The reconstruction of Dresden's cathedral, the Frauenkirche, is perceived as a resurrection, writes Derek Scally in Berlin
The national anthem of the former East Germany began with the words "Auferstanden aus Ruinen" - arisen from the ruins. This week, one of the country's cities, Dresden, witnessed nothing short of a resurrection.
Almost 60 years after the city's beloved Frauenkirche, the Church of our Lady, collapsed after the Allied firebombing, reconstruction work ended on Tuesday with an emotional ceremony. The final act was the lowering into place of a 28-tonne cupola, topped with a gleaming gold cross presented by Britain as a gift to the people of Dresden in an act of reconciliation. After an unprecedented, decade-long rebuilding effort, Dresden has its cherished iconic cathedral once again.
The Frauenkirche was one of the few buildings left standing after British bombers laid waste to Dresden - then regarded as one of Europe's most beautiful cities - in a few short hours on the night of February 13th-14th, 1945. Firebombs set the city alight and the resulting flames engulfed buildings, trapping those inside and sucking up oxygen from buildings and cellars and suffocating those taking refuge.
As dawn broke, the surviving Dresdeners clamoured onto the streets to see what little was left of their city.
"Everything lay swathed in smoke, and there were fires still burning," said one eye-witness, Hannelore Kuhn, quoted in Frederick Taylor's extraordinary book Dresden. Amid fires and smouldering ruins, however, Hannelore remembers a startling sight. "I saw the Frauenkirche. It still stood out, the dome. And I came back to my parents and I said: 'The Frauenkirche is still standing'." She was one of the last to see the Frauenkirche standing: support girders, weakened by fires inside the cathedral, gave way as they cooled and the entire structure collapsed in on itself. After surviving 200 years, the cathedral vanished from the skyline.
For the Dresdeners who had lost everything, this was the final, most bitter blow: the loss of hope. It was an ignominious end for the Frauenkirche, hailed as one of the architectural marvels of the world when it was completed in 1734. Dresden city architect George Bähr had created an architectural sensation, a Baroque cathedral unlike any other in Europe. The simple exterior gave way to an ornate interior and a stunning circular space under a 300-foot high dome, supported by just eight slender columns. The acoustics were so good that, in 1736, Johann Sebastian Bach agreed to give the first public performance on the church organ. The sturdiness of the workmanship was proven twice: during Prussian bombings in 1760, and initially during the Allied bombings in 1945, with bombs bouncing off the dome.
East German authorities were unwilling to consider reconstructing the cathedral and, instead, left the 20,000 cubic metre pile of rubble on the site in the centre of the old town. Only after German unification did momentum begin to gather, and an ambitious worldwide fundraising effort began. More than €130 million has been raised.
The construction project was unprecedented: first the rubble was cleared and the original stones were cleaned and numbered. In 1994, the foundation stone was laid and construction work began on the vaults. The main chamber was tackled two years later and work was started on the outside walls in 1999. The scepticism of Dresdeners slowly turned to pride as the building began to take shape with the completion of the dome in 2002. The scaffolding began to vanish last year, revealing the new sandstone structure which incorporates as much of the original, darker sandstone as possible, giving the exterior a speckled look. Many of the features, such as the ornate altar, were reconstructed from the few existing photos of the original. The interior is still unfinished and the official consecration will be in October 2005.
The Duke of Kent, president of the British Dresden Trust which raised more than €750,000 in donations for the new cathedral bells, visited Dresden on Tuesday for the final ceremony, the lowering of the 91-metre cupola on to the top of the dome. At 5.52 p.m., more than 30,000 people gathered in the marketplace around the cathedral applauded and wept as the crane released the cupola and Frauenkirche bells rang out.
"That's something you see only once in a lifetime," said Horst Glauer, 71, in the crowd. "We stood as children on the roof of our house and saw the fire over Dresden. This really is the highlight of the reconstruction of Dresden."
The Duke of Kent praised the reconstruction as "a wonderful project that brings together people who were once enemies into a permanent friendship". Another guest of honour was the vicar of the English city of Coventry that was also destroyed during the war. It is now twinned with Dresden. He called the Frauenkirche a "visible symbol of reconciliation".
In turn, the most visible symbol of the Frauenkirche is the two-tonne gold cross that now crowns the cathedral. It was created by the British goldsmith Adam Smith, whose father, Frank Smith, flew one of the RAF bombers that destroyed Dresden. Smith told how his father remained convinced until his death that the bombing of Dresden, in the last months of the war, was inhuman and immoral. "Although my father never spoke to me about the bombing, I knew from my mother that it made him another man," he said. "This was a chance to put something right."