Power Places and the Master Builders of Antiquity by Frank Joseph

Author:Frank Joseph
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ancient Mysteries
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2018-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 23.2. View of Lower Arcade: Small Stations of the Cross at the Grotto of the Redemption. Photograph by MissouriRichardson.

Throughout the site are many superbly sculpted statues, all of white Carrara marble from the Apennine Mountains in Italy, imported at a cost more than $100,000. The most outstanding piece is a faithful re-creation of Michelangelo’s Pietà set atop a forty-foot-high hill of minerals. Close by is an artificial lake where white swans glide through the grotto’s reflected image. Walking distance away is St. Peter and Paul’s Church. The Christmas chapel inside contains a single Brazilian amethyst weighing over three hundred pounds. The twenty-two-foot-high maplewood altar was hand carved for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, when it won first prize in an international carpentry competition.

As though the Grotto of the Redemption was not impressive enough in itself, the story of its creation is even more amazing. It is the conception and work of one man, Paul Dobberstein, a physically slight man from Germany who arrived in the United States to study for the Catholic priesthood. Father Louis Greving, who much later became Dobberstein’s helper and took over construction of the grotto, relates how the young seminarian became critically ill with pneumonia.

“As he fought for his life,” Greving stated, “he prayed to the Blessed Virgin to intercede for him. He promised to build a shrine in her honor if he lived. The illness passed, the student completed his studies, and, after his ordination, he came to West Bend [Iowa] as a pastor, in 1898. For over a decade, he was stockpiling rocks and precious stones. The actual work of building the grottoes began in 1912. Before 1947, all the work of the grottoes was by hand labor; that is, the cement, mortar, rocks, steel, and precious stones were moved to the building site and placed on the building platform or scaffolds by bucket and wheelbarrow.

“Only in 1947, when perhaps eighty percent of the gigantic project was completed was an electric hoist installed to make the work lighter for the ailing artist. Most architects and contractors would hesitate a long time before undertaking a project such as the Grotto of the Redemption. It is doubtful whether it can or ever will be duplicated. The sheer bulk of the achievement is startling when we consider that most of the manual labor was done by two men, and practically all the artistic endeavor was done by Father Dobberstein single-handed.”1

No less remarkable, Dobberstein resorted to no architect’s plans, no blueprints or sketches, no paperwork of any kind to construct the grottoes. The vast project, from its conception after the turn of the twentieth century until the man’s death in 1954, was carried entirely in his imagination. Nor was his work completed. For the next forty years Father Greving continued to expand it, adding more precious stones. All the materials—minerals, labor, and equipment—were donated over the decades by numerous persons inspired by Dobberstein’s vision and achievement.

He suffered many personal hardships in its construction, including several serious accidents, once when scaffolding on which he was standing collapsed.

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