The Neumarkt in 1903, from an old postcard
Background and history
Dresden, once famous as an elegant Baroque city, is today better known for the fire bombing of 13-14 February 1945 which claimed tens of thousands of lives, an event described in a number of books, notably Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, Alexander McKee's The Devil's Tinderbox and Clayton and Russell's Dresden: A City Reborn. After the war a few of the city's major Baroque monuments were rebuilt by the DDR government, including the famous Zwinger Palace and the Opera House. Local protests succeeded in preventing the removal of the remains under the DDR government of 1946-89. The ICOMOS-DDR Declaration of Dresden of 1982 called for reconstruction of war-damaged buildings. But the Frauenkirche in the Neumarkt (right, in a view of 1760), the largest Protestant Baroque church in Europe, was left in ruins.
In the early 1990s a group of Dresdeners launched an international appeal for help with the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche. By 1994 they had cleared the pile of rubble, laying out as many stones as possible (about 35% of the material needed) for re-use. The appeal met with broad support within Germany and from the United Kingdom, the United States, France and elsewhere. The British Dresden Trust raised money to finance a window and to replace the golden Orb and Cross which was placed on top of the dome in 2004.
(Placing the lantern. Markus Krusche).
Reconstruction of the church was completed in Summer 2004, with the prefabricated crowning lantern being placed to complete the reconstruction (click here for a report we ran at the time). But the area around it remains largely unbuilt, a legacy of the terrible destruction caused by the fire storm and post war clearing.
Along the riverside Brühl Terrace the Catholic Cathedral, the Schloss, the Art Academy and Galleries have been restored, but the Neumarkt area lacks the hotels and houses which were a foil to the great public buildings. Excavations recently undertaken revealed that basements of many buildings still exist on the sites, a valuable historic record and a useful guide to accurate reconstruction. The preservation of some of the basements is currently under discussion but many will no doubt disappear with the construction of underground car parks and similar uses.
The planned rebuilding
The Dresden City Council has produced planning guidelines to ensure that rebuilding respects the old street pattern, materials and proportions. It has promised the demolition of the repulsive pink reflective glass extension to the central police station and the accurate reconstruction of perhaps 80 of the old town houses and hotels. There is, however, great anxiety that much of the infill on the other 200-odd sites might be modernist in style. Dresden residents are not happy with the design of the new buildings which have been erected elsewhere in the Altmarkt, and would prefer that as many as possible of the original buildings in the Neumarkt are accurately reconstructed. This was done with great success in Gdansk (Danzig) and Warsaw in the years after 1945. The reconstructed Old Town in the latter city now enjoys UNESCO World Heritage status.
Dresden Atelier 2001
Late in 2000, Gesellschaft Historischer Neumarkt Dresden (Association for the Historic Dresden Newmarket), founded by Berlin architect Rüdiger Patzschke and others, approached INTBAU to help them find architects sympathetic to traditional architecture to join the Dresdeners and their friends in the UK and abroad in the international campaign. Groups of architects visited Dresden in March to be briefed about the history of the city and the Neumarkt, and to be allocated a site for a project.
(right - the Frauenkirche before 1945)
The architects prepared exemplary design proposals in the Dresden style for sites where the original buildings could not be accurately documented, and for which some interpretation was required. The designs were presented at a press conference held in Dresden on 4 May 2001, attended by members of Gesellschaft Historischer Neumarkt Dresden, representatives of INTBAU, and several of the participating architects.
HRH The Prince of Wales issued a statement which was read out at the press conference. Click here to read the statement in English or here for German.
GHND Executive Board member Herr Dr Stefan Herzig has recently described the INTBAU Dresden Atelier as "an important milestone for the movement".
University of Ferrara project
In the first weeks of June 2001, Gabriele Tagliaventi of (A Vision of Europe) involved his students at the University of Ferrara in producing a plan for the whole Neumarkt area, based on the designs for individual buildings presented on 4 May. This project clarified the master plan for the reconstruction and established the viability of the scheme. Together with elements of the City Council's plans and the ideas produced by the Gesselschaft Historischer Neumarkt Dresden, this project helped to demonstrate that rebuilding the traditional urban blocks was practical and economically viable.
(right: CAD image of project by Tagliaventi)
Other sites on Dresden Neumarkt
The principal source for information about the Dresden Neumarkt campaign, in English or German, is the website of Gesellschaft Historischer Neumarkt Dresden (Association for the Historic Dresden Newmarket).
You can read about the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche (in German only) on the website of Wiederaufbau Frauenkirche Dresden (Dresden Trust).
You should also visit the Friends of Dresden website which includes a page on the historical development of the city and Neumarkt and has excellent material on the reconstruction of the Neumarkt.
(For music lovers, the site is accompanied by an audio file of Bach's toccata & fugue in D minor arranged as an epic solo piano piece by Taussig.)
There is more about the reconstruction plans, including pictures of the area and a masterplan, on the we
bsite of A Vision of Europe.
You can pan, zoom and tilt to your heart's content on a virtual reality tour of the reconstructed Neumarkt on the German language website of Architektur & CAD.
(Above right: a still image from the Architektur & CAD VR tour)
Click here to view proposals by Robert Adam Architects for one of the Neumarkt sites.
Click here to view proposals by architect Jan Maciag for another of the Neumarkt sites.
Other reconstruction projects in Europe
There are many other current reconstruction campaigns and projects in Germany and elsewhere. The website for the campaign to reconstruct the Paulinerkirche in Leipzig is the source of many of the following links. Most of these sites are in German but some have an English section.
Halle - Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall)
http://www.altes-rathaus-halle.de/
Erfurt - Collegium Maius
http://www.uni-erfurt.de/unigesel/wiederaufbau.htm
Berlin - Stadtschloss
http://www.berliner-stadtschloss.de/
http://www.berliner-schloss.de/
http://www.stadtschloss-berlin.de/
Berlin - Zeughaus (Armoury)
http://www.dh-museum.com/magazine/zeughaus/Wiederaufbau.html
Potsdam - Garnisonkirche
http://www.garnisonkirche.de
http://www.versoehnungszentrum-garnisonkirche.de/
Potsdam - Stadtschloss
http://www.stadtschloss-potsdam.com/
Karlsruhe - Schloss Gottesaue
http://www1.karlsruhe.de/Termine/Offenes-Denkmal/gottesaue.htm
Altkinsberg - Wallfahrtskirche Maria Loreto
http://www.maria-loreto.de/vorher-nachhercz.htm
Loschwitz - Church
http://www.loschwitzer-kirche.de/index1.htm
Bruchsaler - Schloss
http://www.jphbr.ka.bw.schule.de/brurg-page5.html
Moscow - Christ the Saviour Cathedral
http://www.xxc.ru/english/reconst/index.htm
London - St Lukes Church, Finsbury
http://lso.co.uk/lsostlukes/
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