The Dresden Firebombing: Memory and the Politics of Commemorating Destruction 9780755623778, 9781350159075

Citation preview

‘If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts.’ Adam F. Duritz, Mrs Potter’s Lullaby

List of illustrations Figs 1.1, 1.2: Churchill’s drafted memo denouncing the destruction of Dresden and the more discreet redraft. Photographs taken of originals (stored in the National Archives, London): Tony Joel, January 2006. 69, 70 Fig. 2.1: Denkmal for Dresden’s bombing victims out at the Heidefriedhof. Photograph: Tony Joel, 13 February 2006. 88 Fig. 2.2: Trümmerfrau statue in front of Dresden’s Rathaus. Photograph: Tony Joel, 14 February 2006. 93 Fig. 2.3, 2.4, 2.5: Two of the 14 pillars marking the Rondell. Photographs: Tony Joel, 13 February 2006. 99, 100 Fig. 3.1: Dresden’s rebuilt state opera house, the Semperoper, reopened on 13 February 1985. Photograph: Tony Joel, 13 February 2005. 131 Fig. 4.1: The rebuilt Hofkirche. Photograph: Tony Joel, 13 February 2006. 172 Fig. 4.2: The Mahnmal on the site of the original Dresden synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht, 9 November 1938. Photograph: Tony Joel, 13 February 2006. 172 Fig. 5.1: Fighter Command statue of Lord Dowding with the RAF church St Clement Danes in the background. Photograph: Tony Joel, December 2005. 185 Fig. 5.2: Scars of war: pockmarks from the Battle of Britain still evident on the exterior of St Clement Danes. Photograph: Tony Joel, December 2005. 186 Fig. 5.3: Plaque on the pedestal of the BCA’s memorial dedicated to Harris and his wartime crew members, especially the fallen. Photograph: Tony Joel, December 2005. 188 Figs 5.4, 5.5: BCA royal patron the Queen Mother, escorted by Sir Michael Beetham, delivers her address prior to unveiling the Harris statue. Photographs: in possession of the author, provided by Douglas Radcliffe. 193 Fig. 6.1: Dresden’s reconstructed Frauenkirche. Photograph: Tony Joel, 13 February 2006. 254 Fig. 6.2: Close-­up showing the blackened patina formed on original stones reused in the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche, contrasting starkly with the light golden colour of the new sandstone blocks. Photograph: Tony Joel, October 2009 254

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Acknowledgements It is with great pleasure that I now have the opportunity to thank publicly the individuals and institutions who, directly and indirectly, have contributed to the construction of this book. First, my most recent debt of gratitude is to editors Lester Crook and in particular Tomasz Hoskins at I.B.Tauris. Lester’s initial enthusiasm got the publishing process underway, and since adopting the project, Tomasz has skilfully overseen it through to completion. Tomasz’s strong interest in my work, his patience, encouragement, and editorial expertise have been greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank everyone else at I.B.Tauris involved in preparing this work for publication. And I am grateful to Lisa Couacaud for such a meticulous job in compiling the index. In addition to any reviewers who remained anonymous, I would also like to express my thanks to Professor Mary Fulbrook (University College London), Professor Bill Niven (Nottingham Trent University), and Professor Klaus Neumann (Swinburne University of Technology), whose earlier comments and suggestions were not only thoughtprovoking and helpful but also reassuring. Most of the research conducted for this book was made possible courtesy of very generous funding from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service/Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst). I am extraordinarily indebted to Prof. Dr Jost Dülffer (Universität zu Köln), who kindly supported my DAAD application and continues to be a pillar of support and advice. From afar, Jost has probably had a more profound impact on this study (and my growth as a historian more generally) than he realises. My thanks extend to the friendly and helpful staff at the Institut für Zeitungsforschung der Stadt Dortmund. Furthermore, Vera Bertram (Broadview-TV GmbH), Prof. Dr Marc Frey (now Jacobs

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University Bremen), Prof. Dr Ralph Jessen (Universität zu Köln), Prof. Dr Guido Knopp, Prof. Dr Sönke Neitzel (currently LSE, London), and Prof. Dr Reiner Pommerin (TU Dresden) all provided valuable information and/or kind words of encouragement along the way. Two research trips to Britain were made all the more enjoyable and productive thanks to the helpful staff at The National Archives and the British Library Newspaper Reading Room in Colindale. I am also extremely grateful for the warm hospitality afforded by Douglas Radcliffe MBE at his office in the RAF Museum, London, and also Dr Alan Russell OBE at his home (Dresden House) in Chichester. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Deakin University for providing a tremendously supportive and stimulating working environment. Administrative staff in the Faculty of Arts and Education along with Deakin librarians (especially faculty liaison staff and the interlibrary loans department) are helpful always. I feel privileged to belong to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, working for and with HOS Professor Matthew Clarke and SEO Helen Andrew. Of great importance to me is the collegiality enjoyed among Deakin historians. I have had the good fortune of being closely involved with the Alfred Deakin Research Institute (ADRI) since its founding, and in particular its Contemporary Histories Research Group. There are simply too many wonderful Deakin colleagues to thank individually, but a select few are deserving of special mention. I am lucky to count among my closest teaching collaborators Dr William (Bill) Anderson, Dr Donna-Lee Frieze, Dr Helen Gardner, Dr Mark Humphries, Assoc. Professor Chris Waters, and my fellow long-suffering Tigers fan Dr Bart Ziino. Several colleagues, past and present, have aided my progress and shaped my thinking as a historian more than they perhaps realise, including Assoc. Professor Rohan Bastin, Professor Alan Booth, Dr Barry Butcher, Dr Ray Duplain, Roy Hay, Assoc. Professor Michele Langfield, Professor William (Bill) Logan, Tony Neylan, and especially Professor Sarah Paddle. And Dr Murray Noonan and Dr Chad Whelan have remained good personal friends since our days together as PhD students. To teach is to learn, and so it would be most remiss of me not to acknowledge the many students who have influenced my views on modern German history and the politics of the past.



acknowledgements

My appreciation for the insight, kindness, and mentorship provided by three scholars in particular knows no bounds. Professor David Lowe possesses a rare blend of professional and personal qualities that make him respected, appreciated, and liked by his colleagues in equal doses, which is no mean feat for someone who has held numerous positions of authority over many years. I am eternally grateful to David for the effort he has afforded to fostering my development. In my eyes, he is the ‘Tucky’ of Deakin University. I was enormously fortunate to be trained by Professor Joan Beaumont (now at the Australian National University, Canberra). Joan tempers her professional coolness with personal warmth and her enthusiasm for all things history is infectious. Indeed, one of the most cherished memories I have from this whole experience is the whirlwind few days I spent roving around Dresden and Berlin with ‘Auntie Joan’ taking in as many historical sites and museums as we could possibly manage. And it is impossibly difficult to convey my gratitude to Pam Maclean for all the time and effort she has so selflessly invested in my development. Pam identified potential in me as a very raw undergraduate student long before anyone else saw something, me included. She inspired me to specialise in contemporary German history, convinced me to learn German, and subsequently supervised me at Honours and, along with Joan, at PhD level. Indeed, this book has been much improved due to the guiding influences of David, Joan, and Pam over many years. Of course, though, I hasten to add that any remaining flaws are entirely my responsibility. There are several personal debts of gratitude, too. My family’s yearlong stay in Germany was enriched by the manner in which we all were so cordially welcomed into the Köln-Dellbrück community. Deserving of special thanks are our landlords and upstairs neighbours Peter and Helga Gickler. The Städt. Katholische Grundschule Thurner Straße and the Städt. Kindergarten Im Wieschen, both in Köln-Dellbrück, warmly embraced a couple of little Australian kids without any prior knowledge of German and in doing so changed their perspectives on life forever. We are especially appreciative of the teaching and nurturing efforts of Frau Hunze, Anni Reinhardt, and ‘Queen’ Meike Düllmann. And we cherish our lasting friendship with the Familie Hunze. Researching and writing this book has been a long and often lonely undertaking, and so I count myself especially fortunate to have family

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and close friends who, on the one hand, offered much needed support, and, on the other hand, thankfully provided an outlet back into the ‘real’ world. My heartfelt thanks and appreciation go to the extended Joel and McDermott families, particularly my parents, Ronny and Mausa, and in-laws, John and Bronwyn. I would also like to extend my thanks to Des and Annette Bruhn, Chris and Danny Power, as well as Erna Karge and her late husband, Ernst. And thanks also to ‘Lima’ Power for always being (out) there. Finally, I owe more than I can possibly express to my remarkably loving, understanding, and supportive wife, Shan, and our inspirational children Bethany, Chelsea, Sienna, and Lucas. Only Shan knows the full extent of my debt of gratitude and so this book, at long last, is for her.

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Introduction:

The Destruction of Dresden and the Shifting Dynamics of German Victimisation The Brauner family felt compelled to respond. For months leading up to 8 May 1995, public debate had raged in Germany over how the recently reunified nation should confront the looming fiftieth anniversary of the end to the Second World War. The discourse assumed a similar pattern to what had materialised in the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland, BRD) a decade earlier leading up to the milestone fortieth anniversary. On that occasion, Rudolf Augstein, the influential editor of the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, had framed the debate by posing a question clearly crafted for an ‘either-or’ rather than an ‘as-well-as’ answer: did Germany’s unconditional surrender fundamentally represent a ‘collapse or new beginning’ (‘der Zusammenbruch oder die Stunde Null’)?1 In 1995, again the prevailing trend was to advance ‘either-or’ perspectives on what meanings and messages 8 May 1945 should hold for Germans. A nebulous cohort calling itself the May 8th Action Group (Initiative 8. Mai) entered the debate in a conspicuous fashion. Boasting several hundred prominent public figures including incumbent and former federal (Bundestag) and state (Landtag) members of parliament, editors, journalists, and academics among its signatories, the group published large announcements on page three of the 7 April and 5 May 1995 editions of the centre-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).2 The notices quoted inaugural West German federal president Theodor Heuss, who on 8 May 1949 had told the Parliamentary Council that, basically, 8 May 1945 would remain ‘the most tragic and questionable paradox for all of us … because we were rescued and annihilated at the same time.’ The group predicted that mainstream media and politicians alike would one-sidedly characterise 8 May as ‘liberation’ (‘Einseitig



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wird der 8. Mai von Medien und Politikern als ‘Befreiung’ charakterisiert’). Consequently, the uppercase headline across both ads warned fellow Germans to guard ‘AGAINST FORGETTING’ (‘GEGEN DAS VERGESSEN’) the obverse of the nation’s war memory coin. The action group further proclaimed: … that this day not only meant the end of the National Socialist reign of terror, but also the beginning of the terror of the expulsion and new oppression in the East and the start of the division of our country. A view of history that conceals, suppresses, or relativises this truth cannot be the basis for the self-understanding of a self-assured nation, which is what we Germans must be within the European family of nations in order to rule out the possibility of a comparable catastrophe in future.

The May 8th Action Group was not really concerned with guarding against forgetting the date’s double-edged paradox. Rather, it appeared pre-occupied with advancing a decontextualised role-reversal that cast Germans primarily as victims not victimisers. Whereas post-war acts of terror, oppression, and division enacted against Germans were highlighted, earlier crimes committed by Germans went unmentioned. The day after the second announcement appeared, Artur ‘Atze’ Brauner, one of post-war Germany’s most prolific and influential film producers, along with his wife Maria-Theresa and two children, Alice and Sammy, published a privately-funded riposte.3 Mockingly headed ‘CONTRARY TO FORGETTING’ (‘WIDER DAS VERGESSEN’), the Brauners’ response replicated the format used for the action group’s two preceding announcements and likewise occupied the bottom quarter of page three in the FAZ.4 Born in 1918 to a Jewish wood wholesaler in Łódź, Poland, Brauner lost 49 relatives in the Holocaust before moving to Berlin where, in 1946, he founded the Central Cinema Company (CCCFilmkunst).5 Maria-Theresa lost more than 30 relatives including her father and only brother. Dedicating their counter-notice to the memory of ‘innocent victims,’ the Brauners presented an extensive catalogue of Nazi atrocities, all of which had been conveniently overlooked by the action group apparently so concerned with guarding against forgetting. After reminding readers of many chilling cases of German war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Third Reich, the Brauners declared:



introduction

We exercise our right to record the fact that the flight and ensuing expulsion of millions of Germans as well as the bombing of Dresden and other German cities are to be classified exclusively as the consequence of Hitler and his Nazi-henchmen who fomented the war. Without a war of aggression and the destruction of half of Europe – no flight, no expulsion, no revenge. A causal sequence that every humane thinking person with political integrity must meet with understanding. All the more since the majority of Germans cheered on Hitler.

The action group’s gegen das Vergessen warnings and the Brauner family’s wider das Vergessen counter-announcement raise several fascinating questions. Why do anniversaries generally, and milestone anniversaries especially, play such important roles in stimulating and amplifying the politics of war memory and commemoration? How and why, and by whom, are war memories and anniversaries appropriated for political benefit? What impact did the end of the Cold War and subsequent reunification process have on German public memory culture, particularly the contentious subject of victimhood? Who should Germans ultimately hold accountable for the loss and suffering they endured during and after the war? Can Germans appropriately locate their own loss and suffering within a broader context of wartime victimisation, and, if so, how? Or is the notion of Germans as victims rendered void by the superlative debt of Auschwitz? Should the fact that many Germans committed atrocities obscure recognition that many other Germans suffered terribly, while under the yoke of Nazism still other Germans were both victims and perpetrators? Though the Brauners took the moral high-ground, should their motives for engaging in the politics of the past be considered any more ‘pure’ than those of their antagonists?6 Why do (especially manmade and war-related) catastrophes feature so prominently in the politics of commemoration? And, finally, when referring to German loss and suffering, why would the Brauners see fit to single out Dresden as the only individual case worthy of special mention? These absorbing issues have inspired the following study. This work probes the politics of war memory and commemoration by using as its case study public articulation of the Dresden firebombing. Adopting qualitative research practices and employing a slice-history methodology, the following study focuses on what can be described as ‘key incidents.’7 It investigates leading manifestations of both



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state-orchestrated and socially-based approaches to commemoration as evidenced primarily, though not exclusively, in Dresden on 13 February – the anniversary of the city’s wartime destruction – at quinquennial intervals from 1985 to 2005 inclusive. It also pays close attention to the ways in which the destruction of Dresden has been mass-mediated. By tracking continuities and discontinuities in the period leading up to, during, and after German reunification, this study analyses the evolving nature of Dresden commemorative politics. It asks what factors shaped developments, placing particular emphasis on the role of politicisation. Investigating public articulation of the Dresden firebombing is a highly relevant and responsive topic due to the recent and ongoing heated discourse on the appropriateness or otherwise of Germans publicly representing and remembering themselves as war victims.

Dr e sde n a s pa r a dig m of G e r m a n v ic t i m i s at ion a n d s ac r i f ic e

The multi-dimensional notion of Germans as victims embraces several notable themes including: the argument that Hitler’s incompetence as a war leader resulted in both the gross mistreatment of Wehrmacht personnel and dire consequences for civilians on the homefront;8 the Soviets’ mass raping of German women and girls during the Red Army’s advance on Berlin in the final months of the war and beyond;9 and the ‘humiliating’ denazification process to which the occupational forces subjected the general population during the ‘Nuremberg interregnum.’10 As the Brauners’ counter-notice acknowledged, however, bombing and expulsion dominate war memories of German loss and suffering. German losses stemming from bombing and expulsion are sobering. The Western Allies’ strategic bombing offensive, which gained momentum from February 1942 onwards, heavily damaged or wholly destroyed over 130 German cities and towns of varying size and military-industrial strategic importance. Figures of the civil death and destruction caused by bombing are imprecise, but commonly accepted estimates include some 600,000 civilians killed, around 900,000 others wounded, and a further 7.5 million Germans left homeless after approximately 3.5 million



introduction

dwellings were destroyed.11 Overall estimates encompassing the wartime flight and post-war expulsion (Flucht und Vertreibung) are equally rubbery. The most reliable figures suggest around 12 million Reichsdeutsche, or German citizens residing within the pre-1937 boundaries of the Reich, and Volksdeutsche, or ethnic Germans living in other central or Eastern European countries, either fled westward during the final months of the war to escape the advancing Red Army or postwar were forcibly expelled from their homelands to a truncated and occupied Germany.12 Many of the affected Volksdeutsche had boasted ancestral roots in their chosen Heimatland dating back several centuries. Like the Nazis’ earlier Heim ins Reich program that created space for ‘returning’ Volksdeutsche through the forced resettlement of Poles and others who failed to fit the ‘Aryan’ mould for the expanded ‘ThousandYear-Reich,’ these mass expulsions constituted so-called ‘ethnic cleansing’. Unlike the Nazis’ policy, the post-war expulsion of Volksdeutsche from Eastern Europe was in no small part triggered by the widespread desire for revenge after they had received privileged treatment at others’ expense during the Nazis’ wartime population transfers. These expulsions, carried out with Stalin’s express approval mainly by Poland and Czechoslovakia but also other Eastern European nations, were premised on ‘collective guilt.’ Such actions, even if unjustifiable, are understandable given that Hitler had been able to manipulate the strong German presence among the local populations of areas from the Sudetenland to the Memelland in his prewar foreign policy triumphs before subjecting the continent to more than five years of brutal occupation and a war of annihilation. The pre-war and wartime roles played by Volksdeutsche brought to a head the apparent need for an emphatic resolution to Central and Eastern Europe’s continually bleeding borderlands. Accordingly, the ‘Big Three’ officially endorsed the expulsion as part of the Potsdam protocols signed in August 1945, on the proviso that the entire procedure would be conducted in ‘a humane and orderly manner.’13 In the event, however, the expulsions were implemented in a chaotic and cruel fashion lasting several years. Besides the mass rapes, indiscriminate beatings, robberies, and blanket seizure of all lands and belongings without any recompense, probably around 500,000 but perhaps a million or more German civilians – mostly wretched women, children, and the elderly – died during the flight and expulsion.



the dresden firebombing

As these statistics indicate, then, although tragic the Dresden firebombing (discussed at length in Chapter 1) was by no means an isolated case of mass-scale German loss and suffering. Since even before the war’s end, Dresden nonetheless has been widely recognised both in Germany and abroad as somehow altogether different from other ‘conventional’ bombing raids. Five key interrelated issues distinguish it as an especially controversial raid: first, the pre-war international appreciation for Dresden as a refined city of culture (Kulturstadt); second, the Allies’ motivations and the decision-making process leading up to the attack remain cloaked in mystery; third, the lateness of the attack on a hitherto virtually ignored city combined with the unmistakably civic target area raise serious questions about the operation’s military-strategic justification; fourth, the devastating effectiveness of the raid and its immediate aftermath; and, finally, the unconfirmed but certainly excessive death toll. The last point has been particularly influential in setting Dresden apart due to a highly-politicised ‘numbers game’ in which six-figure death tolls have persisted for over sixty years. As Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver explain, however, the ‘arithmetic of a catastrophe does not determine the pattern of its reception and subsequent remembrance.’14 In other words, alone not even the exceptionally high degree of civil death and destruction necessarily ensured that Dresden would come to symbolise German wartime victimisation. Other factors had to emerge before Dresden, as the Brauners specified in 1995, would come to be recognised as a sui generis case of German loss and suffering. If arithmetic cannot single-handedly set the pattern of representation and remembrance, what else may explain how and why Dresden has been considered a uniquely cataclysmic event? This is where the mysterious build-up, questionable methods, and lateness of the attack that resulted in the seemingly deliberate obliteration of a universally cherished and hitherto intact Kulturstadt come into play. Or, moreover, it is the public articulation of these controversial issues that really matters, for as Gray and Oliver further comment: ‘Catastrophes are ultimately defined by what is said about them.’15 In the case of Dresden, two interdependent but separate phenomena can be identified. On the one hand is the historical event of 13-14 February 1945, referred to as the Dresden bombing or



introduction

raid throughout this study. On the other hand, and what is labelled henceforth the destruction of Dresden, is the evolving intellectual construct dislocated from time and space, which encompasses all the various and often competing manifestations of public representation and remembrance. Though the latter always is based on the former, its constantly shifting parameters are marked out to accommodate fluctuations in the contemporary political climate. This work examines not the historical event known as the Dresden bombing, but rather the shifts in the politics of memory and commemoration concerning the destruction of Dresden before, during, and after Germany’s reunification. The following work contends that, at the time, the Dresden bombing was planned and implemented simply as one raid among many, whereas, in time, the destruction of Dresden became widely considered the one raid too many. There is, then, an inherent danger in blindly accepting Dresden’s notoriety as the zenith of the European bombing war. Bestowing the raid with such exalted status actually risks fomenting a tendency to view Dresden’s wartime fate with hindsight. Any such outlook that reads history backwards and portrays the Dresden raid a posteriori as some kind of uniquely malevolent attack creates a false impression. This particular raid was not designed to inflict a toll of civil death and devastation beyond that visited upon other German population centres. Rather, the Dresden bombing was the logical culmination of the overall strategic policy pursued from February 1942 onwards (see Chapter 1). Put another way, although the raid against Dresden proved exceptionally destructive, it was not exceptional by design. Across six decades, however, layer upon layer was added to the politics of the past as the destruction of Dresden developed into something extraordinary. That Saxony’s refined capital remained essentially undamaged for so long made it seem increasingly plausible that, for some arcane reason, it was slated to be spared from bombing. But this popular misconception only made its sudden immolation in the final phase of the war all the more tragic for Germans generally and Dresdeners especially. Overnight, Dresden underwent an unexpected metamorphosis from a European Kulturstadt to the German Opferstadt. Indeed, the German noun Opfer can denote either victim or sacrifice.16 As the paradigmatic Opferstadt, then, Dresden was a city



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Germans could relate to both wartime victimisation and sacrifice. The former meaning showcased how Germans had not only perpetrated but also endured episodes of wartime loss and suffering on epic proportions, and the irreparable loss of German Kultur on 13 February 1945 allowed Dresden to function as an invaluable post-war moral counterweight. The latter connotation reminded Germans of the heavy price they ultimately paid for having revelled in Hitler’s hubris before being forced to share in his nemesis.17 Dresden quickly garnered a reputation as the quintessential German Opferstadt and never relinquished this status throughout four decades of political division along Cold War lines. Not surprisingly, following reunification Dresden served as a paradigm as the Berlin Republic witnessed a resurgent victim culture (Opferkultur) concerned with publicly articulating loss and suffering inflicted upon, rather than caused by, Germans.

W r i t i n g a b o u t t h e Dr e sde n b om b i n g a n d i t s a f t e r m at h

Much has been written about the Dresden bombing. Perhaps the best known work is Kurt Vonnegut’s acerbic time-warp novel SlaughterhouseFive, first published in 1969.18 The popular American writer witnessed the raid while held captive in a Dresden abattoir before being employed with fellow Allied POWs to retrieve bodies out of cellars or what he dubbed Dresden’s ‘corpse mines.’ Vonnegut drew on his personal experiences of the raid and its immediate aftermath as inspiration for his international best-seller. A diverse assortment of full-length accounts of the actual raid and its consequences are available in German and English. These range from Daniel Hoffmann’s virtually unknown Der Knabe im Feuer (literally ‘the boy in the fire’), a short heart-rending eyewitness testimony published in East Berlin in 1956, through to Alan Cooper’s Target Dresden, a cool technical account told from the perspective of the bombers and their commanders re-released in 2005 to mark the raid’s sixtieth anniversary.19 Historiographically, seven full-length works by Axel Rodenberger (1951), Max Seydewitz (1955), David Irving (1963), Wolfgang Paul (1964), Walter Weidauer (1965), Götz Bergander (1977),



introduction

and Alexander McKee (1982) stand out as particularly important works during the Cold War.20 How these influential accounts introduced, perpetuated, or debunked certain myths concerning the destruction of Dresden in the BRD and the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) prior to the period under investigation in this study is outlined in Chapter 1. The Dresden raid also features prominently in many general works on the European bombing war.21 Dresden is applied as a synonym for the horrors of total war and civil destruction in public spaces such as: museum exhibitions;22 newspaper commentaries;23 and parliamentary speeches.24 In addition, Dresden is commonly cited in scholarly writing as a paradigm of German wartime loss and suffering.25 Moreover, some respected scholars have argued that the Dresden raid constitutes a war crime and perhaps even an act of genocide. The late doyen of genocide studies Leo Kuper, for instance, maintained that Dresden and other civilian population centres targeted by ‘incendiary pattern bombing’ such as Hamburg and Tokyo, along with the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all arguably ‘constitute both genocides and war crimes.’26 It must be stressed, however, whereas Kuper believed a reasonable case could be mounted in theory, most of his peers remained decidedly unconvinced that Dresden and similar bombings constitute genocide.27 More recently, Donald Bloxham has argued persuasively that the Dresden bombing can be classified as a war crime.28 Bloxham’s stimulating work was published in 2006 as part of a collection of essays inspired by a symposium held in Edinburgh three years earlier. Titled Firestorm, the book examines ‘the causes, the conduct, and the consequences’ of the Dresden bombing.29 Both the symposium and resultant publication, like Frederick Taylor’s full-length account first published in 2004 and Cooper’s revised 2005 edition, can be viewed at least partially as English-language responses to the turn-of-the-century influx of German academic and popular inquiry into the Dresden firebombing.30 (In turn, the Berlin Republic’s spiked interest in Dresden was an integral aspect of a broader fascination with the bombing war, a point dealt with below.) In Germany, a range of methods was used to tackle various topics relating to the Dresden raid and its immediate aftermath. Helmut Schnatz, for instance, investigated the longstanding controversial claim maintained by countless eyewitnesses



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that extensive low-level strafing had occurred in central Dresden during the attack (see Chapter 1). Schnatz, a retired Gymnasium teacher from Koblenz in the Rhineland-Palatinate, ignored all such testimonies and instead relied on archival sources, ultimately concluding that some isolated strafing occurred along the journey but not in Dresden itself.31 The celebrated writer and archivist Walter Kempowski compiled a loose collage of short extracts taken from diaries, letters, official press reports, radio broadcasts and other sources to capture an essence of the contemporary impressions of, and reactions to, the Dresden bombing and its repercussions. Kempowski’s rich selection of sources canvasses the views of local schoolchildren, Nazi officials, bomber crew members, Red Cross volunteers, concentration camp inmates, and Red Army soldiers among others.32 Whereas the Dresden firebombing has been the subject of considerable historical inquiry, to date there are surprisingly few ‘aftermath studies’ investigating how public commemoration of the destruction of Dresden has been shaped by the politics of memory. Excellent contributions by Israeli scholar Gilad Margalit and local Dresden historian Matthias Neutzner are the two most noteworthy correctives filling this void in German.33 Neither, however, are exhaustive studies and while Neutzner provides a limited overview of the postreunification period, Margalit’s groundbreaking work remains wholly embedded in the Cold War era. That nothing significant has been translated from German only exacerbates the real dearth that still exists in English. In 1987, Elizabeth Corwin produced a historiographical comparative analysis of East and West German interpretations of the Dresden bombing.34 Corwin, who had spent time in Dresden during the 1980s as an American graduate student, also provided some limited insight into how Cold War rhetoric influenced public representation and remembrance of the destruction of Dresden on either side of the German-German border. While Corwin’s study is informative, it is outdated. In 2000, art historian Christiane Hertel penned a brilliant essay comparing and contrasting three Dresden-inspired expressions of the Dance of Death throughout the centuries, of which the final example is a photographic book documenting the effects of the 1945 bombing.35 Hertel touches on certain aspects of public memorialisation of the

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bombing including, most noticeably, monuments erected at Dresden’s Heidefriedhof – the cemetery located in heathland on the city’s outskirts where the ashes of some 20,000 victims rest in mass graves. Hertel’s focus, however, is not on the politics of memory and commemoration of the destruction of Dresden. Curiously, given that his book is titled Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945, Frederick Taylor devotes more than 150 pages to tracing the Saxon capital’s illustrious pre-war history before arriving at the Second World War, and then takes considerably longer still to finally reach the date and event in question.36 Yet, in his tome exceeding 500 pages, Taylor covers the post-war commemorative politics in just a ten-page afterword (none of which is based on original research barring some reflections on his attendance of certain public events on 13 February 2002).37 In 2006, Bill Niven produced a longoverdue study of public articulation of the destruction of Dresden in the DDR.38 Niven’s valuable work, however, concentrates on dissecting literary and artistic interpretations rather than examining how the politicisation of memory has shaped public commemoration on and around the anniversary of the city’s destruction. And, most recently, at the time of writing what promises to be an important new contribution by Anne Fuchs, in which the ‘iconicity’ of Dresden’s destruction is examined from a cultural aspect, was nearing publication.39 It is hardly surprising that, during the Cold War, commemorative politics played out annually in Dresden on 13 February was a subject overwhelmingly ignored in the English-speaking world. Dresden was hidden behind the Iron Curtain where, as the Opferstadt, it was a prominent landmark on the DDR’s ‘memory landscape.’40 Furthermore, East Berlin generally set the commemorative agenda along two abrasive themes: first, anti-capitalist rhetoric emphasised the role of ‘Western imperialist warmongers’ in Dresden’s purportedly senseless destruction at a time when the war’s outcome already was a foregone conclusion; and, second, much was made of destroyed Dresden’s socialist-inspired post-war rebirth. Yet, the fact that this topic largely has continued to be neglected even after the end of the Cold War is rather puzzling, especially given the international dynamics attached to the politics of Dresden’s past since Germany’s reunification (see Chapters 5 and 6).

