For earlier generations the word Dresden made people think of “china." For me, and I suspect for most people my age, the word that comes to mind when I hear Dresen is “fire bombing.” While most of us grew up thinking of World War II as if not a “good war” at least a justifiable one, the incineration of Dresden and the slaughter of 75,000 of its people counts perhaps as the greatest of the war crimes of the allied forces. So it came as a great surprise to discover how much the city has rebuilt in the the last 25 years, recovering both from the horrors of the war and the desolation wrought by socialism.
We had a superb guide for our walking trip this morning. I wish I had a decent picture of the woman; it was a windy day and all the pictures I took of Liliane had her hair blowing across her face. Unlike Alex, our guide from yesterday, she had grown up in Dresden and spent her childhood in the German Democratic Republic. She was coming the to end of high school when the wall fall in Berlin, so she was old enough to remember how oppressive it all was, and yet young enough that the communist system had not destroyed her opportunities for further education and a career.
We began our tour in the middle of the main square right next to the Frauenkirche. This has always been the most important Lutheran church is a traditionally Lutheran city. It was one of the casualties of the allied bombing, and during the years of the atheist government of the DDR, it remained as a pile of rubble in the middle of the city. As soon as east and west Germany were reunited, however, donors from the United States and England provided funds for reconstructing this historic edifice.
Still, as a memorial to the war, a small bit of the original church was left in place, a charred reminder of the horrors of the bombing.
While we were there, our guide gave us some background on the history of Saxony. Although I had always assumed that Saxony functioned more or less as the junior partner of Prussia, it turns out that the two regions of eastern Germany were deeply antipathetic. During medieval and Renaissance times, Saxony was governed by a Prince Elector of the House of Wittin. The put the leader of Saxony just below the Holy Roman Emperor in importance as the seven electors chose the Emperor. After Napoleon finally ended the presence of the Holy Roman Empire, the Prince Elector became King of Saxony. Even after the unification of Germany in the late nineteenth century, the regional kings retained their titles although real power had passed to the Kaiser.
The Prince Electors and Kings of Saxony lived in the Dresdner Residenzschloss, usually rendered in English as Dresden Castle. The castle was severely burned in 1701, and it was reconstructed by perhaps the greatest of the Saxon kings, Augustus the Strong. In the late 19th century a great mural called the “Procession of the Princes” was constructed to show the different rulers of Saxony in one great parade.
Although it looks like a tapestry, the Procession is actually constructed of about twenty thousand porcelain tiles. Because porcelain is fired at a high heat, the mural actually survived the fire storm of 1945 with minimal damage. Colors are still vivid.
Augustus was not only the king of Saxony, but he was offered the crown of Poland. There was one catch, however: the Pole were willing to accept a foreign ruler, but not a Protestant one. Much as Henri of Navarre decided that “Paris vaut bien un messe” Augustus decided that becoming a Catholic was a price he was willing to pay for such an extension to his lands. However, breaking with the tradition of "cuius regio, eius religio,” the principle that the ruler’s religion would become that of his people, Augustus freely allowed his subjects to be either Lutheran or Catholic. In this way, he pioneered the idea of freedom of religion long before it became a principle of Enlightenment thought.
As a Catholic, Augustus needed a church and he had the current cathedral of the city built right next to the castle. It is a magnificent Baroque structure.
The cathedral, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was connected to the palace to that the rulers could easily hear Mass from the royal box.
As a ruler, Augustus was obsessed not only with power but also with beautiful objects. He adored porcelain, at one point saying he had a “porcelain sickness.” He also loved intricate objects in gold and ivory. The Grünes Gewölbe or “Green Vault” of the palace contains the treasures that he and his successor commissioned and collected. He saw many of these including these intricate clocks
There are devotional objects
drinking goblets
and pure objects d’arte.
I have to admit that after a while all of this became kind of overwhelming.
We also went to Zwinger Palace. This surrounds a magnificent central courtyard.
The tower at the end has a carillon of porcelain bells that plays a portion of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons three times a day. We were present as it played today.
Porcelain bells will never replace bronze bells for volume, but they were beautifully pitched and sounded lovely.
John and I returned after the tour to the ship where we had lunch and a nap. Although there were plenty more art museums to see in Dresden, we decided to look for something quite different, Dresden’s bohemian neighborhood in the “Outer New Town” area. This was a part of Dresden that had not been bombed during the war, yet by 1990 it was in such bad shape that few believed it could be saved. Dresden residents had a saying, “You do not need bombs to create ruins.” Now it is on the cusp of serious gentrification and its residents now are fighting to preserve its SoHo-in-the-seventies ambience.
One of the reasons tourists like us come to visit this neighborhood is the Kunsthofpassage. This is a series of courtyards with different whimsical themes.
The most famous part is this one, a giant device that makes music when it rains.
After checking out this neighborhood, John and I went back to the center because I heard that there was going to be a free concert right outside the Semperoper, the Dresden Opera House.
As it turned out, however, it was going to be the live simulcast of a concert later in the evening, so we did not stay. We stopped briefly in the cathedral. Some kind of event — but not Mass — was ending and we did get a chance briefly to hear the famous Silberman organ.
The town was lively as we walked back to the boat with all kinds of street performers including a guy who had been blowing enormous bubbles all day to the delight of children.
