A wealthy Berliner decided to build a chapel in gratitude for life having been saved while he was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Church was intended to resemble the Holy Sepulchre, the church that sits in the Old City of Eastern Jerusalem. Funny enough, an in indulgence was passed stating that those who helped with the chapel would be given forty years less of purgatory; however, in the mid 16th century the Church became Lutheran.
On this day November 27th, in 1727, the foundation stone of Jerusalem’s Church is placed on the orders of Frederick William I of Prussia. He was well known for his display of showy military, and had a regiment of soldiers that were all abnormally tall called the Potsdam Giants. In a somewhat twisted way, while kidnapping tall men, enslaving them, he also somewhat fetishized them as well.
The Jerusalem Church would later be a conglomerate of different former chapels and sects of Protestantism. When the Third Reich rolled through, it caused tension as the Pastor, Dr. Curt Horn, did not believe in the Reich’s ideology. He was still baptizing Jews, bringing them in. In 1941 Jerusalem Church was closed as a place of worship, and in 1968 it was rebuilt.