Ruins of War into Memorials of Reconciliation: Coventry Cathedral and the Dresden Frauenkirche, 1940–2010

Abstract

Coventry Cathedral and the Dresden Frauenkirche, both destroyed in the Second World War, are often mentioned in the same breath, treated as architectural, commemorative, and religious equivalents. Nothing could be further from the truth. While the ruins of Coventry Cathedral were transformed into a site of—and memorial to—postwar reconciliation, the Frauenkirche was neither a revered shrine nor an unintentional monument, but simply a gutted structure suspended in limbo for some forty years. It was only in the course of the 1980s, and especially in the aftermath of German reunification, that the Frauenkirche ruins became invested with specific meaning. Support from Britain and, above all, Coventry, was crucial in this process. Methodologically, the article fuses memory studies with church/architectural history and comparative/transnational research.