Dresden's Frauenkirche restored after 1945 bombing

A very worthy subject. Have you visited the building site yet?

Dresden church gets British cross
By Lars Rischke

DRESDEN, Germany (Reuters) - A British-built cross has been hoisted onto Dresden's Frauenkirche cathedral in a gesture of reconciliation that coincides with new controversy over whether the 1945 Allied bombing of the city was justified.


The giant golden cross was built by the son of a British bomber pilot who took part in the World War Two raid, which killed an estimated 35,000 people and destroyed 80 percent of the city, including the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady).

Left in rubble for half a century, the Baroque bell-shaped church has undergone extensive reconstruction since German reunification.

Tens of thousands gathered in Dresden's historic centre to the sound of a brass band and choir on Tuesday, to watch a crane gingerly lift a copper roof topped with the cross on a golden orb onto the church's main tower.

The seven-metre (23 feet) tall cross completes the church's outer shell and restores the city's pre-war skyline.

British supporters of the reconstruction, due to be completed in late 2005, see the cross as another symbol of reconciliation weeks after Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder became the first German leader to attend D-Day memorial ceremonies.

The Duke of Kent, who heads a British foundation helping to rebuild the church, told the ceremony in German: "This is a wonderful project that unites people who were once enemies in a strong and lasting friendship."

The raid, just three months before the end of the war, caused a firestorm that left one of Europe's most beautiful Baroque cities in ruins. So many were killed that piles of charred bodies had to be burned in public squares rather than buried.

NEW DEBATE OVER BOMBINGS

The new cross, an exact replica of the 18th-century original, was designed by British blacksmith Alan Smith, whose father Frank flew a Lancaster bomber in the first wave of attacks.

"I think it is so moving that the cross was made by the British son of one of the bombers. I think that is great," said Gertraude Preusser, who as a 26-year-old in 1945 stood on a hill watching her home city burn after the raid.

Yet others in Germany see the Allied bombing campaign as a war crime.

Opposition lawmakers have called for a national memorial day for the 635,000 civilians killed in bombing raids across Germany amid a new debate over whether it is justified to speak of German victims of World War Two.

It was long considered impolite, unwise and even dangerously nationalistic for Germans to question whether Allied bombings in World War Two were necessary or legitimate.

But the taboo was shattered last year with a book, "The Fire - Germany and the Bombardment 1940-1945", by historian Joerg Friedrich, which condemns the attacks as war crimes.

Many British historians have criticised Friedrich for what they call a lopsided narrative that fails to reflect that Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany was first to launch air strikes on civilians in Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, London and Coventry.

Most recently, a new book by British historian Frederick Taylor, "Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945", contends that as Germany's seventh largest city it was a legitimate strategic target with an industrial centre contributing to the war effort.

Taylor argues that the number of dead -- frequently cited in excess of 100,000 -- was greatly exaggerated by Hitler's Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, and that the actual death toll was likely to be between 25,000 and 40,000.