Friday, February 24, 2006

The Frauenkirche again!?!

As if you haven't heard enough about her in the past year, I'm about to write some more. And I surely won't be the last either, as Dresden's big birthday party is coming up this summer, which is also sure to bring about more on this very topic.

In my quest for information about Baroque Dresden (I have to teach something about Baroque art and was looking for ways to incorporate Dresden in order to also schedule a field trip), I came across an interesting picture. Here it is:








My Dresdner readers (if I have any) are probably saying "yeah, I got to look at that pile of rocks for about 50 years, what's the big deal?" The big deal is, this is the first time I have ever seen this particular state of the Frauenkirche. I've heard lots about it, how it stood in this form as a sort of ruin as war memorial, but the only Frauenkirche I know is scaffolding and a basement from 2001 and now the completed version, so this view is pretty impressive to me. It's just hard to imagine that that mammoth construction that's now standing once (and for a long time) was just this pile of rocks. Some people say that the above state of the church is a more effective reminder of the horrors of war, and therefore is a more effective memorial, and even think it was incorrect to rebuild the church. Though I do see validity in this argument, and am quite fascinated by ruins like the St. Pauli Kirche and the Trinitatiskirche here in Dresden, I also think the finished Frauenkirche is just magnificent, and that it's the perfect completion to the Dresden skyline.

Here she is finished, from a similar angle (you can see old Martin Luther there in the lower part of the picture, as you can see him in the foreground above):





















It's a Lutheran church, in case you were wondering what the deal with Martin Luther was.

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