Jesus Church (Kaulsdorf) (, colloquially also Dorfkirche, village church) is the church of the Evangelical Berlin-Kaulsdorf Congregation, a member of today's Protestant umbrella organisation Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (under this name since 2004). The church building is located in Berlin, borough Marzahn-Hellersdorf, in the locality of Kaulsdorf. The church was named after Jesus of Nazareth.Four other churches in Berlin are named after Jesus, Jesus Church (Berlin-Kreuzberg), Jesus Christ Church (Berlin-Dahlem), Jesus Christ Church (Berlin-Konradshöhe), and Christ Church (Berlin) in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The congregation's parish comprises the area of the historical village of Kaulsdorf, which had been incorporated into Berlin by the Prussian Greater Berlin Act in 1920.
As a Roman Catholic place of worship (until 1539) Kaulsdorf (then Caulstorp in the Electorate of Brandenburg) used to be a village of soccage farmers, with their dues to be delivered first to the Kalands Brethren confraternity in Bernau bei Berlin, as documented in a deed of donatio by Margrave Louis I of Brandenburg as of 1347, representing the oldest surviving record of Kaulsdorf. The church is located in the midst of the village green, enclosed in a church yard surrounded by a wall of boulders.Sibylle Badstübner-Gröger, Michael Bollé, Ralph Paschke et al., Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler / Georg Dehio: 22 vols., revis. and ext. new ed. by Dehio-Vereinigung, Berlin and Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 22000, vol. 8: Berlin, p. 208. . The church dates back to the 14th century; its apse of Romanesque style may be preserved from a preceding building (13th century). The oriented nave is built from small boulders, clad with plaster.Günther Kühne and Elisabeth Stephani, Evangelische Kirchen in Berlin (11978), Berlin: CZV-Verlag, 21986, pp. 413. . In 1412, acquired the manorial seniority over parts of Kaulsdorf. Therefore, the Provost of St. Peter's held the ius patronatus over church and parish in Kaulsdorf. Prince-Elector Joachim II Hector wanted to increase the number of canons at Berlin's Collegiate Church of Our Lady, the Holy Cross, the Ss. Peter, Paul, Erasmus and Nicholas. So he redeployed some ecclesiastical estates and thus in 1536 Kaulsdorf became a manorial estate held by the canon-law College of that Collegiate Church, in order to provide the revenues for its three additional prebendaries. Also, the ius patronatus was transferred to the collegiate church.
As a Lutheran place of worship (from 1539 on) In 1539, Prince-Elector Joachim II Hector converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism, as earlier many of his subjects had done. The church of Kaulsdorf thus became Lutheran too, like most of the electoral subjects and all the churches in the Electorate of Brandenburg. Kaulsdorf's church was now served by the pastors of the neighbouring village Biesdorf.
In 1608, Prince-Elector John Sigismund converted the collegiate church into the Supreme Parish Church of Berlin, which became a Calvinist church in 1613, when John Sigismund admitted his earlier conversion from Lutheranism to Calvinism. Now Calvinist clergy had become the patrons of a Lutheran congregation in Kaulsdorf, since John Sigismund waived his regnal privilege to demand a conversion of his subjects (Cuius regio, eius religio). In the course of the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) Lutheran Swedish troops under Gustavus II Adolphus and the Catholic Imperial Army under Wallenstein ravaged and plundered Kaulsdorf and its inhabitants in 1638. The survivors deserted the devastated village, leaving the church without parishioners. With the successful repopulation of the village until 1652 by the Prince-Electors, ecclesiastical life reemerged.
In 1715, the church was refurbished and altered. The nave has been lengthened towards the east, and the windows were altered in their forms. The new, longer nave received a flat ceiling above a circular ledge, carried by busts of angels (). On the southern side a chapel was added to the building, which now houses the heating system.
As a Prussian Union place of worship (after 1817) In 1817, under the auspices of King Frederick William III of Prussia, the Lutheran congregation of Kaulsdorf, like most Prussian Protestant congregations, joined the common umbrella organisation then called the Evangelical Church in Prussia (under this name since 1821), with each congregation maintaining its former denomination or adopting the new united denomination (Prussian Union (Evangelical Christian Church)). The Kaulsdorf church still being subordinate to the ius patronatus of the Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church, the king's court church, will most probably have promptly joined the Prussian Union.
