Frauenkirche, Dresden
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The Dresden Frauenkirche ("Church of Our Lady") is a Lutheran church in Dresden, Germany. Several other churches in Europe, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, also share the name of Frauenkirche.
The Dresden Frauenkirche was destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II and has been reconstructed as a landmark symbol of reconciliation between former warring enemies.
An elaborate confection of high Baroque, the church is regarded by some as the most architecturally significant Protestant edifice in Europe—and certainly the most important in Germany.
History
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Destruction
On 13 February 1945, Anglo-American forces began the bombing of Dresden. The church miraculously survived two days and nights of the attacks and the eight interior sandstone pillars supporting the colossal dome held up long enough for the evacuation of 300 people who had sought shelter in the church crypt before succumbing to the heat generated by some 650,000 incendiary bombs that were dropped on the city. The temperature surrounding and inside the church eventually reached 1,000 degrees Celsius. The dome finally collapsed at 10 a.m. on 15 February. The pillars glowed bright red and exploded; the outer walls shattered and nearly 6,000 tons of stone plunged to earth, penetrating the massive floor as it fell.
The altar, a relief depiction of Jesus' arrest on the Mount of Olives by Johann Christian Feige, was only partially damaged during the bombing raid and fire that destroyed the church. The altar and the structure behind it, the chancel, were among the remnants left standing. Features of most of the figures were lopped off by falling debris and the fragments lay under the rubble.
The building vanished from Dresden's skyline, and the blackened stones would lie in wait in a pile in the center of the city for the next 45 years as Communist rule enveloped what was now East Germany. Shortly after the end of World War II, residents of Dresden had already begun salvaging unique stone fragments from the Frauenkirche and numbering them for future use in reconstruction. Popular sentiment discouraged the authorities from clearing the ruins away to make a parking lot.
In 1982, the ruins began to be the site of a peace movement combined with popular peaceful protests against the East German regime. On the anniversary of the bombing, 400 Dresdeners came to the ruins in silence with flowers and candles, part of a growing East German civil rights movement. By 1989, the number of protesters in Dresden, Leipzig and other parts of East Germany had increased to tens of thousands, and the wall dividing East and West Germany toppled. This opened the way to the reunification of Germany.
Promoting reconstruction and funding
There had already been intentions to rebuild the church during the last months of the World War II. However, due to political circumstances in the GDR, the reconstruction later came to a halt. The heap of ruins was conserved as a war memorial within the inner city of Dresden, as a direct counterpart to the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed by German bombing in 1940 and also serves as a war memorial in England.
After the reunification of Germany, efforts were revived. At the time, the effort seemed quixotic. The project caused controversy and neither the Dresden city government nor the state-related Lutheran Church of Saxony supported the plan. Western Germans advised Dresden to leave it as a war monument, much like the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, which was partly rebuilt, with its tower left in ruin. People argued that it was more important to have new hospitals, schools, roads and houses. Even after the city came around, there was little hope of financing the project solely with public money.
In 1989, a 14-member group of enthusiasts headed by Ludwig Güttler, a noted Dresden musician, formed a Citizens' Initiative. From that group emerged a year later "The Society to Promote the Reconstruction of the Frauenkirche", which began an aggressive private fundraising campaign. The organization grew to over 5,000 members in Germany and 20 other countries. A string of German auxiliary groups were formed.
The project gathered momentum. As hundreds of architects, art historians and engineers sorted the thousands of stones, identifying and labeling each for reuse in the new structure, others worked to raise money.
Günter Blobel, a German-born American saw the original Frauenkirche as a boy when his refugee family took shelter in a town just outside of Dresden days before the city was bombed. In 1994, he became the founder and president of the nonprofit "Friends of Dresden, Inc.", a United States organization dedicated to supporting the reconstruction, restoration and preservation of Dresden's artistic and architectural legacy. In 1999, Blobel won the Nobel Prize for medicine and donated the entire amount of his award money (nearly US$1 million) to the organization for the restoration of Dresden, to the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche and the building of a new synagogue. It was the single largest individual donation to the project.
In Britain, the Dresden Trust has the Duke of Kent as its royal patron and the Bishop of Coventry among its curators. "The church is to Dresden what St. Paul's [Cathedral] is to London," said Dr. Paul Oestreicher, a canon emeritus of Coventry Cathedral and a founder of the Dresden Trust. "This is true both architecturally and psychologically." Additional organizations include France's Association Frauenkirche Paris, Switzerlands Verein Schweizer Freunde der Frauenkirch, among others.
