Berlin, Diocese of

BERLIN, Diocese of. - A name of Slavic origin, which designates the capital of the German republic and of the Prussian state. The diocese of the same name was erected on the basis of the concordat between Prussia and the Holy See of 14 June 1929, with the bull Pastoralis Officii of 13 Aug. 1930, and is part of the ecclesiastical province of Breslau. Besides the territory of the city of B., it embraces a large part of the Prussian provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania, with a total area of about 35,000 sq km, where among a population of over 5,656,259 inhabitants there were in 1948, 611,003 Catholics. The parishes are 232, with 350 diocesan priests and 113 regulars. At the present moment, however (1949), there is no possibility of verification for the statistical data.

I. HISTORY

In the Middle Ages this territory belonged to the dioceses of Havelberg, Brandenburg, Lebus and Kammin. After the introduction of Lutheranism, in Pomerania with the ecclesiastical ordinance of Treptow of 1534, in Brandenburg with the ecclesiastical ordinance of the Elector Joachim II of 1540, Catholicism was almost entirely extinguished. Only in the chapels of the embassies of Austria and France in Berlin, by virtue of the privilege of extraterritoriality, could Catholic worship be maintained. Later King Frederick William I, out of regard for the numerous Catholic soldiers serving in the Prussian army, erected at his own expense churches or chapels first in B. (1722), then also in Potsdam, Spandau and Stettin, entrusting their spiritual care to the Dominicans of the convent of Halberstadt; some of them, such as, for example, Fr. Bruns, enjoyed the particular confidence of the king. The Catholic community of B. obtained parochial rights for the first time after the completion of the church of St. Hedwig, built with the help of Frederick the Great, in 1773. The entire territory from 1699 to 1806 was under the jurisdiction of the vicar apostolic of Lower Saxony, a jurisdiction not yet recognized by the State. Repeated attempts by the kings of Prussia to establish in B. a vicariate dependent on the king, for all the Catholics of the monarchy, with the aim of separating them practically from Rome, did not succeed.

The bull De salute animarum of 1821 constituted for the territories of Brandenburg and Pomerania (with the exception of the deaneries of Cottbus, Neuzelle, Schwiebus, Lauenburg and Büttow, belonging to the diocese of Breslau) an apostolic delegation, entrusting its direction to the prince-bishop of Breslau; as his permanent representative the provost pro tempore of St. Hedwig of B. was designated. The intimate union with the great and rich diocese of Breslau made possible the organization, from the ecclesiastical point of view, of the masses of workers, employees, and merchants who flowed into B., which had become an industrial center, and from 1870 also the capital of the new German empire. The number of Catholics, which in 1740 barely reached the figure of 3000, and still in 1821 did not exceed 12,000, rose in 1862 to 51,157; in 1887 it amounted to 142,676, of whom 113,617 in the city of B.; in 1897 it reached 263,347, among whom in 1898 only 81 priests were working. There were cases of Catholics living 100 km. from the nearest church, although, year by year, under the energetic impulse of Card. Kopp and of the Bonifatiusverein, new churches and parishes arose. In 1846 the first Catholic religious women made their entry into B., and they were the Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo of Trier. Numerous other Congregations followed, whose charitable activity, especially in the 17 hospitals of the city, contributed much to the spread of Catholicism. The first convent for religious was founded by the Dominicans in 1869.

When, after the end of the First World War, the number of Catholics reached half a million, Catholic life had become so powerful, and the number of priestly vocations so high as to suggest an autonomous administration of the delegation. The provost of St. Hedwig exercised approximately the powers of a vicar general, and from 1923 he was also a bishop. When in 1930 the diocese of B. was erected, it had as its boundaries those maintained until then by the delegation. At St. Hedwig a cathedral chapter was created composed of a provost and 6 canons. The first bishop was Msgr. Christian Schreiber (1930-33), transferred from the cathedral of Meissen; he was succeeded by Nikolaus Bares, formerly bishop of Hildesheim; since 1935 the see has been held by Count Konrad Preysing, formerly bishop of Eichstätt, created cardinal by Pius XII in the Consistory of 20 Feb. 1946.

