A Foot in Both Camps
Sample extract
When I returned to Dresden in 2008, the issue of right or wrong was still alive, and I therefore felt obliged to ask where I stood myself. Did I think the dead Germans deserved a fate they had brought upon themselves? Or did I consider the whole raid was wrong? And if I thought that, was I comfortable in agreeing on this with Neo-Nazis?
I could no longer see the main railway station from across the river, since the flat bombed-out spaces in between had been filled in with new buildings. But instead of indignation at the accusations of the East German Communist in 1972, I felt an immense sadness for this still wounded city. Sixty-three years after the raid, there were still old bomb sites overgrown with weeds in the centre.
Half a century of Communist government had given the city little chance to arise from the ashes as West German cities had. Walking around the old city centre at night, I saw few cars passing by. The empty, dimly-lit cobbled streets reminded me of the Prague I knew during the Cold War years. In the Neumarkt central square, a concrete cultural centre of the Communist period offended against the graceful harmony of the restored ducal buildings around it.
Amid this sadness however, there was a shining beacon. The Frauenkirche “Church of our Lady” had been rebuilt. Before it collapsed in the shock and heat of the raid, it had been one of Europe’s finest Baroque churches. Its style was quite exceptional. Covering a relatively small space of ground, it soared towards the heavens in a long, elegant cupola.
When I was last there in 1972, it lay as a heap of charred ruins in the Neumarkt square. I scarcely even noticed it. The East Germans were ready to restore secular culture, but declined to rebuild a church, even though it had been the pride of Europe. Only after the collapse of Communism – the “turn” as the Germans euphemistically call it – did the Protestant church and local authorities get together to pursue what was henceforth their prime vocation – to rebuild the Frauenkirche. The whole population rallied to this act of renewal breathing life into the lamed city. A few British pilots who took part in the raid sent money to the building fund. A son of one of the airmen helped craft a gold cross and orb placed at its top.
I walked into the rebuilt Frauenkirche in 2008 and felt I was in heaven. Not the heaven which Catholic churches evoke, far above in the skies, but heaven on earth, gloriously shining in the here and now. The interior was ablaze with golden light reflecting off pastel stuccoes. I was not alone: at any time of the day the church is packed with fascinated visitors – eight to nine million people visit Dresden each year. A pastor came to a table in front of the throng and spoke for a few minutes of the spiritual significance of the restored building. There was a brief pause in the bustle and chatter as the message slipped discreetly into their consciousnesses.
Fifteen minutes later I met the pastor at the top of the dome explaining the church to local schoolchildren. He told how Germans started a war which led to the destruction of the church and how the Communists refused to rebuild it because they did not approve of religion. Then he moved on to the present, asking the children to identify the surrounding buildings they saw, old and new. No morbid dwelling on the past, but no punches pulled either.
When I descended towards the exit, I knew my personal moment of truth had come. The visitors’ book invited inscriptions. Should I comment, or pass by, aloof again? If I wrote, should I remark on the building’s extraordinary architectural merit? Should I express pleasure that it was standing again?
All of this missed the point: that my own people had destroyed this deeply moving place of the spirit. People like my own uncle Henry, shot down while trying to blast another German city. Should I regret that he and the other brave young men commemorated in the graveyard of Middleton Stoney in middle England did what they were ordered, summoned up their courage, and lived and died? Should I observe the British custom that to Germans “we don’t mention the war,” because to do so would oblige us to point out that they were to blame?
None of this was adequate. I could not honestly walk out of the church writing nothing, as if I did not care, or felt the victims deserved their fate. If I ever did feel like that, I no longer did. And if the Germans mentioned the war themselves, and openly acknowledged their responsibility, why should I shirk the issue? It all came down to one question: was I sorry the British did it, and was I prepared to say so?
When my turn came, I wrote in the book: “I am British. I am sorry my people destroyed this church. It should never have happened.”
I walked out relieved. I had taken a stand. I had distanced myself from the excuse that the end justified the means, or that the British had inadvertently become infected with the brutality of the Germans. I felt no less proud of the wartime bravery of my father and uncle, but like the Germans I had also acknowledged a wrong. I had offered sympathy to a people who had finally earned it. I had made peace after war.
When I talked to the German Zeitzeugen “witnesses to history” in Berlin about the evolution of my thinking, a woman told me afterwards that my readiness to change my mind about Dresden was what impressed her most.
That evening, I came back to hear a Bach organ concert played beneath the dome – intellectual, down-to-earth music, played amid bright lights. I experienced harmony on earth, as have thousands of others who have felt the spirit of the new Frauenkirche.
I left Dresden early next morning, my task complete, a foot still in both camps, but knowing where I stood.
© 2011 Marcus Ferrar
