Aerospace software and computers were used to create digitalised copies of each stone. It has been an act of God's grace."No accurate plans of the building survived the war, so surveyors had to rely on drawings, photographs, films and books to build a three-dimensional model on which to base the reconstruction. Thirty architects, 60 stonecutters and 40 masons and carpenters were engaged in the painstaking rebuilding effort that took 11 years to complete. Eberhard Burger, the master builder who supervised the recreation of his Baroque counterpart George B?'s masterpiece remarked modestly this week: "We builders should be happy to have been given the chance to reconstruct something like this from the bottom up.
"I feel that my efforts are a small gesture of reconciliation," he said.When you look at the complex task that faced the municipal authorities in Dresden, the restoration does indeed seem something of a miracle. Mr Smith admits he was plagued by the part that his father played in the bombing for many years. His home town of Coventry, itself a victim of wartime bombing, was twinned with Dresden after the war. Its interior is adorned with frescoes of biblical scenes and rows of seating arcades rise up in mottled shades of pastel yellow, pink and blue.The building is crowned with a golden cross made by Alan Smith, a British silversmith whose father piloted one of the bombers that took part in the Dresden raid. "There were some reservations about rebuilding at first but today I feel grateful and I am moved every time I enter."The wound has finally been healed.
The great dome of the Frauenkirche, cut from honey-coloured sandstone blocks, towers above the city's rebuilt Neumarkt square. Small wonder that its reappearance on the city's skyline is referred to as a "miracle".Jochen Bohl, Bishop of Saxony, who will preside over tomorrow's ceremony, summed up the feelings of many: "There was a feeling that it was not Christian to leave an open wound in Dresden that the ruined church had become," he said. Its reconstruction began in 1994 and has been achieved as a result of €130m (£90m)contributed by 13,000 donors from throughout the world. Its baroque organ, once played by Johann Sebastian Bach, was a heap of ashes.During the Cold War, East Germany's Communist regime refused to clear away the blackened ruins of the church. The site was deliberately kept for propaganda purposes as a symbol of Anglo-American aggression. But for most Dresdeners, the rubble was simply a permanent and tragic reminder of Germany's nightmare past.Tomorrow's ceremony will celebrate the Frauenkirche's extraordinary return to Dresden after an interval of more than 60 years.