Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (in German: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche) is located in Berlin at the Kurfürstendamm. The old church was built between 1891 and 1895 according to plans by Franz Schwechten.

It is also commonly known as the Gedächtniskirche, and by some locals as the "lipstick and powder puff".

Emperor Wilhelm II ordered the construction of the church in honor of his grandfather Wilhelm I. The neo-romanesque style refers to many romanesque churches in the Rhineland.

The original construction was of impressive monumentality and size. Mosaics inside the church recalled the life and work of Emperor Wilhelm I. During World War II, the church was destroyed during a bombing in 1943. The only remainder of the old building is the ruin of the belfry.

After the war, from 1951 to 1961, a new church was built right next to the site of the old one after the plans of Egon Eiermann. The old church was kept as a ruin in memory of the horrors of war. An iconic cross of the Russian Orthodox Church, a copy of a graphic by Kurt Reubers that was drawn in 1942 in Stalingrad (now Volgograd), and a cross made of nails from Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed by Nazi bomb attacks in Britain, are signs for reconciliation of the three countries that were once enemies.