The House of One is a religious structure being built in Berlin. It will be the world’s first house of prayer for three religions, containing a church, a mosque, and a synagogue. The construction costs, which are estimated at 43.5 million euros, come roughly equally from the federal government, the city of Berlin as well as donations and a crowdfunding campaign.
It is to be built in Fischerinsel, on the site where the first church in Berlin, St Peter’s, once stood. The laying of the foundation stone is scheduled for the 14th of April, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the planned groundbreaking ceremony for the House of One was canceled and postponed to May 27, 2021. In the meantime, this date was also in question; But finally the laying of the foundation stone was confirmed – without guests due to the pandemic and via live stream.
The East Berlin magistrate had the St. Peter’s Church, which was heavily damaged in the war, removed in 1964. As a result, Petriplatz was also used as a market and parking lot, among other things. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growing together of the German capital, intensive archaeological excavations took place on Petriplatz from the late 1990s and again from 2006. The found foundations of St. Peter’s Church and other earlier buildings were temporarily filled with earth again for preservation reasons, and the bones of deceased people from the early Middle Ages were secured. In the future, these will find their final resting place in an ossuary at Petriplatz.
In 2009 the community meeting of the parish of St. Petri-St. Marien’s ideas about what could be built on the site of the former St. Peter’s Church were collected. The parish priest, Gregor Hohberg, put forward the suggestion “to do something together with several religions.” This was how the idea of an interreligious place of worship was born. The Berlin Senate soon made the decision, on the one hand, to have the finds permanently present in the area and, on the other hand, to build a common prayer house for all three religions that have played a role in Berlin throughout history: Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which worship a common god (the One), are intended to be symbolized in the building. The supporting foundation was founded on September 8, 2016. An open global architectural competition was announced. The jury chose the design by the Berlin architecture firm Kuehn Malvezzi as the winner, which prevailed against numerous designs.
