Didn’t Werner Düttmann say that Sankt Agnes “stands in the way”? He meant it didn’t stand apart. Sankt Agnes stands at the heart of the new housing estate. Yet it doesn’t stand at its center. Düttmann saw the church as an unobtrusive milestone. It is a distinctive marker. It serves as an open invitation for people to come together.
Düttmann was a great architect of the postwar period. He designed over seventy buildings in Berlin. These include the Akademie der Künste and the Brücke Museum. He thought in terms of comprehensive design for society. He pioneered architecture free from ornament. He opened up the city to people and made it accessible.
The social housing boom marked his era. During his time as Berlin’s director of urban development, 20,000 tenements were built. Düttmann wanted to strengthen the urban community. He aimed to show citizens the possibility of a true collective.
With its clear brutalist forms, Sankt Agnes has a strong effect. Despite its monolithic structure, the parish center blends into the neighborhood. It spans a total of 3,562 m². Martina Düttmann wrote about the church’s aesthetic. It should stand apart yet greet people with open arms. It should blend secular hospitality with the sacred.
Unusual for postwar architecture, Düttmann grouped the parish center around a leafy courtyard. It is accessible from Alexandrinenstraße. Buildings of different sizes stand like silent watchers around the courtyard. Originally, the center housed a parish hall and a kindergarten. There was also housing for the parish priest.
The church itself is austere inside. Instead of baroque gold and marble, the interior features unfinished concrete. It has the clear outline of a basilica. Two slim window slits extend up sixteen meters behind the altar. Two parallel bands of light stream through the hall.
The forms are clear-cut. The surfaces are almost never-ending. The floors were once covered with end grain flooring. Back then, the bishopric spoke of a new “stronghold.” This was at the inauguration of Sankt Agnes in 1966.
Düttmann linked history with modernity in Sankt Agnes’s building. He built the aisle walls from bricks found in the rubble. These bricks came from bombed houses from a generation earlier. These histories and tragedies of the city are alluded to as an abstract memory.
Today, Düttmann is seen as one of Germany’s most important urban planners. Sankt Agnes is regarded as one of the most important church complexes from the 1960s. It embodies the modern parish center. Düttmann’s unpretentiousness coincided with a new unpretentiousness in church building.