The Dresden Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) is a Lutheran church in Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony. An earlier church, building in the 11th century in a Romanesque style, was Catholic until it became Protestant during the Reformation. The original Baroque church was built between 1726 and 1743, and was designed by Dresden's city architect, George Bähr. Bähr's distinctive design captured the new spirit of the Protestant liturgy by placing the altar, pulpit, and baptismal font directly centre in view of the entire congregation.
In 1736, famed organ maker Gottfried Silbermann built a three-manual, 43-stop instrument for the church. The organ was dedicated on 25 November and Johann Sebastian Bach gave a recital on the instrument on 1 December. The church's most distinctive feature was its unconventional high dome, 96 metres high, called die Steinerne Glocke or "Stone Bell". Despite initial doubts, the dome proved to be extremely stable. Witnesses in 1760 said that the dome had been hit by more than 100 cannonballs fired by the Prussian army led by Friedrich II during the Seven Years' War. The projectiles bounced off and the church survived.
The dome of the church vanished from Dresden's skyline on 15 February 1945, after it withstood two days and nights of the bombings of Anglo-American allied forces. The building vanished from Dresden's skyline, and the blackened stones would lie in wait in a pile in the centre of the city for the next 45 years of Communist rule. Shortly after the end of WWII, residents of Dresden had begun salvaging stone fragments from the church and numbering them for future use in reconstruction. Popular sentiment discouraged the authorities from clearing the ruins.
Using original plans, the Dresden City Council decided to proceed with reconstruction in February 1992. The intensive efforts to rebuild this world-famous landmark were completed in 2005, one year earlier than originally planned, and in time for the 800-year anniversary of the city of Dresden in 2006. Since re-opening, the Church of Our Lady has been a tourist destination in Dresden. In the first three years, seven million people have visited the church as tourists and to attend worship services.
Other postcards from my collection, depicting buildings in Dresden, you can find here.
About the stamp
The stamp, designed by Maciej Jędrysik, was issued on June 2, 2016, to mark The 25th Anniversary of the Polish-German Youth Cooperation (joint issue with Poland).
References
Dresden Frauenkirche - Wikipedia
Sender: Maria Ilie
Sent from Dresden (Saxony / Germany), on 16.04.2019
No comments:
Post a Comment