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C on c e p t ua l f r a m e wor k a n d k e y t e r m s

‘The politics of war memory and commemoration,’ according to T.G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper, ‘is precisely the struggle of different groups to give public articulation to, and hence gain recognition for, certain memories and the narratives within which they are structured.’41 During the past quarter-century, investigating the politics of war memory and commemoration has become an increasingly enriched field of historical enquiry.42 In framing the issues, Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper insightfully identify two main approaches to studying war memory and commemoration: the ‘state-centred’ or political perspective; and the ‘social-agency’ or psychological perspective. The former, chiefly propelled by Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and Eric Hobsbawm’s and Terence Ranger’s Invention of Tradition (both from 1983), essentially follows a top-down approach. It stresses the nation-state’s role in shaping the ‘rituals of national identification [to bind…] citizens into a collective national identity.’43 The latter, in many respects developed as a counter-perspective and heavily influenced by Jay Winter, downplays state-sponsored politicisation and instead concentrates on the various civil agencies involved in public articulation of war memories and mourning. Underpinning the social-agency perspective is a ‘particular kind of transnational universalism’ in which mourning is ‘a shared human impulse [that] knows no national boundaries.’44 Writing in 2000, Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper identified an unfortunate tendency among existing studies of war memory and commemoration to construe the state-centred and social-agency approaches ‘as if they were unrelated alternatives.’45 They argue that, by structuring analysis ‘in terms of one or the other,’ studies have tended to establish a false dichotomy between state-orchestrated renditions of the past and socially-engineered interactions in public representation and remembrance of war memories.46 The following study addresses this methodological problem by employing regular ‘slippage’ between the state-centred and social-agency approaches.47 By engaging with both perspectives, Dresden, as the quintessential German Opferstadt, is presented as an evolving and highly-contested site of politicised public mourning on the ‘European memoryscape.’48

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introduction

Scholars engaging in memory work can choose to traverse the private and public realms and/or span from the local to the (inter)national level. Strategies available are many and varied, including: interdisciplinary studies;49 comparing and contrasting similar case studies;50 fixating on a given period;51 synthesising a number of interlocking and overlapping case studies into a master narrative;52 presenting a loose collection of largely unrelated accounts;53 or concentrating exclusively on a specific, often catastrophic, ‘key incident.’54 Some studies examine how ‘memory and memorials’ are mobilised as part of nation-building.55 Others consider the complex relationship between ‘memory and national identity.’56 Investigating history exhibitions as ‘displays of power,’ including their role in either forging or breaking down myths, is a popular and fruitful approach.57 So, too, is probing the seemingly endless stream of oral testimonies, literature, art, film, popular culture, monuments and sculptures, architecture, war cemeteries and old battlegrounds, new or reignited conflicts and controversies, war crimes trials, reparations claims, and other spaces that spark interest and debate.58 All such cases, along with those agents responsible for their carriage, collectively form what Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper consider the two core elements underpinning the ‘articulation of memory.’59 On the one hand they refer to ‘arenas of articulation,’ meaning all those ‘socio-political spaces within which social actors advance claims for the recognition of their specific war memories.’60 The notion of ‘agencies of articulation,’ on the other hand, embraces all the various carriers of memory who ‘seek to promote and secure recognition for their war memories.’ These agencies include ‘the official bodies of the nation-state, the organizations and movements of civil society … and more localized face-to-face groupings.’61 Close parallels can be drawn between the concept of ‘arenas of articulation’ and the pioneering work of Pierre Nora. The French scholar introduced the concept of ‘sites of memory’ (lieux de mémoire) as those public realms where ‘memory crystallizes and secretes itself.’62 Because there is no such thing as ‘spontaneous memory’ at a collective level, argues Nora, ‘we must deliberately create archives, maintain anniversaries, organize celebrations, pronounce eulogies’ and promote our ‘most symbolic objects’ as these realms or sites of memory.63 Nora’s profoundly influential theory of purposely cultivated lieux de mémoire,

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along with the analogous Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper model of arenas of articulation, shapes this study in two fundamental ways. The first instance concerns the deliberate maintenance of an anniversary as a realm of memory. In Dresden’s case, in fact, the German term Jahrestag – used simply to denote an ‘anniversary’ – does not adequately capture the meanings and emotions 13 February evokes. Consequently, to capture the date’s proper essence this study adopts the more loaded term Gedenktag, literally a day of remembrance or commemoration. Investigating how various and often competing agents of articulation sought to appropriate Dresden’s Gedenktag for political purposes between 1985 and 2005 is the major focus of this work. Second, Dresden, in its capacity as the archetypal German Opferstadt, is treated as a singular arena of articulation, where each Gedenktag the politics of memory has been a driving force behind the continuities and discontinuities in public commemoration. It is imperative, however, to recognise that certain nuances exist within this blanket framework of an entire city functioning annually as one allembracing lieux de mémoire. Special consideration, then, is afforded to certain sites in Dresden where Gedenktag politics of war memory and commemoration has been most pronounced. Some sites including the aforementioned cemetery the Heidefriedhof and the rebuilt Church of the Holy Cross (Kreuzkirche) developed into traditional mainstays of the annual remembrance process conducted each Gedenktag. Other sites such as the Semperoper, Dresden’s rebuilt state opera house reopened on 13 February 1985, were not recurrent features but instead focal points on a particular Gedenktag. Above all, one setting receives privileged consideration throughout this study as Dresden’s undisputed foremost bombing-related site of memory: the Church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche) in both of its post-1945 incarnations – first as conserved ruins, and subsequently as a reconstructed church. It was at these specific arenas of articulation – within a broader framework of Dresden functioning as an all-encompassing lieux de mémoire – that various agents of articulation pronounced eulogies, organised celebrations, and promoted the most symbolic objects to remember annually the destruction of Dresden as part of maintaining the city’s bombing Gedenktag. ‘A crisis,’ observes Jörn Rüsen matter-of-factly, ‘is nothing special or peculiar in the realm of historical consciousness.’64 Yet Rüsen, in dealing

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with Holocaust memory, quickly points out that ‘one should differentiate two kinds of crisis, the “normal” and the “catastrophic”.’65 The Holocaust, though exceptional, is not alone in transcending the ‘normal’ and qualifying as a ‘catastrophic’ crisis. The notion of catastrophe is a keystone of the post-1990 ‘memory boom’ concerning war and commemoration.66 As Gray and Oliver explain, the ‘experience of extremity and cataclysm’ can stem from natural disasters and ecological accidents through to more calculated forms of man-made devastation and ruin.67 In the case of the latter, war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are prime subjects of enquiry. From Gallipoli to Fromelles, Guernica to Leningrad, Auschwitz to Berlin, Nanking to Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor to My Lai, Kashmir to the Golan Heights, through to the Balkans and beyond, ‘catastrophic crises’ readily lend themselves to memory work. And Dresden – a city whose name often is used as a byword for the senselessness and horror of total war – fits firmly within this pattern. A touchstone of the politics of war memory and commemoration is what Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan describe as the ‘vigorously contested’ question of victimhood.68 Once viewed disparagingly as a sign of weakness, victim status has manifested itself globally as a soughtafter political commodity for localised minorities through to nationstates with a vested interest in controlling how the past is rendered in the present. Perhaps the most controversial yet equally effective case of victimhood shaping and reflecting what Idith Zertal calls the ‘politics of nationhood’ involves Israel’s cultivation of a nationalised victim or survivor status facilitated by the omnipresent ‘ghost of the Holocaust.’69 Agencies of articulation that pursue victim/survivor status can be formed on national, ethnic, religious, or political lines as defined by their common historical experiences of trauma, loss, and suffering. Whenever compensation claims enter into play they act as ‘a further stimulant to public debate.’70 Indeed, the possibility of monumental legal, political, and economic ramifications reminds us why the stakes are so high in disputes over the ownership of memory, not least because reason demands that for every victim/survivor group acknowledged a perpetrator group must be identified to balance the historical ledger. Such interplay raises questions relating to what Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider frame as ‘the “right” or “appropriate” way to commemorate’ past events.71 Yet

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disputes over victimhood are not always purely driven by obtaining (or avoiding) settlements of financial or other recompense. Often agencies of articulation who self-identify with victimisation are motivated to secure wider recognition for, and acceptance of, their privileged victim/survivor status. ‘Shoah survivors,’ according to Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper, ‘are prominent among such groups, which also include organizations representing veterans of combat from the two World Wars and other conflicts, as well as civilians whose lives have been damaged by war.’72 Nowhere, however, is victimhood a more contested and problematic issue than in Germany where ‘memory continues to matter,’ according to Eric Langenbacher and Friederike Eigler, ‘perhaps just a little bit more than in other countries.’73 For others vehemently opposed to the idea of sharing their victimhood with Germans, a fruitful stratagem is to apply the long-discredited but nonetheless effectual ‘collective guilt’ thesis. In the early 2000s, for example, some high-profile Jews and Poles including Anne Applebaum, Slawomir Majman, Bartosz Jalowiecki, and Marek Edelman responded to Germany’s resurgent Opferkultur by essentially endorsing reverse racism and depicting the Germans as an amorphous mass of Nazi criminals.74 Besides their insistence on viewing the Germans as collectively guilty, another commonality shared by Applebaum, Majman, Jalowiecki, and Edelman is the employment of a sliding-scale of suffering. The implication is that causal sequence means anything endured by Germans paled in comparison to everything the collectively guilty Germans inflicted upon others, ergo under no circumstances whatever should any Germans ever be portrayed as victims of the Nazi era. Whenever Edelman – an esteemed political activist and humanitarian, a recipient of Poland’s highest national award the White Eagle Medal, and celebrated as the longest surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (he died in October 2009) – spoke out about representation and remembrance of Nazism and the Holocaust, people listened. In 2003, two journalists from Kraków’s Tygodnik Powszechny interviewed Edelman about Germany’s resurgent Opferkultur. Asked whether Poland’s post-war expulsion of Germans was similar in principle to the ethnic cleansing witnessed in Bosnia during the 1990s (which he had publicly protested against), Edelman dodged the question and instead reverted to the ‘collective guilt’ thesis by arguing:

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…Germans – with the past they have – are not normal people. If you have such a past you cannot be normal. With my past and my memories I am not normal either – but my past is anti-German, and I need that remembrance… I don’t have anything against the Germans. I just do not want them to be recreating themselves as victims because then I would have to consider myself to be the henchman. And it is the other way around: they were my henchmen.75

Whereas Edelman believed the Germans – past and present – are ‘not normal people,’ similarly Jalowiecki argues that due to its Nazi past Germany is ‘destined to remain a very different kind of nation.’76 Such counter-claims made in response to reunified Germany’s reinvigorated Opferkultur evoke two interlocking and overlapping issues Charles Maier conceptualised during the 1980s in the wake of the so-called ‘Historians’ Dispute’ (Historikerstreit). First, the legacy of Nazism generally and the Holocaust especially has saddled Germany with an ‘unmasterable past.’77 Second, if, for Germans, the Holocaust is destined to remain the inescapable historical debt embodying their unmasterable past, then will this event consequently serve evermore as a political ‘asset’ for Jews?78 This study, however, is not concerned with representation and remembrance of German guilt or responsibility but rather the converse notion of Germans as victims. Accordingly, it draws inspiration from Maier’s stimulating theory about the forging of a historical catastrophe into a contemporary political asset, but by substituting Dresden for Auschwitz the role occupied by Germans is inverted from perpetrators to victims. Put another way, underpinning this investigation into the politics of war memory and commemoration is a theoretical concept of ‘the destruction of Dresden as contemporary political asset.’ It argues that, in Germany since the war’s end, state-centred and socially-based agencies of articulation have continually appropriated the memory of Dresden’s destruction for political means (though, it must be emphasised, not always by promoting notions of German victimhood). The following pages, then, are most interested in tracking the continuities and discontinuities between 1985 and 2005 as individuals and groups spanning the socio-political spectrum became actively involved in the politics of the past enveloping Dresden’s Gedenktag.

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A m y t h ic a l ta b o o

A legacy as the twentieth century’s archetypal evil perpetrator-nation (Täternation) permeates the politics of war memory and commemoration in reunified Germany. Even the most cursory glance at five of the more animated debates and controversies during the past two decades reaffirms Auschwitz as the touchstone of the Berlin Republic’s vibrant public memory culture: the criticisms levelled at chancellor Helmut Kohl’s 1993 remodelling of the New Guardhouse (Neue Wache) in Berlin as a national war memorial;79 the public reception of, and reaction to, the ‘War of Annihilation: Crimes of the German Army’ (Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht) travelling exhibition from 1995 onwards;80 the Goldhagen phenomenon of 1996–7;81 the media-driven Walser-Bubis debate of the late 1990s;82 and the discourse surrounding the protracted sanctioning, designing, and construction of the ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’ (Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas) as a national Holocaust monument in Berlin.83 Failing to acknowledge the centrality of the Holocaust and the primacy of perpetrator memory, then, can only result in a distorted reading of German public discourse dealing with the Nazi past and its consequences. Nonetheless, reunification spawned a perceptible upsurge in German Opferkultur, which in turn both reignited old debates and raised new questions. As the Brauners indicated in 1995, a profoundly divisive issue concerned the appropriateness or otherwise of publicly portraying Germans as victims. Yet, as the gegen das Vergessen announcements suggested, an important development in post-reunification victimisation discourse was the groundswell of popular support for eschewing collectivity by replacing conventional ‘either-or’ attitudes with a more nuanced account of the past based on ‘aswell-as’ options. In reunified Germany throughout the 1990s, it became increasingly acceptable to articulate how during the war, it had been ‘possible both to suffer and to cause suffering to others.’84 When the new millennium witnessed a rapid intensification of German Opferkultur, a popular misconception in English-language media reports was that such a development – that is, Germans publicly casting themselves in the role of victims – represented the breaking of some kind of ‘last taboo.’85 Such claims, however, were decidedly uninformed.

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Several telling studies already demonstrated how, even in the early post-war period, public articulation of German loss and suffering was anything but forbidden. Take, for instance, the groundbreaking works by pre-eminent German historian Norbert Frei and leading American scholar of German memory studies Robert G. Moeller.86 For his 1997 study (translated into English in 2002), Frei coined the striking phrase Vergangenheitspolitik or ‘the politics of the past.’ Frei critically examines how, during the Konrad Adenauer era, many erstwhile Nazis were not only exculpated but, moreover, brazenly integrated into, rather than expunged from, West German political life. Whereas this necessarily transparent process, explains Frei, left little scope for Germans to collectively face up to national guilt or responsibility, it fitted hand-in-glove with the BRD’s burgeoning Opferkultur. Moeller’s 2001 monograph, which investigates the BRD’s ‘search for a usable past’ in the 1950s, focuses on public representation and remembrance of the two leading groups perceived as victims: Wehrmacht POWs still incarcerated somewhere beyond the Urals; and expellees. Moeller examines how the telling of ‘war stories’ casting German civilians and soldiers as victims was a cornerstone of the construction of a West German national identity. Additional works by leading academics including Mary Fulbrook, Atina Grossmann, Jeffrey Herf, and Norman Naimark offer further insights into how East and West German attempts to cultivate favourable public war memories often incorporated notions of German loss and suffering, albeit sometimes implicitly.87 Despite such illuminating works by authoritative scholars, claims nonetheless proliferated in the English-language press alleging it had taken more than a half-century before Germans finally confronted this supposedly hitherto publicly suppressed aspect of the Nazi past. Systematically debunking this misguided but stubborn ‘last taboo’ myth, furthermore, was the inspiration behind a 2006 collection of essays edited by Bill Niven.88 Contributors probed arenas of articulation ranging from official memorialisation and public commemoration through to the popular press and literary, artistic, and filmic expression in order to demonstrate how ‘discourse on German victimhood was always a feature of memory of the Second World War in East and West Germany alike.’89 So, an impressive catalogue of scholarly studies published in English before, during, and after the period in the early- to mid-2000s

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when the ‘last taboo’ myth was widely disseminated already adequately discredits all such mistaken claims. There is no real need here, then, to explicitly address this falsehood. Nonetheless, by demonstrating how for six decades Dresden’s Gedenktag has been a highlight on the German war memory calendar, this work implicitly repudiates widespread claims that only lately have Germans finally started to publicly remember their own loss and suffering. By tracking the continuities and discontinuities in the commemoration of Dresden as the paradigmatic Opferstadt, the following pages provide further evidence that Germans have publicly cast themselves in the role of victim far longer and to a much greater extent than what is often realised abroad.

V ic t i m i s at ion di s c o u r se i n di v i de d G e r m a n y

If Germans as victims was not a taboo subject, what, then, were the established strands of victimisation discourse prior to reunification? It is an important question for a work investigating how decades of antiWestern (including specifically anti-BRD) Cold War rhetoric dissipated after 1990 as the firmly-entrenched custom of commemorating Dresden’s Gedenktag was absorbed into the Berlin Republic’s reinvigorated Opferkultur. Before proceeding, however, two interlocking key determining factors must be acknowledged: first, public representation and remembrance of the destruction of Dresden has never taken place in a vacuum; second, there is no such thing as a ‘fresh start’ or ‘clean slate’ when it comes to the politics of war memory and commemoration – not even after a rupture such as what Germany experienced in 1989– 90. Indeed, much of what has taken place in Dresden on 13 February since reunification bears strong traces of the commemorative patterns formed earlier, when the Saxon capital’s Gedenktag had been shaped by and reflected the fluctuating political climes of the Cold War. For a work probing the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration from 1985 to 2005, the legacies of both East and West German public victimisation discourse are equally significant, albeit for differing reasons. On the one hand, throughout decades of division Dresden was located in the DDR, a centrally-regulated Marxist state

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in which the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) effectively set the commemorative agenda. Many of the customary rites of remembrance conducted annually in Dresden on 13 February to this day were first practised under East Berlin’s rigid control (see Chapter 2). Moreover, it was during the DDR era that Dresden cultivated its reputation as the archetypal German Opferstadt. If Dresden’s Gedenktag were stripped of its Cold War historical complexities, any analysis would become decontextualised and rendered meaningless. It is imperative, then, to consider the enduring impact of East German victimisation discourse. On the other hand, the BRD can be regarded in many fundamental respects – politically, culturally, economically, historically, and even by title as the Federal Republic of Germany – as the predecessor state to the reunified nation. Subsequently, careful consideration must be afforded to the extant victimisation discourse of the Bonn Republic as it effectively consumed the ‘other’ Germany – including Dresden the Opferstadt – as part of its metamorphosis into the Berlin Republic. The DDR and the BRD processed or confronted the Nazi past and its consequences heterogeneously. Cloaking itself ‘in the mantle of antifascism,’ contends Peter Graves, the DDR identified and promoted itself as a new socialist state that bore no connection to the Third Reich and thus was ‘untainted by complicity in Nazi atrocities.’90 Underpinning East German state-centred memory and commemoration of the Nazi past was the amorphous category ‘victims of fascism’ (Opfer des Faschismus).91 Any discrete groups that qualified for victim status were stripped of their distinctiveness as emphasis instead was placed on fascism as the root cause of their collective victimisation. The one exception to this general rule was the preferential treatment East Berlin reserved for remembering communists persecuted under Nazism – a group who fulfilled both the victim and sacrifice connotations of the term Opfer. In particular, communist Opfer killed at the hands of Nazis were fêted as politico-ideological heroes and heroines who, having been victimised for opposing fascism, made the ultimate personal sacrifice for the higher cause of (German) socialism.92 While communist Opfer des Faschismus were revered by the state collectively, Ernst Thälmann, the native Hamburger and Weimar-era communist leader imprisoned by the

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Nazis for over a decade before being summarily executed in Buchenwald in August 1944, was posthumously adopted as a DDR national hero. In what amounted to an antifascist cult of personality, street names, town squares, public parks, schools, state-owned firms, and apparently even a small island off Cuba’s south coast symbolically gifted to the DDR by Fidel Castro during his state visit in 1972 were renamed in Thälmann’s honour.93 Furthermore, documentaries eulogised his unbreakable spirit and resistance against fascism, commemorative stamps and coins were commissioned, and statues and memorials were erected across the DDR leading Hamburg historian Dorothee Wierling to describe Thälmann as a ‘communist saint.’94 Significantly, despite being remarkably nebulous in character, Opfer des Faschismus was not an all-embracing category. Indeed, formulating victimhood on the basis of fascism as a root cause proved doubly convenient for East Berlin because it meant certain groups were excluded for political expediency. In the DDR’s official interpretation of the war, the Soviets were venerated as ‘liberators’ and (at least publicly) nothing contradictory to this party line was permissible. Consequently, one group conspicuously absent from the ‘East German victim role call’ was expellees.95 Some four million Reichsdeutsche and Volksdeutsche somehow or other uprooted from their pre-war Heimatland found themselves living within the borders of first the Soviet Zone of Occupation (Sowjetische Besatzungszone, SBZ) and later the DDR.96 Their eight million similarly dislocated counterparts forging new lives in the neighbouring BRD were labelled ‘expellees’ (Vertriebene) and officially classified as ‘wardamaged’ (Kriegsbeschädigte). East of the Elbe, however, public use of the term Vertriebene was forbidden because not only was it incompatible with the ‘Soviets as liberators’ theme but also undesirable given Poland and Czechoslovakia were neighbouring socialist ‘fraternal countries’ (Bruderländer). In official SBZ/DDR nomenclature, the euphemism ‘resettler’ (Umsiedler) was employed instead.97 Far from classifying these so-called resettlers as victims (in German, Umsiedler evokes a strong notion of voluntarism), East Berlin took immense pride in how well these ‘new citizens’ (Neubürger) had assimilated into the DDR’s native majority.98 Similarly, there was no scope whatever for openly discussing German civilians’ mistreatment at the hands of Soviet ‘liberators’ during

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the final months of the war and subsequent military occupation. Along with the expulsion, then, the subject of mass rapes remained suppressed in public.99 Of course, private or family war memories ‘told around kitchen tables and passed along from parents to their children’ did not necessarily correlate to the official version of events disseminated by the state.100 How many Silesians, East Prussians, or Pomeranians living in Brandenburg or Thuringia pined after their true Heimat and rejected out of hand the party line that they had ‘voluntarily resettled’ after the war? Likewise, how many raped German women and girls endorsed the statecentred veneration of the Red Army as ‘liberators’? In the absence of opinion surveys it is impossible to gauge with any precision, but still it is not difficult to draw speculative conclusions. Although such issues are important, this study is not concerned with memory or commemoration in the private realm. The main point to make here, then, is that for almost a half-century East Berlin continually appropriated, shaped, restricted, and manipulated public articulation of the Nazi past to suit its political needs. Finally, in the DDR’s Marxist master narrative of the war, the subject of bombing enabled Germans to be cast as victims of both capitalism and fascism. On the surface, German civilians had been terrorised by ‘western imperialist warmongers.’ On a deeper level, blaming Hitler for initiating and sustaining an unwinnable war meant that Nazism could be held as ultimately accountable for ordinary Germans’ loss and suffering. This latter interpretation conveniently positioned bombing victims in the Opfer des Faschismus paradigm. Yet it also called for critical selfreflection because it alluded to the kind of sequential argument the Brauners later adopted in 1995: no Hitler and no aggressive war stemming from Berlin would have equalled no German victims. The leading case of Dresden illustrates how state-centred politics of bombing memory and commemoration in the DDR shifted blame between western capitalists and German fascists depending on the fluctuating Cold War climate (see Chapter 2). Furthermore, Dresden commemorative politics of the DDR era also contained a redemptive quality as encapsulated in the celebratory opening of the rebuilt Semper Opera House on the fortieth Gedenktag (see Chapter 3). That is, even if Germans had inadvertently facilitated the destruction of cities like Dresden first by embracing Nazism and then

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by failing to depose Hitler even when the war was a foregone conclusion, at least they could atone by embracing the best traditions of the German working-class movement to realise the DDR’s socialist-inspired rebirth. The BRD’s public memory culture is a more familiar story in Englishspeaking academia, where library shelves are filled with works probing how West Germans confronted the Nazi past. The following brief overview only sketches the contours of West German victimisation discourse. Broadly speaking, the era can be divided into three distinct phases: an initial period fixated on German loss and suffering; conversely, a final period increasingly preoccupied with coming to terms with Germans’ collective responsibility for the Holocaust; and, wedged in between, the 1960s as largely a decade of gradual but decisive transformation as the spotlight shifted from the suffering of Germans to the suffering Germans caused to others. Some eighteen million or around one-third of the nascent BRD’s population officially qualified as ‘war-damaged’ (Kriegsbeschädigte) citizens entitled to governmental aid.101 They comprised war widows and crippled soldiers plus victims of bombing, expulsion, or the June 1948 currency reforms implemented to overturn Hitler’s heavy war debt. The Adenauer government went to great lengths to cope with, and cater for, its war-damaged citizens.102 A special federal ministry for expellees, refugees, and war-damaged citizens (Bundesministerium für Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge, und Kriegsbeschädigte) was established, and the Equalisation of Burdens Law (Lastenausgleichgesetz), passed in 1952, formalised compensation payments for their damages and losses. Such actions indicate the BRD’s moral reckoning for the Nazi past initially concentrated on remedying the costs of the war individual Germans had incurred. Yet Bonn’s divisive and costly pursuit of positive relations with Israel in the form of reparations (Wiedergutmachung or literally ‘making good again’) reveals another side to West German victimisation discourse of the early 1950s. The policy of Wiedergutmachung can be viewed as evidence of an embryonic struggle by the BRD to formally come to grips with a national ‘inherited guilt’ (Erbschuld) and atone for earlier German wrongdoing under Nazism.103 Lively parliamentary and popular debate on the appropriateness or otherwise of Wiedergutmachung notwithstanding, in the BRD victimisation discourse initially focused on loss and suffering

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inflicted upon, rather than meted out by, Germans. This development is hardly surprising given the socio-political milieu created by ruinous cities, every third citizen qualifying for financial assistance as official war victims, countless West German families incomplete one way or another, and with millions of POWs yet to return home. Two final points about this initial phase concern the exclusivism inherent in the BRD’s public conceptualisation of German victimhood. First, this notion did not encompass those groups of Germans systematically targeted by their own government’s policies of pseudoscientific state-sanctioned mass murder such as German Jews, Sinti and Roma, or the mentally- and physically-handicapped victims of the Nazis’ ‘euthanasia’ programs. Nor did it explicitly acknowledge the many Germans subjected to years of brutal persecution in concentration camps including political prisoners, ‘asocials,’ homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.104 Rather, whether by coincidence or not, from the outset in the BRD public victimisation discourse ignored the loss and suffering endured by those Germans whom the Nazis earlier had excluded from their ‘Aryan’ national community (Volksgemeinschaft). Second, and more significantly for this study, Cold War geopolitics effected a reversal of German victimhood status to what prevailed over in the DDR. Whereas public articulation of expellees’ victimisation at the hands of ‘barbaric Soviets’ could be encouraged, at a time when Bonn was launching itself into the NATO orbit the subject of bombing was nothing but encumbering. West Germans were better off rejoicing in the ‘economic miracle’ (Wirtschaftswunder) of the 1950s rather than harping on the devastation Anglo-American bombs had caused the previous decade. Some key incidents and major developments during the 1960s resulted in a gradual but discernible shift in focus away from German loss and suffering toward perpetrator memory.105 Historian Fritz Fischer’s unearthing of archival documents shed new light on the contentious question of the origins of the First World War, thus proving decisive because it confirmed what still was fervently refuted in some quarters but long suspected by many others: Germany was guilty for initiating not only one but two world wars after all.106 Moreover, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, and the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt-am-Main a couple of years later, were instrumental in the Holocaust’s movement

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into the mainstream cultural consciousness of the BRD. Many West Germans who earlier had resented the Nuremberg process as ex post facto ‘victors’ justice’ accepted the Auschwitz trials not least because on this occasion their own government and judicial system were in charge of proceedings.107 The emergence of the 1968-ers announced a left-liberal ascendancy over West German politics and public memory culture as the first post-war generation to come of age found its voice.108 And, in September 1969, a left-centre coalition of socialists and free democrats under Willy Brandt’s dynamic leadership brought to an end two decades of conservative federal governance. Regarding West German Vergangenheitspolitik, whether Brandt was a ‘history-defining visionary’ or simply the ‘man-in-the-moment’ is a moot point. What is certain, however, is that his December 1970 genuflexion at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising monument (Kniefall von Warschau) and his vigorous pursuit of Ostpolitik were strong indicators from above that German loss and suffering had been pushed to the periphery of the BRD’s public victimisation discourse concerning the Nazi past. Throughout the 1960s, then, West German public memory culture underwent a paradigmatic shift whereby war stories depicting German expellees and POWs as victims were replaced by the Holocaust as the new master narrative. Henceforth, the ‘basic imperative of German memory,’ according to Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche, has been ‘the collective responsibility of coming to terms with the past, or Vergangenheitsbewältigung.’109 In due time, Vergangenheitsbewältigung as formulated in the Bonn Republic would be translated into the idée fixe of the Berlin Republic, too. Regarding the Cold War era, meanwhile, Herf perceptively observes that Vergangenheitsbewältigung: … applied to far more than the words and deeds of national political leaders. Confronting the crimes of the Nazi past constituted a, and in many distinguished cases the, central preoccupation of postwar German intellectual, journalistic, literary, cinematic, theological, legal, and scholarly engagement [emphasis in original].110

Significantly, once again some inherent exclusivism should be identified when discussing the nature of Vergangenheitsbewältigung during the BRD era. Although the term literally means ‘coming to terms with the past,’ Vergangenheitsbewältigung denoted West German attempts to cope with,

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or overcome, only one side of the Nazi past: inherited responsibility as the successor state to the Third Reich. Yet, two episodes in the mid-1980s – the Bitburg affair, and the Historikerstreit – signalled mounting public support for the belief that a comprehensive effort to come to terms with the past must involve remembering Nazi perpetrators and German victims side-by-side. In May 1985, US president Ronald Reagan controversially honoured a promise to accompany his West German counterpart Kohl to Bitburg’s Kolmeshöhe military cemetery to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the war’s end. International pressure had mounted on Reagan to cancel his participation after it was revealed some four dozen Waffen-SS soldiers count among the war dead buried in Bitburg.111 The following year, in what was dubbed the Historikerstreit despite important contributions made by political scientists, moral philosophers, and social commentators among others, a very public dispute was played out in the West German press.112 At the crux of the dispute were questions about the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Some asked if the judeocide made it impossible to properly situate Nazism within a broader historical framework of twentieth-century totalitarianism. Others queried whether it is ever appropriate, in light of Auschwitz, to juxtapose German crimes and German loss and suffering. The critical consensus rejected such revisionist approaches as historically misleading and morally flawed because they can lead to Holocaust relativisation and, even more dangerously, provide grist to the mills of neo-Nazi apologists. The fallout from Bitburg and the Historikerstreit revealed that, four decades after the war, the BRD still was not prepared for a more nuanced approach to Vergangenheitsbewältigung in which West Germans publicly came to terms with their own suffering as well as the suffering they or their forebears collectively had inflicted upon others.

