A Prize-Winner Makes a Nobel Gesture

For more than 50 years he cradled the image in his mind. It was always with him, in his dreams, in his heart.

The image was of a cathedral, an 18th-century baroque cathedral with fairy-tale spires and a bell-shaped dome, topped with a golden cross and orb. The Frauenkirche, beloved symbol of Dresden, where Bach had once played the organ. He could close his eyes and picture it, towering over the Elbe, the most dazzling sight he had ever seen.

And he could picture himself, as a boy, watching from the hills of Saxony as British and American bombs rained down, reducing the cathedral and the city to rubble, killing tens of thousands of people.

Through war and peace, he dreamed of it, at universities in Germany and later in the United States. It stayed with him as he became one of the world’s leading scientists, dissecting the structure of the human cell, gathering prize after prize. And when Gunter Blobel was finally awarded the most prestigious prize of all--the 1999 Nobel prize for medicine--he carried the image with him to Stockholm.

There, at age 63, Blobel shared his dream with the world.

They gave him a check for nearly $1 million. And then they listened in amazement as he told them what he would do with the money.

He would spend it on the cathedral in his mind. He would rebuild it. A half-century after it became dust, Gunter Blobel would use his newfound wealth to give the Frauenkirche back to the world.

Blobel was 8 the first time he saw the Frauenkirche in the winter of 1945. His family was among the refugees who swarmed into Dresden from the East, fleeing the Russian army. They were heading to Saxony, where they would live until it was safe to return.

It was the first time the boy had ever seen a city. He was enchanted.

The winding cobblestone streets seemed to have surprises around every corner: courtyards and arches and palaces. And towering over it all, the mighty Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), the 200-year-old Protestant cathedral with its dark sandstone dome. The “Stinerne Glocke” it was called. The Bell of Stone.

“It was such a happy city,” Blobel says.

One week later, it lay in ruins.

Blobel remembers the roar of the RAF Lancasters and the American Flying Fortresses as they bombed Dresden on Feb. 13 and 14. He remembers the yellowish-brown cloud that hung over the city, and the bewilderment of adults who wondered why Dresden, a city of no military significance, had been targeted.

All that was left of the Frauenkirche were two stumps of walls.

“Even as a child,” Blobel said, “I thought it seemed so sad.”

For years, the ruins of Dresden stood as a symbol of the insanity of war.

It wasn’t until 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall that people began to talk seriously about rebuilding it. Other buildings--the Semper opera house, the Zwinger, the Hofkirche (Roman Catholic cathedral)--had been rebuilt. But the Frauenkirche was special. More than any other building, it dominated the city skyline. More than anything else, its absence symbolized for Dresdeners all they had lost.

The talk of rebuilding filtered to New York City, to a cluttered office in Rockefeller University, to a snowy-haired scientist with a plaster model of the Frauenkirche on his desk.

“It was like a call,” Blobel said. “And I had to answer the call.”

Blobel fled his communist upbringing as soon as he was old enough, defecting to West Berlin, eventually following his oldest brother to the United States, where he earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. He runs the Laboratory of Cell Biology at Rockefeller University.

Even as a young scientist, Blobel startled the academic world with his discoveries, mapping a “ZIP Code” for proteins in the cell--work that influenced research in cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s and AIDS. His lab attracted students from throughout the world.

“The structure of the cell is like the structure of a beautiful building,” he would tell them. “There is beauty in both, in the building blocks, in the lines.”

Sometimes, after long hours peering through microscopes, the scientist would describe the most beautiful building of all.

Many of Blobel’s students became famous scientists in their own right. But they never forgot their professor. And when he won the Nobel in 1999, they matched his gesture with one of their own. They organized a science symposium, one that drew scientists and former students from all over the world. They came to Dresden to share their science--and their professor’s dream.

“To understand Gunter,” said his brother, Reiner, “you have to start here.”

He was walking down a narrow street in Freiberg, a medieval castle town 25 miles from Dresden, where the family moved after the war. Here, Blobel cultivated his love for science, and for the arts. He sang in a boys choir in the cathedral, played in the grounds of the castle, explored the abandoned silver mines in the hills.

These days, Blobel is a celebrity in his hometown. He seemed both humbled and thrilled as he strolled through the streets, surrounded by academics and townspeople. Breathlessly, infectiously, he talked--about opera and architecture and history.

Blobel talked about everything except why he has devoted so much energy, taken so much time away from his life and his lab, to rebuild a cathedral.

In Freiberg, as in Dresden, that is the last thing he needs to explain.

Blobel will say only that his family suffered like everyone else during the war. His eldest sister was killed in a train bombing. His family was displaced. But Blobel refuses to dwell on these things, saying his family survived better than many others.

Others in the United States took up the cause of the Frauenkirche: Frank Wobst, a banker in Columbus, Ohio, whose family survived the bombing; Carl Wolf, a New York doctor whose grandparents were from East Germany; John Schmitz, a Washington lawyer with German ancestry and government connections.

But few have devoted the time, or emotion, of Blobel.

He set up a fund-raising foundation, Friends of Dresden; he made ties with similar groups in Germany and in Britain; and he attended fund-raising events on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sometimes the scientist wonders how much more he can give. But then another check comes in, another gesture is made. In England, a craftsman--son of one of the bombers--creates an exact replica of the golden orb that melted during the inferno. In Poland, a Jewish community donates money for cathedral stones. In the United States, a retired staff sergeant who was on a B-17 during the bombing, mails Blobel a check for $1,000.

Dresden streets still bear scars of the bombing: a melted copper arch, gutted gables, broken-winged cherubs. But signs of renewal are everywhere. In the center, under an enormous network of scaffolding and tarps, the columns of the Frauenkirche are being rebuilt. Work is beginning on the stone dome, using the same building methods that were used two centuries ago. Original stones, salvaged from the rubble, are also being used.

High on the scaffolding, Blobel peppers the architects with questions. He regales the scientists who accompany him with descriptions of the work. Never mind the millions that still have to be raised; by 2005, he tells them, the $200-million reconstruction will be completed.

Smiling, he leans over and strokes a slab of sandstone, pale, not yet darkened by age. Soon it will become part of the dome of the Frauenkirche--of the cathedral in his mind.