In 1874, the new church constitution (Kirchenordnung) of the Evangelical Church provided for all parishes the election of presbyters and synodals, thus constituting the parishes as congregations of legal entity status. However, the church building, including the costs of its maintenance, remained under ius patronatus, allowing the patron, then the Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church's presbytery (The presbytery of the Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church bears a specific name, literally in Cathedral College, recalling the history of the church as a collegiate church.), to appoint the pastors in Kaulsdorf. In 1875, the half-timbered church tower gave way for a new extension from brick masonry, attached to the west of the church, including a church tower on a square ground plan. The congregation experienced a drastic inflow of new parishioners moving in during the process of urbanisation after 1900.Claus Wagener, "Kirchenkreis Berlin Land I (Stadtgemeinden)", in: Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten, Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 336–339, here p. 338. . In May 1926 the Nazi Party (NSDAP) founded a local group (Ortsgruppe) in Kaulsdorf, which became the first suburb of Berlin where the party could establish. The local group, among others led by Wilhelm Kube and Kurt Daluege, became the nucleus for most of the other local groups in Berlin's eastern suburbia.
Under Nazi rule After the premature re-election of presbyters and synodals on 23 July 1933, which Adolf Hitler had discretionarily imposed onto all Protestant church bodies in Germany (see Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union), the Nazi partisan Protestant so-called Faith Movement of German Christians, founded by Kube among others, gained a majority in the presbytery of the Kaulsdorf Congregation, like in most congregations within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union. With the new majorities on all levels of church organisation the German Christians systematically tried to subject any unadulterated form of Protestantism by way of firing church employees of other opinion, blocking church property for non-Nazi Protestant groups, and prohibiting collections for other purposes than the officially approved ones.
On 2 February 1934, the presbytery of the Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church appointed the Reformed Heinrich Grüber as the new pastor of the Kaulsdorf congregation, since this church still held the ius patronatus of the Kaulsdorf Church."Deed of appointment of Heinrich Grüber", issued by the Domkirchenkollegium on 7 February 1934, published in: Heinrich Grüber. Sein Dienst am Menschen, Peter Mehnert for Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte and Bezirksamt Hellersdorf (ed.), Berlin: Bezirkschronik Berlin-Hellersdorf, 1988, p. 6. No ISBN Grüber, before pastor at the diaconal foundation Stephanus-Stiftung Waldhof in Templin and known as member of the Nazi opposing Emergency Covenant of Pastors (), was strictly rejected by the German Christian-dominated Kaulsdorf presbytery.Heinrich Grüber. Sein Dienst am Menschen, Peter Mehnert for Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte and Bezirksamt Hellersdorf (ed.), Berlin: Bezirkschronik Berlin-Hellersdorf, 1988, p. 6. No ISBN But the March of Brandenburg ecclesiastical provincial consistory (the competent bureaucracy within the old-Prussian Church) insisted on his appointment as decided by the presbytery of the Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church.Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich: 3 vols., Klaus Scholder and Gerhard Besier, Frankfurt am Main et al.: Propyläen et al., 1977–, vol. 3: Gerhard Besier 'Spaltungen und Abwehrkämpfe 1934–1937' (2001), footnote 378 on p. 1152. . The office of pastor included the function as executive-in-chief of the presbytery. Thus conflicts were unavoidable. The German Christian presbyters steadily denounced Grüber within the ecclesiastical bureaucracy for criticising Ludwig Müller, the then old-Prussian state bishop (), and the Nazi party local group leader denounced him at the Gestapo, for criticising the Nazi sterilisation laws (see Nazi Eugenics) and for mercy and sympathy with the Jews.Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich: 3 vols., Klaus Scholder and Gerhard Besier, Frankfurt am Main et al.: Propyläen et al., 1977–2001, vol. 3: Gerhard Besier 'Spaltungen und Abwehrkämpfe 1934–1937' (2001), p. 865 and footnote 379 on p. 1152. .
Prior to Grüber's appointment, the few congregants in Kaulsdorf opposing the Nazi interference and adulteration of Protestantism did not organise as a group. Now Grüber built up a Confessing Church congregation at Jesus Church. As the officially appointed pastor Grüber held the regular services in Jesus Church, preaching against the Cult of personality of Hitler, the armament of Germany, and anti-Semitism.Dieter Winkler, "Heinrich Grüber und die Kaulsdorfer", in: Heinrich Grüber und die Folgen: Beiträge des Symposiums am 25. Juni 1991 in der Jesus-Kirche zu Berlin-Kaulsdorf, Eva Voßberg (ed.), Berlin: Bezirkschronik Berlin-Hellersdorf, 1992, (Hellersdorfer Heimathefte; No. 1), pp. 30–32, here p. 31. No ISBN