B om b i n g a n d v ic t i m i s at ion di s c ou r se in reunified Germany

The collapse of Eastern European communism and the end of the Cold War created new opportunities for (re)telling war stories and (re)building national identities. In the early 1990s, the effects of these

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highly politicised processes reverberated across the continent.113 Besides the exceptional case of the Balkans, which lived up to its notoriety as the ‘powder-keg of Europe’ when the former Yugoslavia disintegrated again, perhaps nowhere was the (re)construction of national identity and the (re)conceptualisation of public war memories and commemoration a more taxing procedure than in reunified Germany.114 Only a few years earlier, Richard J. Evans had detected a need for ‘rethinking German history.’115 Suddenly, in the wake of such unexpected and momentous changes, other historians suggested there was a need to go a step further by ‘rewriting the German past’ altogether.116 Reunification instantly had a profound impact on German war memory and commemoration of the Nazi past. James E. Young’s fascinating contemporary study of the ‘texture of memory’ and Klaus Neumann’s slightly later work on Germany’s ‘shifting memories’ both investigate how Nazi concentration camps located in the former DDR immediately became embroiled in Vergangenheitspolitik.117 In doing so, Young and Neumann convey a sense of the political sensitivities evident during the reunification process. Germany’s sudden and unexpected reunification, observes Young, resulted in the equally abrupt and previously unplanned closure of the museum housed in the Buchenwald camp near Weimar. During the DDR era, the museum had served as a Marxist-oriented monument against (German) fascism. Accordingly, no hint of the Soviets’ extensive post-war use of Buchenwald as a ruthless internment camp for known Nazis and suspicious fellow travellers was detectable on the site. Following the DDR’s collapse, the museum underwent modifications to bring it up to date with the altered political climate. Neumann describes how memories evoked by another former camp, Ravensbrück, stymied private enterprise. Supermarket chain Kaiser’s was one of countless West German enterprises that eyed-off the former DDR as an opportunity to expand its business horizons. Kaiser’s purchased vacant land in Fürstenberg, a small town near Ravensbrück, and began construction of a new store near the site of the former concentration camp. Public opinion was sharply divided. Whereas many locals excited by the prospect of a new supermarket preferred to look toward a brighter future, for many more Germans nationwide the dark past associated with the camp remained too palpable. Despite being built,

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the supermarket never opened. Such episodes revealed that, although the fall of the Berlin Wall signified the end of the ‘divided nation,’ it did not necessarily draw to a close Germany’s ‘divided memory.’118 This study makes no attempt to address explicitly the boundless topic of German national identity. At various intervals, however, it touches on the question of how national identity has both shaped and reflected German victimisation discourse. It is important, then, to acknowledge that reunification presented two interrelated challenges for public memory culture and national identity in the Berlin Republic. First, Germans suddenly had not one but two forms of totalitarianism – one brown, the other red – to confront when coming to terms with the past. Second, although the DDR’s demise effectively rendered its statecentred Marxist account of twentieth-century German history anachronistic overnight, this interpretation was deeply ingrained among many Ossis and simply could not be expurgated.119 Instead, the virtually irreconcilable East and West German interpretations of the past somehow had to be fused into a refashioned post-1990 master narrative. This process of East-West integration fits the theoretical concept of ‘memory hybridisation’ developed by Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider for their work on Holocaust remembrance in the global age.120 Throughout the following pages, this process is referred to as ‘BRDDR’ memory hybridisation to represent the fusing together of the two former German states.121 To see evidence of this hybridised memory, one need look no further than the two dominant themes in the Berlin Republic’s discourse on German loss and suffering: expulsion, a nonentity in the East, was carried over from the war stories of the West; and bombing, a comparatively ignored subject in the BRD, was inherited from the DDR where Dresden had served for nearly a half-century as the leading exemplar. Developing a BRDDR memory hybridisation model, this work investigates how Dresden’s longstanding reputation as the quintessential Opferstadt was publicly articulated as a touchstone of the post-Cold War hybridised master narrative of German wartime loss and suffering. To scrutinise what impact hybridisation had on the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration following reunification, it tracks the continuities and discontinuities evident on ‘milestone’ Gedenktage at five-yearly intervals before, during, and

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following the ‘turn’ of events in 1989–90 known in German as the Wende. Bombing and expulsion have been the foci of some exceptionally influential publications amid Germany’s post-reunification renaissance of Opferkultur.122 Three books in particular – W.G. Sebald’s collection of essays Luftkrieg und Literatur, Günter Grass’ novella Im Krebsgang, and Jörg Friedrich’s tome Der Brand – deserve special consideration.123 All three publications concurrently shaped and reflected popular attitudes regarding the controversial matter of depicting German wartime loss and suffering, and in doing so attracted widespread media coverage and scholarly inquiry.124 In the cases of Grass and Friedrich especially, their books ascended to the top of Germany’s best-sellers lists where they remained for considerable time while stimulating international debate. Indeed, in Germany the media reception of, and public reaction to, Im Krebsgang and Der Brand perhaps were only surpassed in scale and emotion by the sensational scenes that had enveloped Goldhagen’s controversial book explaining the Holocaust as the logical culmination of ‘German eliminationist antisemitism.’ Given their extensive treatment elsewhere, here some brief remarks, mainly about the bombing-related works of Sebald and Friedrich, will suffice. In 1997, Sebald, a German writer and academic who spent most of his working life in Britain, presented a series of public lectures in Zurich. Sebald was highly critical of German postwar literature for what he perceived to be an inadequate engagement with the subject of human loss and suffering caused by the Western Allies’ strategic area-bombing offensive. According to Sebald, despite the enormity of the devastation and its severe implications for the everyday lives of Germany’s postwar population, a half-century later the subject still had not received sufficient treatment from German writers. He attributed this trend to the early post-war development of a ‘tacit agreement, equally binding on everyone, that the true state of material and moral ruin in which the country found itself was not to be described.’ It remained hidden, continued Sebald, ‘like a shameful family secret.’125 Sebald’s bald claims presumably played a significant role in the emergence of the ‘last taboo’ myth a few years later. Although the inaccuracy of his argument has since been demonstrated most convincingly by literary editor of Der Spiegel

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Volker Hage, at the time Sebald’s eloquent and provocative assertions attracted explosive, albeit ephemeral, media interest in Germany, leading to his lecture series being published in book form two years later.126 The animated discourse spawned by Sebald toward century’s end proved a mere foreshadowing of what shortly would follow. In 2002, Grass, a Nobel laureate and arguably Germany’s most influential living writer, and Friedrich, a low-profile freelance journalist and military historian, engaged the Germans as victims theme from very different angles. Grass wove his period-hopping fictional tale of cross-generational family tragedy around a historical narrative centred on a particularly catastrophic incident during the flight and expulsion, namely the January 1945 sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.127 The prewar-cruiseliner-cum-war-transport-vessel was overcrowded with some 9,000 German refugees and military personnel fleeing the approaching Red Army when torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in the icy waters off the Baltic coast.128 With relatively few survivors and registering a death toll around five times that of the Titanic, the sinking of the ‘Willi-G’ is the largest maritime disaster in history. Yet, it was not simply a case of the story being told but, moreover, who was telling it. Another four years would pass before Grass’ ignominious past – as a teenager in his native Danzig he voluntarily joined the Waffen-SS towards the war’s end – would be exposed in what amounted to a national scandal. At the time Im Krebsgang appeared, then, Grass still enjoyed a widespread reputation as symbolising Germany’s political and moral conscience.129 For decades, his work had focused on German culpability and, as a vociferous opponent to reunification, Grass had become synonymous with the assertion that German national identity always must be viewed through the prism of Auschwitz. So, when he published a novella that so openly depicted Germans as victims, it surprised everyone. Also in 2002, Friedrich published his massive quasi-scholarly account of the Western Allies’ strategic bombing offensive against Germany. Devoid of any broader historical context, Der Brand describes in lurid detail the civil death and destruction visited upon German population centres in the final years of the war. Coincidentally, Sebald earlier had singled out a then relatively unknown Friedrich as the one exception within the guild of professional German historians (‘die Zunft der

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deutschen Historiker’) to have considered in significant detail the bombing war from the perspective of its ground-level impact on Germany.130 Sebald lamented that, in keeping with what he (mistakenly) perceived as a German inclination to shun the subject of bombing, Friedrich’s work characteristically had not received the attention it deserved.131 In retrospect, Sebald’s remarks seem paradoxical given the extraordinary reaction to not only Der Brand but also Friedrich’s follow-up effort a year later. Published in 2003, Brandstätten is a gruesome picture book cataloguing many hitherto unpublished photographs of ‘fire sites’ created by the carpet-bombing of German population centres.132 ‘Only by ignoring the basic sequence of cause and effect’ and downplaying the military-industrial strategic importance of ‘certain German cities’ destroyed by bombing, notes Niven, can Friedrich mount his revisionist interpretation in which Germans are the victims and the Western Allies are cast in the role of ‘gratuitous aggressors.’133 Indeed, Der Brand goes even further than presenting a decontextualised historical account of the bombing war. Friedrich morally condemns the Western Allied leaders – especially Winston Churchill – whom he accuses of undertaking an unjustifiable policy of wanton destruction during the final months of the war by targeting not military-industrial installations but rather historic cultural and architectural landmarks (and German civilians living amongst them). Friedrich’s account, which makes for enthralling reading, is riddled with highly provocative language including phrases usually associated with German perpetrators instead of German victims.134 When explaining that, during firestorms, most victims actually died not from falling bombs but asphyxiation once trapped in underground shelters that filled with carbon monoxide, Friedrich claims these cellars ‘functioned like crematoria’ (‘Keller arbeiteten wie Krematorien’).135 By coining the phrase ‘gas-shelter’ (Gaskeller) he clearly is drawing parallels with the gas chambers (Gaskammer) of Nazi death camps.136 Friedrich also conjures up comparisons with Einsatzgruppen (the mobile killing squads during the Holocaust) when labelling certain RAF bombers as a ‘group of mass destruction’ (Massenvernichtungstruppe). Writing incessantly about civil ‘destruction’ caused by bombing, Friedrich displays a penchant for the German noun Vernichtung rather than the more obvious choice Zerstörung. Although Vernichtung can denote destruction,

32

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when used in reference to the Third Reich it is synonymous with either annihilation (as in Vernichtungskrieg or war of annihilation in the East) or extermination (as in Vernichtungslager or extermination camp). Although Der Brand was more or less universally panned in academia, Friedrich’s account, and no less his tone, clearly struck a chord with many ordinary Germans who welcomed his reinterpretation of their national past precisely because it did not ‘harp on about’ Nazi crimes.137 Amid the international media furore that enveloped his work, an antagonistic and unrepentant Friedrich was quoted in the British press accusing Churchill of being a war criminal and ‘the greatest child slaughterer of all time.’138 By October 2003, Der Brand had sold 185,000 copies in German and already was translated into six foreign languages; intriguingly, though, English was not one of them.139 In fact, it took until 2006 before Columbia University Press finally commissioned an English edition.140 In Germany, the popularity of Der Brand inspired a cottage industry of amateurish bombing books that adopted Friedrich’s problematic approach of historical decontextualisation to portray ordinary Germans as hapless victims. Some localised efforts narrated a particular city’s experiences in the bombing war.141 More general accounts documented the extensive nationwide civil death and destruction caused by bombing.142 Far more reliable accounts also appeared, such as RolfDieter Müller’s outstanding overview of the European bombing war.143 Some notable edited collections, too, made important contributions to the discourse on bombing originally triggered by Sebald and ignited by Friedrich. In 2003, Lothar Kettenacker, the then deputy director of the German Historical Institute in London, assembled an impressive group of German and British scholars to scrutinise the new debates about bombing and German victimisation. Modifying the title of an earlier edited book that had asked during the Goldhagen debate whether Germans were ‘a nation of killers’ (ein Volk von Mördern), Kettenacker and company instead pondered whether the latest trends in public discourse on bombing revealed Germans had recast themselves as ‘a nation of victims’ (ein Volk von Opfern).144 In 2005, journalists and editors of Der Spiegel teamed up with some scholars, all of whom belonged to the eyewitness generation, to recount ‘when fire fell from the sky’ over Germany.145 Contributors considered the moral and legal

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aspects of the bombing war and reflected on its repercussions up to the present. Every German population centre decimated by bombing had its own harrowing stories to recollect as part of the reinvigorated Opferkultur in the new millennium. In a variety of public spaces, however, remembering the destruction of Dresden was the leading issue. Popular and scholarly accounts of the raid and its aftermath transcended the local level to attract nationwide interest; internationally, meanwhile, books like Taylor’s new study and the edited collection that grew out of the aforementioned Edinburgh symposium identified Dresden as special. Despite the fact that Der Brand documents the destruction of dozens of German cities and towns, even Friedrich’s work came to be closely associated with Dresden owing to his unreserved support for the longstanding controversial claim that the raid constitutes a war crime.146 This linkage was especially strong after the German translation of Taylor’s more judicious interpretation appeared in 2005. In what coincidentally amounted to an Anglo-German ‘Frederick versus Friedrich’ debate, the two authors were pitted against each other in public forums and television interviews. While the two authors could reach agreement that the Dresden firebombing was a human tragedy, they vehemently disagreed over whether the raid can be justified on military grounds (see Chapter 6). For more than a decade, meanwhile, all of Germany had observed with a mixture of pride and awe as the project to rebuild Dresden’s Frauenkirche progressed ahead of schedule. By the early 2000s, reconstruction had reached a stage where the church’s colossal bell-shaped sandstone dome – affectionately known to locals as the ‘Stony Bell’ (‘Steinerne Glocke’) – once again dominated Dresden’s Elbe-skyline, and its reconsecration in October 2005 was cause for a national celebration. Furthermore, two films – both collaborative projects that premièred on Germany’s second public television station ZDF – engaged the subject of the Dresden firebombing from polarised perspectives and produced very different results. Under the leadership of its resident historian, the prolific Guido Knopp, ZDF teamed up with Cologne-based production company Broadview-TV to make a documentary titled Das Drama von Dresden.147 According to Broadview-TV’s Vera Bertram, who worked on the project, the intensified interest in German loss and suffering associated with

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bombing triggered by Friedrich’s book actually played no role whatever in the decision to make the film.148 Rather, the documentary already had been commissioned to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the raid. During years of production, the project team ignored the shifting dynamics of public victimisation discourse and instead remained focused on its original mission: to make a ninety-minute film documenting the last 36 hours leading up to the Dresden raid while properly locating it within the broader historical context of the final phase of the war. The result is a rich blend of black-and-white archival footage and photographs interspersed between colour re-enactments and eyewitness testimonies of Dresden civilians and Western Allied bombers. Das Drama von Dresden was critically acclaimed and won several awards, including the 2005 International Emmy Award for Best Documentary.149 In February-March 2006, ZDF broadcast the two-part telemovie Dresden. With a budget of €10 million, Dresden was the costliest production in German television history and billed as the first German fictional filmic portrayal of the Dresden bombing.150 Its maudlin plot follows a most improbable chain of events. A British bomber pilot shot down in February 1945 survives but is badly injured, so he blends among Silesian ‘trekkers’ as they make their way into Dresden where he hides in the underground storeroom of a hospital to treat his own wounds and recuperate. A young nurse (who happens to be the daughter of the hospital’s director, and the fiancée of one of its chief doctors) discovers the British pilot, whom she initially mistakes for a German deserter before discerning his true identity. Inexplicably, she helps him evade capture and the British pilot and engaged German nurse instantly fall in love. Their forbidden relationship is tested when they find themselves trapped in central Dresden during the bombing and firestorm. Hans Janke, ZDF’s Head of TV Drama, heralded Dresden as ‘a captivating antiwar drama and exceptionally moving love-story at the same time’ (‘…ein fesselndes Antikriegsdrama und eine ungewöhnliche, bewegende Liebesgeschichte zugleich’).151 Critics, however, were not convinced. ‘It was never going to be an easy job,’ acknowledged a Deutsche Welle report, ‘to make a slick and critically acclaimed two-part television drama about one of the most controversial bombing raids of World War II.’152 Yet critics savaged the effort by ZDF and its co-producers teamWorx and EOS Entertainment,

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with Deutsche Welle summarising the general consensus by stating that the film’s producers ‘could not have made a bigger mess of the story if they had tried.’ Critics differed in their reasons why Dresden was especially disturbing due to its depiction of wartime victimisation. Kerstin Decker of Berlin’s Tagesspiegel, for instance, panned the film because ‘it makes a mockery out of suffering.’153 Evelyn Finger of the weekly heavyweight Die Zeit fumed: ‘It’s perfidious. The revanchist message is packaged so beautifully you scarcely notice it. There are beautiful costumes. And aesthetically it’s great. The problem is you end up sympathizing with the Germans, regardless of what they’ve done.’154 Irrespective of the critical response, Dresden proved popular among the general public. Part I attracted an audience of some 12.7 million viewers (including 39 per cent of the 14–49 demographic) to set a new ratings record for a German telemovie or miniseries.155 In April 2006, ZDF announced the British free-to-air network Channel 4 had secured the rights to screen Dresden in the United Kingdom.156 Deals already had been signed with French, Spanish, and Italian broadcasters and worldwide distribution soon followed. The reception of, and reactions to, Dresden in Germany and abroad illustrate how, six decades on, the Dresden firebombing continues to be an emotional and divisive subject. Few other events of the Second World War can match the raid’s ability to stimulate interest and provoke debate.

A p p l ic at ion of c on c e p t s

‘There are many ways,’ comments Moeller, ‘to chart the memories of war.’157 This study makes no attempt to cover all the many and varied ways in which the destruction of Dresden was publicly articulated between 1985 and 2005. Instead, it concentrates on a select number of the most revealing arenas of articulation – print media, political speeches, public debates, and commemorative events especially on the city’s Gedenktag – where agents of articulation appropriated Dresden’s symbolism as the paradigmatic German Opferstadt. To track the shifting dynamics of Dresden commemorative politics leading up to, during, and after German reunification, this study

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employs a slice-history approach primarily based on every fifth Gedenktag from 1985 to 2005 inclusive. Whereas several good reasons account for this decision, three concerns stemming from a slice-history methodology based on a selected period must be addressed. First, bearing in mind some ebbs and flows, since the immediate post-war era Dresdeners have displayed a strong commitment to marking the anniversary of their city’s destruction. Given that commemorating 13 February with various forms of remembrance has been a custom in Saxony’s capital for the past six decades, then, the 1985–2005 period should not be automatically considered atypical. Second, the decision to focus on ‘slices’ invariably means that most years within the chosen period are not covered. Finally, owing to the often unpredictable and organic nature of the politics of war memory and commemoration, by no means did Gedenktage have a monopoly on the most noteworthy shifts that occurred during the two decades under scrutiny. Indeed, not only did some momentous events take place outside of 13 February, but even beyond the realms of Dresden itself. Therefore, where necessary this work considers key developments that occurred outside of the quinquennial Gedenktag framework. Nonetheless, when it comes to stimulating heightened curiosity in a historical event there is something special about ‘milestone’ anniversaries. Although locals have publicly commemorated the destruction of Dresden annually throughout the past six decades, barring a few exceptions a distinct pattern emerged whereby wider (inter)national interest in the Gedenktag peaked quinquennially. There is an intrinsic value, then, in focusing on the ‘slices’ of 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005, because the politicisation of memory and commemoration was most pronounced on the ‘milestone’ fortieth, forty-fifth, fiftieth, fifty-fifth, and sixtieth Gedenktage respectively. Public arenas of articulation such as Dresden’s annual Gedenktag constantly change. Investigating what happened in these select years enables a detailed tracking of the evolution of Dresden war memory and commemoration during a two-decade period of profound political changes either side of, and during, Germany’s reunification. Furthermore, because these ‘milestone’ occasions generated the most interest and debate, they offer the richest collection of readily accessible primary resource materials.

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Making the perceptive observation that ‘memories are always mediated,’ in 2005 Moeller recommended that ‘we would do well to pay closer attention to the ways in which postwar German memories of loss and suffering have been mass-mediated [emphasis in original].’158 Following Moeller’s advice, this study pays careful consideration to how news reports depicted public commemoration of the destruction of Dresden at the time of the five selected Gedenktage and other selected key incidents. A diverse selection of local, national, and international newspapers has been surveyed. And the rapid escalation of electronic communication means that websites of reputable news services proved remarkably fruitful sources for the most recent ‘slices’ in particular. Newspapers and electronic news services contained not only reports, editorials, and commentaries, but also verbatim transcripts of political speeches and official press releases. Accompanying photographs offered further insight into the commemorative events under scrutiny by providing invaluable visual documentation. Thus, print and electronic news media constitute the most comprehensive and important primary materials for this study. Reliance on news media as sources of information, however, means one must proceed with caution. It is usual, for instance, to detect major discrepancies in how commemorative events in Dresden during the Cold War were reported in influential newspapers such as the centre-right FAZ printed in Frankfurt-am-Main, the Munich-based centre-left Süddeutsche Zeitung, or from East Berlin the party organ of the SED the Neues Deutschland. And when German and British press reports of Dresden commemorative politics in the postreunification period are juxtaposed the differences of opinion are even more manifest. In defence of such a heavy reliance on the written word to examine the mass-mediation of Dresden war memories, it should be noted documentaries focus on the actual raid rather than probing the subsequent politics of commemoration. Consequently, although documentaries are important arenas of articulation in their own right, they nonetheless fall outside the scope of the present study, which is mostly interested in commemorative events marking the raid. Besides print and electronic media, other primary resources utilised include national archives, memoirs, and museum exhibition catalogues, while secondary materials including scholarly books and journal articles

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provide additional information and insight. In addition, two open-ended interviews were conducted in July and August 2006, and the information provided during these conversations and subsequent correspondence forms the basis for Chapter 5. This work is not about the Dresden raid in February 1945, but rather how various agents of articulation subsequently have appropriated the memory and commemoration of this catastrophic event as a political asset. First, however, this particular raid must be located in a broader historical setting of the Western Allies’ strategic bombing offensive against German population centres. Otherwise, one cannot fully appreciate the significance of Dresden’s emergence – above all other cities and towns destroyed by carpet-bombing and firestorms – as the paradigmatic German Opferstadt. Only once Dresden’s iconic status is rationalised is it possible to understand how and why its Gedenktag has been so consistently and intensively subjected to the politics of the past. Accordingly, Chapter 1 briefly outlines not the entire European bombing war but specifically the extensive civil death and devastation wrought on German population centres from February 1942 onwards as part of the Western Allies’ redirected strategic area-bombing offensive. The objective is not to follow Friedrich’s lead in presenting a decontextualised revisionist portrayal of German civilians as the hapless victims of ‘AngloAmerican air gangsters.’ Rather, the chapter demonstrates how Dresden – though unquestionably severe – was by no means an isolated case of mass-scale German civil death and devastation caused by bombing. It warns against reading history backwards and taking it for granted that the Dresden raid was so uniquely extreme that it was predestined to be singled out as a special if not unparalleled case of German wartime loss and suffering. To further explain how and why the destruction of Dresden quickly materialised as a paradigm of German victimisation, chapter one also briefly discusses the wartime reactions of Joseph Goebbels, Churchill, and the international neutral press, all of whom played roles in Dresden becoming cloaked in a quasi-mythical aura. Finally, the chapter concludes with a short summary of the main issues of interpretation concurrently shaped and reflected by the seven most influential full-length accounts of the Dresden raid published in either the BRD or the DDR by the early 1980s.

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Chapter 2 outlines the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration from the war’s end to the early 1980s. Synthesising some key secondary texts along with additional research, it identifies a tendency for agents of articulation to appropriate Dresden’s Gedenktag as a political asset already commencing in the Nuremberg interregnum. And it was during the Cold War that Dresden’s Gedenktag became a feature on the (especially East) German public memory calendar. Furthermore, it was throughout these four decades that, barring some notable exceptions, every fifth Gedenktag witnessed a peak in interest reaching far beyond the local level. Establishing the continuities and discontinuities in Dresden commemorative politics during four decades of Germany’s division sets the foundation upon which the substantive section of this work is constructed. Chapters 3–6 investigate in detail how Dresden commemorative politics changed in form, content, and intensity between 1985 and 2005. Chapter 3 examines the three most prominent arenas of articulation in Dresden on 13 February 1985: first, the SED’s midday mass party rally (Großkundgebung) at which the DDR’s leader Erich Honecker delivered the chief address; second, the evening’s celebratory reopening of the rebuilt Semperoper forty years after its wartime destruction; and, finally, various acts of remembrance performed day and night at Dresden’s foremost site of memory, the Frauenkirche ruins. Combined these three sub-sections encompassed both state-orchestrated and socially-based acts of remembering the destruction of Dresden. Moreover, the extensive coverage all these forms of commemoration received in the East and West German press highlights why studying the fortieth Gedenktag as the first substantive ‘slice’ serves as an important orientation point. Not even the caesura symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall four years later presented an opportunity for an untainted, fresh start to annually commemorating 13 February as the date of Dresden’s wartime transformation from the Elbflorenz to the Opferstadt.159 Establishing what were the prevailing attitudes in both the DDR and the BRD in 1985, then, enables us to identify and track any continuities and discontinuities evident following the end of Germany’s division. Furthermore, commencing with the fortieth Gedenktag is important because it facilitates a more grounded understanding of the subsequent hybridisation of East

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and West German public articulation of the destruction of Dresden in the post-reunification period. Chapter 4 examines the heady months of late 1989 and early 1990. This ‘slice’ examines three key developments or episodes in the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration during the so-called ‘Schwebezeit’ or time of uncertainty suspended between the DDR’s collapse and Germany’s official reunification. First is the impromptu public address West German leader Kohl delivered in December 1989 during an official visit to Dresden to meet his new East German counterpart Hans Modrow. The actual purpose of the much-publicised trip was to strengthen German-German relations within the shifting European order, but whilst in Dresden Kohl sensed the historical hour was ripe to announce to the world his objective of German unity. The Frauenkirche ruins served as an arresting backdrop for a political speech of such magnitude. Second, during this suspended time a local citizens’ action group (Bürgerinitiative) formed in Dresden and ultimately settled on the forty-fifth Gedenktag as the preferred occasion to publicly launch its ‘appeal from Dresden’ (Ruf aus Dresden) for worldwide support to rebuild the ruinous Frauenkirche. Finally, the chapter investigates the key instances of public commemoration conducted in Dresden on 13 February 1990, which proved the first Gedenktag freed of direct communist influence. Again, during the Schwebezeit manifestations of both state-centred and social agency were evident in the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration. Chapter 4 also advances the concept of ‘BRDDR’ memory hybridisation concerning Dresden as the Opferstadt. Chapter 5, the most ambitious of the four ‘slices,’ adopts a different approach to the other three substantive chapters, each of which hinge on events in Dresden on, or around the time of, a ‘milestone’ Gedenktag. In response to the often organic nature of the politics of war memory and commemoration, Chapter 5 spans from 1992 to 2000, linking together a remarkable chain of events that manifested themselves not only in Dresden but also in Britain. Still, to facilitate continuity, and given the overall focus on quinquennial Gedenktage, events in Dresden on 13 February in both 1995 and 2000 feature prominently. Examining the fiftieth and fifty-fifth Gedenktage together makes sense because of the emergence

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of a dominant new theme in post-reunification commemoration of the destruction of Dresden: German-British reconciliation. In both 1995 and 2000, British representatives participated in numerous official Gedenktag events in which reconciliation was a central theme. First, however, in order to explain how and why German-British reconciliation became a focal point in Dresden commemorative politics, it is necessary to start the chapter by looking at two controversial episodes in 1992: the Queen Mother’s unveiling of a privately commissioned statue of Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris in London in May; and, in October, Queen Elizabeth II’s attendance of a special service in Dresden’s Kreuzkirche during her first state visit to reunified Germany. The unveiling of the much-maligned Harris statue, and the Queen’s contentious fleeting visit to Dresden five months later, were enveloped in heated international debate. Consequently, they also inadvertently inspired the establishment of a British fundraising organisation called the Dresden Trust. In turn, the Trust pursued its objective of fostering improved Anglo-German relations and promoting reconciliation under the aegis of responding to the Ruf aus Dresden by organising sustained British support for the Frauenkirche rebuilding project. The Dresden Trust was well-received in Germany, thus proving the catalyst for substantial British involvement in official Gedenktag ceremonies in Dresden in 1995 and again in 2000. The bilateral pursuit of German-British reconciliation through the prism of Dresden involved royalty, politicians, church leaders, and ordinary people alike. The manner in which the events of 1992 led to reconciliation’s manifestation as a prevalent theme on Dresden’s fiftieth and fifty-fifth Gedenktage illustrates to what extent spontaneous social agency can influence the politics of the past. It must be stressed, however, official British participation soon became carefully fostered. Furthermore, Chapter 5 considers two important corollaries of the emergence of the reconciliation theme and associated strong British presence in Dresden on 13 February in both 1995 and 2000. First, it helped to increase international awareness of, and interest in, not only the fiftieth and fifty-fifth Gedenktage but also the ongoing Frauenkirche rebuilding project. By the mid-1990s, then, the politics of commemorating Dresden’s destruction actually transcended the BRDDR hybridisation of East and West German memories as an international dimension was

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introduction

incorporated. To address this significant expansion in the scope of Dresden commemorative politics, it is useful to borrow another concept from Levy’s and Sznaider’s work on memory in the global age, namely the ‘cosmopolitanisation of memory.’160 A somewhat amorphous concept, here cosmopolitanisation is used to describe the process whereby Dresden war memory and commemoration expanded in the postreunification period to incorporate an international dimension, which, in turn, led to increased international media awareness and relevance. The second issue stems from the fact that Dresden – and specifically its Frauenkirche – came to symbolise the pursuit of improved AngloGerman relations a half-century after the war’s end. The chapter argues this development can be viewed as evidence of a tacit agreement among all parties involved that, at least in this particular instance, German civilians had been subjected to an unreasonable degree of loss and suffering. Otherwise, quite simply it would not have made any sense whatever for Dresden to serve as the touchstone of German-British reconciliation in the post-reunification period. Segueing into the sixth and final chapter, it is argued the very public promotion of reconciliation as expressed on the 1995 and 2000 Gedenktage inadvertently made Dresden an ideal arena of articulation in the new millennium for the Berlin Republic’s reinvigorated far right to disseminate a revisionist account of the war that accentuates German victimisation. Chapter 6, a ‘slice’ focused on key incidents between November 2004 and February 2005, expands on the concept of memory cosmopolitanisation. It begins by looking at Queen Elizabeth II’s further engagement with the politics of Dresden’s past while visiting Berlin 12 years after her previous state visit to reunified Germany. It then concentrates on the struggle that erupted among competing agencies of articulation after the National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD), representing the resurgent far right, signalled its intentions to appropriate Dresden’s ‘milestone’ sixtieth Gedenktag for political means. For several weeks, the NPD’s provocative antics attracted headlines worldwide. The NPD and its followers ultimately met with stiff opposition from a number of fronts on 13 February 2005, as other state-centred and socially-based agencies of articulation sought to attach their own meanings and messages to

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the destruction of Dresden. Although Dresden’s Gedenktag had been an emotionally- and politically-charged arena of articulation for six decades, rarely if ever had it generated such sensational and hostile scenes as those marking 13 February 2005. None of these developments would surprise Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper who predicted in 2000 that the ‘central question in the conflicts of the future will remain that of the politics of agency: who controls the story of war and the way it is told to others?’161 And, in a further reinforcement of memory cosmopolitanisation in the global age, never before had Dresden’s Gedenktag attracted such extensive (electronic) media coverage internationally. ‘Memory,’ observed Jan-Werner Müller in 2002, ‘matters politically in ways which we do not yet fully understand [emphasis in original].’162 Bearing this in mind, it should come as no surprise that this study raises more questions than it supplies definitive answers. The following pages, then, represent ‘work-in-progress.’ But that is perhaps the most exhilarating aspect of studying the politics of war memory and commemoration, for as Confino and Fritzsche remark ‘the power of memory as a historical concept lies in its openness to questioning and renewal.’163

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1

The Western Allies’ Strategic Bombing Offensive and Dresden’s Transformation from European Kulturstadt to Germany’s Opferstadt

In 1802, Johann Gottfried Herder, residing in nearby Weimar shortly before his death, was moved to write in reference to Dresden: ‘Bloom, German Florence, with your treasures of the art world!’ (‘Blühe, deutsches Florenz, mit Deinen Schätzen der Kunstwelt!’).1 The popularised version, ‘Florence of the Elbe’ (Elbflorenz), soon embodied Dresden’s standing as the most internationally renowned German city of culture (Kulturstadt). Its reputation for artistic opulence and architectural grandeur was so pervasive that not even five years of Nazi barbarism and total war prevented some quarters of the enemy from publicly articulating hopes this particular German city would survive undamaged. With impeccably bad timing, an editorial in the reputable Manchester Guardian declared on 12 February 1945: ‘We may hope the Saxon capital is spared the worst. Only Germans need care for Berlin, but Dresden, with the charm of its streets and the graciousness of its buildings, belongs to Europe.’2 Within 48 hours, an Anglo–American ‘triple-blow’ bombing raid and resultant firestorm immolated the hitherto intact Dresden, which overnight effectively was transformed from a leading European Kulturstadt to the quintessential German Opferstadt. On 13–14 February 1945, a combined total of 1,083 aircraft operating in three waves dropped 1,952.2 tons of high explosives (HE) and 1,477.6 tons of incendiaries onto Dresden over some fifteen hours.3 Although such statistics sound impressive, actually they were not excessive in comparison with other major raids conducted by Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command and the US Eighth Air Force towards the war’s end. Due to the fiery outcome, furthermore, a common misconception is that the Dresden loads contained an inordinately high proportion of

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incendiaries. As Sebastian Cox points out, however, with a ratio of 56:44 in favour of HE, the Dresden raid’s percentage of incendiaries ranked only tenth out of fourteen RAF raids against German ‘Town Areas’ conducted in February 1945 alone.4 Nonetheless, as will be discussed below, a confluence of mitigating factors accounts for why this particular attack proved one of the most devastatingly effective operations of the European bombing war. In turn, the destruction of Dresden has come to be widely regarded as the ‘now notorious apogee’ of the Western Allies’ strategic area-bombing offensive against Germany.5 Given the raid’s infamy, then, it is important to establish from the outset that the Dresden raid was not predetermined by its planners to extend far beyond the usual degree of civil death and devastation produced by the so-called carpet-bombing of German population centres. Rather, it was the logical culmination of the overall strategic policy pursued at the time. Put another way, although the Dresden raid proved exceptionally destructive, it was not exceptional by design. This chapter is not a comprehensive account of the European bombing war. Essentially it presents an overview of the strategic areabombing offensive against German cities and towns from February 1942 onwards. Neither debates about whether the indiscriminate bombing of population centres is justifiable, nor the question of whether Germans themselves were ultimately responsible for the mass-scale civil death and destruction they endured, are discussed here.6 The chapter’s chief purpose is to locate the Dresden raid within a broader context of German loss and suffering caused by bombing. By tracing the escalation of bombing from 1942 to early 1945 before examining the Dresden raid in greater detail, commonalities and differences between the bombing experiences of Saxony’s capital and other German population centres can be identified. This is an important exercise, for only then is it possible to fully appreciate how and why Dresden came to be identified as the archetypal German Opferstadt. The chapter also briefly discusses wartime reactions to the Dresden raid, identifying the earliest signs that it would become divorced from the rest of the strategic area-bombing offensive against Germany and treated as something special. The chapter concludes with a historiographical overview of the seven leading fulllength accounts of the Dresden bombing and its aftermath published in

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either the BRD or the DDR between the early 1950s and early 1980s. Particular attention is paid to issues of interpretation and considering how these works shaped and reflected the controversies that enveloped the Dresden raid throughout the decades leading up to the period under scrutiny in the substantive section of this study.

