Germany: Dresden and the Frauenkirche

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Standing in the square in front of the Frauenkirche is a statue of Martin Luther, the survivor. That statue was a part of the church which like almost everything else, was destroyed in the 1945 bombing. The statute remains and was moved to the square - standing watch over a pile of rubble that once was a church described as the protestant’s St. Peter's.

In its day, the Frauenkirche had been a center of Protestant theology and a showpiece, boasting the largest dome north of the Alps – in other words, in the Protestant world. It was a glorious structure and an impressive display of engineering know how. It said to the Catholic world “we are your equal”

And of course, in the bombing, it all came crashing down. The initial response of Dresdeners was to rebuild it. The preference of the East German communists was to leave it as it was - the ruins being a reminder of the consequences of war. The symbolism of Luther’s church lying in ruins was also no doubt appealing to the GDR's official atheists.

And so for decades that is how it sat. That is how we saw it in 1979. A pile of rubble. In 1990, with the Communists now lying in the ash bin of history, Dresdeners once again raised the idea of reconstruction. They put out an international appeal for aid ($) and their call was answered. Locally, the rebuilding sparked some controversy. Some felt preserving the ruin, like the Berlin Gedächniskirche, was required to preserve the memory of the destructiveness of war. The church community's response was to build the memorial into the reconstruction itself. Whenever possible, the original bricks were used and where they were used they bear the marks of the bombing. Those black stones contrast with the new Sandstone and send a powerful message. It is a message you see communicated almost where ever you look in the old city. Why are those buildings so black? War.

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