The Lutheran Church of the Redeemer (الكنيسة اللوثرية في القدس, German: Erlöserkirche) is the second Protestant church in Jerusalem.
The Lutheran Church of the Redeemer Jerusalem is located on the junction of Shuk Hatsaba'im and Muristan Street, south-east of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Masjid Omar.
Built on land given to King William I of Prussia (after 1870 Kaiser Wilhelm I) on the occasion of the latter's participation at the inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869 by Sultan Abdülhamid of the Ottoman Empire, the church was constructed from 1892 to 1898.
circa 1100 BCE
Church of the St. Mary of the Latins
First built circa 1070 CE and then rebuilt by the Crusaders about 1150 CE, it became the monastic church of the Hospitallers. The rest of the order’s compound — cloister, dormitories and refectory — stretched to the south of the church, together constituting the Hospitaller’s headquarters in the Holy Land until the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 CE.
In the post-Crusader period this church slowly fell into ruin, but this 1865 photograph shows some of its walls and apses still standing to a considerable height. It was this church, the medieval Saint Mary of the Latins, that the Prussians (later Germans) sought to recreate with the building of the Redeemer Church.
circa 1900 BCE
Interior
The current Church of the Redeemer was indeed built on exactly the same spot, but with new foundations going down to bedrock (11 meters beneath the Crusader church) and its floor level standing 2 meters higher than the medieval floor.
circa 10 BCE
Through the Centuries Exhibition (Durch die Zeiten)
The archaeological excavations, conducted by Conrad Schick and Ute Wagner-Lux (the former director of German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in the Holy Land (GPIA)) in 1893 CE, and then Karl Vriezen from 1970 to 1974, have been prepared by the (GPIA) in 2009–2012 to present to visitors the different stages of development and building of Jerusalem.
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