Post-Soviet Dresden: Filling in the Gaps
A mural gracing the side of the Kulturpalast is a conspicuous reminder of Dresden’s recent history
Like many cities in the former DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, in English ‘German Democratic Republic’ or simply East Germany), post-Second World War Dresden followed principles of urban governance that were distinctly opposed to those that had reigned for centuries beforehand. The Soviet method of planning emphasized using cities as units of production and valued the creation of new residential blocks, spacious boulevards, and symbolically-charged civic spaces. The Soviet ethos also disregarded urban manifestations of past grandeur, and indeed disregarded many of the principles that underlaid the traditional development of German cities.
The tragedy that was played out in the city at the end of the Second World War is all too well known: the Imperial capital, with its meticulously-kept Baroque Altstadt (‘Old City’), was flattened by Allied bombs in the final year of the war, killing tens of thousands of civilians. What is not often communicated, however, is how the Soviet regime managed (or, rather, mismanaged) the reconstruction of the city in the postwar era, and how the city is only now patching up the holes in its urban fabric.
A former Soviet parking garage being redeveloped into a dense, live/work development
The administrators of the DDR were Germans; they often empathized with their citizens’ demands to reconstruct their cities and monuments to their former, characteristically German, state. The Soviet regime responded to the desires of the remaining citizens of Dresden and rebuilt some of the city’s significant cultural sites, such as the Zwinger Palace and the Semper Opera House. However, many civic monuments — particularly churches — were not rebuilt; the remains of the Gothic Sophienkirche were razed by authorities in the 1950s. While the historic city escaped much of the Soviet Realism-style architecture that was being promulgated throughout the communist world, certain Soviet elements creeped into the peripheral areas of the central city: the box-mirror Kulturpalast replaced the city’s former concert hall, and the stretch leading north from the Hauptbahnhof (central railway station) to the city was splashed with concrete office towers, hotels, and parking garages.
The periphery of Soviet Dresden, however, became a lesson in communist city planning: block-style apartment complexes and new factories sprung up on former farmland, while older neighbourhoods that survived the bombardment were left to rot. These districts, scaled not for the pedestrian, absorbed the local reconstruction funds, funneling them away from central districts. The old city was bisected by a series of ugly six-lane boulevards whose construction was made all the more simple by the previous work of Allied bombers. The Altstadt was no longer a thriving central district but an historically-motivated patchwork reassembly through which suburban commuters could drive at highway speed.
The freshly-reconstructed Frauenkirche and the surrounding Neumarkt redevelopment
The fate of Dresden, as that of all East German cities (for better or worse), changed with the fall of the DDR and the reunification of Germany in 1990. The city’s tourist economy swelled with an influx of newly-permitted visitors, and many former residents who had moved away from the city moved back. 19th-century apartment buildings, that had been abandoned in favour of new Soviet-style apartment blocks, began to be renovated. Some symbols of Soviet planning, such as the brooding Stasi headquarters and a huge multi-storey parking garage on Prager Straße, were torn down; others were adapted, sometimes with rather ironic results: nearly the entire swath of postwar buildings leading from the Hauptbahnhof to the Altstadt have been converted into a giant, western-style shopping district. In 2005, the beloved Frauenkirche, which once crowned the city’s skyline, was finally re-consecrated. It will be at the centre of a complete reconstruction of the Neumarkt district according to exact pre-war standards — a world shift from the Brutalist architecture that was hastily erected on the site after the war. Similar projects throughout the central city aim to finish off the reconstruction that the communist regime failed to do.
Some buildings, such as this one in the Neustadt, have escaped renovation and might never be salvaged
In spite of much optimism for the future of Dresden, there are inevitable problems on the city’s horizon. Many of the Soviet-era neighbourhoods, in which reside a large portion of the city’s population, are crumbling. Industrial jobs are dwindling, and desireable areas of the city are becoming more exclusive. Perhaps most critically, as with most East German cities, Dresden is in the midst of a population decline that will test the ability of local government to manage infrastructure and provide services to its residents. Certain neighbourhoods might be abandoned, and some unpatched scars from the Second World War might never be healed.
Tags: Dresden, Germany, Redevelopment, Urban Design
Christopher Szabla says:
your photos paint a far more handsome portrait of dresden than I remember. when I visited, it seemed as if the “beauty” of the city was contained within a few square blocks of reconstructed palaces and churches.
at the same time, the reconstruction of far more of the city raises questions about the erasure of the impact of history. the firebombing of dresden was one of the most brutal acts of the second world war, and, for better or for worse, the soviet replanning of the city served as a stark reminder of the transformation of the “florence of the elbe” into what vonnegut later described as “a city that looked like toledo”.
June 6th, 2008 at 6:47 am