Rebuilding the Frauenkirche cost €180 million (£122 million / US$217 million). Dresdner Bank financed more than half of the reconstruction costs via a "donor certificates campaign", collecting almost €70 million after 1995. The bank itself contributed more than seven million euros, including more than one million donated by its employees. Over the years, thousands of watches containing tiny fragments of Frauenkirche stone were sold, as were specially printed medals. One sponsor raised nearly €2.3 million (US$2.75 million) through symbolic sales of individual church stones.
More than 600,000 donors contributed to the project. Over half the money was raised by contributions from individuals. Among them were Jewish refugees who were forced to flee the city and death at Nazi hands, local taxi drivers who donated one pfennig (penny) from every fare for the past decade and Polish stonemasons.
Funds raised were turned over to the "Frauenkirche Foundation Dresden", the actual rebuilder, backed by the State of Saxony, the City of Dresden and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony.
Reconstruction
Church architect and engineer Eberhard Burger has described his task of planning and executing the Frauenkirche's reconstruction as the crowning of his career – a "one in ten million job." The project employed a small army of architects, engineers, stress analysts, acoustics designers, woodworkers, art restorers, surveyors, musicologists, computer modelers, and other specialists. Team leaders had only three incomplete – and maddeningly imprecise – sets of schematic drawings of the church to serve as rough building guides. Using original plans made by Bähr in the 1720s, reconstruction finally began in January 1993 and the foundation stone was laid in 1994. The crypt was completed in 1996 and the inner cupola in 2000.
As far as possible, the church – except for its dome – was rebuilt using original material and plans, with the help of modern technology. The heap of rubble was carried off stone by stone. Every usable piece was measured and catalogued; the approximate position of each stone could be determined from its position in the heap, and a computer imaging program that could move the stones three-dimensionally around the screen in various configurations was used to help architects find where the original stones sat and how they fit together.
Of the millions of stones used in the rebuilding, more than 8,500 original stones were salvaged from the original church and approximately 3,800 reused in the reconstruction. As older stones are covered with a darker patina, due to fire damage and weathering, the difference between old and new stones will be clearly visible for a number of years after reconstruction. Two thousand pieces of the original altar were cleaned and incorporated into the new structure. Thus, the rebuilt church will remain a monument, reminding people of its history, and a symbol of hope and reconciliation.
The builders relied on thousands of old photographs, memories of worshipers and church officials and crumbling old purchase orders that detailed the quality of the mortar or pigments of the paint (as in the 1700s, copious quantities of eggs were used to make the color that provides the interior its almost luminescent glow).
When they wanted to duplicate the oaken doors of the entrance but had only vague descriptions of the detailed carving, they issued an appeal to anyone who might have married in the church because couples often pose for photos outside the church doors. People sent their wedding albums or photographs of their grandparents as newlyweds. The construction team went from ignorance to knowing exactly the designs that allowed the wood artisans to create new doors exactly in the image of the old.
The church incorporates the tradition of the original, but in some areas the builders improved it to ensure safety and greater longevity. For instance, a steel "thrust ring," invisible to view, has been placed under the support blocks of the dome to evenly spread its weight to the eight main pillars and outer walls.
The new gilded cross on top of the dome, following the original design of Johann Georg Schmidt, was a gift of the Dresden Trust. It was forged by London Gold and Silversmiths Grant Macdonald using the original 18th-century techniques as much as possible. Principal craftsman on the project was Alan Smith, a British goldsmith whose father, Frank, was one of the bombers who took part in the bombing of Dresden. Before traveling to Dresden, the cross was exhibited for five years in churches across the United Kingdom including the Anglican Coventry Cathedral, Liverpool Cathedral, and St. Paul's Cathedral in London and the Presbyterian St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh. In February 2000, the cross was ceremonially handed over to the Frauenkirche by Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. The distinctive Strahlenkreuz (Radiant Cross) that once topped the dome, now twisted and charred, stands to the right of the new altar.
Seven of the original eight bells had been melted into weapons during the Nazi era. Only "Hannah," cast in 1515 for another church, survived the war, because it was hidden outside Dresden. Seven new bells were cast for the church. Each of the new bells, like the old, bears the name of a biblical figure and all were cast to replicate the sound of the originals. They rang for the first time for the Pentecost celebration in 2003. Heaviest among them is the 4,000-pound "Peace Bell" named for the Hebrew prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4, "[God] will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."). It bears the image of New York's collapsing World Trade Center, an event that designer Christoph Feuerstein witnessed while visiting Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001.
