Comic column: Sebastian Strombach’s “Jeck” about Cologne Cathedral | EUROtoday

It begins in Berlin. That could possibly be known as uncommon for a comic book about Cologne Cathedral. And there is no such thing as a Neukölln Cathedral. We are additionally in Marzahn-Hellersdorf. It’s not Gothic both, extra prefer it gothic: A partnership threatens to interrupt up as a result of he, a comic book artist, places his non-public life apart in favor of the drawing desk, which drives them out, onto the bike and into demise – a visitors accident, then medical tools and at last the switching off of the gadgets. Still no signal of the cathedral.

Sebastian Strombach chooses an introduction that leaves one guessing. However, anybody who is aware of that he misplaced his companion just a few years in the past in precisely the identical approach as is described right here will take a look at this comedian with completely different eyes: It is a extremely private mission, even when after the 9 Berlin pages, the remaining 225 happen in and round Cologne and truly revolve primarily across the cathedral. Introduced by the sentence “Death and birth, beginning and end – let us begin our story with that”. And then demise is adopted by the delivery of a kid in Bethlehem, the place three kings journey, whose bones turn into the middle of veneration within the earlier constructing of in the present day’s Cologne Cathedral from 1164 onwards. And from 1248 onwards a brand new home was constructed for them. The church that the entire world is aware of in the present day.

“Jeck” is the identify of the comedian concerning the church, and you’ll hardly have anticipated that both. What does that imply? First of all, one other truth: each autumn the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt presents its “Architectural Book Awards”. Ten books will every be honored, and whatever the English identify of the prize, these are largely publications from publishers from German-speaking nations (in 2025 there have been 9 together with one Japanese title). This doesn’t take away from the importance of this prize, as a result of nowhere else on the earth is a lot structure printed – and with worldwide influence, which is why half of essentially the most not too long ago awarded books are written in English. And one in Kölsch. At least partially. Just “Jeck”.

The most outstanding factor about “Jeck”’s award isn’t the only a few Cologne passages (the harder ones are subtitled), however relatively the very fact that it’s the first comedian ever to win a DAM Architectural Book Award. This is astonishing given the connection between the 2 artwork varieties – I simply say: “page architecture” – particularly since there’s an illustrator in François Schuiten whose retro architectural fantasy has lengthy had an affect far past comics; In 2000, the Belgian designed the “Planets of Vision” pavilion on the World Exhibition in Hanover.

But Sebastian Strombach, born in 1974 and grew up with Franco-Belgian comics, can be intensively energetic within the architectural discipline: he studied the topic, labored as an architect, and eight years in the past his comedian “Wolkenbügel” got here out, a cultural historical past of the Twenties in Berlin that was strongly influenced by the utopian structure of the time. This was adopted in 2020 by “Verkehr”, a comic book concerning the Berlin City Palace, and now – in a pleasant continuation of the title – “Jeck”. That is one motive for the much less ecclesiastical title.

Strombach lives, as we all know from the opening to “Jeck” and from his earlier architectural comics, in Berlin. What pursuits him about Cologne Cathedral? Well, his household comes from the realm, and one other Strombach, Sebastian’s grandfather Franz, even makes an look in “Jeck.” First as a portray physician who, due to his ardour for artwork, uncared for the big variety of sufferers who have been admitted to his hospital in the course of the bombing raids on Cologne in the course of the Second World War, after which a second time in 1964 when he regarded for college change locations overseas for his kids, which might convey Eberhard Strombach to France, the place he met Sebastian Strombach’s mom.

What does this need to do with Cologne Cathedral? They are interludes (once more, very private ones), every of which follows vital latest turning factors within the cathedral’s historical past, which has now reached virtually 9 hundred years. First of all, there’s the miracle that the cathedral survived 4 years of fixed Allied bombing of town and in 1945 was the one surviving constructing standing in a desert of rubble in Cologne. Strombach dedicates one in all his 22 double-sided panoramic photos to this view, which have been recurring all through all eras since Roman instances and all the time take a look at the identical space from a chook’s eye view – in sum, a easy however successfully staged macro-history of town’s improvement within the precise micro-history of the church constructing, which has not been accomplished to today as a result of the cathedral consistently requires additional restoration work.

