When I visited Ahrweiler in 2019, St. Laurentius Church stood at the heart of the old town, surrounded by the medieval streets and houses enclosed within the historic city walls. From outside, its heavy stone walls, buttresses and tall Gothic windows give the building a restrained and almost austere appearance. Inside, however, I encountered a much richer world: medieval wall paintings, stained glass, sculpture and, most strikingly, an unusual crucifix whose shape immediately attracted my attention.

The history of the parish reaches back at least to the beginning of the thirteenth century. The present church began to take shape in the second half of that century, when Ahrweiler was developing as an important settlement under the influence of Prüm Abbey. Built largely from local stone, St. Laurentius developed as a Gothic hall church, with nave and aisles rising to approximately the same height. This arrangement creates an unusually unified interior: rather than separating the central nave sharply from the side aisles, columns and vaults form a broad continuous space.

The architecture is only one part of the church’s importance. During restoration work in the early twentieth century, layers of later paint were removed and remarkable medieval wall paintings were rediscovered. Dating largely from the fifteenth century, these frescoes depict biblical scenes and saints and reveal how different the interior must once have appeared. What today may seem like bare Gothic stone architecture was originally part of a much more colourful visual environment.

As I moved through the church, however, one object held my attention more than anything else: an extraordinary crucifix in which the arms of the cross rise sharply upward rather than extending horizontally.

This form is known as a Gabelkreuz — a Forked Cross. The cross divides into two upward-reaching branches, creating a Y-shaped form that resembles a tree. Such crucifixes appeared particularly in the German-speaking regions during the later Middle Ages. They belong to a religious culture that increasingly emphasized the physical suffering of Christ and encouraged the believer to contemplate the Passion in intensely human terms.

The body of Christ follows the unusual shape of the cross. His arms are stretched steeply upward, while the weight of the torso seems to pull downward. The result is deliberately uncomfortable to look at. This is very different from representations of Christ as a calm and triumphant figure. Here the emphasis is on pain, mortality and the vulnerability of the human body.

Yet the forked form contains another meaning. Its resemblance to branches connects the cross with the medieval Christian idea of the Tree of Life. The instrument of execution is transformed symbolically into a tree from which salvation emerges. Death and life therefore occupy the same image: the cross represents suffering and mortality, but at the same time resurrection and the promise of eternal life.

Forked crosses are also sometimes described as Pestkreuze — Plague Crosses. In medieval Europe, communities repeatedly confronted plague, famine and other epidemics. Images emphasizing Christ’s wounded and suffering body offered believers a figure with whom their own physical suffering could be identified. For people living in a world where death from disease could enter a town suddenly and without explanation, such an image must have possessed an emotional power that is difficult to reproduce today.

This was what made the cross particularly compelling to me as a photographer. At first I was attracted by its unusual geometry. Only after looking more closely did the physical tension of the figure become apparent. The upward-reaching branches and collapsing body create an image in which suffering and hope exist simultaneously. The object is not simply an unusual variation of the crucifix; it reflects the fears and religious imagination of the medieval society that created it.

Other periods have also left their marks inside St. Laurentius. The medieval frescoes coexist with later furnishings, stained glass and modern interventions. The bronze main portal, created by artist Ernst Alt, belongs to the modern history of the church. Like many European religious buildings that have remained in continuous use for centuries, St. Laurentius is therefore not the product of a single historical moment. Each generation has repaired, altered or added something to the space.

When I photographed the church in 2019, I could not have known that only two years later another catastrophe would become part of its history.

In July 2021, extreme rainfall caused the Ahr River to flood catastrophically, devastating Ahrweiler and many other communities in the valley. Water entered St. Laurentius and severely damaged the interior. The disaster transformed a building that had survived centuries of fires, wars and social change into part of a new and very recent history of destruction and recovery.

The church had always carried images of human suffering within its walls — perhaps most powerfully in the Gabelkreuz that I had photographed. After the flood, this medieval image acquired an unintended contemporary resonance. A work created in a world repeatedly confronted by catastrophe was now standing inside a community that had experienced catastrophe again, centuries later.

Extensive restoration followed the flood, and the church eventually returned to liturgical and community life. For the people of Ahrweiler, the restoration was not simply the conservation of an architectural monument. St. Laurentius stands in the centre of the old town and has been part of the community for generations; bringing it back into use was also part of the recovery of the town itself.

Looking back at my photographs from 2019, I therefore see them differently today. At the time I was photographing a Gothic church, its medieval frescoes and an extraordinary forked cross. I was interested primarily in architecture, religious imagery and the mystery of an unfamiliar form.

Two years later, history added another layer to those photographs. The medieval Gabelkreuz speaks of suffering transformed into hope; after the 2021 flood, the church itself came to embody something similar — a building wounded by disaster, restored, and returned to the life of its community.