voice of the city
By PETER THOMAS (text and photos)
November 4, 2022 After more than 300 years, a new bell was cast for Magdeburg Cathedral in 2022.
It was the start of an ambitious project: the church should once again have a representative ringing of twelve bells.
The path to love is hot and exhausting.
In the dim work hall, the orange-red flames of the casting furnace rage in competition with the sun, which burns down from the sky on this Friday in September 2022.
In the morning, Nicolai Wieland and his employees at the Bachert bell foundry in Neunkirchen am Neckar switched on the oil burners.
Since then, the fire has heated eight tons of bronze, melting the alloy of 78 percent copper and 22 percent tin.
Today the church bell Amemus is to be cast from the liquid bronze.
"Let us love" means the Latin name in German.
The "bell dish" is now around 1100 degrees Celsius hot, soon it can be poured.
The flames of the foundry furnace rage over the molten bronze.
Magdeburg, ten weeks earlier: In the cathedral district, morning light fingers between the foliage and the towering towers of the Gothic cathedral.
The mighty nave lies quietly there before the first tourists visit the burial church of the imperial couple Otto I and Editha, consecrated in 1363.
The cathedral has been Protestant since 1567.
Johannes Sattler, Carsten Sussmann and Rainer Kuhn enter the cathedral, the three belong to a group that has big plans: the cathedral should once again have a representative ringing.
This includes the 5.8 tonne Amemus.
In the future, however, twelve bells are to ring in the cathedral, then as one of the largest bells in Europe with a weight of 42 tons.
More than 300 years have passed since the last new bell was cast for the cathedral of Magdeburg, the great imperial city and center of the Reformation in the 16th century.
The bell project will give Magdeburg Cathedral its voice back.
The pictured Apostolica is one of the four surviving old bells in the cathedral.
The sound of the bells ringing leads through the windows decorated with tracery.
A view of the historic belfry in the north-west tower of the cathedral, which will be supplemented.
Back to the Neckar: It is now 3 p.m. – according to biblical tradition, the hour of Jesus’ death.
In the bell foundry trade, this is the established casting time for church bells.
But when in doubt, metallurgy trumps tradition.
Only when the molten metal has reached the perfect state in the furnace does the casting begin.
Nothing can be seen of the form for the huge instrument, into which the bronze is later to flow – it is deep in the foundry pit under a thick layer of sand.
Now three men in silver heat protection suits carry a slender tree trunk to the stove and dip the wood into the liquid.
Sparks fly, the bell caster looks critically through his visor at the glowing events in front of him.
"Agitating the bell food with the dry spruce trunk is part of the traditional process," he explains.
When the trunk is pulled out of the oven, a charred stump of wood steams in front.
Once again they take a sample with the long-handled trowel, let the glowing bronze drain on the hall floor and cool.
And finally, under the attentive gaze of the visitors, the spectacle takes its course and the casting begins.
Intensely glowing, the bronze runs through the sprues and into the mould.
Casting gases shoot up from the ventilation pipes, flaming with colour.
Then the casting is complete.
Now the new bell will cool down in the ground for days.
Only then can the foundrymen finally judge whether the work was successful.
And finally, under the attentive gaze of the visitors, the spectacle takes its course and the casting begins.
Intensely glowing, the bronze runs through the sprues and into the mould.
Casting gases shoot up from the ventilation pipes, flaming with colour.
Then the casting is complete.
Now the new bell will cool down in the ground for days.
Only then can the foundrymen finally judge whether the work was successful.
And finally, under the attentive gaze of the visitors, the spectacle takes its course and the casting begins.
Intensely glowing, the bronze runs through the sprues and into the mould.
Casting gases shoot up from the ventilation pipes, flaming with colour.
Then the casting is complete.
Now the new bell will cool down in the ground for days.
Only then can the foundrymen finally judge whether the work was successful.
"Agitating the bell food with the dry spruce trunk is part of the traditional process."
NICOLAI WIELAND
Only when the molten metal has reached the perfect state in the furnace does the casting begin.
Tools for sampling during casting
The new ringing has been planned since 2019. At that time, the damaged Dominica bell was lifted out of the tower and repaired in the Lachenmeyer bell welding shop in Nördlingen.
Cast in 1575 by Eckhart Kucher from Erfurt, it is presented in the cathedral and is an impressive reference to the major project: in addition to the Amemus, seven other bells are to be cast by 2025.