The second occasion related to the Strombach household historical past is the German-French reconciliation, which occurred within the Sixties within the shadow of the closely war-torn Gothic cathedrals of Reims and Cologne. Speaking of reconciliation: “Jeck” as a title isn’t solely linked to the “Verrück” comedian, however can be used as a phrase by Strombach to place into the mouth of the Mayor of Cologne and later Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as a verdict on trendy structure – seen on this approach, the quantity can be a continuation of “Wolkeneisen”.

Historical and fictional moments intertwine in Strombach’s new comedian. Goethe was in Cologne twice in his life, however on his first go to the phrases that have been put into his mouth within the corresponding scene from “Jeck” have been already printed: passages from the essay “On German Architecture” concerning the Gothic (for which Goethe was impressed by the Strasbourg Cathedral).

History and tales are two various things: on the one hand, historic factuality (historical past writing), and alternatively, fictional narratives (story writing, generally often called literature). In the story of Cologne Cathedral (used right here in each senses) plenty of issues are shrouded in fable, and so some issues in Strombach are speculative and even fictional. He corrects different issues: For instance, the glossing over of the acquisition of the relics of the three kings – a raid, nothing else.

Just just like the Christian faith would not fare notably properly in its fixed coziness or battle with secular energy. At the top of the guide, Strombach introduces a sheep metaphor that works utterly in another way than the same old non secular connotations: he has a shepherdess drive her flock via the cathedral. To his amusement, a person from Cologne not too long ago claimed to him that he was after all accustomed to the imagined early trendy episode. The folks of Cologne all the time know every little thing higher, or at the least they already comprehend it for a very long time.

Heinrich Heine, alternatively, knew concerning the Cologne Cathedral: “It will not be completed, despite all the cries / of the ravens and the owls, / who, with an ancient mind, like to stay / in high church towers. / Yes, the time will come, / when, instead of completing it, / the inner rooms will be used as a stable / for horses.” This is what it says in “Germany, a Winter’s Tale” from 1844, and it’s doable that the expected agricultural use impressed Strombach to create his sheep. But Heine was utterly flawed. The new Prussian lords of Cologne had resumed the development work that had been interrupted in 1528 two years earlier, and by 1880 the cathedral obtained its hanging double-tower facade – completed after 632 years!

But that did not do any good, as a result of we have solely reached web page 165 within the comedian, and what follows are the First and Second World Wars, in addition to the occupation of the Rhineland in between after which the occupation once more and at last the Federal Republic and the utterly unsuccessful reconstruction of Cologne.

Where “Jeck” beforehand wrote bitingly anti-clerical historiography, within the twentieth century it grew to become anti-national. And we see hubris, racism and terror. The well-known “cathedral bomb”, a short lived walling up from a bomb hit within the north tower that’s nonetheless seen in the present day, was constructed by compelled laborers. In 1965, Turkish visitor staff have been as soon as allowed to hope in Muslim methods within the cathedral, however then by no means once more. Both are relatively unknown tales, whereas some spectacular issues are not noted of the comedian: the treasury theft in 1975 or Gerhard Richter’s south window, which was put in towards the archbishop’s needs. But for the latter, Strombach would have wanted 72 colours, and his comedian is black and white.

But other than all of the anecdotes and reminders: the way in which this comedian tells the historical past of building and likewise appears beneath the cathedral within the twentieth century, the place an aesthetically extraordinarily questionable civil engineering idea was pursued on the finish of the Sixties, undoubtedly justifies the DAM Prize. But you do not have to have a classical architectural curiosity to admire Strombach’s black and white quantity. It is informative, cleverly informed and extremely imaginative. Especially when it comes to website structure.