Dresden: Encyclopedia II - Dresden - History

Dresden - History

Dresden - Early and pre-war history

An ancient Slavic settlement known as Drežďany ("alluvial forest dwellers") on the northern bank of the river was joined in 1206 by a German town on the southern bank, the heart of the present day Altstadt (“old town”), while the Slavic part is called Neustadt ("new town"). Founder of the city was Dietrich of Meißen, Margrave of Meißen.

Since 1270, starting with Henry the Illustrious, Dresden became the capital of the margravate. After the death of the former, however, the city became property of the King of Bohemia and , later, the Margrave of the Brandenburg. It was restoered to the Wettin dynasty about 1319. From 1485 it was the seat of the dukes of Saxony, and from 1547 the electors as well.

From 1697-1706 and 1709-1733 Elector Frederick Augustus I ruled from Dresden as King August the Strong of Poland; the city is also known as Drezno in Poland. Because he planned to make Dresden the most important royal residence, Augustus set out to discover the Chinese secret of porcelain (‘white gold’); under his rule, European porcelain was invented in Dresden and Meißen. He also gathered many of the best architects and painters from all over Europe to Dresden. His reign marked the beginning of Dresden's emergence as a leading European city for technology and art. His son Frederick August II also reigned from Dresden as Augustus III of Poland from 1734-1763: during his reign the city was seat of a treaty that ended the Second Silesian War, and suffered heavy destructions in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763).

Between 1806 and 1918 it was the capital of the Kingdom of Saxony (which was from 1871 a part of the German Empire). During the Napoleonic Wars the French emperor made it his base of operation, winning here a famous battle on August 27 of that year.

During the 19th century, the city became a major center of industry, including automobile production, food processing, and the production of medical equipment. The city also developed into an important center for the international sale of art works and antiques. The city’s population quadrupled from 95,000 in 1849 to 396,000 in 1900 as a result of industrialization.

In the early 20th century Dresden was particularly well-known for its camera works, such as Ihagee and Pentacon, which produced the Praktica , and the cigarette factories, one of which was in the impressive Yenidze, a building with a multicoloured glass roof shaped like a mosque which still stands today.

The city has suffered repeated destruction: by fire in 1491, from bombardment by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1760, and during the suppression of the constitutionalist May Uprising in 1849 and the destructive Allied bombing raid of February 1945.

Dresden - World War II

Main article: Bombing of Dresden in World War II

Dresden was not the only German city devastated by World War II bombing, but the bombing of Dresden in 1945 has become one of the most controversial events of that war. It was carpet bombed on the early hours of Valentine's Day, February 13-14 1945. The Altstadt ("old town") side of the Elbe River full of its historical cultural treasures was the most damaged, and left smoldering. Because the raging fires stopped at the river, the newer Neustadt ("new town") ironically became the older side of modern-day Dresden sustaining less damage. In hindsight it is clear that the end of the war was approaching. However at the time Allied forces had only recently regrouped from a German counteroffensive.

The city was not particularly well defended, because as a European cultural center, lacking industry, it was not seen as militarily strategic. Early in the war it had been considered too distant for the Allied bombers to reach in safety, but even when it had been bombed the majority of Dresden's anti-aircraft defences were redeployed elsewhere in Germany. Evidence uncovered after the war shows that Germany's Anti-Aircraft batteries employed "a flak militia of Juveniles" (Führer-Order 20/90/42).

Dresden's reputation for culture is better known than its highly developed optics industry (Carl Zeiss later Praktica), which produced precision aiming devices during the war. In addition many peacetime factories, such as the cigarette factories, had been converted to ammunition factories as part of the policy of "total war". These factories employed mainly local workers but also used Jewish slave labour. Some 300 Jews were kept slave laborers at a camp in Dresden, of these the majority were killed before the war ended, along with almost all of the 6,000 Jews who lived in Dresden before the war (a famous survivor was Dresden native and writer Victor Klemperer). However these targets were not the main reason for the city being bombed. The Red Army was approaching from the East and Dresden was one of two key rail routes with marshalling yards. Although key industrial facilities were destroyed by the bombing (much of their capacity was quickly restored), the main goal of the "area bombing" was to create a fire storm (an objective inspired by the Luftwaffe's raids on Coventry, Bath and London but refined by Britain's Royal Air Force).

Civilian death estimates vary wildly largely as a result of propaganda figures which received widespread publicity at the time, however the most recently available evidence from Friedrich Reichart of Dresden City Museum points to 25,000 deaths, which is less than the number that died in Hamburg, but Dresden was a smaller city. Numbers between 25,000 - 140,000 have been used in official statistics with the communist authorities of Dresden increasing their estimates across time; estimates in Nazi Germany by the Ministry of Propoganda varied between 350,000 and 400,000. At that time, Dresden's population was 600,000, but up to 200,000 refugees were living in cramped apartments and passing through Dresden as the Russians were now only fifty miles away. The entire inner city (15 square kilometres) was utterly devastated, and other quarters were damaged to some degree, the many villa quarters, however, on average much less than others.

