CovSoc member and Chair of the Friends of Coventry Cathedral brings to our attention an important historical event that has not been much reported in the UK press. In his monthly Chairman’s E-news Martin writes….
King Charles stood shoulder to shoulder with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany at the ruins of St Nikolai Church, Hamburg on the final day of his recent visit to Germany. They joined together in the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation spoken in both English and German by the Lutheran Bishop Kirsten Fehrs.
There was no extensive news coverage of this event in the UK, but in Germany the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation was at the centre of a major news story. What King Charles did was unprecedented for a British sovereign.
TV commentators on the German rolling news channel NTV called it a “great, great symbol”. Before the ceremony Germany’s biggest-selling daily paper, Bild, said that King Charles’ gesture at the memorial “will say more than any speech”. In The Guardian, the Hamburg-based historian, Helene von Bismarck, said Charles’s stop at the memorial was far more than just another photo op. “At a time when many politicians all over the world like to pick and choose from history with the sole aim of suiting their narratives, it matters,” she said.
Today the church of St Nikolai is preserved as a memorial to those who lost their lives during the heavy air raids carried out by US and British air forces 80 years ago. Codenamed Operation Gomorrah, the raids unleashed 9,000 tonnes of explosives. Some 34,000 people died in the intense bombing and firestorms that followed. The surviving 147-metre-high church tower served as a target marker for the bombers. The church was badly damaged on July 25, 1943. In WWII Hamburg and Dresden were the most heavily bombed cities in Nazi Germany.
The Coventry Litany of Reconciliation is the prayer declared by Provost Williams in 1959 to be prayed each Friday at noon in Coventry Cathedral Ruins. It is also used across the world by members of the Community of the Cross of Nails (CCN) and in Coventry Cathedral services on other occasions.
The roofless ruin of St Nikolai is all that remains of a church that was originally designed by the English architect, George Gilbert Scott. Coincidences abound when you remember that it was the same architect who designed the Albert Memorial in London, a memorial erected in honour of King Charles’s German ancestor, Prince Albert. Incidentally, the Albert Memorial incorporates decorative ironwork by Francis Skidmore, the famous Coventry metal artist, who also designed ironwork furniture for Coventry Cathedral that was lost in the Coventry Blitz.
In Hamburg Bishop Fehrs told the gathering ‘at this special place of remembrance’, where 80 years ago the church was destroyed by bombs, that ‘we stand in solidarity with people throughout the world who strive for reconciliation in the face of violence and war; we are deeply grateful for this moment of unity.
Let us set an example for understanding peace with the deeply moving and unifying Coventry Litany of Reconciliation.’
When later questioned by reporters, Bishop Fehr said, “The sign of reconciliation between two war enemies and the joint commemoration of the victims are an important signal today,”
Before the prayer the Hamburg Boys’ Choir sang one of my favourite anthems, “If ye love me”, by the English composer Thomas Tallis (1505-1585).
You can view film of King Charles in Hamburg on Youtube. The timing of the Coventry Litany is 43.45 to 47.42.