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| Europe |
| Dresden prepares for crowds as Frauenkirche re-opens |
| 2005-10-29 |
| The German city of Dresden was preparing Friday to host 100,000 people at the re-opening Sunday of its Frauenkirche, the magnificent church flattened in 1945 by Allied bombing and rebuilt as a symbol of reconciliation. The Frauenkirche Foundation said it had accredited hundreds of media people for the grand re-opening of the Lutheran church, which will be televised nationwide on two public channels in Germany. Since there is only seating in the huge church for 1,700 people, most residents and tourists are expected to watch the main ceremony Sunday on giant screens on the streets outside. A programme of church services and concerts on the new organ will continue right through to Tuesday. Some 850 of the donors who contributed a total of 100 million euros (120 million dollars) for the rebuilding have been allotted seats in the church near dignitaries including Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, his successor Angela Merkel and ambassadors of the World War Two Allies. Britons and Americans contributed generously to the project in a sign of the friendship that followed the hatred of the war. The re-dedication is to begin in the open air outside the church, with a procession of young people carrying inside its bible, altar cross, chalices and baptismal font before Lutheran bishop Jochen Bohl declares the former ruin hallowed ground. The service includes separate dedications of the pulpit, the baptismal, the altar and the organ. Catholics and other faiths will attend an ecumenical service at the church on Sunday evening, with the Anglican Bishop of Coventry, Colin Bennett, to preach. Coventry Cathedral in England was rebuilt in 1962 in a similar act of reconciliation. Unlike the new Coventry Cathedral, a modern church next to the ruin of the old, the Frauenkirche is a replica of the old, with old and new stone mingled to recall the years when it lay in rubble. |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #4 Hi trailing wife - great story about your tough- minded Cousin Reinhilde. A few years back I went through Europe (Rick Steves Tour) and while going through the German part we stopped at a Jewish Cemetary that was over a thousand years old, The tombstones had engraved Hebrew lettering which was over 900 years old. I was amazed, partly because the beasts somehow missed this and maybe some humans helped in this ironic outcome. Germany was once the greatest European nation (pre-1914) along with Austria (my partial background). The beasts come in all ages and disguises but one thing for sure, they still keep coming and they do not discriminate. |
| Posted by: Bardo 2005-10-29 19:47 |
| #3 I'm sure the Frauenkirche will get plenty of use for christenings and weddings (I'm not sure how funerals are handled). It is for this, after all, that most Germans are willing to register with the government as either Catholic or Lutheran, and pay the Church Tax (levied as an added percentage of their income tax each year), when they could get out of it by filling out a form. It is interesting, how carefully the Germans have been rebuilding the architectural heritage destroyed in the Second World War. I had a cousin in the town of Hildesheim, near Hannover, who was involved in rebuildng the Rathaus there. Not only was the rebuilding paid in large part with donations from the local citizenry, but old photos and building plans were searched out so that the new building was close to indistinguishable from the original (only with central heating and dryer basements, I'm sure). Even though Cousin Reinhilde had been actively quarreling with the town council since 1946 (the members coveted her house situated on main square, and deeply resented that she stayed and rebuilt that which had been bombed to pieces, instead of giving up and disappearing quietly like a half-Jewish woman ought to have done after the war), she gave unstintingly from her time and her meagre purse to support that and similar projects around town. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-10-29 13:44 |
| #2 Remind me, but didn't TGA have a hand in this? |
| Posted by: Steve White 2005-10-29 12:00 |
| #1 It's too bad that once all the opening ceremonies are complete it will be mostly empty (except for tourists). I guess it will be more functional after it is converted like St. Sophia's in Constantinople. |
| Posted by: whitecollar redneck 2005-10-29 08:43 |