Living Monuments to WWII: Aegidientorplatz

One of the things the Monuments Men when they arrived in a village or city was to look for thei historical landmarks and assess them for damage.

When we were in Germany during the summer of 2012, we discovered that a tradition in some cities was to leave one of the destroyed churches as a living monument to those killed by WWII. Today I want to share with you a post I wrote while we were in Germany about our discovery of that church in Hannover:

Yesterday, as we were dodging raindrops, we headed off on the tram system to find a church I’d heard rumors about. As Germany rebuilt after World War II, one of the things many of the larger cities did was leave one church in its damaged state as a memorial to the war and its losses. Someone had mentioned that Hannover had such a church and I thought I knew which stop it was, but that was it. Since the rain had stopped (temporarily) we decided to dash across town to see if we could find it.

Aegidientorplatz is kind of the center of the financial district. As we got off the tram, I saw many tall buildings, but nothing that looked like a church. We kind of took off blindly in what we hoped was a good direction. After a couple blocks and a detour past a 14th century wall, we found the church…as raindrops started falling. After huddling under an awning across the street for about ten minutes, that cloud passed, and we crossed to the church.

My favorite feature is the artistic impression of the stained-glass that must have filled the shelled windows.