It is famous for its Italian Romanesque Revival architecture with a separate campanile (bell tower) and for its scenic location.

The design was based on drawings by King Frederick William IV of Prussia, called the Romantic on the Throne.

[1] The church is situated on the bank of lake Jungfernsee, a part of the river Havel, 300 metres south of Sacrow Manor at the edge of its park, designed and expanded in the 1840s by landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné.

This area of lakes, forests, parks, and castles has been classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Johann Andres Moritz, Pastor of Fahrland from 1774 to 1794, in his diary gave a detailed description of life in the village and of the changing owners of the manor house built in 1774.

You know it, how I then...must travel until evening and speak, how disgusted it makes me now ....") After Father Moritz had died, in 1794 Sacrow was transferred to the parish of St. Nicholas' Church, Potsdam.

In October 1840, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, bought the estate for 60,000 thalers and added it to his lands in Potsdam a month later.

Ludwig Persius, the court architect, turned the king's sketches into a building and put his colleague, Ferdinand von Arnim, in charge of the construction process.

Beginning in 1842, the landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné designed the church grounds, the cove, the Sacrow Manor's park, and a rented house in the Italian style (1843/44) by Persius called Zum Doctor Faustus, which stood farther to the east.

[3] The building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 led over the following decades to heavy damage to the Church of the Redeemer.

The barrier along the border between the East German Democratic Republic (GDR) and West Berlin was built straight across the lot of the church property and the campanile was used as part of the protective wall of concrete.

A great deal of the merit for the preservation of the building is due to Richard von Weizsäcker, at that time Mayor of West Berlin.

In November 1989 the Iron Curtain fell, and on Christmas Eve 1989, a service was held once again in the Church of the Redeemer, after almost three decades.

The early-Christian style building was, for Frederick William IV, an architectural reminiscence of early Christianity, whose unified community of the faithful inspired him.

Since the arcade protrudes onto a semi-circular platform in the Havel, to those in the river or in Wannsee-Berlin on its opposite shore, the church looks like it an old ship anchored near the bank.

The outer walls, with their yellow-rose bricks, were striped with blue varnish broken by yellow tiles.

On it glazed gold underside is Christ enthroned holding the Book of Life, surrounded by the Four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with their symbols of the lion, eagle, man, and bull.

Adolph Eybel undertook the painting in 1845, basing his work on a sketch by German romantic painter Carl Joseph Begas.

In the half-circle of the bema, the color sequence of the church hall, gold stars on a blue background, returns.

In order to complete the general view of the gallery, at present the organ space is held by a deceitfully real looking paper mockup.

On rectangular forecourt with its exedra on the narrow side, stands the over 20 meter high campanile (from Latin campana = bell).

In the summer of 1897, the bell tower was used by the physicists Adolf Slaby and Georg Graf von Arco to try to perfect Marconi's radio technology.

On August 27, their signal transmission arrived at the imperial seaman station Kongsnaes [de] on the opposite side of the Jungfernsee at Swan Alley in Potsdam 1.6 km away .

A commemorative plaque that was put up in 1928 by Hermann Hosaeus [de] over the entrance door to the Campanile alludes to this incident.

In the middle of the plaque, which is made of green dolomite, is Atlas supporting the globe, surrounded by lightning and the commemoration: "An dieser Stätte errichteten 1897 Prof. Adolf Slaby und Graf von Arco die erste Deutsche Antennenanlage für drahtlosen Verkehr."

(At this spot in 1897, Prof. Adolf Slaby and Graf von Arco erected the first German antenna for wireless communication.)