On my last visit to Strasbourg, a brief one, I spotted a plaque on one side of the Cathedral, unusual because of its modern design on the Gothic masterpiece. I took a picture because of its beautiful work. Only months later did I discover the poignant and fascinating history behind the sign, and how Johann Knauth became the Savior of Strasbourg Cathedral.
Johann Knauth was a Cologne-born architect and engineer who went to work in 1891, age 27, for Fondation de l’Oeuvre Notre Dame, the organization that has been responsible for the structure of Strasbourg’s Cathedral for nearly a thousand years. At the time, the city was under German rule.
In 1905 he became the chief architect of the Cathedral and undertook a restoration of the main facade.
But the work he is most remembered for and which earned him the plaque is a less visible but potentially more important project: keeping the Cathedral’s tower from falling.
The impressive tower, once the tallest structure in Europe, was much taller and heavier than the foundations had been designed for centuries before. In the course of the work, in 1903, Knauth noticed that the foundation under the tower was cracking; Two pillars near the front of the church were particularly affected.
Knauth first surrounded the base of the tower and parts of the foundation in concrete while devising a permanent plan to provide a stronger foundation. That became even more urgent after an earthquake in 1911, and the work was carried out between then and 1920. It’s actually a fascinating story, told on the Fondation’s website (French only), with full details of what was done.
But Johann Knauth’s story doesn’t end there; Knauth’s time in Strasbourg and in his job had a bad ending, one that delayed his honor at the Cathedral until 2014. Knauth was a German, and after World War I, Alsace, and its capital Strasbourg, returned to France, and most public institutions were anxious to purge themselves of German influence, just as Germany had acted to ‘Germanize’ the area after 1870.
Knauth was welcome to keep his job, he was told, but he would have to become a French citizen. His two sons, serving in the German army had died in battle during the war, and he declined the offer, returning to a town in Germany a few miles from Strasbourg.
To Johann Knauth, Savior of the Cathedral, by the grateful city of Strasbourg.
In 1926, at the grand ceremony marking the end of the work to preserve the foundations and the pillar, his name was not spoken. It took nearly a century for his name to be restored to its place in the Cathedral’s history.
Nearby, another unusual monument honors the masons and other artisans who have built and maintained the Cathedral over the centuries.
