Franziskan Kloster Kirche – Phoenix Rose's Blog

The city of Berlin is an awesme place. Sometimes, when you’re out wandering, you find things that – even though you thought you REALLY had covered the entire area in your previous wanderings – somehow, you turn down a side street and VIOLA, you discover something new, unique and very cool. Such was the case with the Franziskan Kloster Kirche Ruins, near the Old City Walls.

Broken Pavement Art Display

While out walking between Jannowitzbrueke from seeing the puppets (see previous post), Jade, Paul, and I decided to cut across through the “old city” and came across a lovely park – that was filled with ruins – now used for various “artistic” displays. After wandering around the edge, I found out that it’s an old Franciscan Cloister Church. Just some history on this church – it was originally built in about 1250. It’s where the Franciscan monks of Berlin were housed, and sat right on the original city walls. It was here, that in 1380, a huge fire burned through. Parts of the cloister were rebuilt. In 1539, the monestry was then closed during the reformation, and the last “serving” brother died in 1571. At that time, the building was converted into a high school, where it remained as such – educating such famous Germans as Otto Von Bismark. In 1926, the building was remodeled to be used as a school / church. During WW2, the building was badly bombed and between 1959-1961 determined that it could not be saved. So, the area was cleaned up and stabelized as much as possible and turned into a park. Today, the building hosts art projects that change monthy, and in the summer months, it hosts open air theater performances.

Anyhow, It seems it was fate for us – because the particular “art” display of the day was a bunch of metal lines strung up between the empty windows – with some kind of pulley system on them – attached to jackets. On that very blustery of fall days, not only did the leaves fall from the trees through the open window frames, but also, the jackets danced – as if they were filled with a life of their own.