ThyssenKrupp Magazin

44 MASTER BUILDER
She looks very elegant and stylish in her trousers suit in her little
office in a building on the Domplatte, Cologne’s Cathedral Square.
Desk, visitors’ table and cupboards all exude the charm of pieces of furniture
that have outlived the past. However, the computer on her desk
makes it immediately clear that Barbara Schock-Werner is not living in
the past – by no means. “We are living in the present and are therefore
modern. I want to demonstrate this outwardly too. I am fulfilling a function
here, I use the materials of our time – and I will disappear again in
a few years, when old age comes.”
She is not lacking in examples. Modern materials such as stainless
steel were purposely put to use in the newly renovated treasure
vault, which can gain a lot from them because of their elegance, aesthetics
and clear lines.
As is always the case with aesthetic categories, they say a great
deal about the person they proclaim. Certainly, Cologne Cathedral is
much more than a contemptible building site for the head of the Dombauhütte,
the cathedral building works. Correspondingly, Barbara
Schock-Werner would never describe her function as a job, but rather
as a “really marvelous task” in which, as she honestly admits, there are
sometimes days when she has the impression that normality is the exception,
and on the other hand that abstruse, peculiar and crazy events
are the rule. Nonetheless, the cathedral master builder does not seek
confrontation, but discussion, in order to find a balance between the
various interests.
THE CATHEDRAL MASTER BUILDER IS IN CONTROL
It is really fortunate that the cathedral belongs to itself, and to no one
else. Under law, the cathedral is registered to itself – which is why no
one can make any claims to ownership. However, they can claim to perform
patronage duties or charitable works, in the manner of the
Domkapitel, the cathedral chapter, for example, or the Dombauverein,
the cathedral construction society.
Anyone who is the focal point of such different lobbies requires a
personal robustness. No one would deny that the 50-year-old master
builder has this, from background onwards. She grew up in Stuttgart.
Her Swabian craftsman’s family left its mark: “I went through the German
education system diagonally, so to speak: Mittlere Reife [the German
intermediate school certificate], then trained as a draughtswoman,
because I was always interested on the one hand in art and on the other
hand in mathematics. This was followed by the study of architecture at
the technical university in Stuttgart.” To continue the diagonal: On the
side, she also completed practical training on a building site as a brick-
Supporting
steel corners