The Berlin Site of Luisenstadt and the Figure of St Michael. A Case Study on Iconic Space

Abstract

The article focuses on the figure of St. Michael on top of the front façade of St. Michael's Church, which is situated in the Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, formerly called Luisenstadt. Following a relational approach, according to which single elements only get an explicit and distinct meaning in connection to other elements, the contribution first. describes the site in which the figure of St. Michael is embedded and reconstructs its spatial iconicity. Second, it analyzes the statue as a polysemic and thus contested icon and shows how political, artistic, touristic, and religious meanings interact with each other in and through the figure.

Ghostly Presence: An Abandoned Space and Three Religious Communities in Parishville, Quebec

“…This observation converges with the growing amount of research that examines the role of material culture in religious practice (Arweck & Keenan 2006;Houtman & Meyer 2012;Kaell 2015;King 2010;Morgan 2010bMorgan , 2017Zubrzycki 2016). Along with bodies, artifacts, and imagery, the space mediates people's encounters with the sacred (Brenneman 2016;Orsi 1999;Williams 2010) and becomes an object of negotiation, creation, and appropriation (Beekers & Arab 2016;Engelbart & Krech 2016;Hoover 2014). Several scholars of religion have examined the regulation of religion through places of worship as well as the tensions that these places stir up for residents and for municipal authorities (Beaman & Beyer 2008;Becci et al 2016;Burchardt & Becci 2013;Germain & Dejean 2013;Dejean 2016;Sullivan 2005).…”