Sources: M. Lehmann-H. Granier, Preussen und die katholische Kirche, 9 vols., Leipzig 1878-1902 (for the period

1648-1807); Ph. Hiltebrant, Preussen und die römische Kurie, I, Rome 1910 (stops at 1740).

Hubert Jedin

II. THE MUSEUMS AND THE INSTITUTE OF CHRISTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY OF BERLIN

Important objects of early Christian art are found in various places in B., such as, for example, in the Museum of Antiquities, the Egyptian Museum, the Museum of the Castle, the State Library and the Institute of Christian Archaeology of the University. The collection of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum is one of the most complete in the world, because it contains objects from different countries (Italy, Byzantium, Egypt) and periods. Some important pieces, especially early Christian bronzes, such as the statuette of St. Peter, already derive from the «Kurfürstliche Kunst-Kammer», bought together with the Bellori Collection in Rome.

The first collector of medieval art was King Frederick William IV, who from 1834 onward had a great number of sculptures bought in Italy, especially for the decoration of the churches of Potsdam; as in 1842 the mosaic of St. Michael in Affricisco from Ravenna. In 1841 he acquired in Berlin the Pajaro Collection with many medieval marbles from Venice. The greatest increase came around 1901-1902 with a large collection of Coptic art, bought in Egypt. For the inauguration of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Wilhelm von Bode, in 1904, gathered these and other objects in a special department for early Christian, Byzantine and Italian medieval art; after Oscar Wulff was called as inspector, the collection was arranged and a catalogue in two volumes was published. Other objects arrived in Berlin from the excavations of Abu Mina, of Althmim-Panopolis, of Arsinoopolis and of Antinoopolis. Many architectural fragments were found in the excavations from Asia Minor or bought in Constantinople, such as the fragment of a sarcophagus from Psammathia with Christ and the Apostles; besides originals, casts and many copies of frescoes were also assembled in the Museum for convenience of study, frescoes that were in danger such as those of Latmos or Macedonia, largely of the Byzantine period.

With the inauguration of the Pergamon Museum around 1931, it became possible to arrange the collection better in new rooms. On this occasion the Egyptian Museum ceded the finds from Antinoopolis and Arsinoopolis, with many Coptic stelae, fabrics, bronzes, etc. The Museum of Industrial Art in the Castle also ceded the large painted Coptic fabrics. A room was added for the art of Greek and Russian icons.

Outside the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum the most important collection of Coptic fabrics is in the Castle Museum, and a small one in the Schliemann Collection of the Prehistoric Museum. The Prehistoric Museum includes some early Christian glass, goldsmith work in the Gaus collection, coming from Assiut, and two ivory diptychs. In the collection of Gnostic gems of the Egyptian Museum there are also pieces of Christian type. The National Library preserves the diptych of Rufius Probianus and the miniatures of the "Itala" of Quedlinburg.

For students at the University there serves the small collection of the Institute of Christian Archaeology, which contains a lead plate, lamps and especially casts of ivories. The Institute, with a good library, founded by Ferdinand Piper (1849-55), serves especially students of Protestant theology. The above refers to the state of the said museum up to the last war and there is no positive data about its present state.

