Dresden (dpa/sn) - According to Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU), the visit of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in Saxony in 1992 is particularly memorable. "This trip was a further step towards reconciliation between the peoples of Germany and Great Britain after the devastation of the Second World War, which was so important to Queen Elizabeth," he said in a letter of condolence to King Charles III on Monday, according to a statement from the State Chancellery in Dresden The monarch died on September 8 at Balmoral Castle, aged 96. At her state funeral, the Free State ordered nationwide mourning flags.
In October 1992, almost 50 years after the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945, the Queen and Prince Philipp (1926-2021) took part in a memorial and reconciliation service in the Kreuzkirche and then in the Leipzig Nikolaikirche of the peaceful revolution of 1989 in the GDR thought. Elizabeth II also donated money for the gilded domed cross of the Dresden Frauenkirche, which was destroyed in World War II and rebuilt after 1990 with financial help from all over the world. It was created by a London blacksmith whose father was one of the pilots who bombed the former Saxon royal residence. The British gave Dresden the replica of the original cross recovered from the rubble in 1993 as a sign of reconciliation.
