growth plan that included the previous faculty web site. It is actually not unfair to categorise the plan as a typical Berlin compromise: one half of the previous faculty web site was declared a everlasting inexperienced house. The plan envisages the development of a college on the opposite half. What makes this compromise unsatisfactory is the truth that, on the one hand, it stipulates a inexperienced house with a manageable high quality of keep – squeezed in between the church ruins and neighboring buildings. On the opposite hand, the shortage of house endangers the development of a brand new faculty: the Berlin faculty administration has confirmed that no public faculty may be constructed there below the present guidelines. A personal faculty developer has not but been discovered.

When you take into account the spectacular former constructing ensemble, the query of the structure of future buildings additionally arises. The debate continues to be in its early levels. The new constructing should actually relate to the monastery church with out dominating it. Bricks, as the fundamental constructing materials for future buildings, may make an essential contribution to this. Berlin state archaeologist Matthias Wemhoff has set one other tone together with his demand {that a} constructing needs to be constructed in the identical quantity because the chapter home. The director's residence, which is a defining characteristic of the cityscape, would even be a candidate for restoration. The reference to the stays of the cloister found throughout archaeological excavations additionally appears apparent.

This would deliver issues full circle: the highschool was a structural testomony to medieval Berlin and a college of nice enchantment. The future design and use of this space should meet this requirement. This would definitely even be within the spirit of James Simon, a monastery resident who’s culturally and socio-politically dedicated.

Georg Dybe is chairman of the Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster Foundation and the Association of Former Klosteraners.
Benedikt Goebel is the board member of the Mitte Berlin Foundation.