- BERLIN -- The Church of Our
Lady in Dresden, once one of Europe's finest baroque buildings, was restored
to glory yesterday almost 60 years after it was destroyed by Allied bombers.
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- A cross and orb built by the son of an RAF pilot who
took part in the attack was lowered on to the Frauenkirche following the
10-year, £90 million restoration. The church has been rebuilt from
scratch in one of the most ambitious reconciliation projects involving
Britain and Germany.
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- Alan Smith, a craftsman at London firm of goldsmiths
Grant MacDonald, spent eight months building the cross and orb in stainless
steel and copper to the original 18th century design. His father, Frank,
flew a Lancaster in the 1945 raid.
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- "My father used to tell me about the horrors and
the suffering of Dresden," Mr Smith said. "He did not want it
to be forgotten. By working on the cross I've come closer to my father
and it's my way of saying goodbye to him and fulfilling his wishes."
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- Mr Smith and his 80-year-old mother joined other VIPs
at the ceremony, including the Duke of Kent, and around 300 British guests.
Many were from Coventry, which was also intensively bombed and is now twinned
with Dresden.
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- Old Dresdeners wept and cheered as workers eased the
crown and orb inch by inch on to the church's tower with a crane. Bells
pealed across the city to signal their success.
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- The Duke of Kent, the patron of the Dresden Trust, a
British initiative established to raise money for the reconstruction, said
its crowning was a sign of hope for a "free, peaceful and united Europe".
It should stand as a reminder of the "painful and difficult past"
shared by Britain and Germany.
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- British businesses contributed hundreds of thousands
of pounds to the project. Most of the rest of the money was raised by charitable
foundations.
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- The blackened stones of the Frauenkirche, built in 1743,
lay for decades where they had fallen in 1945 as a reminder of the horrors
of war.
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- Of the million bricks which make up the reconstructed
church around 8,000 are original, their blackness marking them out from
the pale new stones.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/23
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