In 1956 my grandfather was in the army and stationed in Ulm, Germany. On multiple occasions he told me about the amazing Munster, still the tallest church in the world and built by the townspeople over a period of 400 years. He talked about how much he enjoyed the Christmas service there and how proud the city was of their cathedral. During WWII, they lit it up extremely bright to try and make sure it wasn’t destroyed. It worked, despite over 80% of the city totally destroyed. As an architect I find it important when a building moves people. This church was even the inspiration for Ken Follet’s "Pillars of the Earth".
A few years ago, my grandma gave me some photos he took during his time here. In October of 2023, I finally made it to this place having decided to recreate his photos as best I could. I only stayed there for one afternoon/night, but was actually able to find each of the places he snapped photos from. This was a completely fun exercise to try and do, 67 years later, and put me in a place of happiness I cannot describe.
So enjoy! Not the most amazing photos on either end, but a wonderful journey...
The quest...find these locations...
1956 by
Michael Stroh, on Flickr
This one was a challenge because this is now a railway bridge and has a sound wall on both sides. So you can no longer get the original image from across the street...
I didn't have any idea how to find this one and happened to look up on my way back across a bridge...
This statue of Kaiser Wilhelm was a bit out of the way and turned out to have been moved when the new bank building behind was built...
My grandfather at age 24...and me at just about twice that age...
I took many more photos of Ulm which I will share here, but I wanted to do these first...
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