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Reconstruction over ruins : rebuilding Dresden's Frauenkirche Joel, Tony 2012, Reconstruction over ruins : rebuilding Dresden's Frauenkirche, in The heritage of war, Routledge, Abingdon, England, pp.197-218. Attached Files Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads Title Reconstruction over ruins : rebuilding Dresden's Frauenkirche Author(s) Joel, Tony Title of book The heritage of war Editor(s) Gegner, Martin Ziino, Bart Publication date 2012 Series Key issues in cultural heritage Chapter number 10 Total chapters 12 Start page 197 End page 218 Total pages 22 Publisher Routledge Place of Publication Abingdon, England Keyword(s) history cultural heritage memory studies Germany Dresden Frauenkirche war and society Summary The debate over the reconstruction of Dresden’s Frauenkirche, the city’s landmark Protestant cathedral destroyed by aerial bombing in 1945, exemplifies the conflicts inherent in the treatment of war-related cultural heritage. Although initially preserved only by virtue of some local citizens’ determination to rebuild the church, in time the Frauenkirche ruins emerged in their own right as an arresting antiwar symbol and one of the foremost sites of war memory and commemoration in the divided Germany. This development created a certain conundrum, for if the church ever were to be rebuilt such a project could only materialise by disturbing the ruins, which supporters claimed were deserving of preservation in their unaltered state. With the advent of reunification, the kind of heritage to be preserved at the site—and the way in which it was to be conserved—came under renewed and reintensified scrutiny and debate. By tracing the shifting dynamics during a half-century of debate over how the Frauenkirche site should be conserved, this chapter examines the impact that struggles over war memory and commemoration can have on cultural heritage. It surveys the arguments for and against rebuilding the Frauenkirche before, during, and after reunification, and considers what aspirations conflicting sides had for expressing personal, national, and international memories of war, loss, and the German national past. Finally, it explores how anastylosis rebuilding principles were used to find a compromise by incorporating, somewhat controversially, parts of the existing ruins into the new church after a local citizens’ initiative successfully appealed for worldwide support to reconstruct the Frauenkirche in the wake of Germany’s reunification. ISBN 9780415593298 9780415593281 9780203809204 Language eng Field of Research 210202 Heritage and Cultural Conservation 210307 European History (excl British, Classical Greek and Roman) Socio Economic Objective 950399 Heritage not elsewhere classified HERDC Research category B1 Book chapter ERA Research output type B Book chapter Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30049507 Document type: Book Chapter Collections: Alfred Deakin Research Institute School of Humanities and Social Sciences   Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved. Versions Version Filter Type Tue, 27 Nov 2012, 13:55:03 EST Tue, 27 Nov 2012, 13:55:35 EST Tue, 27 Nov 2012, 15:24:38 EST Thu, 29 Nov 2012, 10:49:31 EST Fri, 30 Nov 2012, 12:47:57 EST Fri, 30 Nov 2012, 15:20:38 EST Fri, 12 Apr 2013, 09:24:34 EST Fri, 12 Apr 2013, 13:10:47 EST Filtered Full Access Statistics: 208 Abstract Views, 2 File Downloads  -  Detailed Statistics Created: Tue, 27 Nov 2012, 13:55:01 EST by Tony Joel

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