13

Thanks to Sophie

A beautifully patterned baroque wallpaper is the sumptous decoration of the apsis of the Sophienkirche. For a long time it faded on the wall until it was painted over with oil paint. Today it is freshly restored and shines in all its splendour.
In 1712, Sophie Luise, the wife of King Frederick, donated a new parish church für the inhabitants of the Spandau suburb. The grand tower with its curved copper roof was added some thirty years later and was payed for by the otherwise notoriously thrifty Soldier King. It is the only extant Baroque tower in Berlin.
On 13th September 1964 during a surprise visit in East Berlin the American civil rights activist Martin Luther King preached in front of 3000 people about freedom and human rights – first in St. Mary at Alexanderplatz and later in the Sophienkirche. Exactly one month later he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.