Bu i l d - u p

Though there is no scope here to present a detailed history of bombing prior to the Dresden raid, it would be most remiss not to commence by acknowledging Germany’s pioneering role in targeting civil objects including the enemy’s homefront population. Through its cumbersome yet imposing Zeppelin airships and then the more threatening Gothas, during the First World War the Kaiserreich stole an early march in the universal pursuit to find a method of ‘leapfrogging’ an enemy’s land and sea forces to directly attack its homeland.7 Then, on 26 April 1937, some 43 German Luftwaffe aircraft operating in the Spanish Civil War as the Condor Legion bombed the small, unobtrusive, and unsuspecting Basque town of Guernica.8 Although technically justifiable as an act of interdiction – it supported General Franco’s Nationalist ground forces by delaying and disorganising Republican troops – the Guernica raid seems to have been little more than a test run for German bombers. The nature and scope of the unprovoked attack was unprecedented. Soon thereafter, Nazi Germany became the first nation – albeit somewhat ineffectively – to mount a bombing offensive during the Second World War.9 Guernica, then, was the menacing prologue to Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry, Liverpool, London, Leningrad, and Stalingrad as Hitler sought to flatten enemy cities through bombing. Early on, Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe ‘sowed the wind,’ remarked Sir Arthur Harris, and in time all Germans were to ‘reap the whirlwind.’10 British bombing policy remained restrained in the first two years of the war. Guided by the moral sensitivities that had prevailed in the interwar period, Whitehall’s earliest directives stressed that under no circumstances whatsoever could bombing operations be performed if the possibility existed that enemy civilians’ lives would be at risk.11

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Bomber Command’s initial modus operandi was the daytime bombing of unambiguously military-industrial installations as defined by the Oil Plan. Most power supplies, oil plantations, naval docks, and warrelated factories, however, were dispersed among or near populated areas, meaning options were severely restricted. Furthermore, operational limitations stemming from deficiencies such as poor radar equipment and inaccurate bombs or poor weather conditions meant that precision bombing was beyond Bomber Command’s capabilities at this stage. Germany’s sustained bombing of British cities and towns from Peterhead to Portsmouth helped British politicians and RAF policymakers overcome any lingering moral concerns about Bomber Command switching to night operations, a necessary move that would unavoidably result in increased casualties among enemy civilians. Moreover, after the British Expeditionary Force was expelled from the continent following the May–June 1940 evacuation at Dunkirk, and with the Royal Navy preoccupied with the crucial task of keeping transatlantic supply lines open, bombing represented Britain’s only real way of ‘hitting back’ at the Nazi homeland. Winston Churchill’s support for Bomber Command would oscillate throughout the war, but in a September 1940 memorandum the prime minister expressed an early appreciation for its potential by proclaiming: ‘The fighters are our salvation but the bombers alone provide the means of victory.’12 Bomber Command’s exploits over Reich territory, including the heavy December 1940 attack on Mannheim that Churchill ordered as reprisal for the fierce attack on Coventry the previous month, proved a boost for homefront morale.13 It was a different story behind closed doors, however, where Bomber Command was suspected of overly generous post-operational self-evaluation. D.M. Butt, a civil servant of the War Cabinet Secretariat, was charged with critically assessing the efficacy of bombing raids and his wholly negative findings exceeded even the most pessimistic expectations.14 According to Max Hastings, the Butt Report of August 1941 ‘marked the low-water mark of the wartime fortunes of Bomber Command.’15 Most damning was the fact that results against the Ruhr area – the tenaciously defended ‘armoury of the Reich’ (Waffenschmiede des Reiches) – were nothing short of appalling.16 Butt’s

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findings exposed Bomber Command as essentially a blunt instrument. In response to his report, on 13 November 1941 all long-range bombing operations against enemy territory were cancelled indefinitely.

Wat e r sh e d

February 1942 was the watershed month of the RAF’s strategic bombing offensive against Germany. After years of ineffectiveness and several months of relative inactivity following the Butt Report, two seismic decisions were made: first, a new directive that promised to revolutionise bombing operations was issued; second, a new hard-nosed Commanderin-Chief (C-in-C) was appointed to oversee its implementation. These two decisive steps set Bomber Command on the path of civic destruction that would see Dresden immolated practically three years later to the day. On 14 February 1942, the Air Ministry issued High Wycombe, Bomber Command’s wartime headquarters, what can be considered its first ‘areabombing directive.’17 Marking a radical departure from previous policy, it authorised the resumption of bombing against German territory ‘without restriction.’18 The directive designated 18 German cities as prioritised targets to be attacked repeatedly. Seven cities located within range of GEE – the RAF’s new top secret innovative target-finding and blind-bombing radar device – were euphemistically graded as either ‘Primary Industrial Areas’ or ‘Alternative Industrial Areas.’19 The other 11 cities deemed important but located beyond GEE’s range were classified as ‘Industrial Areas.’20 No Saxon cities were included on the list because they remained out of reach at this stage of the war. The 18 cities were selected principally due to their war-related industry. Significantly, bomber crews were charged not only with destroying factories but, moreover, breaking the spirits of enemy civilians in the process. ‘It has been decided,’ explained the directive, ‘that the primary object of your operations should now be focussed on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular, of the industrial workers.’21 Essen, the home of Germany’s leading armaments and ammunitions manufacturer Krupp, was designated the ‘most important of the selected primary targets.’22 Just hours after the directive was issued, overnight on

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14–15 February 1942 Essen was subjected to a new kind of attack – the indiscriminate carpet-bombing of an entire city. The heavily-defended expansive Krupp steelworks again proved elusive. Not so lucky was Essen’s centrally-located children’s ear-nose-and-throat clinic pulverised by a direct hit.23 Ten children and five adults were killed in what was a small but ominous warning of the mass-scale civil death and destruction that would accompany the RAF’s new area-bombing directive. A week later, on 22 February 1942, Bomber Command’s newlyinstated C-in-C Arthur Harris arrived at High Wycombe ready to put the RAF’s new policy into full effect. A pragmatist, he argued it was ‘better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to fail to destroy a large industrial city.’24 Determined to start with a bang, Harris ignored the prioritised but heavily-defended Rhine-Ruhr cities and instead earmarked Lübeck for annihilation. The old Hanseatic porttown represented an attractive proposition to Harris, who described it as built ‘more like a fire-lighter than a human habitation.’25 On 28 March 1942, Palm Sunday, 234 aircraft bombed Lübeck’s medieval Old Town (Altstadt). It was the first occasion Bomber Command trialled its so-called ‘double-blow’ technique in which a second wave of aircraft arrived several hours after the initial attack in order to augment the chaos and confusion unfolding below. The attack on Lübeck proved so outstandingly successful that, henceforth, Harris adopted the ‘doubleblow’ technique as Bomber Command’s preferred method of attacking German population centres. Large conflagrations consumed most of the city-centre and the raid killed over 300 Lübeckers, injured some 800 more, and made a further 16,000 homeless.26 Local industry, located on Lübeck’s outskirts, sustained only moderate damage but nonetheless took several weeks to reach pre-raid levels. Many irreplaceable historic buildings and monuments, including the twelfth-century medieval Church of Our Lady (Marienkirche) and the Renaissance-period town hall (Rathaus), were destroyed. The following day, an impressed Churchill sent a personal telegram to Franklin Roosevelt informing the US president that the results were ‘said to be the best ever.’27 Speaking from self-imposed exile in California, Lübeck’s most famous son Thomas Mann expressed sadness at the news of his hometown’s demise. As his message made unmistakably clear, however, Mann did not eschew cause

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and effect: ‘But I think of Coventry and have no objection to the lesson that everything must be paid for’ (‘Aber ich denke an Coventry und habe nichts einzuwenden gegen die Lehre, daß alles bezählt werden muß’).28

E s c a l at ion

Two months later, Harris conceived an ambitious plan. By drawing on additional aircraft and crews from other RAF commands and even its training program, he proposed carpet-bombing a single German city with 1,000 bombers overnight. Operation Millennium originally was planned to target Hamburg, but, owing to the vagaries of the weather, on the night of 30–1 May 1942 it was implemented against Cologne instead. It proved a spectacular success with over 900 of the 1,046 aircraft dispatched bombing the expansive city sprawled along both sides of the Rhine.29 Crews later quipped that the skies over Cologne had resembled Piccadilly Circus.30 The ‘double-blow’ raid caused extensive damage: some 3,300 buildings destroyed; over 2,000 more seriously damaged; and another 7,400 moderately damaged, mostly burned-out from incendiaries (another lesson learned from that ‘firelighter-town’ Lübeck). Whereas some 2,500 of the 12,800 buildings destroyed or damaged were industrial or commercial, the majority were residential quarters. Many historical and cultural buildings and monuments, including some dating from Cologne’s Roman period, were destroyed. Yet, somehow, the city’s massive centrally-located landmark cathedral, the Kölner Dom, escaped practically unscathed. Local industry took months to get back to pre-raid levels. But Cologne (unlike complacent Dresden in the distant east) always expected to be bombed heavily. Accordingly, the city’s 770,000 inhabitants were well-protected against air attack. Despite causing immense civil devastation, Millennium produced surprisingly low casualty figures of fewer than 500 killed and approximately 5,000 injured.31 Conversely, some 45,000 inhabitants of Cologne were made homeless overnight.32 This last statistic was particularly pleasing to Churchill’s scientific advisor Lord Cherwell, the German-born author of the infamous March 1942 ‘de-housing’ paper.33 Cherwell had calculated that a ten-thousand-strong fleet of heavy bombers could lay waste to

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Germany’s 58 major cities. He informed Churchill this would help secure victory by ‘de-housing’ around 22 million Germans or one-third of the Reich’s civilian population.34 Operation Millennium received rapturous applause in Britain and ‘Bomber’ Harris, as its mastermind, emerged as one of the Western Allies’ most popular war leaders. ‘It was, without question,’ states his biographer Henry Probert, ‘the attack on Cologne that imprinted the name of Harris on the nation’s consciousness – and that of the wider world.’35 The Thousand-Bomber-Raid against Cologne also marked the arrival of a radical new phase in air warfare. Just three decades earlier, when the first primitive bombing experiments were conducted during the Italo–Turkish conflict of 1911–12, Italian pilots had pulled the pins out of bombs with their teeth before flinging them out of the aircraft.36 By 1942, large cities were in danger of being erased overnight. In the ensuing three years under Harris, Bomber Command would attack German population centres with escalating intensity. As for Cologne, it continued to be bombed regularly until its 262nd and final raid on 6 March 1945. Four days later, when the US Army overran the Domstadt, they found a veritable ghost-town. Only some 10,000 of the pre-war population of approximately three-quarters of a million people had remained living in Cologne until the bitter end.37 For every pre-war inhabitant there were 31.4 cubic metres of rubble; only Dresden, which averaged 42.8 cubic metres per person, surpassed Cologne.38 Throughout 1942, the RAF dropped 40,000 tons of bombs on Germany. In the following year that figure quintupled.39 German bombing operations against Britain, conversely, already had peaked. Offensively the Luftwaffe was resigned to little more than nuisance attacks known as the ‘Baedeker raids’.40 An RAF propaganda leaflet distributed across the Reich in July 1943 succinctly summed up the situation: Fortress Europe has no roof: today the RAF is stronger than the German and Italian air forces combined. American aircraft production is larger than Germany’s, Italy’s, and Japan’s combined. In one hour on the night of 23–4 May 1943, the RAF dropped twice as many bombs on Dortmund as the Luftwaffe offloaded on all of England in the entire six months from 1 January to 30 June 1943.41

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During 1943, High Wycombe conducted three main operations: first, the Battle of the Ruhr; second, Operation Gomorrah; and, finally, the Battle of Berlin. From March to July, Bomber Command flew 18,506 sorties and dropped nearly 60,000 tons of bombs onto Germany.42 Although cities from Stuttgart to Stettin were attacked, this period of intensified assault became known as the Battle of the Ruhr because more than half the tonnage was dropped on Germany’s most heavily industrialised and densely-populated area. On 13 May, over 40,000 Duisburgers were ‘de-housed,’ as were more than 50,000 Dortmunders 11 days later. On 23 June, another 30,000 Ruhr inhabitants were ‘de-housed’ after an attack on Mülheim. Meanwhile, around 300,000 more civilians were ‘de-housed’ in separate raids on Wuppertal, Düsseldorf, and Krefeld – all located on the perimeter of the Ruhr.43 The Wuppertal bombing in May 1943 is especially noteworthy. Crew members later told Max Hastings that they had felt uncomfortable about the raid after being briefed that ‘part of their purpose was to catch the thousands of refugees believed to have poured into Wuppertal after the Dambuster operations a fortnight earlier.’44 The raid, which produced unusually large conflagrations for the time, burned out much of Wuppertal. Only five German cities had recorded death tolls exceeding 200 victims from a single raid, with Dortmund’s figure of 693 deaths on 24 May 1943 setting the benchmark.45 Less than a week later in Wuppertal, an estimated 3,400 people were killed in what represented a five-fold increase on the previous highest death toll recorded after an individual attack. All but essential workers deserted the Ruhr and relocated to safer locales including Saxony’s untouched capital, which enjoyed a nationwide reputation as the ‘air-raid shelter of the Reich’ (Reichsluftschutzkeller).46 Operation Gomorrah consisted of six massive Anglo–American attacks on Germany’s second city Hamburg between 24 July and 3 August 1943. It reached its apogee on 27 July, when Bomber Command engulfed the largest of all the Hanseatic port-cities in a lethal firestorm. Due to an unusually hot and dry summer, Hamburg was extremely susceptible to fire. A fierce upward suction of overheated air saw tornado-like winds tear a path of destruction through the city as a sea of flames was nourished by closely-built and cheaply-constructed

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wooden dwellings in the city’s working-class districts. According to Hamburg historian Ursula Büttner’s calculations, some 256,000 dwellings – more than half the city’s total – were fully destroyed with a further 22,000 made temporarily uninhabitable, causing around 900,000 refugees to flee the dead city.47 An estimated 40,000 Hamburgers were killed in what is widely recognised as the single most deadly operation in the European bombing war (Hamburg’s position is challenged only by historical revisionists and political extremists who maintain the Dresden raid claimed far more victims than the conventional estimates).48 Gomorrah, having spawned the first fullscale firestorm, introduced a wholly new dimension to civil death and destruction. Raids continued for several days as the city still burned. Combined the Western Allies dropped 8,500 tons of bombs on Hamburg within 11 days.49 Hamburg never fully recovered from Gomorrah, yet was bombed another 65 times, taking its overall tally to 213 separate raids.50 In September 1946, the British journalist, sometime labour politician, antiwar activist, and international socialist Fenner Brockway toured the British Zone of Occupation. Spending most of his time in Hamburg, Brockway solemnly observed: Several times I have remarked that bomb damage in Hamburg did not appear to be worse than in many English cities. The retort has always been: Wait and see. Now I do see. We drive to what was the largest working-class area in the town – and find it entirely gone. For literally miles there is hardly a house standing and those which stand are not more than skeletons…We walk in the shadow of these high walls which once were the frontage of dwellings five storeys high. They stand, but everything else above ground has gone. We return to the car and drive amidst the ruins. I am silent as I am told of the 46,000 who were killed in three days.51

At the time of Hamburg’s demise, Dresden had experienced three dozen full-scale air-raid warnings, all of which proved false alarms. Another 16 months and over 60 more false alarms would pass before the first bombs fell on Saxony’s increasingly complacent capital.52 In fact, such was the optimistic sense of safety in Dresden that all kinds of rumours spread among locals regarding why their city was being spared. Did the Western Allies admire its cultural heritage and architectural splendour too much to bomb the Elbflorenz? Had they earmarked it as their

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post-war administrative headquarters? Was an agreement in place to respect Dresden as a hospital city?53 Some Dresdeners, including the ‘privileged’ Jew and diarist Victor Klemperer, even pinned their hopes on rumours circulating that Churchill was personally responsible for protecting their Heimatstadt because his favourite aunt either was buried or perhaps even still living there.54 Bomber Command, meanwhile, was steadily creeping eastwards throughout 1943. Following the successes of the Battle of the Ruhr and Operation Gomorrah, in November Harris mounted his so-called Battle of Berlin. (The campaign consisted of 35 major raids, of which 19 actually were coordinated against cities other than the capital.)55 Harris confidently told Churchill that, if the USAAF joined him, for the loss of 400–500 aircraft he could flatten Hitler’s capital and ‘cost Germany the war.’56 The Americans declined the offer, instead preferring to continue their Transport Plan in an endeavour to paralyse the German war effort. Harris initiated his Battle of Berlin, anyhow. The operation proved a costly lesson of how, despite the Western Allies’ air superiority, attacking heavily-defended cities deep inside enemy territory remained fraught with danger. Successful missions were spasmodic at best, although one notable triumph during the otherwise costly Battle of Berlin was the 3 December 1943 firestorming of Dresden’s nearby Saxon sister city Leipzig.57 Nonetheless, within five months Bomber Command lost 1,047 aircraft with a further 1,682 damaged – equating to 2,690 crew members killed and almost 1,000 more captured.58 By March 1944, in the wake of the catastrophic raid on Nuremberg remembered as the ‘blackest night’ of Bomber Command’s war, the RAF was forced to abandon the campaign.59 Harris’ anticipated Berlinerdämmerung ended up his costliest failure. German civilians received some temporary respite between April and August 1944. Bomber Command was pre-occupied with supporting the build-up to, and execution of, Operation Overlord, the Western Allies’ Normandy invasion. Harris, however, resented being placed under the command of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). He always vehemently protested against orders to concentrate on what he considered ‘panacea’ targets. Once freed from some of his Overlord commitments in August, Harris recommenced carpet-bombing German ‘industrial areas.’ Within a fortnight, Berlin, Bremen, Cologne,

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Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt-am-Main, Hamburg, Homberg, Kiel, Leverkusen, Mannheim, Rüsselsheim, Stettin, and even the distant Königsberg all had been attacked at least once.60 High Wycombe gradually learned fire could be far more destructive than simply blasting population centres. Accordingly, meticulous bombing load ratios were developed in conjunction with the ‘doubleblow’ technique. The first wave would use a combination of HEs and incendiaries. The former knocked out a city’s infrastructure, prevented emergency services from gaining access, and blasted open buildings to create drafts. The latter struck literally thousands of small fires all over the helpless city. Nourished by the drafts, these soon merged to create larger conflagrations. A second wave then would follow up, predominantly with incendiaries, stoking the conflagrations and thus amplifying the terror and expanding the destruction. The most effective raids created firestorms, several of which occurred in the last quarter of 1944 and, including Dresden, in early 1945. However morally dubious it might have been, the earlier carpetbombing of the Ruhr and other major industrial cities and transportation hubs could be justified on military-strategic grounds. Cities such as Essen, Duisburg, Dortmund, Cologne, Hamburg and many others always expected to be bombed throughout the war. It is not so easy to defend the later attacks that destroyed hitherto ignored cities and towns including Darmstadt, Pforzheim, Würzburg, and, most controversially, Dresden in the final months of the war. In less than an hour on 11 September 1944, some 400 tons of HE and 580 tons of incendiaries were dropped onto Darmstadt. A firestorm consumed the Hessian city, which for several years prior to the First World War had been home to a certain Frederick Lindemann – later Lord Cherwell – while he attended the local high school (Realgymnasium) and polytechnic (Technische Hochschule).61 Roughly 10 per cent of Darmstadt’s 100,000 wartime population was killed overnight and a further 66,000 people were ‘de-housed.’62 One wonders how many of these victims once counted the young Lindemann as a classmate, friend, or neighbour. Darmstadt experienced proportionately the second most lethal raid of the European bombing war, surpassed only by the Pforzheim firestorm. On 23 February 1945, around 17,600 Pforzheimers – almost a quarter of the 1939 population

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of 79,000 inhabitants – were killed, saddling the Baden-Württemberg town with the unwanted distinction of having suffered proportionately Europe’s single most deadly bombing raid.63 And in 17 minutes on 16 March 1945, Bomber Command dropped 1,127 tons of bombs onto pristine Würzburg, a historic residential city nestled in Bavaria’s Franconian north. The resultant firestorm killed an unknown number of at least several thousand Würzburgers, ‘de-housed’ some 90,000 others, and caused so much devastation that 2.25 million cubic metres of debris were removed during post-war reconstruction.64 Whereas these three raids produced spectacular results, in scope and by design they simply were symptomatic of what would continue until 16 April 1945, when, just three weeks short of VE-Day, the RAF’s strategic area-bombing offensive against German population centres was cancelled. That Darmstadt, Pforzheim, Würzburg and numerous other similarlysized towns had long been ignored (despite being easily reachable) raises serious questions about their perceived importance as military-industrial targets. Ergo, problems arise when justifying why they were subjected to such destructive attacks – loaded with high proportions of incendiaries – so late in the war. Even the Bomber Command Campaign Diary acknowledges: ‘Darmstadt was simply one of Germany’s medium-sized cities of lesser importance which succumbed to Bomber Command’s improving area-attack techniques in the last months of the war when many of the larger cities were no longer worth bombing [emphasis added].’65 Correspondingly, in the Bomber Command Association’s 1992 tribute to C-in-C Sir Arthur ‘Butch’ Harris and those who served under him, Air Commodore and Head of Air Historical Branch Henry Probert reflected: Sadly … the pattern of the strategic campaign in the closing months of the war has tended to cast a shadow over its total achievement, and when one considers the immense hitting power now available and the general weakness of the German defences it is hard not to believe that more emphasis could – and should – have been placed upon attacking carefully selected precision targets rather than on the continued bombing of centres of population.66

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the dresden firebombing

W h y i s Dr e sde n sp e c ia l ? Or , w h y Dr e sde n i s sp e c ia l

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), compiled immediately after the war, calculated that 3.6 million German dwellings – approximately 20 per cent of the pre-war total – were ‘destroyed or heavily damaged.’67 The USSBS further estimated 7.5 million Germans had been made homeless. By the 1970s, the BRD’s Federal Office of Statistics (Bundesamt für Statistik) in Wiesbaden had settled on a figure of some 593,000 German civilians killed by bombing.68 In addition, across the Reich countless other Germans were seriously wounded, widowed, or orphaned by raids while a myriad of historic buildings of priceless cultural heritage were heavily scarred if not irreparably damaged.69 In light of these figures and the preceding overview of the Western Allies’ strategic area-bombing offensive against German population centres, the Dresden firestorm, however tragic, clearly was not an isolated case of mass-scale civil death and destruction. As Table 1.1 reveals below, in fact, concerning both the total number of raids and overall bomb tonnage dropped, the RAF and the USAAF hardly attacked Dresden compared to Germany’s other second-tiered cities. Both Cologne and Essen were attacked on more than 250 separate occasions (in contrast to six operations against Dresden) with each sustaining more than five times the amount of air ordnance. Cologne in particular recorded a sizeable death toll, too. Dresden, furthermore, suffered neither the single most lethal nor proportionately single most lethal raid of the European bombing war. And, revisionist claims aside, Dresden almost certainly did not register the highest overall death toll among bombed German cities. A persuasive case could be made that Hamburg endured a worse air war fate than Dresden, especially if not only the Gomorrah firestorm but the effects of more than 200 other raids against Germany’s second-largest city are taken into account. The bombing kismet of the great Rhine-Ruhr cities including Cologne, Dortmund, Duisburg, and Essen was extraordinarily destructive and demoralising, too. Although the Dresden bombing was late, Saxony’s capital was not the last hitherto spared German population centre to be destroyed

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through bombing. Both Pforzheim and Würzburg were firestormed afterwards and numerous other places including Hildesheim and Potsdam had largely escaped attention for years only to be obliterated in the final weeks of the war. Several cities and towns destroyed by bombing, then, could justifiably lay claim to being if not the, then at least a, German Opferstadt. City

Population (c.1939)

Total number of raids

Bomb Tonnage Dropped

Bombing War Casualties

Cologne

772,000

262

44,900

20,000*

Essen

667,000

272

37,900

7,500*

Munich

841,000

73

27,000

6,500*

Leipzig

707,000

23

11,600

5,200**

Dresden

630,000

6***

7,000

25,000**

Table 1.1 The Bombing War and Second-Tier German Cities *approximation, **minimum, ***February 1945 ‘triple-blow’ counted as single raid 70



Yet, even before the war’s end, the Dresden raid was identified as an especially tragic event that somehow transcended all other German loss and suffering caused by bombing. Five interlocking and overlapping factors account for why the Dresden raid is often divorced from the rest of the civil devastation that followed the 14 February 1942 area-bombing directive: first, the city’s universal repute as the Elbflorenz; second, the mystery enveloping the Allied decision-making process leading up to the raid; third, the lateness of the attack on the hitherto virtually ignored city, combined with the peculiarly civic target area, raises questions about the operation’s military-strategic justification; fourth, the devastating effectiveness of the raid and its subsequent aftermath; and, finally, the unknown but certainly high death toll. In the sixteenth century, Saxony’s Wettin dynasty settled on Dresden as their royal seat (Residenzstadt).71 Yet it was not until the early eighteenth century, under Elector Frederick Augustus I (or Augustus II the Strong) and his son and successor Augustus III, that Dresden first gained real repute. Inspired by the great northern Italian Renaissance cities, both electors invested considerable resources into transforming their Residenzstadt into a leading centre of architectural splendour and high culture. Dresden’s Altstadt amassed an envious collection of some of Europe’s finest examples of (neo)baroque design and its opulent

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galleries housed masterworks by Raphael, Bernado Bellotto Canaletto, Titian, and Rembrandt among others. For over two centuries prior to the Second World War, Dresden revelled in its status as Germany’s leading Kulturstadt. Saxony’s capital was not the only German city to lose irreplaceable historic buildings and monuments of priceless cultural heritage through bombing. Dresden, however, lost its very character and identity when immolated in February 1945, for its pre-war standing as the Elbflorenz was buried under a hail of falling bombs and fiery debris, replaced by a new status as the German Opferstadt. An air of mystery still hovers over who was ultimately responsible for ordering or requesting the Dresden raid and what were their base motives. Responsibility and motivation are crucial factors, not least when debating whether the raid was militarily justifiable, a war crime, or something in between. Here is not the place to get mired in conjecture, but a few general points must be made. The Yalta Conference, which concluded just two days before the Dresden bombing, often is cited as the scene where the decision was made. Sir Martin Gilbert, for instance, argues ‘the fate of Dresden … was sealed’ at Yalta when it was decided Western Allied bombers should assist the Red Army by halting ‘the flow of German troops’ to the Eastern Front.72 According to this interpretation, the Big Three agreed Dresden was a vital transportation hub. Another longstanding version claims that the Russians specifically made a formal request for Dresden to be bombed, ostensibly for the same reason – to stifle the redeployment of Wehrmacht troops and matériel. Curiously, when supporting this view some reputable historians have attached unwarranted credence to unsubstantiated claims made by Hugh Lunghi, who translated Russian for Churchill at Yalta.73 In print and documentary interviews conducted in 1994 and 1996 respectively, Lunghi broke his half-century of silence to claim Stalin was present at negotiations when General Aleksei Antonov, his chief military delegate at Yalta, apparently declared ‘we want Dresden.’74 Lunghi’s sensational claims, however, cannot be corroborated and run contrary to the official historical record. Whereas conference documents reveal that Antonov did request railway junctions in eastern Germany be bombed, the Russians only designated Berlin and Leipzig as targets.75 Records indicate Dresden was mentioned only in