On 13 April 2004, the last stone was put in place and on 22 June 2004, a few days after the 60th commemoration of D-Day, the cupola and cross were placed on top of the structure. The external structure of the Frauenkirche was completed. For the first time since the last war, the completed dome and its gilded cross grace Dresden's skyline as in prior centuries.
As for the organ, it was decided not to reproduce a facsimile of the Silberman organ. Instead, a 4,873 pipe organ was built by Daniel Kern of Strasbourg, France and completed in April 2005. This has caused caused the Dresden organ dispute ("Dresdner Orgelstreit"), which was, however, partially based on the misunderstanding that the new organ would be entirely "modern". In fact, the Kern organ contains all the stops which also were on the stoplist of the Silbermann organ and tries to reconstruct them, but in addition, further stops are included, especially a fourth swell manual in the symphonic 19th century style which is apt for the organ literature composed after the baroque period.
A bronze statue of reformer and theologian Martin Luther that survived the bombings, has been restored and again stands in front of the church. It is the work of sculptor Adolf von Donndorf from 1885.
The intensive efforts to rebuild this world famous landmark were completed in 2005, one year earlier than originally planned and in time for the 800-year anniversary of the City of Dresden in 2006.
Reconsecration
On the anniversary of Dresden’s destruction in February 2005, the Frauenkirche was received into the Community of the Cross of Nails, Coventry Cathedral’s worldwide network of peace and reconciliation centers.
On Reformation Sunday (30 October) 2005, over 60 years after it was destroyed by Allied bombing, the Frauenkirche was reconsecrated in a festive service attended by dignitaries from around the world. Around 1,800 people attended the service of reconsecration, including German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his successor Angela Merkel, German President Horst Köhler, the Duke of Kent and representatives and ambassadors of World War II allies. Approximately 850 of the donors who contributed to the reconstruction were among those allotted seats for the ceremonies.
The reconsecration began at 9 a.m. in the open air outside the church, with a procession of young people carrying a Bible, altar cross, chalices and baptismal font into the huge edifice before Lutheran Bishop of Saxony Jochen Bohl declared the former ruin hallowed ground. The service included separate dedications of the pulpit, the baptismal font, the altar and the organ. Bohl said in his sermon, "A deep wound that has bled for so long can be healed. From hate and evil a community of reconciliation can grow, which makes peace possible."
About 60,000 people crowded into Neumarkt square, surrounding the church, to watch the service on giant screens, which also was broadcast live by German television channels ZDF and MDR amd seen by millions.
A program of church services and concerts on the new organ continued through All Saints Day (1 November), including an ecumenical service presided over by the Anglican Bishop of Coventry, Colin Bennett. The organizers expected more than 100,000 visitors to the church in the first three days after its reconsecration. Over a 20-hour period, visitors in groups of 380, were expected to tour the church at 20-minute intervals.
Festivities will continue into November with a series of concerts, including three by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra with Lorin Maazel conducting. On 17 November, the Orchestra will give the world premiere performance of British composer Colin Matthews' Berceuse for Dresden, which was commissioned by the Friends of the Dresden Music Foundation to commemorate the renovation of the cathedral. Ten days later, the work will receive its U.S. premiere at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, again led by Maazel.
Thereafter the church will regularly host concerts. Highlights during Advent 2005 include Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio (2 and 3 December), George Frideric Handel's Messiah (9, 10, 30 and 31 December), Bach's Magnificat (14 and 15 December) and Vivaldi's Magnificat in G minor and Gloria in G major (16 and 17 December ). There also will be concerts of organ music by candlelight (4, 11, 18 and 26 December), Dresden Brass Christmas music (10 December) and carols (19, 22 and 23 December). Festive holy day services take place on Christmas Eve at 10 p.m. and Christmas Day at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Hours / Services
The Frauenkirche is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day. There are two devotional services every day and two full liturgies every Sunday.
From October 2005 through the year 2010, there is an exhibition on the history and reconstruction of the Frauenkirche at the Stadtmuseum (State Museum) in Dresden's Alten Landhaus.
External links
- The Frauenkirche - a page from the Library of Congress website, from which part of this article was copied
- Official German website Includes historical and current pictures.
- Live Webcam showing the Frauenkirche
- Friends of Dresden, Inc.
- Gunther Blobel's autobiography