Fritz Volbach

III. ART

1) Local art. - At Koelln, inhabited for the most part by fishermen, the parish church of St. Peter is recorded in 1237, and it was rebuilt in 1379. The new Gothic church was destroyed in a fire in 1730 and then rebuilt in a barbarous Gothic style. The patron of B. was St. Nicholas, to whom the parish church, mentioned in a document of 1244, was dedicated. Around 1250 a third church dedicated to the Madonna was founded a short distance from that of St. Nicholas. A great fire in 1380 also destroyed these two churches. That of St. Nicholas, rebuilt in brick in Gothic forms, was particularly solemn, thanks also to its remarkable colored stained-glass windows. In modern times two bell towers were added on the base of the tower, which clash with the simplicity of the building. The church of St. Mary is also a Gothic construction: it preserves a fine baptismal font of the fifteenth century. Famous is the Dance of Death, a fresco painted between 1460 and 1470, very well preserved. The chapel of St. Gertrude, consecrated at Koelln in 1411 with the adjoining hospital, was destroyed in the nineteenth century. Around 1250 the Franciscans came to B. and built there their first convent with an adjoining church. It was the first Gothic brick church. It still exists today, and in the monastery there has been since 1576 a secondary school which in its name (Gymnasium zum grauen Kloster) preserves the memory of the friars and of which Bismarck was the most famous pupil. Among the buildings of the fourteenth century there still exists the small Gothic church of the Holy Spirit, which was once the chapel of the hospital of the same name. Of the great commandery of the Templars to the south of the city, which later passed to the Order of St. John after the suppression of the former (1312), B. preserves no other memory than the name of Tempelhof for a district and the airport situated there. With the Reformation introduced by the Elector Joachim II, in 1540 all the churches passed to Protestantism and for two centuries Catholics possessed no building of worship. As their number grew, under Frederick II the Great (1740-86) a church dedicated to St. Hedwig was built for them (1746), probably according to the plans drawn by Jean-Laurent Legray. It was round, of simple forms, but of very harmonious proportions. The king offered the land and the timber, while the rest had to be collected among the Catholics of all countries. The construction lasted almost thirty years; and it was therefore consecrated with great solemnity in 1773 by the bishop of Ermland. In 1778 it became a parish church. The great king gave the Catholics a second place of worship in the chapel of the military hospital of the invalids, dedicated to St. Sebastian. It served to gather there the Catholic soldiers and was replaced by a garrison church in the nineteenth century. Then several Catholic churches arose, for the most part built in brick in the neo-Gothic style characteristic of the second half of the century. Worthy of mention are St. Sebastian, St. Louis, St. Matthias, St. Boniface, St. Clement Hofbauer; the church of St. Michael, on the other hand, is round and neoclassical (a parish from 1851).

2) Art collections. - The State Library possessed a fine collection of medieval codices, among them a Gospel of Prüm of the middle of the tenth century, the Psalter of Louis the German of the same age and an Epistolary of the school of Reichenau (last quarter of the tenth century). Another rich collection of codices was to be found in the Cabinet of Engravings. Worthy of note are the so-called Gospel of Henry IV (second half of the eleventh century), that of the monastery of Abdinghof (ca. 1060) and the Passio Sanctae Lucioe (twelfth century). The principal museums are: the National Gallery dedicated to modern German art, the Old and the New Museum, the German Museum, the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum. All these buildings are located on the Spree Island, where the castle also is, which in its oldest parts goes back to the Margrave Frederick II the Iron (1420-70) and which was the residence of the Hohenzollerns. The collections of Catholic art are to be found in the last two museums mentioned above. In the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum was arranged a collection that gave an exact idea of the art of painting in Europe from the thirteenth century up to the beginning of the nineteenth. Among the German works worthy of note are several altars of the Cologne school of the end of the fourteenth century, the Adoration of the Magi and the beautiful head of an Apostle, by Giovanni Baldung called Grién (ca. 1480-1552), the Rest during the Flight into Egypt, the Nativity of Christ, the St. Francis and the St. Jerome by Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1530). There were then the Holy Family, the St. Ulrich and the St. Barbara by Giovanni Burgkmair the elder (1473-1531). Important was the collection of the works of Albrecht Dürer (v. BAMBERGA), among them the Madonna with the Little Lamp, an Adoring Madonna, the magnificent Portrait of Jerome Holzschuher. Mention must still be made of the Mourning Virgin by Giovanni Holbein the elder (ca. 1465-1524) and the Portrait of the merchant Gisse by his son Giovanni Holbein the younger (v. BASILEA). In the last war these treasures were kept in a place presumed safe; it is not possible now (1948) to know the state of the monuments and the location of the works of art. - See Tavy. LXXXV-LXXXVI.

Hermine Kühn-Steinhausen