#13 - The Frauenkirche in Dresden, a historic church

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[brcibake]

I decided A and D were contenders but ultimately went with D. A does solve the discrepancy to an extent, but if they were modeling the church the way it was in the past D makes more sense to me.

[nicholaspavic]

Hi brci,
Remember that the correct answer to a Resolve question will often be an answer choice that contains a possible cause of the situation. While Answer Option (D) contains the suggestion that the organ had been modified several times, keep in mind, that does not explain the cause for the choice by the foundation, despite the offer of payment by the donor. Consider it this way, what if the "modifications" mentioned in Answer Option (D) only amounted to a repainting of the organ or some other extremely superficial change? Would that ever cause the foundation to reject the organ?

Now consider Answer (A)'s suggestion that the organ "cannot adequately produce much of the organ music now played in church services and concerts." That is a very solid reason for deciding not to add the organ back into the church. The foundation doesn't need something in the church that it won't use. Answer (A) offers causality for the decision and is definitely the strongest of all the answer choices and thus is correct.

Thanks for the great question!

[harvoolio]

I had initially chosen (D) but changed it to (A) because of the word "modified" which would still allow for the 18th century organ to be in use at the time of the church's destruction in WWII.

But had "replaced" been substituted for "modified" in (D) would (D) still be eliminated because even if the organ had been replaced with another organ when the church was destroyed, we are told that "The foundation doing the reconstruction took extraordinary care to return the church to its original form.", not the form the church had when destroyed in WWII?

Thanks.

[Daniel Stern]

Substituting "replaced" for "modified" would not have saved answer choice D; the problem with D is that it does nothing to explain why the foundation made the choice of a modern organ over the original organ. Whether they would have recreated the organ as it was when first built, or as modified/ replaced by the time of WWII is irrelevant -- they put in a modern organ, and our credited answer has to explain that choice when all of their other reconstruction choices were to go with the original church design.

Good luck in your studies,
Dan

[1month2go]

I'm still having trouble understanding why A is correct. The stimulus clearly states that the foundation put emphasis on returning the church to its original form, using a modern organ would thus be contradictory - hence the paradox. I don't understand how the question of functionality described in answer A resolves the original form side of the paradox...Are we supposed to understand that the foundation would "take extraordinary care to return the church to its original form" UNLESS it didn't serve the current needs of the church" -- if so, where is that shown in the stimulus? Because as I understand it we're really supposed to base these answers on "the facts" - LR Bible.

I had selected answer D because to me it means, the organ in its original form was altered so many times anyway so they couldn't really modify it to the original form. I see that this answer is not the strongest, but I don't yet see answer A as that much stronger.

Hope you can help, and hope my reasoning made a bit of sense.

Thanks!

[Alex Bodaken]

1month2go,

Thanks for your question! I agree this is a tricky one. One way of looking at a resolve the paradox question is that we are looking for the best reason for this paradox to exist even if we can't fully resolve it. So while I agree it is hard to get to answer choice (A) unless we assume that they wouldn't build anything that doesn't meet the current needs of the church, the idea that "An eighteenth-century baroque organ cannot adequately produce much of the organ music now played in church services and concerts" does represent a very strong reason that they wouldn't want to build that type of organ - after all, that would defeat the entire reason they are building this church! So that is a very good reason for this paradox (building a modern organ despite the commitment to restoring the church in it's original form) to exist. By contrast, (D) simply isn't as strong - the organ being modified a couple of times doesn't explain why the church still couldn't return it to it's original form, as the stimulus says they want to do.

Hope that helps!
Alex

[fersian]

Alex, could one reason that 'A' is correct is because in the stimulus, it says that the historic church has been reconstructed TO SERVE... Would it make sense that answer 'A is indirectly saying that because the organ being reconstructed would NOT serve, then that is why it isn't being rebuilt?

[Brook Miscoski]

fersian,

You are correct to focus on that language. The stimulus states that the purpose of the restoration is to serve as a place for church and cultural events. (A) explains that it wouldn't accomplish the purpose to restore the organ to its original form. It doesn't matter whether the organ had been modified several times (D), because that's unrelated to the governing principal the stimulus assigned, because we have no idea whether the building itself had been modified prior to its destruction (thus no idea of whether (D) introduces a distinction), and because it's 75 years after WWII, so the leap to modern isn't explained by (D).

[quan-tang@hotmail.com]

The reason I still think D is a good answer because by stating that the organ was modified several times, it indicated that it is not contradictory to 'The foundation doing the reconstruction took extraordinary care to return the church to its original form' but given different definition of 'original form'.

1. the original form as when the organ was designed and built in 18th century.
2. the original form as when the organ was destroyed in ww2.

the answer solved the paradox of why the rebuilder did not reconstruct the organ to 1 because instead they rebuilt the organ to 2, which was already after several modification and modernization.

Hi brci,
Remember that the correct answer to a Resolve question will often be an answer choice that contains a possible cause of the situation. While Answer Option (D) contains the suggestion that the organ had been modified several times, keep in mind, that does not explain the cause for the choice by the foundation, despite the offer of payment by the donor. Consider it this way, what if the "modifications" mentioned in Answer Option (D) only amounted to a repainting of the organ or some other extremely superficial change? Would that ever cause the foundation to reject the organ?

Now consider Answer (A)'s suggestion that the organ "cannot adequately produce much of the organ music now played in church services and concerts." That is a very solid reason for deciding not to add the organ back into the church. The foundation doesn't need something in the church that it won't use. Answer (A) offers causality for the decision and is definitely the strongest of all the answer choices and thus is correct.

Thanks for the great question!