Protestant Church of Plötzensee

The Protestant community centre at Heckerdamm 226 in Charlottenburg-Nord was consecrated in 1970 as a second site of the local parish and sits just metres from the Ploetzensee Memorial, the central execution site of the Nazi judicial apparatus. Because of this proximity its main hall was deliberately designed as a memorial church for the victims of National Socialism, with liturgy that remembers resistance figures including the Stauffenberg family, Helmuth James von Moltke and the Red Orchestra. The plain brick and concrete late-1960s architecture is intentionally restrained, the interior dominated by a large bronze altar relief by Alfred Hrdlicka. Visitors crossing over from the memorial find here the spiritual space for reflection that the bare execution barracks next door deliberately do not offer.