The German stonemason is sitting at the plastic kitchen table cutting bulbs of garlic with a blunt knife, drowning the slices in butter, covering the spread with a leaf of spinach and then rolling his lunch in a khubz bread between sips of German coffee and long-life milk.

It has been a good morning: hammering away at Omani marble under a January sun, far away from the bitterly cold European winter. He started with a large piece of rough marble composite from Jebel Howrah, drawing his cut lines with a pencil as long as a man’s arm, tracing graphite against the rough surface. His moustache and nose ring turned pale with the dust that inevitable followed, as a generator and electric cutter took over. “The electric tools are for when we get lazy,�he admits, and quickly sheds them for the real stuff: an array for hardened instruments that wouldn’t look out of place in a Medieval torture chamber. “Never,�he says with a half-smile, “get into a fight with a stonemason.�This is before he starts pecking away at the surface of dull white with a razor-edged hammer, roughing up the surface to pockmarked perfection, revealing spots of the brilliant sub-surface.

Florian Schröfer is in Oman till March, for the restoration of 4,000 year-old ruins �structures that dig up more questions with each excavation �far away from the infinite detail of 500 year-old Gothic German architecture reproduced in his reference books. If architecture is, as Goethe described, frozen music, then stonemasons are its unsung heroes. For the names that monuments elevate above their spires are those of their architects and royal patrons �but who knows the stonemasons, the men who cut the rock at the Brandenburg Gate, built up the Arc de Triomphe, chiselled the Sphinx, hammered at the Great Wall?

Little has changed over the centuries, and the labour and tradition that went into the monuments that tourist brochures across the world tout is still alive and well, kindled by little-known groups. Florian belongs to one such loose association, known as the Gesellen. This comes from the German Geselle, roughly translating into ‘companion�(given that they can be clubbed into a group) or journeyman (a slight misnomer, but one that refers to the journeys they are supposed to embark on, to travel and learn the craft).

LEARNING STONE
How to become a stonemason

Florian started with something a lot softer, studying biology and hoping to become a naturalist. But he soon realised that such ideas sounded good but didn’t necessarily make good career decisions. “Naturalists usually become taxi drivers,�he says cynically, and “biologists play God with DNA. This was too hot an iron for me.�Instead, he chose stone, taking after his grandfather who was a master-builder.

Florian studied at the stonemason school in Demitz-Thumitz, East Germany, one of a handful in the country. This Steinmetzschule was founded in 1908 in an area where lots of granite had been discovered and quarried. Three years later, he became a Geselle, after studying techniques, stones, load bearing, calculations, fire regulations and many rules and theories that had developed over centuries of European building. “I needed an average of four out of six in my test. As part of my practical examinations, I had to build a balustrade in 52 hours: 60cm high, 20 by 20cm square. And carve out a sentence in Latin script in eight hours. In addition, there were also written tests and calculations, and the planning to build a hypothetical house. The theoretical part of the examination depends on the school, while the practical part is given by the guild.�br>
TRADITION
Setting themselves apart

Florian sticks out of the Omani landscape like a wigwam in the Bundestag, in his bell-bottom trousers with dual zippers, corduroy waistcoat, Chinese-collared white shirt, and, most impressively, a hat that seems to have been imported from the 18th century. But this isn’t German high fashion displayed in the interiors of the Dhahira, except for the nose ring, that is. Such clothes are the uniform of the guild, and Florian wears his every day, in full glory. Every detail has meaning and purpose: the thick corduroys weather the rough surfaces and cold, the leather patches prevent tears. The jacket has six buttons for each working day of the week, the waistcoat has eight for their hours in a day. The bell-bottoms cover the boots so that stone chips don’t fly in, while letting enough air through. The hat is more complex: “We have three types �cylindrical (the kind that Florian wears), melon-shaped and large-brimmed. The last are for the lazy one’s who don’t want to be seen �the carpenters!

“We even have a special handshake, a little scratch of the fingers, but no one really has time for such traditions �today it is all about time and business. In the old days, we were allowed a Blue Monday, so we could recover from Sunday night’s revelry, and were off from Saturday.�br>
And then there is the gold earring, which serves as payment for one’s gravediggers. But perhaps the most romantic and compelling tradition of the Geselle is the Wanderschaft, where the stone worker is supposed to travel the world and learn from masters in different countries, returning not before three years and one day. Florian hasn’t done this yet, but has managed a bit of travel with the restoration projects he has worked on through Bennert, the company he works for. “It is possible,�he insists, “to see German carpenters dressed like me stand in front of Ayer’s Rock.�They’d be wearing black of course, instead of the khaki of the stonemasons that adapts to the dust of rock rather well.

TIME
The modern stonemason

What does all this wandering lead to? Florian targets restoration projects because, he says, “They involve more traditional stonemasonry where we use our hands, just as they did hundreds of years ago, instead of the high-powered tools that are commonplace at any building site today.�Old buildings in need of repair might be a good market category too, because Europe has moved away from the grand stone buildings we have come to associate it with.

Concrete buildings are typically cheaper, better insulated and more adaptable to design than earthier materials, so why might people still build with stone? “Because stone stands for a kind of lifestyle that you cannot replicate with concrete, for the sheer weight of history. I prefer sandstone over all others, for its texture and colours, which can range from reds and browns to greens.

“I think the pinnacle of stone architecture was reached in Europe during the Gothic period. After this there was too much kitsch in the styles of the Renaissance and the Baroque. Lots of little angels with wings pouring water �yuck!�That obviously wouldn’t get Florian to break out into the old stonemason’s song, Rochlitzer Zunfdlied. Cupid is too sugary sweet for him �we’re talking dark German coffee, garlic cut with Swiss tools and a can of bitter brew before you hit the sack. Stonemasons are supposed to go through a rite of passage that involves getting a nail hammered through one’s ear, although Florian says that his nose ring was painful enough.

GOTHIC
Schools of thought

Cupid pouring sweetness over the masses was supposed to be the elevated art over the heavy Gothic style; the term ‘Gothic�itself was used derisively from the 16th century to describe a culture that was thought barbaric. Renaissance, or Rinascimento as the Italians called it, rendered Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic art as being without aesthetic value. Such views sound terribly wrong now, of course, but this period was all about a rebirth of Classical styles. Think Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael.

But visions of the Sistine Chapel dissolve as the stonemason reaches with stubby fingers across the dinner table, grabbing a piece of papaya. “Architects fly too high.�The fruit pops into the mouth. “There would be nothing without the stonemason.