Stadtkirche Darmstadt

The date most people give for this church's destruction is wrong. It did not burn in the Brandnacht of 11 and 12 September 1944 but three weeks earlier, on the night of 25 August. When it was rebuilt, the architect Karl Gruber deliberately refused to copy the original: he raised the nave, dropped the outer walls by two metres and enlarged the tower lantern, so the break would stay visible instead of being smoothed over.