 Friedrich Wilhelm III, this theological direction had already been promoted by appointments of revivalist theologians as professors at the University of Berlin. The concept for the deaconesses’ home also refers to medieval nuns working as nurses; as if to emphasise this, a medieval hospital is quoted on the facade. In the centre of the hospital, which originally housed 350 beds, there is a large galleried church, whose position is brought out in the main facade through its central projection and two turrets.[9] Underneath the church is the deaconesses’ refectory. With the founding of the hospital, the King turns the romantic image of medieval Christian society into one of modern welfare. Charity is considered an apostolic ministry belonging to the church, rather than a duty of the civil-communal administration authorities. In terms of the hospital’s interior design and technical infrastructure, it paved the way for Prussia and for its time; it was state of the art, particularly due to visits the executive architect had made to several hospitals across Europe. The novelist Theodor Fontane was employed here as a pharmacist in 1848/49.
A new Protestant church had been part of Lenné’s plans for the square since 1840; but it was not until the 1860s that it was built according to a draft drawn up by Friedrich Adler, an architect from the second generation of the Schinkel school. Originally, the Luisenstadt community was responsible for the entire Luisenstadt or Köpenicker Feld; its church was destroyed during World War II and never rebuilt. With the development of the new quarters as a first step, a new parish was created in the west, separate from the Luisenstadt community. St. Jacobi Church was built for the new parish on Oranienstrasse 1844/45. With the King ’s financial support and participation in planning matters, the church was built in the form of a late antique basilica with a columned vestibule and a campanile. Even back then, separation to create another church parish was contemplated, but wasn’t brought about until the new city had been developed further. It was expected that the architecture of the church, initially proposed for the southern edge of the square, would lend itself to a place of worship for an urban parish with monumental external impact in the context of Lenné’s plan; it was also intended to be in keeping with that of the Bethanien hospital. The importance of St. Thomas for the construction of 19th century churches was already recognised by contemporary critics in the design Adler submitted for the architectural competition. It brings together the central space developed for the Protestant church in the 17th century with the longitudinal extension required by the contemporary theory of church building. [10] With the extension of the arms of the cross and the shortening of the nave, Adler found a solution that became a model for the great churches of the late Wilhelmine period. The monumental nature of the church is achieved through its lofty, narrow twin-towered facade, which carries the elongated shape of Mariannenplatz into the vertical dimension, so to speak, but even more so through the dome, which dominates the church and the cityscape in accordance with the loop of the canal along the axis of the Schillingbrücke. The church’s contemporary aesthetics asserted themselves against all practical considerations. Even in the planning phase, the effect the dome’s echo would have on the acoustics was already well known, in particular on the audibility of the sermon; in this respect, the church was a problematic case right from the beginning.
St Thomas’ church stands with its chancel at the apex of a circular segment, delineated by the former Luisenstadt canal. The reference to water is in line with the basic feature of Lenné's urban design, which applied the concept of the picturesque, developed in romantic landscape gardening, to urban spaces.[12] As with the dome, the King ’s insistence on the loop in the canal meant that functionality had to give way to aesthetics. The small difference in water level between the Spree and the Landwehr canal resulted in a weak current, which was further slowed by the inclination between Engelbecken and the river Spree. Construction of the canal began in 1848, the year of Revolution, within the context of job-creation schemes. The emergency measures for recruitment of the unemployed began shortly before the March Revolution of 1848, as a futile attempt to prevent its outbreak. As a result, the progress of the canal’s construction was accelerated during the Revolution. In 1852 the canal was already open for shipping. In 1848, during construction, the October riots took place, caused by among other factors the remuneration scheme. Among the relief workers were unemployed craftsmen, who, in contrast to the more experienced, piecework labourers, preferred the daily wage, which was paid regardless of the amount of work that had to be done. On 16th October, a steam engine designed to draw water was destroyed by workers, who felt it was a threat to their jobs, comparable to the effect on weavers following the introduction of the power loom. Conflict arose between workers and the armed civic militia, who acted in place of the military to keep public order during the Revolution.
The shooting of canal workers by vigilantes as presented by the newspaper Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung on 4 November 1848, with the headline: “Workers riot in Berlin on 16 Oct.” Whether the representation is based on eyewitnesses is questionable. The composition could also owe itself to the pictorial tradition of Goya's painting “The Execution of the Rebels” (1814). The scene of the action is however, consistent with the site; the rear facade of the Bethanien hospital, then highly visible with its distinctive church in the middle, speaks for the artist’s local knowledge.
The canal’s purposes were the drainage of damp meadow land, the transport of building material for the new dwellings and the supply of food and fuel from the surrounding area to the local population. Even with its slow current, the canal was still able to fulfil its function of transportation, but it became more and more filthy and caused an unbearable odour problem in the area, particularly after the housing development had been completed and the lock in the river Spree was opened less often. The tree-lined promenades that Lenné had planted on either side of the canal could no longer fulfil their urban function as a “double boulevard”[14] within the context of an open recreational area. As a result, as early as the 1880s, filling in the canal was considered. This was then planned and executed in the 1920s, again as part of a job creation scheme; which, considering the canal’s evolutionary history, brings to mind the Sisyphus myth. The canal was filled with excavated earth yielded from the simultaneous construction of an underground tunnel.
Engelbecken and St. Michael's Church form the true heart of Luisenstadt as a late romantic urban landscape. The church was already included here in Lenné’s plan in 1840 to beautify the area and enjoyed particular attention from the King. On the one hand, the position of the church above the basin is decidedly reminiscent of romantic Italy; on the other hand, the prestigious construction corresponds to the ecclesial-political self-image of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who dealt with the founding of the parish in the tradition of Friedrich II and sealed the end of the rift with the Catholic Church with a great architectural gesture. In 1845, the parish was separated from the Hedwigskirche, which was built under the initiative of Friedrich II, although the new church was initially used as a garrison church for Catholic soldiers, who had by now grown greatly in number. The period of the church’s construction, which was designed by one of Schinkel’s pupils, August Soller, lasted from 1851 until 1856. Along with the Bethanien hospital and the canal, the area around St. Michael now boasted yet another monumental feature. While Friedrich II had given the Hedwigskirche the subtext of tolerance, or even religious indifference, with its Pantheon-like architecture, the interior of St Michael’s Church leans towards the traditional Basilica, though with some characteristics of the Italian High Renaissance: the floorplan and dome are based on that of the San Salvatore church in Venice (built from 1508 onwards). The interior was considered one of the most successful of its kind in late-romantic church architecture; for Theodor Fontane, St. Michael’s was the most beautiful church in Berlin. It was in particular the flat domes borrowed from San Salvatore, instead of ordinary vaults, which added to the spatial impression by spanning the yokes of the nave and framing the raised copula to great effect; barrel vaults overarched the aisles. After the damage caused during World War II, only the transept, the dome, the chancel and the southern facade were restored. The nave and the aisles were preserved as ruins, and so the building is now more in accordance with early than late Romanticism aesthetics. Low functional buildings have been built on one part of the nave, though these are not visible from the outside of the church.
View of Engelbecken and St. Michael's Church. Lithography from after 1860, probably based on a drawing by F. A. Borchel. The impressive shadowing on the church facade is not caused by any actual object; the boat’s sail and flag in the right half of the picture are also likely to have been added as aesthetic embellishments. The image was in print at least until the 1880s, e.g. as a steel engraving, where the sailing boat is present, but the buildings