“We might be too late for photographs,” he said. But we quickly left the car and hurried up the gravel path, swishing aside the clouds of mosquitoes in the air as we walked. I heard myself exclaim aloud, “Oh my!” And I sped up a bit since the sun was swiftly sinking and the sky was already flat and gray.

Italian Romanesque Revival style Campanile at the Heilandskirche near Berlin

I might have momentarily thought that I was standing on the edge of a lake in Italy — but I was at the waterside in Germany, looking at a the Heilandskirche, the Church of the Redeemer — a place that was frozen in time and held hostage for decades by the construction of the Berlin Wall.

Heilandskirche at the water's edge

Gazing up at the campanile and ambling through the solemn but serene columned arcade on either side of the church, I could barely imagine how devastated the parish would have been when the wall was built right up to the church and the GDR border troops prevented people from entering for worship.

Columned walkway on right side of the Heilandskirche

And so it sat — crumbling into disrepair until the Berlin Wall came down, a campaign was mounted to raise funds to restore the church, and once again everyday citizens and tourists alike could have a quiet moment by those now-peaceful shores.

Columned walkway on left side of Heilandskirche

Sculpted plaque on the courtyard side of the Campanile

As you look at the picture of the columned walkway above, you can see a tower in East Berlin off in the foggy distance on the other shore of the lake.

I am grateful to our friend Stefan Hoffmann for taking us to this remarkable place and sharing the story with us this week.

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