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relation to the establishment of a so-called ‘bomb-line’ (from Berlin to Dresden to Vienna to Zagreb) designed to protect the advancing Red Army.76 A conspiracy theory involving the Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin triumvirate deciding that Dresden – the Third Reich’s last remaining intact major city – should be immolated as some kind of fiery metaphorical epitaph for Nazism is intriguing. Such a notion of sacrifice fits the Dresden as Opferstadt thesis nicely, too. In reality, however, whether they ever discussed Dresden as a potential target at Yalta remains a mystery. Moreover, whatever discussions took place during the Yalta Conference are a moot point, because incontrovertible evidence confirms the Western Allies already had decided to ‘thunderclap’ Dresden a week before even leaving for the Crimea. The original July 1944 Thunderclap Plan was conceptualised as the ‘knock-out’ blow that would end the war by demolishing Hitler’s capital and finally breaking Germans’ morale.77 In a four-day around-the-clock combined RAF-USAAF operation, some 25,000 tons of bombs were to be dropped on Berlin. (By contrast, ‘just’ 8,500 tons were dropped on Hamburg during Gomorrah, whereas fewer than 3,500 tons proved enough to destroy Dresden.) For several reasons, however, Thunderclap was shelved indefinitely. Six months later, conditions appeared favourable for the plan to be dusted off and modified to incorporate multiple targets. For two intertwined reasons, added to Berlin was the Saxon trinity of Leipzig, Chemnitz, and Dresden: first, these cities were identified as the key communications and transportation hubs directly behind the Eastern Front; second, they were known to be swarming with refugees fleeing the approaching Soviets. ‘Thunderclapping’ all four cities, then, held much theoretical appeal. Bombing a city already crammed with refugees would create untold mayhem, causing an even larger swell of refugees – with their morale crushed – to move on to the next closest city. This would place an unbearable strain on the civil administration and communications networks of the cities involved. The waves of refugees would clog the transport arteries behind the Front, thereby paralysing the Wehrmacht. The enemy either would be forced to surrender or eventually run out of functioning cities, whatever came first. In Britain, key war figures including Churchill, Harris, and Chief of Air Staff (CAS) Charles Portal privately championed the idea of bombing cities known

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to be swarming with refugees.78 Among the Americans, Chief of Staff of the US Army General George C. Marshall (who as Secretary of State would later lend his name to the post-war European Recovery Program better known as the Marshall Plan) argued that exploiting refugees when selecting cities for bombing ‘would probably be of great benefit’ because it would show German civilians ‘there is no hope.’79 Thunderclap was set in motion on 22 January 1945, when the British commissioned an intelligence report to determine the plan’s likely benefits in supporting the Red Army’s advance. The report was distributed three days later, and SHAEF headquarters in Paris decided Thunderclap ‘should be held in instant readiness, but not ordered until the Russians were either on the [River] Oder in strength or across it.’80 SHAEF also declared it would be conducted as a joint RAF-USAAF operation. Before day’s end, word of Thunderclap’s pending implementation filtered through to London, where Secretary of State Sir Archibald Sinclair informed Churchill. According to Sinclair, with his typical flair the approving prime minister asked what specific plans the RAF had for ‘basting the Germans in their retreat from Breslau.’81 High Wycombe also was informed in the evening of 25 January, meaning the order to bomb Dresden came not from Harris – as is widely mistaken – but from above. A bad weather snap temporarily stalled Thunderclap (coincidentally during the Yalta period), but it was only a matter of time before conditions would clear and the Saxon trinity could be attacked. In fact, in the wake of the devastatingly effective Dresden bombing, it is often overlooked that an even larger fleet was dispatched to Chemnitz the following night only for atrocious conditions to severely hinder accuracy and thus save the ‘Manchester of Saxony’ from a similarly catastrophic fate.82 It is pertinent to remember, then, the Western Allies intended – indeed, attempted – to ‘thunderclap’ Chemnitz and not just its more illustrious neighbour, and only the vagaries of the weather prevented a second Saxon firestorm in February 1945. Furthermore, if Operation Thunderclap was fully implemented, Leipzig might have been firestormed a second time, too. Popular legend has it that Dresden was a ‘virgin’ target at the time of its destruction. It is true, as Harris noted in his confidential post-war despatch appraising his three years in charge of Bomber Command, Dresden ‘had not previously been bombed’ by the RAF.83

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The Americans, however, had bombed the city or its surrounds on three separate occasions. On 24 August 1944, 78 aircraft offloaded 154 tons of HE on semi-rural Freital, located just eight kilometres southwest of Dresden.84 According to Götz Bergander, although locals believed it had been a mishap, Freital was purposely attacked as part of the USAAF’s oil offensive.85 The raid caused minimal damage and killed 241 people. On 7 October 1944, the Americans were responsible for what local diarist Victor Klemperer termed the ‘deflowering of Dresden.’86 With the primary target (nearby oil installations) concealed by 10/10ths cloud cover, 29 USAAF bombers instead dropped 70 tons of HE onto their fall-back option: Dresden’s centrally-located Friedrichstadt marshalling yards.87 Bombs sprayed adjacent residential quarters, killing approximately 270 people. On 16 January 1945, some 127 B-24 Liberators attacked the Friedrichstadt marshalling yards, again as a secondary option. Although 264.8 tons of HE and 41.6 tons of incendiaries is a relatively modest load, it was more than the previous two raids on Freital and Dresden proper combined.88 Moreover, it was the first occasion incendiaries – over 18,000 sticks – were used against Dresden. Minor damage was recorded along with an official death toll of 376 victims. Prior to February 1945, then, Dresden and its immediate surrounds had been attacked three times, sustaining moderate damage and registering almost 900 deaths. Although Dresden was no ‘virgin’ target, it would be folly to exaggerate its bombing experiences to this point in the war given what other German cities already had endured. Comparatively speaking the Elbflorenz had been ignored, and its historic cultural Altstadt remained wholly intact. This, coupled with the questionable nature of the raid as outlined below, only made the lateness of the destructive raid seem all the more tragic and controversial. Ira Eaker, the commander of the US Eighth Air Force, once remarked to General Carl ‘Toohey’ Spaatz, his immediate supervisor and senior American airman in Europe: ‘We should never allow the history of this war to convict us of throwing the strategic bomber at the man [sic] in the street.’89 For much of the war, the USAAF did concentrate on targets such as ball-bearings factories or synthetic chemicals and oil installations as part of the Transport Plan. The Americans largely tried to paralyse the

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German war machinery and left Bomber Command to attack civilian morale. Over time, however, the USAAF increasingly warmed to the RAF’s method of indiscriminately bombing population centres. On 3 February 1945, for instance, an exclusively American attack on Berlin that simply designated the city centre as the aiming point proved one of the largest raids of the European bombing war.90 In the final phase of the war, moreover, the two air forces often worked in tandem. The Americans would lead the way with a daytime assault on a designated city, which still would be aglow and in disarray that evening, making it easier for Bomber Command to locate and destroy. On 16 January 1945, for example, a USAAF-RAF day-night combination assault obliterated the hitherto virtually untouched Magdeburg.91 Indeed, this collaborative modus operandi actually was the original plan for the Dresden ‘triple-blow’ and only the vagaries of the European winter meant the order was reversed. Whereas the USAAF’s raid scheduled for midday on 13 February was postponed for 24 hours due to poor visibility, conditions cleared sufficiently for the RAF’s two-wave attack to go ahead that evening as planned. ‘Had the weather not intervened,’ muses Cox, ‘it would have been the USAAF bombers which bombed Dresden first, and not the RAF, with incalculable results both for the raids themselves and the ensuing controversy.’92 Had the Americans attacked first as planned, Dresden would have been covered by a pall of smoke when Bomber Command arrived, forcing them to bomb ‘blindly’ by radar. As it happened, the order reversal meant the RAF operated in optimum conditions. Dresden was clearly visible and, moreover, the complete absence of German fighters in the air and flak defences on the ground left it utterly defenceless. The marker pilots could descend lower than usual to expertly demarcate the aiming point. The bombers likewise were informed it was safe to descend to as low as 15,000 feet to get beneath the highest levels of cloud cover, which facilitated an exceptionally precise raid. Bomber Command’s most accomplished starters of firestorms, No 5 Group, had mastered its unique Newhaven sector-bombing technique in which a fan- or wedge-shaped area was bombed evenly to ensure small fires quickly merged into larger conflagrations.93 Accuracy was paramount to Newhaven successfully creating a firestorm and Dresden’s absolute

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defencelessness allowed the time needed to ensure such precision. The ‘general impression,’ as noted in No 5 Group’s Summary of Operations report submitted the following day, was that ‘the attack went according to plan.’94 Shortly after 10.00pm on 13 February, Shrove Tuesday, the first wave of 253 aircraft (codenamed PLATERACK and exclusively consisting of 5 Group) commenced sector-bombing Dresden’s Altstadt. Offloading almost 900 tons of HEs and incendiaries, PLATERACK accomplished its mission to engulf the city in a firestorm. Around three hours later, the second wave of 552 aircraft (STRONGMAN, made up of Groups 1, 3, 6, and 8) dropped another 1,800 tons of air ordnance onto Dresden, further stoking the firestorm already burning uncontrollably. The combined incendiary load – the part designed to burn a city to the ground – included more than 400,000 four-pound magnesium incendiaries and over 2,000 incendiary clusters.95 Within hours the firestorm consumed some thirteen square miles of Dresden’s hitherto undamaged Altstadt and surrounding residential quarters.96 Most of Thunderclap’s death and destruction already had been visited upon Dresden. Around noon the following day, Ash Wednesday, the USAAF completed the ‘triple-blow’ as 311 aircraft dropped some 800 tons of bombs onto the Friedrichstadt marshalling yards and peripheral parts of the city not hit by Bomber Command.97 In addition to some 75,000 dwellings lost, virtually all of the (neo)baroque masterworks located in the Altstadt were heavily damaged if not wholly destroyed. American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, who as a POW interned in a local slaughterhouse witnessed the raid and its immediate aftermath, later described Dresden as a virtual moonscape.98 Bomber Command’s only attack on Dresden (complemented by the USAAF) produced an impressive catalogue of damage to industry, public utilities, and communications installations.99 It is, however, better remembered for destroying more or less all of the architectural masterworks that dotted Dresden’s Altstadt. Of all these gems, the last to succumb was Dresden’s most celebrated and beloved landmark building and arguably German Protestantism’s most important architectonic achievement, the Frauenkirche. For two hundred years, the church’s impressive sandstone dome had crowned Dresden’s renowned Elbe-

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skyline. At first it seemed the Frauenkirche somehow had miraculously survived both the bombing and firestorm despite being in the middle of PLATERACK’s target area. But the intense heat had severely weakened the massive dome’s wooden support beams and, owing to unbearable structural damage, mid-morning on Thursday 15 February Dresden’s Frauenkirche imploded into a mountain of rubble (Trümmerberg). In the ensuing half-century, the Frauenkirche ruins would come to symbolise many things from the universal horror and senselessness of war to German loss and suffering. As discussed in great depth throughout this study, in time the site of the Frauenkirche Trümmerberg emerged as Dresden’s foremost bombing-related arena of articulation and a focal point of Gedenktag politics of war memory and commemoration. A single operation deprived Dresden of everything responsible for, and associated with, its identity as a European Kulturstadt. It is impossible to express with mere words the despair felt by those familiar with pre-war Dresden, but perhaps the German Nobel laureate Gerhart Hauptmann captured it best. The 83-year-old Silesian poet and dramatist, who witnessed the Dresden firestorm from nearby Loschwitz, lamented: Those who have forgotten how to weep learn again with the destruction of Dresden … I personally experienced the destruction of Dresden under the Sodom-and-Gomorrah-hell of the enemy aircraft…I am standing on the exit door of my life and envy my dead departed comrades who were spared this experience.100

Not only was Dresden laid bare to attack through the absence of flak and fighters, but furthermore its population was left woefully unprotected from air attack. Dresden, the supposed ‘Reichsluftschutzkeller,’ was overlooked by the national emergency programme (Führer-Sofortprogramm) in which more than 3,000 public bunkers were constructed in over 80 German cities from September 1940 onwards.101 Years of complacency and corruption by the region’s Nazi Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann only exacerbated the problem. Whereas Mutschmann assured Dresdeners they would continue to be spared from bombing, he nonetheless commissioned SS engineers to construct state-of-the-art bunkers below his office and behind his private residence.102 In February 1945, when Bomber Command finally attacked, most Dresdeners had no choice but

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to seek refuge in rudimentary shelters in their basements. Thousands, tragically naïve of the RAF’s ‘double-blow’ technique, were too frightened to venture outside after PLATERACK had finished bombing. Instead, they remained inside and by the time STRONGMAN arrived they were trapped. As in Hamburg and other firestorms, the majority of deaths in Dresden resulted not from being burned alive on the streets but rather from asphyxiation. One of the hardest aspects of analysing the bombing war, as Olaf Groehler remarks, is accurately calculating the number of casualties.103 In the case of Dresden, the unknown number of refugees present on the night in question makes it especially difficult. A sizeable number of ‘trekkers’ were in Dresden, most of whom were camped around the central station (Hauptbahnhof) or in the nearby expansive public gardens, the Großer Garten, and thus caught amid the bombing and firestorm. But a consensus never has been reached on how many extra people were in Dresden on 13 February 1945. Two examples demonstrate the wildly conflicting estimations. In the 1950s, Axel Rodenberger claimed that over 1.1 million people ‘were accommodated within the walls of this large city when its moment of ruin arrived.’104 A half-century later, Jörg Friedrich claimed that Dresden’s usual population of 640,000 was swelled to 800,000 or perhaps up to one million.’105 The unknown number of refugees, moreover, adds to the uncertainty over the number of bombing victims, which in turn has given rise to all manner of sensational allegations including six-figure death tolls that persist to this day. Claims of 350,000 or more victims that circulated immediately following the attack were instrumental in Dresden garnering a reputation as a sui generis event even before the war’s end.

Wa rt i m e r e ac t ion s

Summoning the added air of trustworthiness attached to neutral observers, in mid-February 1945 Nazi newspapers including Der Angriff and the Dresdner Zeitung reported that ‘confirmation’ had been provided by the London correspondent of a Swedish newspaper that ‘Anglo-American air-gangsters’ (‘anglo-amerikanischen Luftgangster’)

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were mercilessly targeting German refugees in ‘wicked terrorist attacks’ (‘gemeine Terrorangriffe’).106 Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, upon hearing of Dresden’s immolation, immediately moved to manipulate the situation. News that enemy ‘Luftgangster’ had laid waste to the universally-revered Elbflorenz presented a last-ditch opportunity to steel domestic resolve and engender international sympathy. A Nazi press release on 16 February proclaimed the Dresden bombing was particularly callous on two accounts. First, Dresden was (falsely) described as a city void of war industries and ergo not a militarily justifiable target. Second, the statement argued: The use of incendiary bombs shows that the cultural and residential areas were deliberately attacked and destroyed…The explanation can only be that they [the Western Allies] desire to obliterate and annihilate the German people and all its [sic] remaining possessions.107

Wildly exaggerated figures quickly circulated in the international neutral press after German diplomatic contacts disingenuously passed on falsified information to Swedish and Swiss news correspondents in Berlin. On 17 February, Sweden’s Svenska Morgonbladet reported that 2.5 million people were in Dresden on the night of the firestorm, meaning almost two million ‘trekkers’ would have been swarming the streets.108 A week later, a rival Swedish daily paper the Svenska Dagbladet acknowledged an accurate death toll was ‘impossible to guess’ but nonetheless continued: ‘According to a report issued a few days after the attack the figure was nearer 200,000 than 100,000.’109 Far from subsiding, by March some reports in the neutral press estimated 400,000 victims had been killed overnight in Dresden.110 The numbers game involving Dresden’s death toll had commenced in earnest even before the Western Allies’ strategic bombing offensive against Germany had concluded. It was not only in Germany and neutral countries that the Dresden firebombing already was being singled out as exceptionally catastrophic even before the war’s end. In Britain, however, the Dresden raid’s instant notoriety did not necessarily have anything to do with remorse over the targeting of refugees or an exorbitant death toll. Rather, it stemmed from those issues raised by the Manchester Guardian on the eve of the raid, namely that Dresden should have been spared the worst because it was a Kulturstadt whose charm and graciousness belonged to all of

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Europe. ‘For the first time since the bomber offensive began,’ states Hastings, ‘on the news of the destruction of Dresden a major wave of anger and dismay swept through Whitehall and the Air Ministry, echoed in Parliament, and finally reached the gates of High Wycombe.’111 Moreover, in a confidential minute dated 28 March 1945, Churchill, not wishing to ‘come into control of an utterly ruined land,’ questioned the



Figs 1.1, 1.2

Churchill’s drafted memo denouncing the destruction of Dresden and, overleaf, the more discreet redraft. Photographs taken of originals (stored in the National Archives, London).

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wisdom in continuing to obliterate German cities in light of imminent victory.112 The prime minister suddenly felt ‘the need for a more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.’ He identified one particular raid as worthy of special mention, declaring: ‘The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing.’ Noting Churchill had counted among Bomber Command’s most vocal political champions in the preceding five years, the official historians of the strategic bombing offensive against Germany, Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, consider this particular memorandum ‘among the



Fig. 1.2

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strategic bombing and dresden ’ s transformation

least felicitous of the Prime Minister’s long series of war-time minutes.’113 Hastings argues that ‘it is impossible to regard this memorandum as anything other than a calculated attempt by the Prime Minister to distance himself from the bombing of Dresden and the rising controversy surrounding area bombing.’114 In any case, an incensed CAS Portal demanded the minute be withdrawn and redrafted minus the damning assessment of the RAF’s conduct, and on 1 April Churchill issued what Webster and Frankland describe as a ‘more discreetly and fairly worded’ version.115 All mention of ‘acts of terror’ and ‘wanton destruction’ had vanished, as had the specific reference to Dresden. As the politically astute Churchill soon recognised, the strategic area-bombing offensive – especially the Dresden firebombing – threatened to hover over the Western Allies’ conduct of the war like an accusatory question mark. Churchill made no specific reference to Bomber Command’s contribution in his prime ministerial VE speech broadcast to the nation on 13 May 1945; no individual campaign medal or service award was struck for Bomber Command; and, unlike all his contemporaries and even some lower-ranking officers, C-in-C Harris did not receive peerage.116 In his multi-volume war memoirs, Churchill scarcely refers to the strategic bombing offensive against Germany and fails to acknowledge the debate among wartime policymakers over area-bombing and the Transport Plan. He only fleetingly mentions that in February 1945 the RAF ‘made a heavy raid’ on Dresden, described vaguely as a ‘centre of communications of Germany’s Eastern Front.’117 Despite Churchill’s whitewashing attempts, this ‘heavy raid’ would become widely recognised as one of the most controversial episodes of the Second World War.

I s su e s of i n t e r p r e tat ion : sha p i n g a n d r e f l e c t i n g c on t rov e r sy

During the Cold War era, the Dresden firebombing sparked considerable historiographical debate in Germany and abroad. Though historiography is an intriguing arena of articulation in its own right, its impact on the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration features only

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briefly at certain points in the substantive section of this work. For the purposes of the following study, then, it is unnecessary to cover fully the expansive and complex yet peripheral subject of Dresden bombing historiography. Instead, what is presented here is an overview that identifies and traces the main issues of interpretation as they appeared in East and West German discourse throughout the Cold War period. The remainder of the chapter explores how seven highly influential full-length accounts of the raid simultaneously shaped and reflected the controversies that underpinned the central historiographical issues in the BRD and the DDR. First published between the 1950s and early 1980s, they consist of three West German and two East German works as well as two translated British accounts. Particular attention is paid to how these seven publications helped to perpetuate Dresden’s iconic status as the German Opferstadt. Whereas Saxony’s destroyed capital was such a prominent early landmark on the East German ‘memory landscape,’ the first full-length account, Axel Rodenberger’s Der Tod von Dresden (literally ‘the death of Dresden’), actually appeared in the BRD.118 For three decades, Rodenberger had lived in Dresden intermittently before settling in western Germany after the war to escape communism.119 First published in serial form in a popular West German weekly throughout 1951, Rodenberger’s account heavily relies on his intimate knowledge of Dresden and eyewitness testimonies. Furthermore, his claims of having accessed unpublished official reports were not refuted at the time. Consequently, a certain weight of authority was attached to Rodenberger’s version of events in which he makes some remarkable assertions including: Dresden, swelled with half a million refugees, housed 1,130,000 people on the night of the attack; extensive strafing of civilians occurred in central Dresden; and the death toll ranged anywhere from at least 100,000 and possibly up to 400,000 victims.120 That Rodenberger’s book sold in excess of 250,000 copies and was reprinted eight times between 1951 and 1963 (and was re-released in 1995 to mark the raid’s fiftieth anniversary) indicates it was immensely popular and had a lasting impact on how (West) Germans viewed the destruction of Dresden.121 Rodenberger’s startling claims of a six-figure death toll was his pioneering work’s most influential corollary. Whereas it suggested the

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Dresden raid was at least twice as deadly as the Hamburg firestorm, his assertion that the figure perhaps reached as high as 400,000 victims would have meant almost as many people died in Dresden overnight as the rest of Germany during the entire bombing war. Given such claims it is little wonder Dresden was recognised in the BRD as the quintessential German Opferstadt (see Chapter 2). Meanwhile, during the Soviet occupation local Dresden authorities initially determined an official estimate of 25,000 victims before the DDR settled on the slightly higher figure of 35,000 deaths (an assessment maintained until the state’s collapse in 1989). For his many West German readers, then, Rodenberger’s ostensibly authoritative account – apparently based on unpublished official reports – raised an intriguing question: why did East German communist officials disseminate such ‘low’ figures? After all, given the British and Americans were responsible, should it not have suited the DDR’s anti-Western Cold War rhetoric to maximise rather than minimise Dresden’s death toll? A possible explanation for this conundrum can be discerned from the first full-length account of the Dresden bombing that passed through the DDR’s stringent publishing censors (discussed below). Rodenberger, in fact, portrayed Dresden not only as Germany’s equivalent of a nuclear attack, but something even more lethal by claiming that its death toll of ‘hundreds of thousands’ exceeded those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.122 Rodenberger’s notion of Dresden as a German Hiroshima would pervade the politics of memory and commemoration in both Germanies throughout the Cold War (see Chapter 2). Another author to make the Dresden–Hiroshima connection, albeit from a very different perspective, was Saxony’s former minister-president (Ministerpräsident) Max Seydewitz (1947–52). Published in 1955 to mark the raid’s tenth anniversary, Seydewitz’s Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau von Dresden (literally ‘the destruction and reconstruction of Dresden’) was the first full-length account to appear in the DDR.123 Seydewitz toed the party line, first portraying the Dresden raid as a senseless, indeed criminal act planned and executed by ‘western capitalist warmongers’ late on when the war’s outcome already was decided. He then presented a premature but glowing appraisal of the city’s socialist-inspired postwar reconstruction and rebirth. Grouping Germany’s Opferstadt

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with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an apoplectic Seydewitz argued that all three events were early signs of ‘American imperialism’ inasmuch as the motivation behind unleashing such exceptional attacks had nothing whatever to do with wartime military considerations and instead they were designed to lay the foundations for Washington’s plans for post-war world domination.124 Seydewitz’s bout of historical amnesia, in which he more or less forgot the RAF’s leading role in the Dresden raid while overemphasising the USAAF’s involvement, complemented the DDR’s anti-American Cold War rhetoric of the 1950s. Despite categorising Dresden with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Seydewitz’s account maintained East Berlin’s official death toll of 35,000 victims. Seydewitz also advocated a theory that had increasingly gained momentum in the East since the onset of the Cold War: the Western Allies’ destruction of the defenceless Kulturstadt had nothing whatever to do with defeating Hitler, but rather was designed to both hinder and intimidate the Soviets in the looming post-war period. The Dresden raid, according to this argument, was less a militarily-inspired act directed against the Nazis and more a politically-motivated measure enacted in opposition to Moscow. Such allegations effectively portrayed the Dresden bombing as a very early salvo in the Cold War – fired even before Hitler’s downfall. Viewed from this perspective, the DDR’s initially puzzling decision not to follow Rodenberger’s lead and cite six-figure death tolls makes sense. Disseminating such inflated estimates actually would have done more harm than good by suggesting the Western Powers’ ‘conventional’ bombing capabilities were even more destructive than nuclear weapons. Any such claims only would have served to frighten East Germans during the early phase of the Cold War. One-time Dresden theatre critic Wolfgang Paul, who survived the bombing and firestorm, was expelled from the DDR after openly criticising its state censorship of cultural expression.125 In 1964, Paul’s eyewitness account of the raid and its immediate aftermath, titled … zum Beispiel Dresden: Schicksal einer Stadt (literally ‘Dresden, for example: the fate of a city’), was published in the BRD.126 According to Elizabeth Corwin, Paul’s book is most notable because it introduced to West German discourse a theory that already had been popularised in the DDR for some time: he questioned whether the Western Allies destroyed

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Dresden primarily to impress Germans and Soviets alike with their military might.127 Like Seydewitz, Paul argued the raid was a politicallymotivated act concerned less with defeating Hitler than intimidating Stalin; ergo, neither the cultural loss nor the unknown number of victims – still widely believed to be in the hundreds of thousands in the BRD at the time – could be justified militarily. According to Paul’s interpretation, then, Dresden fulfilled the dual meanings of Opfer: a city crammed with civilian victims when it was militarily sacrificed to meet political ends. Paul’s book was not the most significant full-length account published in the BRD in 1964. David Irving was a 27-year-old without any academic qualification or formal training as a historian when his first book, The Destruction of Dresden, was published in April 1963.128 It met with instant popular acclaim and when the (West) German translation, Der Untergang Dresdens, appeared in the BRD a year later it proved a catalyst for widespread interest in the subject (see Chapter 2).129 Concerning the unsolved question of who ordered the raid, Irving absolved both the Soviets and Harris of any direct responsibility and instead blamed Churchill personally for requesting Dresden be destroyed. Extensively researched, engagingly written, and including a glowing foreword by Harris’ wartime deputy, Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, Irving’s work gave the impression of an authoritative account that would stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. His account was so persuasive that even Saundby advocated Irving’s six-figure death toll estimate of 135,000 victims without demur. In his foreword, Saundby also cited the precise total of 71,379 victims in relation to Hiroshima, thereby suggesting to (West) German readers that the Dresden firebombing had claimed almost twice as many victims as the first atomic attack on Japan. Accordingly, Saundby recommended that ‘supporters of nuclear disarmament’ should read Irving’s account and ‘ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an air attack with conventional weapons’ (‘Die Befürworter der nuklearen Abrüstung scheinen zu glauben, wenn sie ihr Ziel erreichen könnten, würde der Krieg erträglich und anständig werden. Sie täten gut daran, dieses Buch zu lesen und über das Schicksal Dresdens nachzudenken, wo hundertfünfunddreißigtausend Menschen durch einen Luftangriff mit konventionellen Waffen umkamen’)130 To a West German readership previously influenced by Rodenberger’s astronomical estimates

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reaching up to 400,000 victims, despite still being six figures Irving’s claims of a 135,000 death toll – endorsed by Saundby – appeared rather ‘moderate’ by comparison. It remained, however, significantly more than the DDR’s official estimate of 35,000 victims maintained since the late 1940s. Irving’s figure, in fact, was precisely 100,000 higher – a coincidence he alleged was the result of communist agents doctoring official reports by deleting the first digit so that East Germans were less intimidated by Western military might.131 It would be the documents Irving relied upon to substantiate his claims of 135,000 victims that, in time, were exposed as the forgeries; rather than post-war communists deleting the first digit, Nazi agents had earlier suffixed a rogue zero to figures in official records of Dresden’s bombing dead.132 As early as July 1966, through an open letter to The Times of London, Irving publicly acknowledged his sources for Dresden’s death toll almost certainly were Nazi forgeries.133 His translated work, however, already had made a profound impact on West German public discourse on the destruction of Dresden leading up to the twentieth Gedenktag (see Chapter 2). Irving’s account, suggests Matthias Neutzner, was the driving force behind Dresden cementing a reputation in the BRD as not only a uniquely destructive event in the European bombing war, but even more deadly than atomic warfare.134 Irving’s 1966 admission in The Times did not prevent him from continuing to cite vague figures of anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000 victims in the many English and German revised editions published in the ensuing decades (see Chapter 4). As Richard J. Evans’ exhaustive investigations reveal, Irving’s manipulation of the Dresden raid generally, and its death toll especially, would become a cornerstone of his elaborate history-falsifying campaign as he drifted toward Holocaust revisionism.135 A decade after Seydewitz’s monologue, another retired prominent Saxon politician, Dresden’s former mayor (Oberbürgermeister) Walter Weidauer (1946–58), published another full-length account of the Dresden firebombing.136 Neutzner aptly describes Weidauer’s 1965 portrayal as a largely unreliable and biased East German equivalent to Rodenberger’s account (‘…und war mit seinen oft übertriebenen oder falschen Details gleichsam das östliche Pendant zu Rodenbergers Darstellungen’).137 Weidauer depicted the raid as a war crime, arguing it was not militarily motivated

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because the target zone unquestionably was the historic cultural Altstadt and adjoining residential quarters. The Western Allies, alleged Weidauer, had destroyed Dresden for two reasons: first, as barbaric retribution against Germany; second, to hinder and intimidate the Soviets upon their imminent arrival – a theory Seydewitz had endorsed a decade earlier. Weidauer also devoted considerable attention to repudiating the lingering speculation that Moscow had demanded Dresden be attacked.138 Weidauer generally remained faithful to the state’s established interpretation, but he enlivened his account with an extraordinary new allegation. The reason why Dresden had remained untouched for so long, claimed Weidauer, was because the Americans had it earmarked as their preferred target for the first atomic bomb.139 A ‘virgin target’ would be required to accurately gauge results, and Dresden was one of the few suitable options still available in Germany. Weidauer based his assertion on a mixture of hearsay and tentative information, particularly the astonishing claims Nobel prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg made during an October 1963 interview with the editor of German scientific journal Physikalische Blätter.140 Heisenberg claimed one of Göring’s adjutants had informed him of a threat conveyed by the United States to Germany’s Lisbon delegation during the 1944 summer: if the Nazis did not seek peace within six weeks, an atom bomb would be dropped on Dresden.141 The only thing that ultimately spared Dresden from this fate, according to Weidauer, was the fact that the Manhattan Project advanced at an insufficient pace to have the new weapon ready for use before Nazi Germany’s defeat. Weidauer concluded that only upon realising it would not be ready in time did the pernicious Western Allies resort to using ‘conventional’ bombing methods to destroy Dresden, anyhow. Weidauer’s account also is noteworthy for its stinging criticism of journalists, historians, and writers in the West – particularly in the BRD – who had ‘wanted to make a profit’ from manipulating Dresden’s death toll.142 It was a subject Weidauer knew intricately, for he had served on the specially-commissioned panel that established the DDR’s official figure of 35,000 victims. Weidauer, then, was in a position to present an informed (even if biased) rebuttal of the exorbitant figures quoted in the West, which he argued was a deliberate ruse to make nuclear warfare appear less deadly (a complete reversal of Saundby’s viewpoint).143 To

