Berlin in Light and Dark

Thinking of Berlin today after yesterday's attack on the Christmas market in the Breitscheidplatz yesterday.

I visited that place last summer.  It's right next to the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on the Kurfürstendam.  Below are all my photos except where noted.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church from near the Zoological Park train station in the Hardenbergplatz.  The zoo is very close by this busiest part of Berlin.

The former entrance of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
The church was built by Kaiser Wilhelm II as a memorial for his grandfather Kaiser Wilhelm I, and as part of his campaign to turn Berlin into a national capital and focus for a German national loyalty to replace local and regional loyalties.  It was built from 1891 to 1895.
An air raid in 1943 destroyed the church.

Broken Jesus; a damaged mosaic in the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Mosaics in the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Kaiser Wilhelm I with his grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II on the far right.

Mosaics of Reformers in the Kaiser Wilhelm Church.

The ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church from the Kurfürstendam.  The Breitscheidplatz is on the other side of the church from this photograph.

The church photographed shortly after its completion.  Photo from Wikipedia.

Inside the new Memorial Church built 1959 to 1960 on the site of the old church.  It was designed by architect Egon Eiermann with very striking stained glass walls designed by Gabriel Loire.

Baptismal font in the new Memorial Church.

The old Luftwaffe headquarters that remarkably survived the war undamaged.  Today, the building houses the German Finance Ministry.

The old Luftwaffe Headquarters in the background with a surviving portion of the Berlin Wall and an advertising balloon.
In the foreground is the site of the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin.  The building was torn down after the war, but its site remains vacant and is now a memorial to the Gestapo's victims.

Part of an excavation on the site of the old Gestapo Headquarters that exposed a number of subterranean solitary confinement cells and interrogation chambers.

The tiled wall of an old Gestapo interrogation room.

The site of the Gestapo headquarters on the Prinz Albrecht Strasse.

A street next to a canal in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin.

A street bridge over a canal in the Kreuzberg neighborhood.

A street in the Kreuzberg neighborhood.

Some of Bill Paulsen's oldest friends in Germany, friends and colleagues from almost 50 years ago when he did his pastoral internship in Berlin.

Your's truly in the foreground on the right.