Name:  Augusta Victoria Compound on Mount Scopus
Description:  Pilgrim Center
Institution Category:  Pilgrim Center
Religion:  Christian
Denomination/Stream:  Lutheran
Address (1):  P.O.Box 14076
City:  Jerusalem
Zip Code:  91140
State:  Israel
Work Telephone:  972 - 2 - 628 7704
Fax:  972 - 2 - 627 3148
E-mail:  wohlrab@avzentrum.de
www.avzentrum.de
Full Description: 

In 1841, Queen Victoria of England agreed to a proposal by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia to establish a joint Anglican-Lutheran bishopric in Jerusalem, with nomination of the bishop alternating between the monarchs of the two countries. When the association began, the Lutherans were newcomers to the Holy Land and hoped to benefit from the foothold in Jerusalem that the Anglicans had recently established. After 1849, the bishopric was based in the Anglican Christ Church, just inside the Jaffa Gate of the Old City—the first Protestant church consecrated in the Middle East. Four decades later, when the king of Prussia had become the emperor of a united Germany, the arrangement was no longer compatible with German prestige. The joint enterprise was formally dissolved in 1886 and each country and denomination proceeded to pursue its own interests.

Like many other European leaders of his time, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who ascended the throne in 1888, dreamed of transforming Jerusalem into a Christian city once again. When he paid his first visit to Jerusalem in 1898, to dedicate the imposing German Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, near the Holy Sepulchre, a gap was breached in the city walls alongside the Jaffa Gate to accommodate his entourage. He himself entered mounted on a white steed, with all the messianic associations of such an act. Wilhelm returned to Jerusalem in 1910 to inaugurate a compound on Mount Scopus, which he dedicated it to his wife Augusta Victoria. During that same visit, he also consecrated the neo-Romanesque German Catholic Dormition Abbey, on Mount Zion, and the massive St. Paul’s German hospice (today a girls’ school) just north of the Old City.
Both in site and in splendor, the Augusta Victoria complex on Mount Scopus transcends all other German establishments in the Holy Land. The fortress-like compound with its tall bell tower stands out on the eastern horizon of Jerusalem; from the valley below, it recalls a medieval castle towering over the Rhine. The original complex included a pilgrim hostel, a sanatorium, and the unusually ornate Lutheran Church of the Ascension, dominated by Crusader motifs, including a depiction of medieval Jerusalem surrounded by Crusader kings. The entrance to the church is flanked by large stone eagles, a frequent German symbol that harks back to Charlemagne, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in the year 800.
By a strange quirk of history, the Augusta Victoria compound served as the headquarters of General Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the First World War, then of the British Military Administration of Occupied Enemy Territory (South), and finally of the Mandatory Administration of Palestine. It was the official residence of the British High Commissioner from 1921 until 1927, when a severe earthquake caused extensive damage to the premises. Today, the compound hosts a medical clinic for the Palestinian population of Jerusalem and the surrounding area, run by the United Nations in cooperation with the Lutheran World Federation. Extensive renovations to the Church of the Ascension in the 1980s restored its original glory.