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fully appreciate Weidauer’s fiercely anti-Western portrayal of events, it must be remembered his account first appeared at a peak in Cold War tensions – only a few years after flashpoints like the erection of the Berlin Wall (August 1961) and the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) and at a time when the United States’ involvement in Vietnam was escalating. Irrespective of some marked differences in their interpretations of events, the accounts by Rodenberger, Seydewitz, Paul, Irving, and Weidauer share an important feature. All five present captivating, heart-rending, and sensationalised depictions underpinned by flawed logic: working backwards from effects to causes, because it proved extraordinarily destructive the Dresden raid is divorced from the rest of the strategic area-bombing offensive and portrayed as if it were planned and executed as some exceptionally malevolent attack. By eschewing historical context, the authors could put aside their manifest differences in interpretation and find agreement that sinister motives seem to have inspired the decision to destroy Dresden. Although Seydewitz and Weidauer did not accept the claims of their Western counterparts that the Dresden firebombing produced a death toll that far surpassed even the atomic attacks on Japan, they did share the view that Dresden was a German equivalent to Hiroshima. No one who read any of these five accounts published in either the BRD or the DDR between 1951 and 1965 could be left in any doubt whatever that bombing had transformed Dresden from Germany’s Kulturstadt to its Opferstadt. In 1977, Götz Bergander broke the mould with an objective assessment that properly depicts the Dresden raid as a more or less routine operation that just happened to produce extraordinarily destructive results.144 Born in Dresden in 1927, the teenage Bergander was an eyewitness of the bombing and firestorm that destroyed his Heimatstadt.145 In fact, upon completing his daily shift caring for ‘trekkers’ temporarily seeking refuge at Dresden’s Hauptbahnhof, Bergander inadvertently made his way home along the outskirts of 5 Group’s target area less than an hour before the first bombs fell.146 Bergander’s sober account, however, bares few traces of his personal experiences on 13 February 1945. The most noticeable exception concerns his calculation that approximately 200,000 refugees were present in Dresden on the night of the bombing, a conclusion strongly based on personal observations made at the time.147 During

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many years working as a journalist based in West Berlin, Bergander spent much personal time and money visiting federal archives, public libraries, and private collections in Germany, Britain, and the United States to access documents relating to the build-up to, and execution of, the raid plus its consequences. After meticulous research on the subject, Bergander concluded that strafing of civilians had not occurred in central Dresden.148 His stance was rather controversial, because many Dresdeners alleged to have personally witnessed low-level strafing during the attack. Furthermore, earlier authors, especially Rodenberger, Seydewitz, and Irving, had provided grist to the mills with detailed and harrowing stories of Allied pilots sweeping down through streets and along the Elbe meadows to machine-gun hapless civilians as they fled the firestorm. Claims of strafing consequently became a touchstone of the mythic aura enveloping the destruction of Dresden. Bergander also was the first Western historian to eschew six-digit death tolls and instead cited an estimate of 35,000 to 40,000 victims, which corresponded with the DDR’s official figure. Nonetheless, his book was formally banned east of the Wall. Revised in the 1990s to draw on previously unavailable records, Bergander’s book – unfortunately not translated into English – remains the definitive work on the Dresden raid and its immediate aftermath. The seventh and final full-length account from the Cold War period that had a significant historiographical impact is Alexander McKee’s work from the early 1980s. The original English version, titled Dresden 1945: The Devil’s Tinderbox, first appeared in 1982.149 The following year, a (West) German translation was published with a more dramatic subtitle: instead of the devil’s ‘Zunderbüchse,’ Dresden was labelled ‘the German Hiroshima’ (das deutsche Hiroshima).150 It was far from a novel concept, of course, for (Bergander aside) authors had been making the connection from the 1950s onwards. McKee’s book represented a return to the earlier blueprint of detaching this one particular raid from the rest of the strategic area-bombing offensive to depict ‘what happened in Dresden as if it had been infinitely worse’ (‘… was in Dresden geschah, als wäre dies unendlich schlimmer gewesen’).151 From a British service family boasting longstanding connections to the navy, army, and more recently the air force, McKee himself was

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serving as a soldier on Reich territory when the war ended. Afterwards he became a prolific author specialising in naval, military, and aviation history before turning his attention to Dresden. One of the most striking aspects of McKee’s account is his quasi-obsessive fixation with mounting a character assassination of Churchill. He inculpates the prime minister and not ‘Bomber’ Harris as the true hangman of Dresden. McKee readily admitted longstanding personal bias (pre)determined his stance, explaining that because a family member was lost at Gallipoli ‘among us the name of Winston Churchill was pronounced without much reverence’ (‘…so daß bei uns der Name Winston Churchill mit nicht allzu großer Ehrfurcht ausgesprochen wurde’).152 McKee relied on traumatic eyewitness testimonies to revive allegations that strafing had, indeed, taken place in central Dresden.153 He also rehashed some of the more sensational claims popularised in the West by Rodenberger and Irving. On the subject of refugees, for instance, McKee claimed: Dresden’s normal population of approximately 600,000 had now swollen to at least one million. One could hardly move in the streets without falling over wretched ‘trekkers’ sitting hopelessly on their suitcases and packs, too tired to continue. And they, too, were mainly women, children, the elderly, and the weak. The men were at the Front or in factories, and there were hardly any factories in central Dresden.154

Claims of some 400,000 or more unprotected refugees trapped in an unfamiliar city during a firestorm, by extension, led to McKee arguing the death toll was most likely far higher than the DDR’s official estimate. Despite acknowledging it is impossible to know for certain, McKee nonetheless concluded that ‘the figure of 35,000 for one night’s massacre alone might easily be doubled to 70,000 without much fear of exaggeration’ (‘Die Zahl von 35.000 Opfern des Massakers einer einzigen Nacht kann man ohne weiteres auf 70.000 verdoppeln, ohne sich vor Übertreibung zu fürchten. Doch niemand wird es jemals genau wissen’).155

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C on c lu sion

This chapter established that, although the Dresden raid proved extraordinarily destructive, it was not exceptional by design. Rather than being planned in isolation as some uniquely malicious attack, it was more or less a routine operation that represented the logical culmination of the overall strategic policy pursued from February 1942 onwards. The strategic area-bombing offensive against German population centres produced much civil death and destruction. Yet, even before the war’s end, Dresden was identified as an especially tragic case of loss and suffering and it promptly garnered a reputation as the quintessential German Opferstadt. Most full-length accounts of the Dresden bombing published in German during the Cold War period were sensationalised depictions that helped to perpetuate the notion that this particular raid was something special. The following chapter traces public articulation of the destruction of Dresden as expressed annually around the time of the Gedenktag, mainly in the DDR but also the BRD throughout the decades leading up to 1985 and the first substantive case study.

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2

The Fashioning of Dresden’s Destruction into a Political Asset: 1946 to the Early 1980s

Dresden, in its manifestation as the Opferstadt, fulfilled a special role in the politics of war memory and commemoration in both Germanies throughout the first four post-war decades, albeit to varying degrees and for very different purposes. Owing to Dresden’s eastern location, public articulation of the city’s wartime destruction always was a far more palpable issue in the SBZ/DDR, where 13 February featured as one of the most prominent dates on East Berlin’s Cold War commemoration calendar. SED agencies of articulation appropriated the destruction of Dresden as both a leading anti-fascist and anti-capitalist propaganda weapon in the DDR’s pro-Soviet politico-ideological struggle against the West. The state employed Cold War rhetoric as it repeatedly set the public commemorative agenda for Dresden’s annual Gedenktag during the 1950s, 1960s, and, after a temporary waning in interest, the early 1980s. It took slightly longer for Dresden to emerge in the BRD as a usable paradigm of German loss and suffering, and once it did it never generated the same level of sustained (and state-centred) articulation as in the DDR. In West German public discourse Dresden, as the national Opferstadt, served as an emotionally-charged moral counterweight that at least partially offset the ever-increasing focus on German guilt or responsibility for embracing Nazism, initiating the war, and carrying out the Holocaust. Whereas the methods, objectives, and intensity varied, in both the BRD and especially the DDR between the late 1940s and early 1980s, the destruction of Dresden was transformed into a contemporary political asset. This chapter presents an overview of the politicisation of remembering Dresden’s destruction in the pre-1985 period. It mostly synthesises key interpretations by Israeli scholar Gilad Margalit and local Dresden

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historian Matthias Neutzner along with some additional materials.1 To track the transitions in both state-centred and social agency approaches to articulation, the chapter is divided into four sub-sections: the Nuremberg interregnum; the 1950s; the 1960s; and from 1970 to the early 1980s. Both Germanies are covered within each timeframe, yet the SBZ/DDR invariably receives more detailed treatment because the commemorative events that took place in Dresden are the focal point of discussion. In keeping with the slice-history methodology, this chapter primarily concentrates on the ‘milestone’ Gedenktage at quinquennial intervals in 1950, 1955, 1960 and so on. Nonetheless, given that the politics of war memory and commemoration often proves a remarkably organic process not always constrained to specific anniversaries, other years are examined wherever relevant. The chapter identifies the major continuities and discontinuities that characterised Dresden’s annual Gedenktag during the four decades under scrutiny. It demonstrates how public articulation of the destruction of Dresden was a necessarily dynamic process in which the dominant interpretations frequently underwent reconceptualisation to suit the politico-ideological requirements of any given era.

T h e N u r e m b e rg i n t e r r e g n um

The destruction of Dresden, contends Margalit, was hardly observed in the Western Allies’ occupation zones during the immediate postwar years.2 This is not surprising given that so many of the German population centres most heavily damaged by bombing were located in what became the so-called ‘Bizone’ then ‘Trizone’. Inhabitants of the Ruhr area or large cities like Hamburg and Cologne through to smaller towns including Darmstadt and Pforzheim were preoccupied with the task of rebuilding their own lives, homes, and communities, leaving little time to contemplate what had happened to Dresden. It was a different story in the SBZ where Saxony’s capital stood out among eastern German cities as having been particularly affected by bombing both in terms of death and devastation.3 Already in the 1940s, according to Neutzner, the Dresden raid was recognised as ‘the unique destruction [emphasis in original]’ (‘die einzigartige Zerstörung’).4

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‘There seems little question,’ claims Frederick Taylor, ‘that no serious political advantage was taken of Dresden’s terrible fate for the first four years after the end of the war.’5 The research of Margalit and Neutzner reveals the naïveté of Taylor’s assertion. Indeed, the destruction of Dresden was exploited as a three-fold political asset by local communist leaders and Soviet military authorities who coordinated the city’s commemorative agenda during the Nuremberg interregnum: first, Germans were inculpated for having supported Nazism; second, by holding the Nazis as ultimately responsible for everything that happened during the war, the loss and suffering associated with Dresden could be evoked as a warning of the inherent evils of fascism; and, finally, depicting the Dresden raid as an act of wanton destruction painted the Western Powers as ‘imperialist warmongers.’ The latter two themes were to dominate statecentred articulation during the 1950s and 1960s as the DDR appropriated the destruction of Dresden as a Cold War propaganda tool. Thus, the parameters for this Moscow-oriented Marxist interpretation were marked out during the late 1940s. The Soviet military administrator Major Broder permitted the communist-leaning provisional Dresden City Council to turn 13 February 1946 into a major occasion. Broder, however, provided strict guidelines stipulating how proceedings on the inaugural Gedenktag could and should be conducted. Wary that if Dresden were to be depicted as some kind of German Opferstadt it may reflect badly on the occupational powers collectively, he ordered that under no circumstances whatever ‘was it permissible for 13 February to appear as a day of mourning’ (‘Es soll alles vermieden werden, was den 13. Februar als Trauertag erschienen läßt’).6 Such an outcome, Broder warned the city council, had to be avoided under all circumstances (‘… das müßte unter allen Umständen vermieden werden’).7 To circumvent the day of mourning or Trauertag theme on 13 February 1946, no fewer than 29 official commemorative events were staged at various public venues in Dresden.8 These arenas of articulation essentially were coordinated political rallies. All 29 events were promoted under the slogan: ‘The Reconstruction of Dresden’ (Der Neuaufbau Dresdens).9 According to Neutzner, however, this official line of celebrating the day as the beginning of Dresden’s socialist-inspired rebuilding and rebirth proved difficult for most locals to accept so soon

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after the war. Instead, most Dresdeners viewed 13 February as a ‘day of terror’ (Schreckenstag).10 Two official speakers addressed the crowds at all 29 venues. Conforming to Broder’s guidelines, the role of the Allied bombers was ignored. According to the city council’s interpretation, two groups (of Germans) were held to be ultimately responsible for Dresden’s senseless destruction. First, ordinary Germans were accused of political weakness in first having embraced Nazism before failing to revolt against Hitler even after the evils of fascism were unmistakably clear.11 Only the quintessential Opfer des Faschismus – Ernst Thälmann and others imprisoned for actively struggling against the Nazis – were immune from such criticism. Second, ‘Nazi criminals’ (Naziverbrecher) were blamed for not only provoking a(nother) world war but also refusing to surrender even when all realistic hope of victory was lost. This was a most persuasive argument for Dresdeners given the sobering realisation that their Heimatstadt might have been spared if only the war had ended sooner. As war raged across Europe, Saxony’s capital had survived some 280 weeks essentially untouched only to be more or less completely destroyed less than three months prior to Germany’s Stunde Null. As the communist functionary and Dresden’s acting Erster Bürgermeister Walter Weidauer (who would publish a controversial account of the raid two decades later)12 lamented in the 1946 Gedenktag edition of a local newspaper: ‘Especially bad are catastrophes that could have been avoided’ (‘Besonders schlimm sind katastrophen, die vermeidbar gewesen wären’).13 Stressing the lateness of the attack combined with the selfinflicting role played by Germans themselves reinforced the idea of Dresden as the Opferstadt. At 9.40pm on 13 February 1946, all of Dresden became a singular arena of articulation when the bells of every tower still standing tolled in unison for 20 minutes. This marked the time between when the full-scale air-raid alarm had been sounded and the first bombs fell. The ringing was not meant to mimic the sound of the alarm, but rather was designed as a gesture of communal remembrance for the city’s destruction and the bombing victims. Neutzner poignantly describes the effect as a three-toned chime of ‘lament, warning, and hope’ (‘Klage, Warnung, und Hoffnung’).14 It is a practice that has continued every Gedenktag

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since, and on each occasion ‘the entire city pricks up its ears for one long moment’ (‘Die gesamte Stadt horcht einen Moment lang auf’).15 In his aforementioned newspaper article, Weidauer had declared no further proof beyond Dresden’s destruction was required in order to hand out the harshest punishment to the ‘bandits’ on trial at Nuremberg (‘Könnte man den Verbrechern in Nürnberg keine weiteren Schandtaten nachweisen, allein die Zerstörung Dresdens müßte genügen, um diese Banditen zur härtesten Strafe zu verurteilen’).16 The model of blaming Germans generally and Nazis especially was adopted by the SBZ’s first German film company DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft). In 1946, DEFA produced two films about Dresden: a publicity film (Werbefilm) detailing the city’s reconstruction already underway; and a documentary about the bombing simply titled Dresden.17 In the latter, footage depicting the pre-war splendour of the Elbflorenz is followed by the Nazi ‘seizure of power’ (Machtergreifung), whereas at no stage is any allusion made to the identity of the bombers. Both Margalit and Neutzner observe that the film denounces fascism and portrays German guilt – in this instance, the nation’s lack of political conscience – as the root cause of Dresden’s destruction.18 Little attention was paid to politicising Dresden’s Gedenktag in the following two years. No public rallies were conducted in 1947–8, while even the local press barely acknowledged the second and third anniversaries of the bombing. On 13 February 1947, the Sächsische Volkszeitung published only a pre-war photograph of the Frauenkirche crowning Dresden’s Elbe-skyline accompanied by the short caption: ‘Dreadful end to twelve years of barbarism and hopeful prelude to a new era’ (‘Entsetzlicher Ausklang der zwölfjährigen Barbarei und hoffnungsvoller Auftakt einer neuen Zeit’).19 The following year, a similarly low-key approach was adopted by the local press. Importantly, however, coinciding with escalating Cold War tensions between the Soviets and the Western Powers the first small but significant shift in focus could be detected. In the first post-war example of Dresden’s bombers being explicitly identified in a local public medium, the Sächsische Volkszeitung baldly exclaimed in its 13 February 1948 edition: ‘Many thousands, the majority of whom were women, children, and the elderly, lost their lives in an instant in the hail of bombs of the Anglo-American aircraft, at a

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time when the Nazi War already had reached its end’ (‘Viele Tausende, in der Mehrzahl Frauen, Kinder und alte Leute, mußten im Bombenregen der anglo-amerikanischen Flugzeuge ihr Leben lassen zu einem Zeitpunkt, da der Nazikrieg bereits sein Ende erreicht hatte’).20 Over 20,000 bodies recovered after the raid were cremated and buried in mass graves in a specially-designated section of the Heidefriedhof, a cemetery located in heathland on Dresden’s northern outskirts. This area was subsequently developed into a memorial site (Gedenkstätte) featuring numerous sculptures, plaques, and other tributes. As the final resting place of most of Dresden’s bombing victims, the Heidefriedhof naturally emerged as one of the leading arenas of articulation each Gedenktag. Since the 1940s, in a practice still continued, it has been the site for the main memorial service conducted each 13 February. A large sandstone monument (Denkmal) was constructed at the far end of the Gedenkstätte in 1948. Its inscription, formulated by the German–Jewish communist writer and poet Max Zimmering when he returned from exile to Dresden, reads: How many died? Who knows the number? In your wounds one sees the torment of the nameless who burned here in a fiery hell made by human hand. In Memory of the victims of the air-raid on Dresden on 13–14 February 1945.

(See Figure 2.1 below.)

On 22 September 1948, Saxony’s minister-president Max Seydewitz (who would later write the first full-length account of the raid published in the DDR)21 re-opened Dresden’s rebuilt state theatre. The communist functionary Seydewitz drew on the lateness of the raid to present the destruction of Dresden as a two-pronged politico-ideological asset. He commenced his address with a customary reference to the ‘criminal manner’ (‘verbrecherischerweise’) in which the Nazis had pointlessly continued the war even when defeat was a foregone conclusion.22 Seydewitz then told his audience the Dresden raid held no militarystrategic purpose whatever, declaring that ‘the heavy bombing attacks of the American air force, which in one night … brought death and destruction upon the art- and culture-city Dresden were senseless

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Fig. 2.1

Denkmal for Dresden’s bombing victims out at the Heidefriedhof.

[emphasis in original]’ (‘Sinnlos aber waren auch die BombenGroßangriffe der amerikanischen Luftflotte, die in einer Nacht … der Kunst- und Kulturstadt Dresden Tod und Vernichtung brachten’).23 Seydewitz’s speech, delivered at the height of the Berlin Airlift, is noteworthy for two reasons. First, Saxony’s minister-president publicly implored Dresdeners to adopt an openly anti-Western attitude when remembering their city’s destruction. Second, in Seydewitz’s revised account of events Bomber Command did not even rate a mention whereas the Americans – who actually attacked during the daytime – supposedly had single-handedly destroyed Dresden overnight. This surely was no simple oversight on Seydewitz’s behalf, but rather a calculated re-writing of contemporary history: in ensuing decades East German Cold War rhetoric would continually stress the Americans’ role in the destruction of Dresden often to the point of ignoring Britain’s involvement altogether. After a two-year hiatus, in 1949 a total of 17 local Gedenktag rallies were coordinated under the title: ‘13 February 1945 – Dresden Cries

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Out in Accusation!’ (Dresden klagt an!).24 The standard template for rally speeches covered the three established components of guilt: first, it was claimed, Dresden cried out in accusation against the German people for having supported Nazism; second, Dresden cried out in accusation against the Naziverbrecher who initiated an unprovoked war of aggression and then facilitated the city’s destruction by refusing to capitulate; and, finally, Dresden cried out in accusation against the Western Powers for the death and destruction they visited upon the city so late in the war. This last theme was given prominence in the Berlin-based central organ of the SED, the Neues Deutschland, which devoted half of its Sunday edition to covering the destruction of Dresden.25 Articles were complemented by graphic photographs of mountains of rubble and pyres of corpses cremated on Dresden’s main square the Old Market (Altmarkt). Such scenes from just four years earlier were in stark contrast to the stockpiles of coal and foodstuffs the Western Powers were now providing to the nearby divided capital during the around-the-clock operations of the Berlin Airlift. From this perspective, remembering the destruction of Dresden served East Berlin authorities as a useful propaganda instrument on the eve of Germany’s official political division in 1949.

The 1950s

In the newly-formed BRD, the destruction of Dresden initially remained a tangential subject while expellees and POWs dominated the West German ‘search for a usable past.’26 Nonetheless, during the 1950s Dresden fulfilled a small but significant role in public discourse on German loss and suffering. In the fledgling DDR, on every Gedenktag up to 1955, state agents of articulation set Dresden’s commemorative agenda. Thereafter, coinciding with the Eastern Bloc’s temporary experiment with ‘peaceful coexistence’ during the so-called ‘Khrushchev Thaw’, the second half of the 1950s evidenced a downturn in state-centred politics of war memory and commemoration of the destruction of Dresden. Although the western German press hardly covered Dresden’s annual Gedenktag early on, East Berlin’s pro-Soviet rhetoric had not gone unnoticed. Umbrage was taken at what was perceived as communists

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misappropriating Dresden’s misfortune to mount a propaganda offensive against the West. In 1950, some reporters in the nascent BRD counterattacked. Christian Wulffen of Die Zeit protested that the Soviets were exploiting Dresden as a ‘beacon in the struggle against the Americans.’27 Another critic in the Wirtschaftszeitung accused the Soviet occupational forces (this particular newspaper refused to recognise the DDR as a legitimate political entity) of still doing nothing to re-establish Dresden, which it described as the most desolate large German city five years after the war.28 During the SBZ era, commemorating Dresden’s destruction essentially had been a local matter (with coverage in newspapers such as the Neues Deutschland an obvious exception). Following the DDR’s foundation, the SED organised a special German Committee of Fighters for Peace (Deutsche Komitee der Kämpfer für den Frieden) whose first task was to expand the commemorative scope of Dresden’s fifth Gedenktag to make it a ‘national day of struggle against American warmongers’ (‘Nationale Kampftag gegen amerikanische Kriegshetzer’).29 On 13 February 1950, rallies were coordinated across the entire DDR, while Saxony also observed a minute’s traffic-stop at midday.30 In Dresden, banners draped over buildings carried specifically anti-American – as distinct from more generally anti-Western – slogans: ‘American bombers murdered, the Soviets bombed no defenceless women and children’ (‘Amerikanische Bomben mordeten, die Sowjetunion bombardierte keine wehrlosen Frauen und Kinder’); ‘We hate American warmongers, the murderers of Dresden’ (‘Wir hassen die amerikanischen Kriegstreiber, die Mörder Dresdens’); and ‘Here American bombers destroyed a place of culture’ (‘Hier zerstörten amerikanische Bomber eine Kulturstätte’ ).31 A main party rally was staged at the renamed Karl-Marx-Platz on the relatively undamaged Neustadt side of the Elbe.32 An estimated crowd of 100,000 Dresdeners attended the rally, which was broadcast live on East German radio.33 Afterwards, standard-bearing local members of the National Front’s juvenile branch the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend, FDJ) marched across the Elbe to the new town hall (Rathaus). They passed through what once had been Dresden’s cultural heart, the Altstadt, which five years on remained a wasteland interspersed with rubble and ruin.34

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During the Cold War, observes Margalit, East Berlin adopted what resembled Goebbels’ wartime propaganda line: the ‘terror-attacks’ (Terrorangriffe) that the Western Powers executed against German cities like Dresden betrayed them as ‘barbaric and hostile to culture’ (‘barbarisch und kulturfeindlich’ ).35 In the 1950 Gedenktag edition of the Sächsische Zeitung, a front-page article (that bucked the trend of ignoring Britain’s role) summarised the day’s meaning: ‘Destroyed Dresden, earlier one of Europe’s most beautiful cities, and the bestial murder of a large portion of its inhabitants, those are the calling-cards of the profit-hungry, bloodthirsty Anglo-American imperialists’ (‘Das zerstörte Dresden, früher eine der schönsten Städte Europas, und die bestialische Ermordung eines großen Teils seiner Einwohner, das sind die Visitenkarten der profithungrigen, blutrünstigen anglo-amerikanischen Imperialisten’).36 In 1951, the Gedenkstätte out at Dresden’s Heidefriedhof underwent significant updating. In keeping with the DDR’s politics of the past, the long grove that dissects the Gedenkstätte leading to the bombing Denkmal was officially dedicated as the ‘Avenue of Honour for the Victims of Fascism’ (‘Ehrenhain für die Opfer des Faschismus’).37 A new sepulchral memorial unveiled at the entrance to the Ehrenhain honoured the memory of some 750 Dresdeners who, as fighters against Nazism, were killed during the Third Reich. Henceforth, anyone wishing to pay their respects to Dresden’s tens of thousands of bombing victims at the Denkmal first had to remember the city’s principal Opfer des Faschismus – those hundreds of leftist martyrs sacrificed in the struggle against Nazism. Visitors were forced to remember that (German) fascism paved the way to, and was ultimately responsible for, the war including Dresden’s destruction. During the following decades, East Berlin often disseminated this message as a warning from history depicting the BRD as the latest danger to peace. In the 1950s, self-condemnation in the form of blaming the German people for their indirect role in Dresden’s fate was moved to the background in the DDR’s state-centred politics of the past. It was a pragmatic measure on East Berlin’s behalf, argues Margalit, as millions of ex-Nazis and ‘fellow-travellers’ living in the DDR were alienated by the SED’s official interpretation of the past fixated on anti-fascist resistance.38 This problem of ostracism was overcome by emphasising an alternative strand of tradition built on ‘the tragic heroism of Wehrmacht

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soldiers and the suffering of the German civilian population under the massive bombardment of the Western Powers’ (‘Betont wurde in diesem Traditionsstrang das tragische Heldentum der Wehrmachtsoldaten und das Leiden der deutschen Zivilbevölkerung unter der massiven Bombardierung der allierten Westmächte’).39 Through these two forms of victimisation and sacrifice the vast majority of DDR citizens could be integrated into the state’s idealised and expanded notion of Opfer des Faschismus. Furthermore, a statue erected in 1952 indicated the state had decided it was time to stop criticising the German people for their pre-war and wartime misdeeds and instead start honouring their postwar deeds. Sculptor Walter Reinhold’s statue ‘Rubble-Woman’ (‘Trümmerfrau’) was dedicated on 13 February 1952.40 The modest statue depicts a sturdy, unassuming woman dressed in work clothes, headscarf, and industrial apron, holding a masonry hammer in her right hand. Given that Dresden’s Trümmerfrauen faced the demanding task of clearing away more cubic metres of rubble per capita than in any other German city, it was deemed fitting to commemorate their efforts by erecting the statue in the highly-privileged location in front of the Rathaus. Reinhold’s ‘Trümmerfrau’ embodies the state’s interpretation of Dresden as an Opferstadt to Nazism, whose post-war rejuvenation was inspired by socialist values based on individuals’ unselfish hard work for the common good. In the early to mid-1950s, mass rallies conducted annually at the Karl-Marx-Platz attracted crowds of up to 200,000 people.41 That East Berlin identified Dresden’s Gedenktag generally and the rallies in particular as pivotal arenas of articulation is evidenced by the leading functionaries dispatched to address the crowds: Otto Grotewohl (1951 and 1955); Walter Ulbricht (1952); and Johannes Dieckmann (1953 and 1956).42 During the Korean War, the Americans’ role in Dresden’s destruction was so exaggerated that the New York Times dubbed the annual Gedenktag rallies as the ‘Hate-America-Demonstrations.’43 According to a 1952 politburo resolution, remembering how ‘imperialist mass-murderers’ (‘imperialistischen Massenmörder’) had destroyed a ‘city of art’ (‘Kunststadt’) in an ‘open expression of cultural barbarism’ (‘ein Ausdruck der offenen Kulturbarbarei’) was a duty that held ‘all-German significance’ (‘gesamtdeutsche Bedeutung’).44 Western ‘imperialism’ in

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its various guises – on the one hand as West German fascists, on the other hand as British and especially American ‘capitalist warmongers’ – was identified as the greatest threat to peace.45 Talk of German fascism as the root cause of Dresden’s destruction was used as a propaganda



Fig. 2.2

Trümmerfrau statue in front of Dresden’s Rathaus (notice the candles left from the night before).

