Frauenkirche, Dresden

A ruin kept as a warning

George Bähr's Frauenkirche was built between 1726 and 1743, a Protestant church crowned by a great stone dome known as the stone bell. After the air raids on Dresden in February 1945, the dome collapsed on the morning of 15 February, at about ten o'clock.

The rubble stayed where it fell. Throughout the East German years the heap lay in the middle of the city, and in 1966 it was officially declared a memorial against war. From 13 February 1982 people gathered there with candles each year to remember the dead.

Rebuilt stone by stone

In February 1990 the Call from Dresden, drafted by the pastor Karl-Ludwig Hoch, appealed for the church to be rebuilt. Clearing of the rubble began on 4 January 1993, and the foundation stone was laid on 27 May 1994.

The ruin was treated as an archaeological site. More than 8,500 original stones were salvaged, and about 3,800 were set back into the new building. The blackened old stones fleck the pale new sandstone, and larger dark patches mark surviving fragments of a corner tower and the choir.

The rebuilding cost 180 million euros. About 115 million came from donations from around the world; the federal government, the state of Saxony and the city of Dresden shared the rest.

A cross from Britain

The gilded orb and cross on the lantern were made by the British silversmith Alan Smith, whose father had been a bomber pilot in the raids of 1945. The Duke of Kent presented them in February 2000, and the cross went up on 22 June 2004.

On 30 October 2005 Bishop Jochen Bohl consecrated the church. Inside sat 1,700 invited guests, and Federal President Horst Köhler gave the main address. Outside, some 60,000 people followed the service on giant screens on the Neumarkt, where new Baroque-style facades were still rising behind scaffolding.

Why Germans see reconciliation in it

For Germans the Frauenkirche has become the great symbol of reconciliation and of reunified Germany. Its consecration was broadcast live across the country, sixty years after the raids and fifteen years after reunification.

The memory it rests on is still contested. The bombing of Dresden is exploited by the far right as a story of German victimhood alone. The rebuilt church tells a different one: a ruin kept for decades as a warning against war, raised again with gifts from around the world, and crowned with a cross made by the son of a man who had flown against the city.

Sources

• Wikipedia (de): Frauenkirche (Dresden)
• Wikipedia (de): Neumarkt (Dresden)
• rene-gaens.de
• Wikipedia (en): Frauenkirche, Dresden