Merbitz

The Frauenkirche, perhaps more than any other structure, is what comes to mind when one thinks (okay, when I think) of the Dresden skyline. It's strange, because it wasn't built until the 1730s (1726 to 1743 to be accurate), and for over half of the Twentieth Century, it was little more than charred heap of rubble. But when I think of Dresden, this church is what I picture. All right, some people think of the onion dome-crown thing on top of the Zwinger Palace, but meh. Or the cigarette building that looks somewhat Moorish. Less meh.

Frauenkirche was built on the site of previous churches. The original built in the Eleventh Century and falling under the control of the Meissen diocese. It went, like most of Saxony, Lutheran. The new church was built as a distinctly Evangelical (in US Lutheran) church by the citizens in response to Augustus the Strong's conversion to Catholicism so he could become King of Poland. Seeing how great an undertaking the construction was, it was a pretty big screw you to their anointed leader, and a demonstration of their intention to remain Protestant. Remember, a hundred years before the Europeans ended thirty years of slaughter with the idea that the rulers would pick the religion, no hard feelings. Augustus himself didn't have hard feelings about it, and supported the building. I'm not sure if he kicked in any money, though.

There are a few notable things about the construction/ contents of the church. The original organ was built by Gottfried Silbermann, who was famous for his instruments (not just organs, but harpsichords, clavichords, the guy did it all), which you can find in several major churches. The altar, pulpit and baptismal font were placed directly front and center in view of the congregation, something Protestants take for granted now, but was not the norm in churches. It was down as a reflection of the liturgy, a demonstration that indeed, this was, and would remain, an Evangelical church. The dome, 12,000 tons of sandstone, has been compared to Michelangelo's dome for Saint Peter's in Rome. It was built so well, that it withstood the Prussian army's cannon fire (up to 100 shots) during the Seven Years War.

It didn't survive its next time under fire as well.

The Frauenkirche was mostly destroyed in the February 1945 fire bombing of Dresden. The structure, including the dome, withstood two days of bombing, but collapsed on the morning of February 15, when the temperature reached 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit. The pillars exploded, sending the dome crashing through the floor, killing the people who had taken refuge there. The chancel and parts of the altar survived.

After the war, the locals began to salvage fragments from the church, some being numbered in the hopes that the church would be reconstructed. At one point, the Communist government planned to remove the rubble to built a parking lot, but strong popular sentiment against the plan caused them to name the rubble as a memorial against war. Nice pivot on the part of the authorities, and it gave them a site to hold acceptable demonstrations. However, the best laid plans and all of that, it didn't always work out that way. In the 1980s, the church became a site of protests against the DDR regime, with people massing with candles and flowers.

The church was going to rebuilt by the Communist authorities after the historic secular structures had been rebuilt. It never happened. Instead, the rebuilding occurred mainly through private and corporate donations after Reunification. The actual building began in 1994 based on the original plans from 1720. They were finished, complete with all interior painting and seven new bells a year ahead of schedule in 2005.

Stones (3,800) that had been salvaged and kept since 1945 were reincorporated into the structure. These are the darker ones that you see in the pictures.

To replicate the original paint for the interior, they made egg-based paint, just as they would have in the Eighteenth Century. Side note: I remember making paint like this with kids for school and it has a beautiful light to it, just like in the church.

The golden cross and orb for the top of the dome was made by a British goldsmith whose father had been in one of the air crews on the fire bombing mission. It was placed on top of the dome in June 2004, sixteen days after the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day. What's left of the cross that had been on the dome during the bombings now stands in the church by the altar.Read more