"Frauenkirche" in Dresden
Pictures and text by Mark R. Hatlie
These pictures were taken on 23 October, 2008 and the night shots on 13 February, 2009. The Frauenkirche church was completely destroyed in the bombing of February 13, 1945. It remained as a rubble heap for decades. As a rubble heap it served as a memorial site which, starting in the 1980s, began to be used as the site of an unofficial memorial ceremony on the anniversary of the bombing. The reconstruction began in 1992 and the new church was opened in October of 2005. It was re-built using as much original material as possible.
Behind the church, a large piece of the original dome was put upright and turned into a permanent memorial.
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This shows the square in front of the church, the Neumarkt. |
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A view of the church from the Neumarkt with a statue of Martin Luther in the forground. |
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Here, a tourist bus has stopped right next to the preserved piece of the original church dome. |
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A diagram mounted on the piece shows the section of the dome the piece is from. Part of the original inscription on the stone is still visible above the diagram. |
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The plaque reads, "...When I looked for the dome through the milky fog as I came into the dead city on the at around 11 o'clock on the 15th of February (1945 - a day after the attack), I saw to my horror that it was gone. Only an hour before, my wife, out looking for me, had been a witness to this tragedy. It started out as a quiet creaking, then the dome slowly collapsed and then the outer walls of the church burst with a loud bang and a black cloud of dust filled the area..." Those were the notes of chief church inspector Weimert in February of 1945. / In 1993 this piece of the dome was saved from the rubble and in 2005 placed here. ("...Als ich am Donnerstag, den 15.2. gegen 11 Uhr beim Hineinkommen in die tote Stadt in dem milchigen Nebel die Domkuppel suchte, sah ich zu meinem Schreck ins Leere, denn bereits eine Stunde vorher war meine Frau auf der Suche nach mir Zeuge dieser Tragödie gewesen, als nach anfänglichem leisen Knistern die Kuppel langsam in sich zusammensank und dann mit einem ungeheuren Knall die Außenwände der Kirche barsten und eine nachtschwarze Staubwolke die ganze Umgebung erfüllte..." notierte Kirchenoberinspektor Weimert im Februar 1945 / 1993 wurde das Bruchstück der Kuppel in diesem Bereich aus dem Trümmerberg geborgen und im Jahre 2005 endgültig hier aufgestellt.) |
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On the anniversary of the attack, people place candles at the site. This was immediately following a memorial ceremony on the other side of the church, at the Neumarkt, in which several hundred people, perhaps several thousand, took part. |
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