Dresden - Not the Old Town

Away from the old town, DDR-era civil planning is still very evident. The walk from the station to my hotel took me through a shopping centre the featured 60s architecture at its most bland and utilitarian. Better was Dresden-Neustadt, located across the Elbe River from where I was staying. Despite the 'new city' name it is just as old as the Altstadt on the opposite side. The Neustadt is a vibrant and creative district. Shabby in places, remarkable in others. Most interesting was the Kunsthofpassage (art courtyard passage) a series of connected courtyards full of art and quirky shops. The whole area reminded me of Shoreditch 10 or 15 years ago, before it was fully gentrified.

Dresden - The Old Town

Before visiting Dresden, my only points of reference were fine porcelain and saturation bombing. Between the 13th and 15th of February 1945, the RAF and US Army Air Force dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city. The resultant firestorm is estimated to have killed up to 25,000 people. To give some context to those figures, in the main raid on Coventry, which took place on 14/15 November 1940, and led the Nazis to coin the verb Koventrieren (to Coventrate) meaning "to annihilate or reduce to rubble", the Luftwaffe dropped approximately 500 tons of high explosives and 36,000 incendiary bombs, killing an estimated 568 people. The Coventration of Dresden was near total, including 80% of the historic old town.

After the war, the East German authorities made efforts to rebuild some of Dresden's former landmarks, including the Semperoper (the Saxony state opera house), Dresden Cathedral and the Zwinger Palace. However, most of the city was remade from a clean slate, as a model of socialist efficiency. Following reunification, work started to rebuild some of the old town in all its Baroque glory. The Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), a large Lutheran church which had been left as a memorial ruin by the DDR, was reconstructed between 1994 and 2005. The Neumarkt (New Market), a large square surrounding the Frauenkirche has been further reconstructed since 2005. There have been criticisms that the reconstruction lacks authenticity. It certainly had to be far more extensive than was done for Notre-Dame, where the walls and even some windows remained intact. The Frauenkirche reconstruction used the old burnt stones on the skin of the building. However, as the builders couldn't know where these stones originally went, they used a computer program to randomize the burnt stones in the façade. The result is striking, but it is not the old church restored.

My hotel was on the Neumarkt at the heart of the old town, making it very easy for me to shoot the area at the both ends of the day. Like in Berlin, I was also very lucky with the weather. The low light showed the reconstructed Baroque architecture at its best. I did also see some porcelain, in the form of the Fürstenzug (Procession of Princes), a monumental porcelain tile mural depicting a mounted procession of the rulers of Saxony.

Berlin - People and Places

Before we leave Berlin, here is a final selection of images that caught my eye. 

Berlin - East Side Gallery

The East Side Gallery is a 1.3 km section of the Berlin wall that has been re-purposed as an open-air art gallery. It features the work of 118 artists from 21 countries. The murals are only on the side of the wall that faces a fairly busy road. The other side, facing the river, has the more usual kinds of graffiti.  

I visited on a sunny Sunday morning, so it was pretty busy. The most popular section featured the iconic picture of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing. It took a while to get a shot free of other people. I then went into Martin Parr mode and spent another while photographing people photographing themselves. My East Berlin experience was further enhanced by the sight of a number of Trabants travelling down the road. Not just the sight, there was also the sound and the smell. They are not exactly ULEZ compliant.

 

Berlin - Holocaust Memorial

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, or more simply the Holocaust Memorial, consists of 2,711 concrete slabs or 'stelae', arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. There are no names, religious symbols or inscriptions. This is memorial in abstraction, and more affecting because of it.

The stelae are uniform in length and width, but vary in height. At first the stelae are below knee height, but as you walk further into the field they quickly increase in height, to tower above you. The camber of the sloping cobbled path changes frequently, adding to feelings of disorientation and unease. From the outside, the resemblance to a graveyard is clear. It reminded me a little of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague. At the deepest parts of the field, the feeling is more industrial, rigid and unyielding. Isolating and claustrophobic. Both brutalist and brutal.

Over the years I have seen many photos of the memorial, in club competitions and exhibitions. Often the stelae are rendered in low-key monochrome. However, I felt that I needed to include some colour. A small counterpoint of hope against the darkness. Luckily, the trees on the edge of the field were in autumn colour, a couple of the surrounding buildings also helped, and the two Buddhist monks were just a gift. Would I use a different photographic approach on another visit? Probably. This is the kind of location where it is possible to find many interpretations on many visits.