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weapon against the BRD, which SED agents portrayed as an aggressive successor-state to Hitler’s Third Reich. In the first half of the 1950s, it was commonplace for East Berlin to use Dresden’s Gedenktag as a setting in which it could criticise Bonn for its remilitarisation and integration into the NATO orbit.46 Dresden’s milestone tenth Gedenktag was unprecedented. Over 7,000 political agitators from the National Front were dispatched to various gatherings including rallies, public lectures, discussion evenings, and more than 3,000 so-called ‘Hausversammlungen’ (a specifically DDR term for tenants’ meetings).47 The state approved large printing runs of pamphlets that referred to the Dresden raid as a ‘terror-attack’ executed exclusively by the Americans (‘… des Terrorangriffs der amerikanischen Luftwaffe’), and commissioned 80,000 commemorative discs made out of Meissen porcelain – commonly known outside of the area as Dresden china.48 DDR minister-president Grotewohl, in tandem with Weidauer (now officially inaugurated as Dresden Oberbürgermeister), delivered the chief address at the 1955 mass rally, which reportedly attracted a 250,000strong crowd.49 Weidauer, in a clear reference to Bonn’s integration into NATO, pleaded with the West German leader Konrad Adenauer not to enter into any ‘alliance with the executioners of Dresden’ (‘… kein Bündnis mit den Henkern von Dresden’).50 On 13 February 1955, Dresden’s prominent Martin Luther Denkmal, which had been blown off its pedestal during the bombing raid, was ceremoniously replaced on its renovated platform in front of the Frauenkirche ruins.51 Nearby, the rebuilt Kreuzkirche was reconsecrated earlier that morning.52 The evening was a particularly special occasion for the Kreuzchor, the church’s internationally renowned boy’s choir, which lost 11 members in the firebombing. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, its choirmaster (Kreuzkantor) Rudolph Mauersberger had composed a mourning-anthem (Trauerhymnus) titled Dresdner Requiem.53 For the opening line, Mauersberger borrowed from the prophet Jeremiah’s lamentation over Jerusalem’s fall to the Babylonians in 586 BCE: ‘How desolate lies the city that was full of people’ (‘Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst, die voll Volks war’ ).54 The Kreuzchor had premièred Mauersberger’s Dresdner Requiem on 4 August 1945 in the burned-out vestiges of the Kreuzkirche, and on each Gedenktag since 1949 they had

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conducted it in various churches still standing in Dresden.55 In 1955, they returned ‘home’ as part of the celebrations marking the reconsecration of the Kreuzkirche. The performance started a tradition: on every 13 February since 1955, the Dresdner Requiem has been performed in the Kreuzkirche. The requiem is a hallmark of the church’s manifestation as a leading arena of Protestant articulation each Gedenktag. Locally, the Gedenktag remained profoundly meaningful in the second half of the 1950s. In 1957, the party’s annual mass rally was shifted from the Karl-Marx-Platz to the redeveloped Altmarkt where a crowd of some 200,000 Dresdeners gathered.56 Local civil and religious practices including the morning Heidefriedhof memorial service, the performance of Mauersberger’s requiem, and the twenty-minute tolling of the city’s bells all continued to blossom into traditional Gedenktag events that helped to ensure 13 February remained Dresden’s fateful day (Schicksalstag). Yet, whereas examples of social agency meant the day retained its significance at a local level, 1955 proved the high-water mark in the DDR’s early appropriation of Dresden’s destruction as a commemorative politics asset. In the second half of the decade, the state’s interest in Dresden’s Gedenktag as an arena of articulation subsided sharply. On 13 February 1956, the destruction of Dresden warranted only a snippet in the Neues Deutschland and the following year it failed to rate a mention at all.57 During the Eastern Bloc’s ephemeral flirtation with ‘peaceful coexistence’ in the 1950s, the DDR ceased exploiting Dresden’s destruction for contemporary political benefit. In the BRD, early interest in Dresden also peaked in 1955. According to Margalit, some West German newspapers’ coverage of the destruction of Dresden around the time of the tenth Gedenktag even matched the considerable space afforded to the topic by the state-controlled press in the DDR.58 A headline in the Kasseler Post declared: ‘Dresden was worse than Hiroshima’ (‘Dresden war schlimmer als Hiroshima’).59 Such a headline is all the more astonishing given that Kassel itself experienced a devastating firestorm in October 1943, which claimed around 10,000 victims in a single night. Dresden, mass-mediated as the incomparable German Opferstadt even in other firebombed towns, was portrayed as having suffered even more than cities attacked with nuclear weapons. It would appear Rodenberger’s popular account and its sensational claims

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of a six-figure death toll made a broad impact on West German victimisation discourse.60 Since 1952, the Association of Dresden Citizens in the Federal Republic (Verband Dresdner Bürger in der Bundesrepublik) had staged small Gedenktag ceremonies in Frankfurt-am-Main.61 On 13 February 1955, the event’s scope was expanded and, owing to the attendance of prominent federal politicians including Adenauer’s deputy Franz Blücher, it received national attention. Addressing the crowd, Blücher, one of the early post-war period’s staunchest advocates of German reunification, used Dresden the Opferstadt to symbolise German loss and suffering from two perspectives. On the one hand, he argued, the immolation of the Elbflorenz embodied the overall wartime loss of German Kultur. On the other hand, Blücher continued, the fact that former Dresdeners were being forced to commemorate the destruction of their Heimatstadt from afar highlighted the ongoing problematic and painful repercussions stemming from Germany’s political division.62 Interest in Dresden’s Gedenktag tapered off in the BRD after 1955, where (post)war stories of POWs and especially expellees continued to dominate West German ‘rhetorics of victimisation.’63 Importantly, however, these two themes focused on groups of victims rather than any particular place. This left a niche for Dresden to occupy as the Opferstadt. Yet, in the late 1950s, there was no consensus in West German discourse on whether Dresden’s misfortune could and should be appropriated as a symbol of German wartime victimisation. This point is best illustrated by juxtaposing two viewpoints expressed in 1959 – one by leading social philosopher Theodor Adorno and the other by eminent historian Karl Dietrich Erdmann. Instead of comparing Dresden with Hiroshima, both Adorno and Erdmann contrasted Saxony’s destroyed capital to Auschwitz, though from polarised perspectives in support of opposing arguments. In 1959, Adorno presented his famous lecture: ‘What does coming to terms with the past mean?’ (‘Was bedeutet die Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?’).64 The lecture is best remembered because Adorno accused his fellow (West) Germans of adopting an improper and flawed approach to what would become known as Vergangenheitsbewältigung or ‘coming to terms with the past.’65 Reappraising what meaning the Holocaust should hold for Germans at the end of the 1950s, Adorno argued that attempts to relativise guilt were

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absurd because they served no productive purpose whatever: ‘Irrational, too, is the widespread “settling of accounts” about guilt, as if Dresden made up for Auschwitz.’66 Adorno surely did not pluck Dresden out of obscurity to serve as a Germans-as-victims counterweight to Auschwitz. It seems reasonable to assume, then, Dresden’s reputation as the German Opferstadt was consolidated in the BRD during the 1950s. A remark from Erdmann, also made in 1959, reinforces this viewpoint. As part of a fourvolume history of Germany’s involvement in the two world wars, the influential Kiel-based historian identified Dresden as the paradigm of loss and suffering inflicted upon, instead of perpetrated by, Germans.67 In what essentially amounted to an attempt to relativise the Holocaust a quartercentury prior to the so-called Historikerstreit, Erdmann declared: ‘Next to the names Belzec, Treblinka, and Auschwitz as symbols of horror…stands the name of Dresden: here crowded great multitudes of homeless refugees. Into these defenceless people air squadrons…dropped their explosive and incendiary bombs.’68 For Erdmann, Dresden’s meaning transcended far beyond the apogee of the European bombing war. The destruction of Dresden, he argued, ranked alongside Nazi death camps at the pinnacle of moral degradation and humankind’s twentieth-century lapse into barbarism. In the mid1960s, this very sentiment would be carved into stone out at the Heidefriedhof during a decade in which East Berlin reinvigorated its appropriation of Dresden’s Gedenktag as a Cold War arena of articulation.

The 1960s

Articulating memories of Dresden’s destruction continued to be a commemorative politics asset on both sides of the German-German border throughout the 1960s. The trend continued to be most pronounced in the DDR, whereas in the BRD interest mainly intensified around the time of the milestone twentieth Gedenktag in 1965. Throughout the decade, the meanings and messages East Berlin attached to Dresden’s destruction underwent some appreciable shifts. Initially, the prevalent anti-Americanism of the previous decade was replaced by an anti-fascist propaganda offensive directed against the new chief politico-ideological

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adversaries – the ‘Bonn Ultras.’ Later, coinciding with the United States’ escalating involvement in Vietnam, the earlier anti-American Cold War rhetoric returned with renewed dynamism. Irrespective of the enemies targeted, two key tenets underpinned the SED’s appropriation of Dresden’s Gedenktag throughout the 1960s: peace and rebuilding (Frieden und Wiederaufbau).69 By the time of Dresden’s fifteenth Gedenktag in 1960, East Berlin’s propaganda attack on Bonn already was in overdrive. The BRD’s remilitarisation as a satellite in the NATO constellation had given rise to concerns in the DDR about potential nuclear warfare.70 After German– German relations deteriorated still further, culminating in the August 1961 erection of the Berlin Wall, criticising Bonn as a focal point of Dresden commemorative politics intensified. Periodically during the 1950s, delegates from various West German cities also heavily bombed had been formally invited to Dresden on 13 February because they, too, symbolised the senselessness of ‘violence and war’ (‘Gewalt und Krieg’).71 Following the erection of the Berlin Wall – what the SED called its ‘antifascist protective rampart’ (‘antifaschistische Schutzwall’) – no West German representatives at any level were welcomed to Dresden. Instead, their Gedenktag presence was replaced by delegations from numerous war-torn cities from across Europe with which Dresden formed sistercity (Partnerstadt) relationships.72 Although most cities involved, including Leningrad, Warsaw, Wrocław (formerly Breslau), and Lidice, were located behind the Iron Curtain, Dresden’s original sister-city partnership (established in 1959) happened to be with Coventry.73 It was an inspired choice not simply because Coventry was universally recognised as Britain’s bombing war equivalent to Dresden, but because it helped to locate Saxony’s capital within a network of cities spanning the length and breadth of Europe, all of which shared a common bond: they had suffered terribly during Hitler’s war. This effectively made them a continental collection of city Opfer des Faschismus. It also can be viewed as an early step toward the cosmopolitanisation of Dresden war memory and commemoration. As for the anti-fascist rhetoric disseminated on Dresden’s Gedenktag during the early 1960s, in a period when the DDR depicted the BRD as the successor-state to Hitlerdeutschland it served as a valuable propaganda tool in East Berlin’s campaign against ‘Bonn Ultras.’

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The DDR’s politico-ideological attack on its nemesis the BRD continued to be a hallmark of Dresden commemorative politics in the first half of the decade, as evidenced by the slogan adopted for the mass rally on the milestone twentieth Gedenktag in 1965: ‘German imperialism – deadly enemy of the German people! Fight against the Bonn danger of atomic war!’ (‘Der deutsche Imperialismus – Todfeind des deutschen Volkes! Kämpft gegen die Bonner Atomkriegsgefähr!’).74 Also in readiness for 13 February 1965, the bombing Gedenkstätte out at Dresden’s Heidefriedhof underwent another major overhaul. Roughly halfway along the Ehrenhain für die Opfer des Faschismus leading to the bombing Denkmal, a large, open, circular memorial was constructed. Approximately 20 metres in diameter and dissected by the pathway, it is known simply as the Rondell (the generic German term to denote a circular path or area). Either side of the pathway, seven





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Fig. 2.3, 2.4, 2.5

Two of the 14 pillars marking the Rondell.



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Figs 2.4, 2.5

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tall sandstone pillars intersect a low semicircular wall. Those on the left bear the names of five cities and two villages devastated in the war, and all seven pillars on the right carry the names of Nazi concentration or death camps. In a clockwise direction the 14 places featured in the Rondell are: Coventry; Dresden; Leningrad; Lidice; Oradour-sur-Glane; Rotterdam; Warsaw; Theresienstadt; Sachsenhausen; Ravensbrück; Dachau; Buchenwald; Bergen-Belsen; and Auschwitz. Collectively these places encapsulate the gamut of Nazi atrocities – civil area-bombing, siege, the massacre of civilians and erasure of entire villages, cruel military occupation, brutal political oppression, incarceration, forced labour, state-sanctioned industrialised mass-murder, and judeocide. No explanation is provided either for the purpose and meaning of the Rondell or why these particular sites of suffering were chosen ahead of other possibilities. The memorial is left to speak for itself. Dresden stands out as unique among the places selected as the only catastrophic event executed against, rather than perpetrated by, Germans. For the DDR, then, the symbolism attached to the German Opferstadt could be stretched even farther than the 13 other examples making up the Rondell. Like the others, the destruction of Dresden ultimately qualified as a corollary of (German) fascism, yet it also evoked memories of the Western Powers’ supposed penchant for excessive force and aggression. This meant the pillar bearing Dresden’s name implicitly coupled the two paradigmatic targets of SED Cold War rhetoric – (West) German fascism and western (read American) imperialism. As state-centred articulation carved into stone, the Rondell provides tangible evidence of how, during the 1960s, the SED appropriated Dresden’s symbolism as a contemporary political asset. East Berlin endorsed the notion of Dresden the Opferstadt serving as a German representative among European cities victimised by fascist tyranny and war. That the bombing Gedenkstätte out at the cemetery underwent significant remodification in 1965 does not appear to have been the result of happenstance. It was at this time, according to Neutzner, that a pattern was settled upon for Dresden’s annual Gedenktag. As part of setting the commemorative agenda, the state imbued the morning memorial service at the Heidefriedhof with the important role of establishing the desired ‘meaning and atmosphere’ (‘Inhalt und Atmosphäre’) for the remainder of

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the day.75 A wreath-laying service was followed by brief addresses, usually from local dignitaries, party functionaries, National Front representatives, and, occasionally, invited guests. From the twentieth Gedenktag onwards, all attendees of the Heidefriedhof service for bombing victims were confronted with the rather disturbing imagery of the Rondell located in the centre of the Ehrenhain dedicated to all of Dresden’s Opfer des Faschismus. Whereas the wreath-laying memorial service and the mass rally were touchstones of the state-centred approach to articulation, there were some prominent examples of social agency conducted annually, too. These included both religious practices and other kinds of localised commemoration. Each Gedenktag, the evenings were dominated by church services (most notably in the Catholic Hofkirche and the Protestant Kreuzkirche) as well as musical performances by the state light orchestra (Dresdner Staatskapelle) and other municipal and church ensembles. Mauersberger’s Dresdner Requiem was just one of several works performed that drew inspiration from the city’s destruction.76 In February 1965, the destruction of Dresden also attracted heightened interest in the BRD, where every major national newspaper gave extensive coverage to the subject.77 That it was a milestone Gedenktag – the twentieth – surely helped to generate extra awareness. After all, the same trend was evident a decade earlier at the time of the tenth anniversary of the bombing. Nonetheless, solid foundations for intensified West German public discourse on the subject of Dresden as Opferstadt had been laid when Wolfgang Paul’s and especially David Irving’s accounts were published in the BRD the previous year.78 Around the time of the twentieth Gedenktag, Irving’s apparently ‘moderate’ and authenticated figure of 135,000 victims was widely quoted in the West German press.79 A six-figure death toll emanating from a British author (who essentially depicted the Dresden bombing as an excessively callous act against a defenceless Kulturstadt devoid of any real military-industrial strategic value) provided grist to the mills of the Germans as victims position, in terms of both civil death and destruction. Doubts over the raid’s justification combined with the irreversible loss of German cultural heritage and the thought of some 135,000 civilians – mainly women, children, the elderly, and wretched refugees – being slaughtered in the process was what really set Dresden apart as a supposedly sui generis

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event. ‘Probably the greatest mass-murder in all the history of humanity that occurred in the space of a single day,’ commenced Margaret Hofmann’s September 1964 review of Irving’s book in Die Zeit, ‘was not endured by the population of Hiroshima like one automatically assumed at first, but rather by the inhabitants of Dresden’ (‘Der wahrscheinlich größte Massenmord der gesamten Menschheitsgeschichte, der in der Spanne eines einzigen Tages stattfand, wurde nicht von der Bevölkerung von Hiroshima erduldet, wie man zuerst fast automatisch annimmt, sondern von den Bewohnern Dresdens’).80 The significance of such a claim appearing in one of the BRD’s most reputable and widely-circulated newspapers in the middle of the Auschwitz trials, conducted from December 1963 to August 1965, cannot be overstated. Likewise, Wolf Schneider’s article in the 12 February 1965 edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung ran with the interrogative headline: ‘Why did Dresden have to die?’ (‘Warum mußte Dresden sterben?’).81 That this equally highly-regarded newspaper also accepted Irving’s sensational interpretation of events (first popularised by Rodenberger in the previous decade) is evidenced by Schneider’s claim that it was in neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki but Dresden that the ‘most terrible massacre’ (‘das furchtbarste Gemetzel’) had taken place.82 Moreover, accompanying the article was a graphic photograph of a pile of corpses readied for mass cremation on the Dresden Altmarkt after the raid. Whereas these kinds of images had appeared in the eastern German press as early as 1949’s Gedenktag, according to Margalit this was the first occasion any West German newspaper published such a photograph – and Irving’s book was the attributed source.83 Irving’s account clearly had an immense impact on how the destruction of Dresden was mass-mediated in the BRD during the mid-1960s. It was a different story in the DDR, however, where reviews were not so approving of Irving’s account. In 1965, Bernt von Kügelgen, as chief editor of East Berlin’s influential cultural politics weekly Sonntag (nowadays renamed Der Freitag), wrote a review article in which he juxtaposed Irving’s and Weidauer’s contrasting accounts. Kügelgen savaged the former and heaped lavish praise on the latter, insisting that only a Marxist interpretation could properly contextualise Dresden’s destruction as the tragic outcome of fascist and imperialist aggression. Diametrically opposed to the stance Erdmann had adopted

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six years earlier in the BRD, Kügelgen asked rhetorically: ‘How many Dresden ruins atone for the barracks of Auschwitz?’84 By 1964, with ‘American imperialism’ and ‘West German fascism’ consolidated as the DDR’s chief politico-ideological targets, Britain’s role in the destruction of Dresden was all but expunged from state-centred articulation. Operating within the parameters of the Dresden–Coventry sister-city relationship, however, German and British church leaders ensured no such oversight occurred at the level of localised public activity.85 In 1961–2, the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD) had sponsored a group of German youth volunteers to travel to Coventry. Serving under the EKD’s international rebuilding program Aktion Sühnezeichen (Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, ARSP), they helped to redevelop the ruins of Coventry’s old cathedral into the International Centre for Reconciliation.86 All volunteers involved came from the BRD, because the DDR forbade its citizens from travelling to Western countries to participate in Aktion Sühnezeichen projects.87 Nonetheless, when Coventry’s Provost Bill Williams coordinated a reciprocal program in 1965, sister-city Dresden was chosen as the sole beneficiary. Williams endured months of negotiations with SED bureaucrats before obtaining permission to send British volunteers to the DDR.88 After being blessed by the provost in the new Coventry Cathedral in March 1965, some two dozen young Britons departed for Dresden. For the ensuing six months they helped to rebuild one of the city’s hospitals destroyed by the bombing, the Lutheran Deaconess Hospital (Diakonissenkrankenhaus).89 The bilateral movement among young Christians between 1961 and 1965 represented an early, small-scale commitment to British–German reconciliation pursued through the prism of Dresden’s destruction. (As Chapter 5 explores in detail, three decades later reconciliation would re-emerge as arguably the most dominant theme following German reunification and the cosmopolitanisation of Dresden as an arena of articulation.) In the second half of the 1960s, the DDR renewed its propaganda offensive against ‘American imperialist warmongers’ each Gedenktag as memories of the Dresden ‘terror-bombing’ were linked to Vietnam. On 13 February 1966, a representative from the North Vietnamese embassy in the DDR was invited to be the special guest speaker at the annual

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mass rally.90 Just as Dresden had been linked to the Korean War earlier, now the Dresden–Vietnam comparison was given prominence. In 1967, the Sächsische Zeitung declared: ‘What is happening in Vietnam today closely resembles in character the crimes that were committed on 13 February 1945 in Dresden – genocide, terror, and raging ruination’ (‘Was heute in Vietnam passiert, sind im Wesen die gleichen Verbrechen, die am 13. Februar 1945 an Dresden verübt wurden – Völkermord, Terror und blindwütiges Zerstören’).91 By the 1960s, the Frauenkirche ruins were established as Dresden’s foremost site of war memory and, by extension, also its most contested terrain. Years of exhaustive post-war rubble-clearing and two decades of extensive restoration, reconstruction, and redevelopment meant that very few noteworthy remnants or ruins still dotted central Dresden. Whereas the vestiges of bombed- or burned-out buildings were common, only the Frauenkirche site remained clearly detectable by virtue of still being covered by actual uncleared rubble. That the church’s ruins remained in such a state was no accident or oversight. From the outset there was widespread hope, if not downright expectation, among Dresdeners that the Frauenkirche – their city’s landmark building – would be rebuilt sooner rather than later.92 In the 1940s, locals had helped to raise funds for rebuilding the church through novel ideas including ‘donation angels’ (Spendenengel) for Christmas trees and a specially commissioned ‘reconstruction lottery’ (Wiederaufbaulotterie).93 EKD authorities, as custodians of the land and the ruins, initially announced their support for rebuilding the Frauenkirche. Yet, owing to a dearth of money, the synod declared it was in no position to help fund any such project.94 The EKD handed over responsibility for protecting the Frauenkirche ruins to Dresden’s Institute for the Conservation of Historic Monuments (Institut für Denkmalpflege).95 Led by head curator Hans Nadler, the institute supervised some preliminary rubble-clearing in readiness for impending reconstruction. Before long, however, it became apparent that without financial support from either the church or the state the project would not get off the ground. By the early 1950s, Dresden’s Denkmalpfleger stopped planning for rebuilding the Frauenkirche in the foreseeable future and instead turned their attention to preserving the ruins indefinitely. As the rest of the rubble was cleared from central Dresden, Nadler and his

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colleagues secured and then protected the Frauenkirche Trümmerberg for two interrelated reasons. First, its existence safeguarded against the site’s possible redevelopment, which in turn facilitated the church’s future reconstruction. Second, it was recognised from the beginning that the ruins were essential for an authentic reconstruction of the Frauenkirche according to the process of anastylosis (see Chapter 4). Thus, Dresden’s Institut für Denkmalpflege always guarded over the ruins ‘like its most treasured possession’ (‘…gehütet wie seinen Augapfel’).96 By the mid-1960s, however, the preserved Frauenkirche ruins effectively had taken on a life of their own by evoking powerful antifascist and especially anti-war symbolism. This unforeseen development complicated matters by presenting a certain conundrum. Though it was never the intention of those conservationists responsible for safeguarding them, there was no denying that over time the ruins had become a leading arena of articulation in their own right, imbued with their own unique spirit and functionality. It was unavoidable, then, if the Frauenkirche ever were to be rebuilt it could only come at the expense of the Trümmerberg, which had emerged as Dresden’s most important bombing-related site of memory. Yet there was no escaping the fact that the ruins were only able to develop into such a meaningful site because local Denkmalpfleger had so vigilantly conserved them in order to facilitate the church’s reconstruction. Otherwise, it is almost certain that early post-war state officials and city planners would have cleared the site for redevelopment, in which case neither a rebuilt church nor the ruinous site of memory ever would have materialised.97 Debate over whether the Frauenkirche could and should be rebuilt at the expense of the Trümmerberg ebbed and flowed throughout the decades before the issue ultimately came to a head in the wake of the DDR’s collapse (see Chapter 4). In the 1960s, meanwhile, financial constraints created an impasse: on the one hand, without funding from the church or the state, rebuilding the Frauenkirche remained out of the question; on the other hand, neither local council nor state officials could spare the considerable resources required to clear the site.98 Consequently, the undisturbed ruins remained under the care of the Institut für Denkmalpflege. In 1966–7, the Dresden City Council nonetheless attached a new official status to the Frauenkirche Trümmerberg, thereby

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formalising its function as a site of state-centred memory. The ruins were designated as a special feature in the Structure Plan outlining central Dresden’s future redevelopment.99 As part of this process, on 5 May 1966 the city council moved a motion for the erection of a commemorative plaque (Gedenktafel) at the Frauenkirche site. The following year, a small Gedenktafel measuring 80cm by 63cm was affixed to part of a stair-tower that, along with a section of the choir, was one of only two segments of the church’s exterior still partially standing on either side of the massive sandstone Trümmerberg wedged in between. Its short text read: FRAUENKIRCHE. BUILT BY GEORGE BÄHR 1726–1743. DESTROYED BY ANGLO-AMERICAN BOMBERS ON 13.2.1945.100

The 1967 Gedenktafel erected at the Frauenkirche ruins, like the Rondell constructed out at the Heidefriedhof two years earlier, is tangible evidence of state-centred attempts in the 1960s to continue to politicise Dresden’s most prominent arenas of articulation. The Gedenktafel also made official what already had been self-evident for quite some time. Just as the Frauenkirche had embodied Dresden’s prewar standing as the German Kulturstadt, so, too, had its ruins come to symbolise the city’s postwar disposition as the German Opferstadt. Despite the simmering dispute over what purpose the ruins really served – facilitator of future rebuilding or important site of memory in their own right – the DDR’s interest in setting Dresden’s commemorative agenda started to wane by the end of the decade. In retrospect, 13 February 1965 represented a highwater mark for the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration that would not be matched until the milestone fortieth Gedenktag two decades later (see Chapter 3).

T h e 1 9 7 0 s a n d e a r ly 1 9 8 0 s

During the 1970s, public articulation of the destruction of Dresden increasingly receded owing to sweeping changes to the West German memory landscape and the East German political landscape. Altered conditions, both domestically and internationally, meant some of the

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politicised messages customarily attached to Dresden’s Gedenktag on either side of the German–German border lost much of their earlier appeal and relevance. In the BRD, public discourse centred on the notion of German victimhood increasingly lost both momentum and legitimacy as Holocaust-centric perpetrator memory emerged as the new master narrative. In the DDR, a period of Cold War détente meant Dresden’s Gedenktag temporarily lost its potency as a state-centred arena of articulation. The actions of an underground protest movement led by local youths in the early 1980s, however, reignited East Berlin’s direct involvement in the politics of commemorating Dresden’s destruction. In the BRD, Willy Brandt’s advocacy of Ostpolitik in the early 1970s temporarily silenced expellees’ demands of a ‘right to Heimat’ (Recht auf Heimat). Not until the CDU’s return to office under Helmut Kohl a decade later would ‘war stories’ of German loss and suffering once again re-emerge as a dominant strand of West German public memory culture. Except for on the far right of the political spectrum, meanwhile, little public space remained for Dresden the Opferstadt to continue to serve as the tu quoque moral counterweight it had been in previous decades. Dresden’s Gedenktag would pass largely unobserved in the BRD until 1985, when the milestone fortieth anniversary of the city’s destruction triggered a veritable explosion of interest unprecedented in the West German press. On 13 February 1970, DDR minister-president Willi Stoph delivered the chief address at Dresden’s annual mass rally. Large banners behind the stage set the tone for the twenty-fifth Gedenktag: the celebrated union of ‘socialism and peace’ (Sozialismus und Frieden) was juxtaposed with the condemned combination of ‘imperialism and war’ (Imperialismus und Krieg). It would prove the last state-orchestrated mass rally for more than a decade. Furthermore, although the annual Heidefriedhof wreath-laying service continued throughout the 1970s, according to Neutzner it transformed into a somewhat silent and selfreflective event as the propagandistic fuss of the previous decades disappeared (‘… das propagandistische Tamtam der zwei Jahrzehnte zuvor verschwand vollständig’).101 The SED’s removal of 13 February from the state’s commemorative politics calendar during the 1970s was characteristic of the DDR’s general move away from an overtly anti-Western stance during détente.

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In 1969, Bonn, under the influence of Ostpolitik, had abandoned the uncompromising Hallstein Doctrine in a move that augured well for improvement in German–German relations. East German ministerpresident Stoph and West German chancellor Brandt hosted each other in Erfurt and Kassel in March and May 1970 respectively in what were the historic first meetings conducted between leading politicians from the two Germanies.102 Although nothing materialised – largely because Brandt still refused to recognise the DDR’s state sovereignty – the lines of more cordial communication between Bonn and East Berlin nonetheless were opened. Later that year, Ostpolitik resulted in the BRD signing treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland.103 This principle of what the one-time-journalist-turned-Brandt’s-secretary Egon Bahr termed ‘change through rapprochement’ (‘Wandel durch Annäherung’), moreover, paved the way for the two Germanies and the four occupying powers to find a partial solution to the complex issue of Berlin. The Wall continued to cast a shadow over the divided city, but two agreements reached in 1971–2 represented important steps toward ‘normalising’ relations (at least as far as the prevailing conditions would allow) between East and West Berlin as well as permitting BRD citizens to travel to the DDR in certain circumstances.104 These developments culminated in the two Germanies signing the Basic Treaty (Grundlagenvertrag) on 21 December 1972, which, after acrimonious debate in the Bundestag, was ratified in May 1973 and came into effect the following month.105 As a cornerstone of the Basic Treaty, the BRD and the DDR finally recognised each other’s status as sovereign states (but not as separate nations). Three months later, the ‘two German states in one German nation’ were admitted to membership in the United Nations on 18 September 1973.106 Coinciding with these developments, successful dialogue between Washington and Moscow produced the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), a breakthrough marking the start of a new period of superpower détente. Throughout this delicate series of groundbreaking treaties and agreements in the 1970s, it would have made no sense whatever for the DDR to continue its politico-ideological attack on ‘West German militarist fascists’ and ‘American imperialist warmongers.’ Accordingly, Dresden’s Gedenktag – no longer a political asset – ceased to be an

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arena of state-centred articulation for the politics of East German war memory and commemoration. Press coverage of Dresden’s Gedenktag also diminished considerably during the 1970s. Early in the decade, the local party organ the Sächsische Zeitung devoted up to half of its front page reporting on various commemorative events, whereas in 1979 the day’s proceedings were concealed to a snippet hidden away on page eight.107 According to Neutzner, locally 13 February nonetheless continued to be ‘an important date’ (‘ein wichtiges Datum’) as the city’s destruction remained a major talking point among Dresdeners.108 Without political speeches, the Heidefriedhof wreath-laying service was freed of the earlier state-centred articulation in which the paramount objective had been stressing the indirect role of fascism and the direct role of the Western Powers in the destruction of Dresden. Instead, it evolved into a solemn event fixated on silent remembrance of Dresden’s bombing victims and reflection on the loss of cultural heritage caused by the city’s destruction.109 Manifestations of social agency dominated proceedings in the evening, as ecumenical sermons and memorial services conducted in several of Dresden’s churches continued to serve as the focal points of communal commemoration among Christians. Musical performances by local church choirs and municipal ensembles, followed by the tolling of the city’s bells, always rounded off proceedings.110 Unlike previous ‘milestone’ years, East Berlin did not turn 13 February 1975 into an epic event. Correspondingly, the Sächsische Zeitung devoted scant attention to the day’s commemorative practices. A small page three report covered the Heidefriedhof wreath-laying service and all other events passed without notice.111 Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Christian Schütze (a native Dresdener who fled to the West as a young man in the early postwar period) later observed that, after decades of disseminating hardline SED dogma whenever covering Dresden’s Gedenktag, by the mid-1970s the Sächsische Zeitung was adopting a restrained tone.112 The explanation for the newspaper’s radically altered position, according to Schütze, could be found in the bold-type headline of the article directly beneath the brief Heidefriedhof report: ‘British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in official visit to the USSR. The theme of his negotiations: international détente’ (‘Britischer Premierminister Harold Wilson zum

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offiziellen Besuch in der UdSSR. Thema seiner Verhandlungen: Die internationale Entspannung’).113 In 1980, East Berlin again decided not to overtly politicise Dresden’s Gedenktag. There were no political speeches at the Heidefriedhof ceremony, no mass rally, and, without any official themes or slogans underpinning the day, Dresdeners essentially were left to commemorate their city’s wartime destruction free of contemporary political rhetoric. Yet, when Christoph Ziemer, Dresden’s Protestant Dean (Superintendent), had contacted state authorities requesting permission to stage an open-air public memorial service (Gedenkgottesdienst) at the Frauenkirche ruins, his application was rejected.114 Such a refusal was not unusual in the DDR, where the church and the state endured a difficult relationship.115 Although Ziemer’s proposal came to nothing, it was noteworthy nonetheless inasmuch as it signalled the emergence of a new era of contested memory for Dresden’s Gedenktag. Henceforth, the state’s control over the meanings to be attached to, and evoked by, the Frauenkirche ruins as Dresden’s main site of memory would be challenged each 13 February until the DDR’s collapse at the end of the decade. While the state’s interest in Dresden’s Gedenktag ebbed and flowed depending on the status of the Cold War (though usually peaking quinquennially up to the 1970s), various forms of social agency were expressed annually. Significantly, however, these secular and religious rites of remembrance never undermined the state’s position as chief articulator whenever East Berlin chose to become involved in setting the day’s commemorative agenda. That changed on 13 February 1982, when the Frauenkirche ruins emerged unequivocally as Dresden’s most contested arena of articulation. By the early 1980s, with funds still not forthcoming, it seemed increasingly unlikely George Bähr’s ‘Stony Bell’ would ever again crown the city’s Elbe-skyline. It was widely assumed that the ruins, as the embodiment of Dresden the Opferstadt, would remain preserved as an anti-war memorial. The key issue concerning Dresden’s bombing site of memory par excellence, then, was how best to harness the ruins’ emotive symbolism. It was for this reason that the city council already had staked its claim on the site with the erection in 1967 of the small Gedenktafel. It explains, too, why Ziemer had identified the ruins as the location for a proposed open-air Gedenkgottesdienst for 13