Only four historical bells of Magdeburg Cathedral have been preserved.
A project of this size is extremely rare outside of Germany.
"We want to give the cathedral and thus the city the sound back," says Johannes Sattler.
The electrical engineer is a member of the association's board, which takes care of the project.
Now he is standing at the repaired bell together with the cathedral construction manager Carsten Sussmann and the archaeologist Rainer Kuhn.
For laypeople, the traces of the restoration on the bell crown are hardly visible - the Nördlingen experts have done a great job.
"We want to give the cathedral and thus the city the sound back."
JOHN SATTLER
And since last weekend, Dominica is no longer alone in the cathedral: the casting of the Amemus was successful, even before the Reformation Day on October 31, the second heaviest bell of the future ringing was presented during a ceremony - including with Bishop Friedrich Kramer - in the cathedral .
Time plays a relative role when it comes to church bells: the oldest surviving Magdeburg bell is the 13th-century Orate.
Archaeologist Kuhn has led research into the cathedral's history, with excavations on the outside since 1998 and inside the Gothic cathedral from 2006 to 2010.
Kuhn also knows the biography of the Magdeburg cathedral bells, tells of the fire on Good Friday 1207 when the bells of the Romanesque predecessor building fell to the ground - except for one.
At that time, the knowledge needed to cast the bells for the new cathedral was available in the city.
"Magdeburg's bronze technology was leading in the 13th century," he explains.
Nicolai Wieland and his employees would probably recognize many of the movements of the foundrymen of that time.
Because the work of today's bell founders combines modern metallurgy and foundry technology with centuries-old methods of planning and mold making.
First, a bell founder designs the longitudinal section of the later bell, the so-called rib.
It specifies the sound of the instrument to the sixteenth of a semitone.
That is why it was so important to plan and coordinate the entire ringing of the Magdeburg Cathedral before starting to cast new bells.
The design is implemented using the so-called clay template method: the specialist transfers the silhouette of the rib onto a wooden board and then saws out the inner line.
The form is now mounted vertically with hinges as a rotating template.
Below her, the core of the later mold grows by hand, modeled from clay with additives.
Traditionally, cattle hair and horse manure are used.
Once the mold has dried, it gets a coating of tallow as a separating layer.
In the meantime, the second line of the template has been sawn out.
It now serves as a template for the so-called "false bell", which is also made of clay.
A steel clapper
Bell founder Nicolai Wieland between bell moulds
The artistic decor is mounted on top of this, the "bell ornament" modeled from wax.
This is followed by the crown and another layer of sebum, then finally the mantle.
Now the complete composition dries.
At Bachert, as in most bell foundries, gas burners are used.
After the drying time, you carefully lift the coat off with a crane, smash the “fake bell” and put the coat back on.
This creates the casting mold as a hollow body.
A special feature of the Amemus was the construction of the mold directly in the pit, says Nicolai Wieland.
This was due to the size and weight of the bell.
Smaller bell molds are usually built on the workshop floor.
The Credamus, weighing around 14 tons, is planned as the grand finale of the project.
She is a fortiori a candidate for underground construction.
In September, a delegation from Magdeburg took part in the final casting, following the process spellbound, albeit at a safe distance.
The casting is a big moment for the project, supported by civic commitment.
In the future, the cathedral in the inner city district will again produce a melodious, polyphonic soundscape.
Does it sound the same as the historical peal with probably up to 14 bells?
That cannot be said, because exact information about the old bells has not been handed down.
The bells alone are not enough either.
The appropriate infrastructure is also needed, explains cathedral construction manager Sussmann - in particular the belfry on which the instruments are hung.
The civil engineer is not employed by the church, but is hired as an external expert for all aspects of cathedral construction management.
Working for the bells: Carsten Sussmann, Johannes Sattler and Rainer Kuhn on the Dominica from 1575, which was restored in 2019
The planning of the new bell also included vibration analysis of the two west towers.
The northern tower still carries the bells that have been preserved.
Its historic belfry is to be complemented by a new construction made of oak.
In the currently empty southwest tower, the belfry must be completely rebuilt.
The bells will have an important role in the history of the city in 2031.
Then Magdeburg commemorates the destruction of the city 400 years ago in the Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648).
The cathedral should also raise its voice again - with the complete new ringing of twelve bells, including the large Credamus, which will probably cost significantly more than half a million euros.
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