On 13 February 2000 HRH the Duke of Kent presented the Frauenkirche’s new cross, financed by British donations. Alan Russell and the Dresden Trust collected some ₤600,000 for the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche from more than two thousand British donors. The new cross was made by Alan Smith:

“I spent up to ten hours a day working in the sweltering heat of my workshop, eight months long. I hammered out the steel and copper of the cross using old smithing techniques from the eighteenth century. At the end I covered it with three layers of gold leaf, to protect it for eternity. Old drawings were the only source I could draw upon for my work: the new cross on an orb. It was to crown the Dresden Frauenkirche once again. On the day that the cross was finally attached to the dome, I looked down from the tower upon the crowds gathered below. Everyone was cheering and clapping. It was like in a dream.

That day, a long-awaited dream came true for me. There is only one thing that I deeply regret: that my father was not there that day. Fifty-nine years ago he looked down on Dresden from a similar viewpoint, but a few metres higher up: from the cockpit of his Royal Air Force bomber. After the attacks on Dresden, the knowledge of what had really happened in the war never left him. All his life, he was haunted by the memories; he became a pacifist. That is the way we were brought up in my family. When I heard about the bid invitation to make the Dresden church cross, I just had to get the job. I did everything I could to get it; convinced my company that we could manage it. At first I didn’t tell anyone what was motivating me. When it became known that I, the son of a bomber pilot, was crafting the cross for the church, there was a big rush for the story. Initial amazement gave way to a very positive reaction. Even the war veterans from my country who had served alongside my father gave me a slap on the back and told me a lot about the past, about the war. They had kept silent about it for so many years.

I have worked with gold, diamonds and gemstones, created jewellery for royal households and Arab rulers, gifts of state for the highest dignitaries in the world. But this seven-metre-tall gilded steel cross is the pinnacle of my career. It was like putting together an extremely complicated puzzle in which the past and the future neatly fit into one another.”

Alan Smith in Cicero (excerpts, translated from German into English)