Pfarrkirche St. Antonius, church

Only the St. Peter and Paul Church in Potsdam’s city centre was available to the Catholics who moved to Nowawes and neighbouring Neuendorf in the 19th century. Due to the distance and increasing numbers of Catholics in the area, the current church property was purchased in 1891. For financial reasons, it was not possible to start construction of a vicarage with an integrated spacious chapel until 1905. The chapel was consecrated on October 7, 1906. In the same year, a pastor was appointed to the parish and in 1909 St. Anthony’s became an independent curacy.

In 1927, St. Michael’s Church was built for the Catholics in the parish of Berlin-Wannsee. Two years later a convent was added to the Babelsberg parish for a branch of the Sisters of Mary of the Immaculate Conception, which opened in 1923. The foundation stone was laid for the present church on July 30, 1933. The Bishop of Berlin, Nikolaus Bares, consecrated St. Anthony’s on April 15, 1934.

The architect of the church, Wilhelm Fahlbusch, had previously worked for the parish on St. Michael’s Church in Wannsee. While in the latter his design comprised expressionist pointed arch shapes, he created St. Anthony’s as a rectangular structure with an apse across the entire width of the interior. Due to the location of the property, the worship area faces south. The chancel is delimited by lateral transverse pillars that indicate a triumphal arch. The interior has a flat wooden ceiling on which two parallel beams each form a cross above the central aisle up to the apse and transversely at the transition to the chancel.

The church is illuminated by ten narrow, high windows in the west and east walls that are framed with red bricks on the outside. Two further narrow windows behind the cross pillars illuminate the chancel and the apse mosaic.