Many of the higher estimates are based on a fake TB47 report (which has been visibly altered). However the West German Federal Archive in Koblenz discovered a genuine copy of TB47. The official "Final Report and Situation (TB47)" produced by Reich Commander of the Order Police a month after the bombings. "TB47" is probably a reasonable guide to the order of casualty numbers. It states definite figures of between 18,000 and 22,000 with estimates of final numbers of 25,000 and includes the interesting sentence "Since rumours far exceed the reality, open use can be made of the actual figures."

While some think that the bombing of Dresden was a tragic occurrence that Nazi Germany brought upon itself, others feel it should be treated as a war crime. Others see it as a necessary military action taken to support the Red Army. Fortunately, much of the city's beauty has been restored, thanks to the zeal of the populace in recreating the architecture of ‘old Dresden'. Today Dresden has a strong partnership with the English city Coventry, which was heavily damaged by German air attacks. The comradery is deeply supported by the populace in both cities.

Dresden - Post-war period communist rule

After the Second World War, Dresden became a major industrial center in socialist East Germany with a great deal of research infrastructure. Many important historic buildings were rebuilt, although the communists leaders of the city chose to reconstruct large areas of the city in a bland socialist modern style for economical and ideological reasons, namely to break away from the city's past as the royal capital of Saxony and a stronghold of the German bourgeoisie. However, many of the bombed-out ruins of churches were razed by Soviet authorities in the 1960s instead of being repaired. Among East Germans, Dresden also earned the nickname "the valley of the clueless" because the city's location in a valley prevented its residents from watching West German TV, an illegal but popular pastime among East Germans. On 3 October 1989, (the so-called “battle of Dresden”), a convoy of trains carrying East German refugees from Prague passed through Dresden on its way to West Germany. Local activists and residents, joined in the growing civil disobedience movement spreading across East Germany by staging demonstrations and demanding the removal of the undemocratically-elected communist government.

Dresden - Post-reunification

Dresden has experienced dramatic changes since the reunification of Germany in the early 1990s. The city still has many of its wounds from the bombing raids of 1945 but Dresden has undergone significant reconstruction in recent years. The most important urban renewal/reconstruction project was the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche (“Church of Our Lady”) and the surrounding Neumarkt district. The church, once the city's symbol and considered the world's finest Protestant church, was rebuilt following German reunification in 1991 from the remaining pile of rubble of the original church's ruins thanks to private and corporate donations. It was completed in 2005, a year before Dresden's 800th birthday. The new Frauenkirche was rebuilt according to historical drawings and photographs and is now open to public service since Reformation Day 2005. Despite the inner city’s almost total destruction in World War II, many areas in the central city have been restored to their former glory. The urban renewal process in Dresden will continue for many decades but public and government interest remains high and there are numerous large budget projects underway - both historic reconstructions and modern plans - that will continue the city's recent architectural renaissance.

In 1990 Dresden--an important industrial centre of East Germany--had to struggle with the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and the other export markets in eastern Europe. East Germany had been the richest Communist country but was faced with competition from western Germany after reunification. After 1990 a completely new law and currency system was introduced in the wake of Communism’s downfall, and eastern Germany's infrastructure was largely rebuilt with funds from western Germany. Dresden as a major urban center has developed much faster and more consistently than most other regions in the former East Germany, but the city still faces many social and economic problems which stem from the collapse of the communist system, including high unemployment levels. Many of the industries that made Dresden rich before the Second World War and disappeared under communism have resettled in the city including the optical industry, the high quality foodstuffs industries, and the watchmaking industries (including the Glashütte brand). The city has also attracted many new firms to the region (including AMD, Motorola, net-linx, Toppan Photomasks, Infineon Technologies, and Airbus Industries). Volkswagen is currently manufacturing its Phaeton car model and the Bentley "flying spur" model at a modern factory located in central Dresden, delivered by city tramway.

In 2002, torrential rains caused the Elbe to flood 9 m past its 1845 record height, damaging many landmarks (See 2002 European flood). The destruction from this “millennium flood” is no longer visible, due to the rapidity of reconstruction. Disaster relief for the millennial flood came from around the world.

In 2004 the United Nation's cultural organization UNESCO declared Dresden and the surrounding section of Elbe river valley to be a "World Heritage" site.

Dresden remains a major cultural epicenter of historical memory, owing to the city's destruction in World War II. Every year on February 13, the anniversary of the major British fire-bombing raid that destroyed most of the city, tens of thousands of demonstrators gather to commemorate the event. Similar ceremonies held during the period of communism were specifically directed at demonizing the Western Allies, above all the United States. Since reunification, the tone of the ceremonies has taken on a more neutral and pacifist tone. In recent years, however, right-wing extremist skinheads have tried to instrumentalize the event for their own political ends. Affiliated with the radical right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), they cite the bombing of Dresden in order to portray Germans as the real victims of the Second World War, and try to take advantage of anti-American sentiment to do it. In 2005, Dresden was host to the largest Neo-Nazi demonstration in the post-war history of Germany. Between five and eight thousand Neo-Nazis took part, mourning for the victims of what they call the Allied bomb-holocaust (German: Alliierter Bombenholocaust).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki