Germany’s roadway church network provides drivers with toilets, parking, and brief encounters with the divine.
It ’s a bright Sunday inBerlin — a natural time of the week to go church service - hopping , if not incisively the fix for it . The metropolis is so secular that it ’s been called the “ atheist Das Kapital of Europe”for years ; for an entire subgroup of people there “ Christian church ” unironically refers to the infamous techno club Berghain . Wherever Germany ’s variation of God hang out , it ’s probably not in the chapiter .
Hemightbe find , however , on theAutobahn , and not just because main road driving is specially contributive to meeting your Almighty early . Spread throughout Germany ’s panoptic highway system are theAutobahnkirchen , a web of 47 small churches and chapels that run as spiritually - be given rest catch for automobilist . Official materials advance the churches asTankstellen der Seele — gas post for the individual . There areseveral criteriachurches must meet to take in this official appellation . For one , a church ’s interior must be large enough for a coach - sized mathematical group to visit together , and there must be toilets and parking on site , and they must be open from 8 am to 8 pm day by day .
Understandably , most Autobahn stories focalize on the actual drive experience as opposed to the conterminous base . After all , no other highway organization feels as inextricably tie to home personal identity or maintains such a keep on the popular imagination , which envisions it as a speed - point of accumulation - averse free - for - all where German families cosplayFormula Oneen road to Opa and Oma ’s family . In reality , it ’s the fourthly - long national highway web in the world , 30 % of which is indeed open to speed limits . The other 70 % has a recommended speed limit of 81 miles per hour , with the implication being that exceeding that velocity is unwise . Sat in a sensitive Volkswagen Polo , my friend and I have neither the HP nor desire to live on this finical boundary . We ’re not on the Autobahn for its own saki anyway . We ’re on the Autobahn for God ’s sake , and to see another clearly German conception : the Autobahn church building .
This “gas station for the soul” is located not far from the hedonistic capital of Germany.|Photo courtesy of Elle Carroll
We merge onto the A13 without incident .
Less than an minute afterwards , we ’re draw off the highway into Duben . Besidesa state prisonthat primarily houses male inmate with “ tenacious prison judgment of conviction or serious personality disorders , ” Duben ’s primary attraction is the local Autobahn church service . It ’s a simple structure made of snowy stucco and quality with a roof of rust - gloss shingles , built in 1684 after the Thirty Years ’ War put down the first one . We peer in the window at the whitewashed dais with gold dialect and jiggle every peculiarly - mold brass handle but it is both empty and locked . Denied our roadside solacement , we read the figure carve into a nearby stone column memorialize the localgefallen Helden — fallen hero — of 1914 - 1918 and 1939 - 1945 .
The 2d set of date should not come as a surprisal . Contemporary Germany is suffused with reminders and remnants of its Nazi past , the Autobahn among them . Hitler ’s visual sense of a modern Germany was a motorized one , and heopened the national Autobahn edifice project at a ceremonial groundbreakingnear Frankfurt just six months after impound power in 1933 . mental synthesis continued until 1941 , much of it done by forced manual laborer and compactness camp convict following the irruption of war in 1939 .
Duben’s local Autobahn church honors fallen German soldiers from the the two World Wars.|Photo courtesy of Elle Carroll
The Nazis make out less than a fifth of the plan 20,000 kilometers , but the task was taken up again in earnest by the West German government in the 1950s . The first Autobahn church was built in 1958 on the A8 between Stuttgart and Munich , explicitly intend to provide Sunday services to traveler . In that sense , it failed . Travelers showed up every twenty-four hours of the week and rarely stayed longer than 15 minutes .
As I would soon find out , transience has delineate Autobahn church cultivation ever since .
After all , a driver does n’t plan to go far at an Autobahn church service at a sealed metre the elbow room a parishioner plans to go to stack on Sunday . Services , if provided at all , are subaltern to these Christian church ’ chief function as asylum . This is just a practicality . attend a avail mid - journey is unmanageable to time and liable to add up another hour to an already lengthy road trip . Staying 10 minutes , however , feel no logistically different than stopping for gas .
On the A13 toward the Autobahn church in Uhyst…|Photo courtesy of Elle Carroll
The number of Autobahn church has jumped from 30 in 2005 to 47 today , but elsewhere , Germany ’s non - Autobahn church are in crisis . Nationwide church membership is in protracted fall , send packing from 61 % of the entire universe to less than 50 % between 2005 and 2022 . Some 360,000 Catholics and 280,000 Protestantslefttheir various German churches in 2021 alone . Meanwhile , and despite reliable figures being difficult to properly measure , the Autobahn churches ’ govern connection calculate visitor numbers to be at least 1 million annually .
In praxis , Autobahn churches supply momentary and private spiritual hiatus without requiring deeper and communal spiritual commitment ( or thefederal church taxlevied alongside church membership ) . Because of the accent on being bema as pit to supply services , Autobahn church offer even respite to the most devout driver , to driver disillusion with institutional Christianity but not God himself , and to driver who would just rather not do their day-after-day external respiration exercises in a rest occlusion privy .
They ’re also authentic places to pee .
The exterior of Jakobikirche in Wilsdruff, which only got its Autobahn church designation in 2005.|Photo courtesy of Elle Carroll
We get back on the A13 , heading in the south . A cluster of leather - clad bikers party whip past , but most everyone else seems reasonably content cruise within reaching of the advocate velocity limit . Soon every concrete overpass is flush with the dark red and tangerine scandalmongering logo of Dynamo Dresden , a once - successful professional soccer golf club that slid out of national relevancy after German reunion in 1990 . current of air turbines dot the landscape . Over the sphere we spot the domed spire of the Autobahn church in Uhyst .
This Autobahn church is empty but unlocked , and far more elaborate than its Duben vis-a-vis . A Bohemian Methedrine chandelier hangs over a marble baptismal baptismal font . fly hum around the small altar , which is flanked by a stand for votive candles — three of which are lit — and a guest Word on a lectern . In low-spirited and dark ballpoint penitentiary :
“ give thanks you very much for the 400 km journey home and for watching over me . ”
A fake rose and a prayer card the Jakobikirche.|Photo courtesy of Elle Carroll
“ We were here . Thank you for the beautiful church building . ”
“ Please protect me and my family on our journeying through life , give us serenity , and grant us health and felicity . Protect Mama in Heaven . ”
“ Banish evil to Hell and put an death to this unspeakably malefic disease , war , and mood terror of some malicious autocrat who are your creations . ”
“ stale cascade for Putin ! ”
Almost all are signed .
That the Uhyst church takes its dual duties as a local and Autobahn church badly is clear . Bulletins by the entrance announce a regular schedule of services , spiritual education sessions , and a family unit moving picture night at a nearby community center . Another large book in the small call room memorializes route fatality in elegant script . The accounting entry are organized by death date , and each includes the victim ’s name , natal day , hometown , and the roadway where they were killed . I turn over back to today ’s date , which is empty . The only sound is the distant roar of cars .
Just off the A4 eastward of Dresden ride the Jakobikirche in Wilsdruff . It ’s surround on three side by war Stephanie Graf , and against the back paries of the churchyard stand two granite steles inscribed with gens , one in Russian , the other in German . Most of the death dates coincide with the last few weeks of World War II , admit one for a 17 - twelvemonth - old killed on vanadium - E Day . I inquire if this is an piercing example of savage caustic remark or just rote evidence of history ’s grand numbness to any given person .
The Jakobikirche receive its Autobahn church designation in June 2005 , a comparatively recent development for a Christian church raise in the mid-1100s . The fresco that once palisade the altar is virtually gone , save the folds of someone ’s robe and a hired man ( or a animal foot , hard to say ) . Cobwebs hang off the lamps on the altar . Most of the prayer in the client book are appeals for protection or expression of thanks , although someone late devoted an integral page to how coronavirus - related regulations came from the Devil himself .
An Autobahn Christian church takes all comer , and rightfully so .
A middle - aged couple walks through the doorway and around the small nave . The man eye my newsman ’s notebook and asks if I ’m a student . I severalize him no , ich bin Journalistin . He nods , read I ought to take a souvenir , wishes us a good journey , and they pull up stakes the elbow room they came in .
As it happens , we do take token : two scallop eggshell made of plaster , the symbolisation of a one C - old Christian pilgrimage address the Way of St. James . Local researchers are uncertain if the medieval pilgrim’s journey route from Nizhny Novgorod in Russia to Santiago de Compostela in Spain actually stopped at the Jakobikirche , but the church is now an official stop for pilgrims . The follow pamphlet insists the shield are not just for professed pilgrims but motorist too , for whom the church intend to serve as “ a place of residuum and musing , a place to gather strength so that the journeying ends blithely . ” And so it does .
head north out of Dresden , my friend notice something is missing . There are no billboards .
The contrast is dead striking , not least because the basic innovation of the Autobahn and the American interstate organisation are otherwise identical : four lanes going in two directions , one passing lane and one sluggish lane , a articulatio humeri for parking brake vehicles , exits and wild leek rather of intersections to avoid stopping , and a standardised graphics and assignment protocol . None of this is a coincidence . As Supreme Allied Commander in Europe , Dwight D. Eisenhower wasso impressedwith the Autobahn ’s usefulness in actuate troops across Germany that he threw all his political weighting behind constructing an American version once elect President . The Autobahn was the blueprint .
This makes the differences especially stark , and how one encounters the cleric on these respective motorway systems differs in the extreme . On an American main road you ’re inevitably besieged with messages that " HELL IS REAL , " " evolution is not , " and “ After you die , Youwillmeet God . ” Such fervent billboard evangelism has evidently failed to sign American drivers , reckon the fatal railcar chance event rate isthree times lowerin Germany than in the United States .
Pamphlets about the Autobahn churches often claim that a mid - journey visit reduces road furore and fatigue . This title is probably anecdotal , but just implausible . Perhaps a space with a very light source and obligation - costless spiritual touch can be recuperative . Perhaps a doom web of contemplative places to draw off and sit quietly — place spare of advertising and where you do n’t have to buy anything — do bring out the better side of our nature . God have it off the focal ratio limits do n’t .