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February 1980, and presumably why his application was refused. Furthermore, it also explains why, two years later, a daring group of disgruntled young Christians chose the Frauenkirche ruins as the place for both silent candlelit remembrance of the bombing victims and a public show of passive resistance against the state. In 1981, 17-year-old Dresden pedagogy student Anette Ebischbach (nowadays Johanna Kalex) was deregistered from university after distributing supposedly subversive leaflets on campus.116 Ebischbach reacted by mobilising a small group of similarly discontented youths she had befriended through her association with the Church of the Epiphany (Dreikönigskirche) on the Neustadt side of the Elbe. Inspired by the actions of the Solidarity movement in neighbouring Poland, Ebischbach and her friends formed an underground action group. They established contact with Pastor Harald Bretschneider, the figurehead of the DDR’s influential Protestant peace movement known as ‘Swords into Ploughshares’ (‘Schwerter zu Pflugscharen’), as they set about planning a peace demonstration for the upcoming 1982 Gedenktag. They initially called themselves the ‘February 13th Action Group’ (Initiative 13. Februar), but quickly became (in)famous as Wolfspelz.117 To generate awareness of, and support for, their planned demonstration, over several months Wolfspelz circulated underground flyers. Participants were told to meet on the Altmarkt in front of the Kreuzkirche. From this meeting point, a silent candlelit march would lead to the nearby Frauenkirche ruins where ‘a small commemorative ceremony’ (‘eine kleine Gedenkfeier’) was to climax with the singing in English of the protest song ‘We Shall Overcome’ (whose words were printed on the flyers). Hoping to circumvent state or police intervention, the flyers stressed that participants would not be doing anything forbidden (‘Wir tun nichts Verbotenes’). Although the clandestinely organised event was promoted under the rubric of a Christian silent remembrance of the bombing, it was designed predominantly as a show of passive resistance against the state. As word spread throughout the DDR generally and Dresden especially, the Stasi were called in to investigate the activists whom state authorities referred to as the Ebischbach Group (Gruppe Ebischbach). When it was discovered that a female printing operator had furtively (and illegally) used the print machinery of the state-controlled Sächsische Zeitung to run off

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5,000 leaflets, Ebischbach and other ringleaders were threatened with eleven years imprisonment if the event proceeded as planned.118 Endeavouring to defuse the situation by dissuading participation in the confrontational demonstration, Protestant State Bishop Johannes Hempel announced that a peace forum (Friedensforum) would be staged at the Kreuzkirche as an alternative option.119 It is impossible to gauge whether Hempel’s plan worked. The Friedensforum attracted a large crowd (estimates vary from 5,000 to 8,000) and there is no way of telling how many of these people, if any, would have supported the Wolfspelz demonstration had they not been presented with an alternative choice. Regardless, a couple of thousand (mainly young) East Germans defied state warnings to partake in the silent protest march to, and passive resistance at, the Frauenkirche ruins. As in every year since 1946, at 9.40pm on 13 February 1982 all of Dresden’s bells rang out in unison. On this occasion, the tolling signalled the time had come for demonstrators to congregate in front of the Kreuzkirche before slowly making their way in a silent protest march (Schweigemarsch) to the Frauenkirche ruins. Local police and Stasi agents watched over proceedings from a short distance but took no action.120 The impressive number of predominantly young demonstrators not only braved state enmity but also the freezing cold as they gathered around the snow-capped ruins until midnight. Some quietly sang Christian hymns, while others preferred to reflect in prolonged silence. Adhering to a specific request that Wolfspelz had included on the underground flyers, almost everyone brought along flowers and candles (‘…jeder bringt Blumen und eine Kerze mit’). The teenage Ebischbach and her friends originally planned their demonstration of passive resistance against the state with only 13 February 1982 in mind. The fact that gathering around the Frauenkirche ruins late in the evening of the Gedenktag developed into an annual event for the remainder of the DDR era illustrates how social-agency manifestations of war memory and commemoration often stem from remarkably organic origins. The successful promethean action organised by Wolfspelz, which attracted thousands of passive protesters and passed without incident, was a momentous occasion whose significance cannot be overstated. It marked the first instance whereby the state’s hitherto unchallenged role

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in the appropriation of Dresden’s Gedenktag as a contemporary political asset was openly tested. The Schweigemarsch was, for the DDR at the time, an exceptionally rare case of mass public opposition to the state. Matthias Gretzschel and others even identify this particular episode as the beginning of the East German ‘peace and civil rights movement’ (‘Friedens- und Bürgerrechtsbewegung’).121 Indeed, by attracting significant numbers of protesters and observers alike every year for the remainder of the 1980s, this annual show of passive resistance set an important precedent from which East Germans could draw inspiration for the more widespread acts of open dissent in late 1989. Furthermore, the state, after having largely refrained from politicising Dresden’s Gedenktag for more than a decade, considered the events at the Frauenkirche ruins on 13 February 1982 a deliberate provocation. East Berlin acted swiftly, seeking to reclaim control over Dresden’s most prominent arena of articulation. Following the 1982 Gedenktag, soldiers from the DDR’s National People’s Army (Nationale Volksarmee, NVA) embedded a new copperplate plaque into the ground at the base of the Frauenkirche ruins. Measuring 221cm by 178cm and featuring an intricate high-relief rendering of the church as a centrepiece, this state-sanctioned update dwarfed the city council’s rudimentary tablet erected in 1967. The new version carried all the same information as its predecessor, and also included a cautionary message: THE DRESDEN FRAUENKIRCHE WAS DESTROYED IN FEBRUARY 1945 BY ANGLO-AMERICAN BOMBERS. ITS RUINS SERVE AS A REMINDER OF THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DEAD AND URGES THE LIVING TO FIGHT AGAINST IMPERIALIST BARBARISM FOR THE PEACE AND HAPPINESS OF THE HUMAN RACE.122

The additional text meant a clear distinction could be drawn between the two official plaques erected at the site 15 years apart. The 1967 original was an example of what is known in German as a Gedenktafel, literally a commemorative plaque. The enhanced 1982 version was a Mahntafel, which is a special kind of commemorative plaque designed as a warning to present and future generations. Given there was a Gedenktafel erected at the site already, the state’s decision to embed a large Mahntafel at the base of the ruins in the immediate aftermath of 13 February 1982 can be

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viewed as a direct response to the mass demonstration of passive resistance that had taken place. In 1982, state authorities neither took any action against the passive protesters on the night, nor did they carry out their threats of lengthy imprisonment for the demonstration’s organisers. The Mahntafel, however, is evidence that East Berlin felt compelled to act somehow after its control over Dresden commemorative politics had been openly challenged. Perhaps, the state commissioned the enhanced Mahntafel in 1982 because it predicted Dresden’s Gedenktag generally, and the Frauenkirche ruins especially, would become contested arenas of articulation in future. What is certain is that, after the 1970s had proved a sustained period of relative inactivity, in the early 1980s East Berlin once again became heavily engaged in shaping Dresden’s commemorative agenda. For a more detailed study of this reintensification of state-centred articulation, Chapter 3 examines the milestone fortieth Gedenktag in 1985.

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3

Dresden’s Last Milestone Gedenktag before the Fall of the Wall: 13 February 1985

Dresden’s milestone fortieth Gedenktag was characterised by many and varied forms of state-centred and socially-based remembrance. Several events not analysed in detail within the scope of this chapter nonetheless warrant brief mention. On the one hand, these included the traditional rites of remembrance such as the Heidefriedhof wreath-laying ceremony, the performance of Mauersberger’s Dresdner Requiem as part of the ecumenical service held in the Kreuzkirche, and the 20-minute tolling of the city’s bells. On the other hand, some novel religious sermons and services organised especially to mark the fortieth Gedenktag included a Catholic requiem in the cathedral of the diocese of Dresden-Meissen and an ecumenical ‘peace ceremony’ (Friedensfeier) conducted in the Annenkirche.1 Also, the Dresden City Council invited delegations from its sister-cities across Europe – Leningrad, Ostrava, Skopje, and Wrocław (formerly Breslau) through to Florence and Coventry – to converge on the city for a round-table discussion on peace and other contemporary issues of mutual significance.2 While all these events made valuable contributions to the day’s proceedings, this chapter identifies three main arenas of articulation as having played the most significant roles in shaping the politics of commemoration in Dresden on 13 February 1985. The three case studies explored in detail are: first, the SED’s midday mass rally staged at the Theaterplatz; second, the state-orchestrated reopening of Dresden’s rebuilt state opera house, the Semperoper; and, finally, various manifestations of remembrance enacted at the Frauenkirche ruins. Unlike the other two arenas of articulation, which were totally controlled by East Berlin, at the Frauenkirche ruins both state-orchestrated and socially engineered commemorative practices took place.

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Although Dresden’s fortieth Gedenktag occurred during the so-called ‘Second Cold War’, it was a period in which the two German states in one German nation continued to enjoy a comparatively healthy relationship fostered during the 1970s. From East Berlin’s perspective, this limited how the destruction of Dresden could be exploited as a contemporary political asset. What ultimately proved the last milestone Gedenktag prior to the DDR’s collapse (and subsequent hybridisation of East and West German public memory cultures) generated unprecedented interest in the BRD. Prior to examining the day’s main commemorative events staged in Dresden, then, some general observations about how the West German press mass-mediated the destruction of Dresden in 1985 are of relevance. That Saxony’s capital, located over in the East, was depicted in the BRD as the German Opferstadt at this time is significant because it reveals West German attitudes toward Dresden’s functionality in victimisation discourse leading up to reunification.

W e s t G e r m a n m as s - m e diat i on of Dr e sde n as Opf e r sta dt

War-related public discourse in the BRD in early 1985 was stirred by a spate of fortieth anniversaries. Coverage of the Dresden firebombing formed an integral part of this trend, as evidenced by Hermann Heckmann’s remarks: ‘Memories of the events “forty years ago”, which have been roused in the last year by the press and television, find a highpoint on 13 February with thoughts about the destruction of Dresden’ (‘Die in den letzten Jahren von Presse und Fernsehen wachgerufenen Erinnerungen an die Ereignisse “Vor 40 Jahren” finden am 13. Februar mit dem Gedanken an die Zerstörung Dresdens einen Höhepunkt’).3 Only one date – 8 May, marking the war’s end – surpassed 13 February in regard to the amount of attention it received and the debate it generated in the West German press.4 Sometimes the two dates were even fused together in disputes over what meanings (West) Germans should attach to the legacy of the Nazi past. Six stimulating commentaries by eminent scholars were serialised in Die Zeit under the title ‘8 May: The Unwieldy Commemorative Day’ (‘8. Mai: Der sperrige Gedenktag’).5 The contributors approached this most challenging date from various angles, with historian Golo Mann making

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the perceptive observation that ‘on commemorative days the wounds open up’ (‘Gedenktage, die Wunden aufreißen’).6 Many of the letters to the editor provoked by the series suggested that 13 February was the date on which German wounds open up especially. A collection of readers’ letters published under the inquiring heading ‘Eternal Guilt?’ (‘Ewige Schuld?’), for instance, was accompanied by a solitary photograph: not of Auschwitz, but Dresden after its destruction.7 Dr Siegfried Bork, from whose letter the overall heading was taken, acknowledged that Germans ‘carry with them an eternal guilt’ (‘Wir schleppen eine ewige Schuld mit uns’). Yet Bork concluded in reference to Dresden: ‘Time heals all wounds, but never this one’ (‘Die Zeit heilt alle Wunde, aber diese nie’). In stark contrast to the state-controlled East German press, a number of controversial questions relating to the Dresden raid and its immediate aftermath were widely and fiercely debated in West German newspapers around the time of the fortieth Gedenktag. Why was a hitherto undamaged Kulturstadt destroyed so late in the war? Who, out of the most likely suspects Churchill, Harris, and Stalin, was ultimately responsible for ordering the raid? If Dresden was not a militarily justifiable target at the time it was attacked, does the raid constitute a war crime? Did strafing occur in central Dresden? And, finally, what was the likely death toll?8 In a front-page editorial, liberal political editor of Die Zeit Theo Sommer provocatively claimed that, even if German raids on cities like Guernica and Coventry had set a precedent, the Dresden firebombing was ‘deliberate mass-murder [and] a non-nuclear Hiroshima’ (‘Dies war gezielter Massenmord, ein nicht-nukleares Hiroshima’).9 The Süddeutsche Zeitung commissioned Michael Cullen, a West Berlin-based American freelance historian of architecture, to write a feature article ostensibly about Dresden’s soon-to-be-reopened reconstructed Semper Opera House.10 Cullen found sufficient space to present an uninformed, inaccurate, and biased account of the raid in which he isolated Harris as being solely responsible for selecting Dresden as a target before independently planning and coordinating the attack. The significant contribution his American compatriots made to the ‘triple-blow’ against Dresden did not even rate a mention in Cullen’s prolonged account. Ernst-Otto Maetzke of the FAZ responded to the screening of a documentary series on the bombing war in which the last episode

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portrayed the Dresden firebombing as ‘the catastrophe of the century’ (‘Jahrhundertkatastrophe’).11 Maetzke engaged with a range of contentious issues covered in the documentary. He refuted the claim that Dresden was not a military target at the time it was attacked and, drawing on Bergander’s exhaustive research, rejected widespread eyewitness testimonies that strafing had occurred. Maetzke did, however, accept as feasible the film’s estimate that 70,000 victims were killed in the raid. Whereas this figure was significantly less than the estimates previously disseminated by Rodenberger and Irving, it corresponded with McKee’s estimate from three years earlier and doubled the DDR’s official number of victims. Maetzke’s unsympathetic article provoked several volatile responses in the letters to the editor, especially his dismissive attitude to strafing.12 Finally, Olaf Ihlau, the London correspondent for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote a scathing overview of the apathetic public reaction in Britain to the fortieth anniversary of the Dresden bombing.13 As these examples indicate, the destruction of Dresden was a prominent topic in West German public discourse around the time of the fortieth Gedenktag.

T h e pa rt y ’ s m as s r a l ly

State leader Erich Honecker and his politburo visited Dresden on 13 February 1985 with a clearly-defined agenda built around two events: the party’s midday mass rally, followed by the evening reopening of the Semperoper. Nothing in Honecker’s schedule for the day was to detract from the positive messages to be promulgated at these two stateorchestrated arenas of articulation, and so he was a notable absentee from the morning’s two official wreath-laying ceremonies where the mood was necessarily sombre. Hans-Joachim Hoffmann, the Minister for Culture and politburo member, and Hans Modrow, then the First Secretary of the SED’s Dresden branch (and later the DDR’s last communist Chairman of the Council of Ministers), were the state’s two official representatives in attendance at the traditional Heidefriedhof service.14 NVA soldiers and FDJ members represented the state at a specially-arranged service staged at the Frauenkirche ruins. Rather than attend personally, the state- and

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party-leader left it to the NVA to lay a wreath on his behalf.15 Honecker maintained a certain personal detachment from these two ceremonies where sorrowful remembrance of German wartime loss and suffering was the prevailing theme. He made his first public appearance of the day at the party rally, where peace was the first of two main messages articulated by the state. As the headline on the front page of the following day’s edition of the Neues Deutschland proclaimed, on 13 February Dresden served as a ‘reminder and an obligation for peace.’16 Whereas peace was by no means a new theme to be associated with, and promoted on, Dresden’s Gedenktag, the ways in which it was articulated in 1985 differed considerably from earlier decades when anti-Western Cold War rhetoric had prevailed. Both the Karl-Marx-Platz and the Altmarkt, the arenas previously chosen whenever the state conducted a mass rally, were overlooked in 1985. In an inspired choice, Dresden’s Theaterplatz was selected instead. The spacious, centrally-located square is flanked on three sides by the rebuilt Zwinger complex and its galleries, the restored Hofkirche, and the Elbe River making it a majestic setting. Moreover, now framing the fourth side of the Theaterplatz was the latest addition to Dresden’s catalogue of reconstructions, the Semperoper. Large red banners draped across adjacent buildings carried slogans that set the tone for the event. One echoed Weidauer’s book title and declared that the ‘Dresden inferno should never be repeated’ (‘Das Inferno Dresden darf sich nie wiederholen’). Another banner created a portmanteau by modifying the popular Dresden-Hiroshima nexus to warn that ‘Europe cannot become a Euroshima’ (‘Europa darf kein Euroshima werden’).17 Yet another sign stretched above the Theaterplatz reminded those Dresdeners foregoing their lunch-break to attend the party’s mass rally that the DDR’s national economic plan was a program of struggle (‘… der Volkswirtschaftsplan ein Kampfprogramm sei’).18 Small handheld flags of various colours and designs proliferated in the rapidly expanding crowd: red flags signifying support for socialism; patriotic flags of red, black, and gold adorned with the DDR’s emblem of a hammer, compass, and wreath of wheat ears; and blue and white flags featuring peace symbols. Likewise, in keeping with the event’s focus on peace, the temporary stage was painted blue and white and an enormous

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international dove of peace made an impressive backdrop. A veritable ‘who’s who’ of East German politicians, religious leaders, and public figures gathered together on stage in a show of solidarity in the name of peace. National Front functionaries from East Berlin included Willi Stoph, Horst Sindermann, Kurt Hager, and Egon Kranz. Religious representatives included Saxony’s Protestant State Bishop Johannes Hempel, the Catholic Bishop of the Dresden-Meissen diocese Gerhard Shaffran, and the president of the DDR’s Jewish community Helmut Aris. Prominent locals included Dresden’s incumbent Oberbürgermeister Gerhard Schill plus the inaugural postwar Oberbürgermeister and author Weidauer. Delegates from Dresden’s numerous sister-cities also gathered on stage to add an international dimension to the occasion.19 An estimated 200,000 Dresdeners packed the Theaterplatz and spilled into adjacent streets. In what Uly Foerster of Der Spiegel mockingly referred to as a typically socialist ploy, ‘tinny-sounding marching music’ (‘blecherne Marschmusik’) blared from dozens of loud speakers to generate excitement among the crowd.20 An anonymous master of ceremonies aroused the crowd by repeatedly asking in a rhetorical tone whether they wished to hear from their leader. Only after six or seven such queries, all of which apparently were greeted with thunderous and heartfelt applause, did Honecker finally make his eagerly anticipated appearance on stage.21 Placing such emphasis on Honecker’s presence was consistent with the DDR’s cult of personality built around the party- and state-leader.22 The baited crowd, however, had to wait to hear Honecker speak. The rally began slowly as various officials made short introductory speeches. These were followed by a declaration of intent (Willenserklärung) read out on behalf of the people of Dresden by young local construction worker Gerolf Otte, who cut a distinct figure on stage.23 Dressed in overalls and construction helmet, Otte’s attire accentuated his special role in proceedings as the embodiment of the self-proclaimed workers’ and farmers’ state (Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Staat). Otte commenced the Willenserklärung by speaking of Dresdeners’ love for their Heimatstadt, which he described as a ‘victim of the Second World War’ (‘Opfer des zweiten Weltkrieges’). He proclaimed Dresden once again was a ‘blooming metropolis’ (‘aufblühende Großstadt’) thanks to the guidance and prosperity of ‘our socialist German Democratic Republic.’ Dresdeners,

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according to the Willenserklärung, shared an unconditional commitment to the pursuit and promotion of world peace. Otte also reiterated the key message expressed on the aforementioned banner that Europe could not be allowed to become a ‘Euroshima.’ Immediately after delivering the Willenserklärung, Otte handed over the keys to the rebuilt Semperoper to its Manager and Artistic Director (Intendant) Professor Gerd Schönfelder. Upon accepting control of the rebuilt state opera house, Schönfelder expressed gratitude on behalf of Saxony’s population: ‘We thank our party- and state-leadership and, in particular, comrade Erich Honecker for the generous support to rebuild our Semper Opera House’ (‘Wir danken unserer Partei- und Staatsführung und besonders Ihnen, Genosse Erich Honecker, für die großzügige Unterstützung beim Aufbau unserer Semperoper’).24 Schönfelder’s specific mention of Honecker conformed to the day’s general pattern of emphasising the state leader’s guiding role in the reconstruction of the Semperoper. It also provided a bridge to the highlight of the mass rally, Honecker’s chief address. Honecker began his speech with the anti-fascist rhetoric first introduced under Soviet occupation in the late 1940s. He proclaimed that, within a few short hours 40 years earlier to the day, Saxony’s capital had been reduced to rubble and ash because: The flames of the Second World War, which originated from Berlin, the capital of the ‘Third Reich’ at that time, set the world on fire and then struck back, shortly before the end of the war, and also engulfed Dresden and an unknown number of Dresdeners along with many others who searched here for refuge.25

Honecker subsequently declared that, on the occasion of the fortieth Gedenktag, the living shared an obligation to remember the Dresden firebombing and its victims and never allow a third world war (‘… heute zu gedenken, ist uns Mahnung und Verpflichtung, ist Aufruf an die Lebenden, einen dritten Weltkrieg nicht zulassen’). According to the Neues Deutschland, which published an annotated transcript of Honecker’s speech the following day, these words met with ‘tempestuous applause’ (‘stürmischer Beifall’). Despite not attending the earlier Heidefriedhof memorial service, Honecker appears to have drawn inspiration from the Rondell for a key aspect of his address. Since its construction in 1965, the Rondell situated

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Dresden’s wartime fate within the broader context of European-wide civil death and destruction. Honecker, too, adopted this approach as part of his appeal to the international community to learn from the horrors of the Second World War and adopt ‘a program for world peace’ (‘ein Programm für den Frieden der Welt’).26 Honecker cited all seven cities and towns that feature in the Rondell along with six out of the seven camps (Theresienstadt was omitted inexplicably). He argued that, four decades later, these particular sites of horror continued to evoke exceptional antiwar sentiments and thus demanded a universal commitment to secure world peace. To bolster his point, Honecker made a few intriguing additions to the 13 names from the Rondell. Stalingrad, arguably the most notable omission from the Rondell in 1965, was mentioned by Honecker two decades later. The destalinisation of the Khrushchev era – which saw Stalingrad renamed Volgograd in 1961 – presumably accounts for why the city’s name was missing from the Rondell constructed four years later. In 1985, however, Honecker clearly felt comfortable conjuring up the dynamic imagery of Stalingrad as the turning point in the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War against fascism. Furthermore, added to the European sites of memory were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their inclusion was a logical extension in two interrelated respects: first, from the 1950s onwards the ‘conventional’ bombing of Dresden frequently had been compared to the nuclear attacks on these Japanese cities; and, second, an overriding theme of the fortieth Gedenktag was the play-on-words that Dresden’s destruction served as a reminder and an obligation never to allow a ‘Euroshima’ to happen.27 Honecker adopted a restrained tone throughout his address. It was a move that surprised West German journalists, who, in the midst of the ‘Second Cold War’, had anticipated that he would use the party rally as an opportunity to revive the DDR’s appropriation of Dresden’s destruction as a usable asset in its anti-American politics of the past. Albrecht Hinze, the political editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, observed: ‘Honecker, in his portrayal of the destruction of Dresden, avoided the term still customarily chosen in the DDR of “AngloAmerican terror-bombing’’’ (‘Honecker vermied in seiner Schilderung der Zerstörung Dresdens die sonst in der DDR übliche Begriffswahl vom, “anglo-amerikanischen Bombenterror”’).28 Foerster noted that,

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‘strangely enough’ (‘ungewöhnlich genug’), Honecker refrained from employing the terms ‘imperialism’ (‘Imperialismus’) and ‘revanchists’ (‘Revanchisten’) throughout his address.29 Peter Jochen Winter similarly observed that there was ‘no lapse into using inflammatory words [and instead] Honecker remained moderate during his short speech, making accusations against neither the “imperialists” of that time nor of today. He did not make a propaganda event out of the rally’ (‘… fallen solch agitatorische Worte nicht. Honecker bleibt in seiner kurzen Rede moderat, klagt weder die “Imperialisten” von damals noch die von heute an. Er macht aus der Kundgebung keine Propagandaveranstaltung’).30 The last remark – suggesting that East Berlin did not create this particular arena of articulation for propaganda purposes – either exclusively referred to the fact that Honecker’s speech uncharacteristically did not attack the West, or otherwise betrays Winter as remarkably naïve. It is true this particular party rally lacked the aggressive Cold War rhetoric of its predecessors in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet the entire event – from the banners and marching music, to Otte dressed in his construction site apparel reciting the Willenserklärung and Schönfelder attributing the rebuilding of the Semperoper to the state’s leadership, through to the tone and content of Honecker’s chief address – was carefully orchestrated to create the desired atmosphere for the day. Given that the overriding purpose for the rally was to articulate the DDR’s commitment to world peace, a very good reason explains why Honecker refrained from attacking the West generally and its superpower leader especially. Shortly prior to Dresden’s Gedenktag, Washington and Moscow had announced they would send delegations to Geneva in midMarch to recommence arms reduction negotiations.31 Over six years had elapsed since their last fruitful discussions, and in the two years since US president Ronald Reagan’s March 1983 announcement of the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), or ‘Star Wars’ programme, superpower relations had deteriorated alarmingly.32 In February 1985, Honecker was evidently loath to provoke the West on the eve of the Americans and Soviets resuming dialogue about (nuclear) arms reduction. The Geneva talks, combined with the relatively cordial nature of German–German relations, meant a 1950’s- or 1960’s-style anti-Western diatribe directed against ‘imperialist warmongers,’ ‘American terror-bombers,’ or ‘Bonn

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Ultras’ was unbefitting Dresden’s fortieth Gedenktag. Accordingly, a core element of Honecker’s speech was publicly stating the DDR’s support for the looming superpower negotiations, hence his declaration that East Germans wished the Soviets and Americans ‘complete success’ (‘… wünschen wir den am. 12 März entsprechend der gemeinsamen sowjetischamerikanischen Erklärung in Genf beginnenden Verhandlungen vollen Erfolg’).33 Only once during his 15-minute appeal for world peace did Honecker deviate from his moderate approach and briefly adopt modulated tones when implying that the Americans were solely responsible for the (re)escalation in the nuclear arms race. He argued that ‘the architects of a “Star Wars”’ (‘die Architekten eines “Krieges der Sterne”’) were sowing the seeds of their own destruction, because no country would ever really have the capacity to withstand nuclear weapons.34 Though he did not name the United States outright, in light of Reagan’s SDI there can be no mistaking at whom Honecker’s ‘Krieges der Sterne’ barb was directed. Intriguingly, whilst warning that a continuation of the SDI would inevitably lead to MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), Honecker did not use the common German term ‘der Westen’ in reference to the West. Instead, he referred to ‘das Abendland,’ usually a literary term referring to the Occident. Honecker paired Abendland with the ambiguous noun Untergang, which can mean ‘decline’ or ‘downfall’ but in this context unmistakably denoted ‘destruction.’ Honecker appears to have been borrowing from the title of Oswald Spengler’s seminal work Der Untergang des Abendlandes.35 Though Spengler had theorised about ‘the decline of the West’ during the world wars interregnum, Honecker was implying that a future ‘Star Wars’ would result in the (self-)destruction of the West. Honecker concluded by describing Dresden as ‘a flourishing city striving for progress’ (‘Heute ist Dresden eine blühende, aufstrebende Stadt’). Here, in anticipation of the other main state-centred arena of articulation – the evening’s lavish reopening of the Semperoper – attention was turned to the second key theme East Berlin disseminated on 13 February 1985: Dresden’s socialist-inspired postwar redevelopment and rebirth. The end of Honecker’s address, reported the Neues Deutschland, was met with ‘continuous, tempestuous applause and cheers for the SED

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and its General Secretary’ (‘… anhaltender stürmischer Beifall, Hochrufe auf die SED und ihren Generalsekretär’). To officially end the party’s mass rally, Otte was again called upon to thank Honecker personally before making a short closing speech. Otte further shifted the focus toward the evening’s gala event by proclaiming: ‘The reconstruction of the Semper Opera House is a symbol of the well-being of the people, executed by the good politics of the Party and the Government, and is an expression of the love for our Heimatstadt Dresden’ (‘Der Wiederaufbau der Semperoper ist ein Symbol der auf das Wohl des Volkes gerichteten guten Politik von Partei und Regierung und Ausdruck der Liebe zu unserer Heimatstadt Dresden’).36 Occurring at a time of acute Cold War tensions, the stateorchestrated mass rally in 1985 eschewed the anti-Western rhetoric that permeated similar events in earlier decades. Honecker’s speech in particular nonetheless utilised Dresden’s milestone fortieth Gedenktag as a commemorative politics asset. On 13 February 1985, state-centred remembrance of the destruction of Dresden served as a universal warning from history about the horrors of war and an obligation for present and future generations to pursue and promote world peace. Yet, the state also planned for it to be a day (or, more precisely, an evening) of celebration for East Germans generally and Dresdeners especially.

T h e r e op e n i n g of t h e S e m pe r ope r

In February 1985, the internationally-renowned Semperoper became the latest addition to Dresden’s rebuilt (neo)baroque architectural masterworks. During the previous four decades, numerous centrallylocated churches, museums, galleries, and other public buildings damaged or destroyed in the firebombing were restored or reconstructed. Originally these buildings had been constructed under, and often commissioned and funded by, Saxony’s former Wettin dynasty once Dresden was established as its Residenzstadt. As relics of the city’s royal past, such ornate buildings hardly conformed to the DDR’s socialist ideals. Importantly, however, their wartime destruction could be indirectly linked to fascism and directly to ‘western imperialist

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warmongering.’ Moreover, rebuilding them extolled the intrinsic worth of socialism because such projects were tangible manifestations of the DDR’s national anthem Auferstanden aus Ruinen, which literally means ‘risen from the ruins.’37 For several decades the Semperoper, along with the Frauenkirche and the former royal residence (Residenzschloss), remained one of the three most glaring examples of an iconic building in central Dresden not restored, rebuilt, or even cleared away for redevelopment of the site.38 Finally, on 24 June 1977, the foundation stone was laid marking the start of the reconstruction of Dresden’s state opera house. After almost eight years of exacting work, the Semperoper was completed in time for its celebratory reopening. East Berlin’s choice of the richly symbolic date of 13 February 1985 had a powerful politico-ideological effect. It meant Dresden’s Semperoper would ‘rise from the ruins’ precisely 40 years after its destruction, thereby juxtaposing its fascist-induced destruction and socialistinspired reconstruction. Coinciding with the reopening of the Semperoper in the mid-1980s, prominent figures in German history previously maligned in the DDR’s official interpretation of the past, such as Martin Luther, Frederick the Great, and even Bismarck, were rehabilitated as part of the state’s intensified interest in preserving and promoting German cultural heritage (Kulturerbe).39 The decision made eight years earlier to rebuild the Semperoper was, in fact, one of the first major indicators that East Berlin’s attentiveness to Kulturerbe actually had been kindled a full decade earlier. On 19 July 1975, the DDR’s unicameral parliament the People’s Chamber (Volkskammer) enacted important new laws pertaining to the conservation of historic monuments (Denkmalpflege).40 Over 50,000 separate objects of historical and cultural worth were registered either on local or regional lists and also included on the state’s central list (Zentrale Denkmalliste). Rebuilding Dresden’s Semperoper was one of the most ambitious tasks undertaken as part of the DDR’s post-1975 embrace of Kulturerbe and Denkmalpflege. The reopening of the Semperoper was a much-anticipated occasion in both Germanies, albeit within disparate interpretative frameworks. Whereas East Berlin promoted it both as the latest example of Dresden’s socialist rebirth and the state’s preservation of Kulturerbe, leading up to

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its reopening BRD newspapers depicted the Semperoper as representative of Germany’s rich national historical traditions. This interpretation allowed West Germans to overcome the problem of geopolitical detachment caused by the nation’s division to still rejoice in the return of a national icon. To this end, in the BRD the looming reopening was celebrated through the articulation of two overlapping themes: the architectural genius of Gottfried Semper and the legendary reputation of the two opera houses that he designed for Dresden. Semper was born in the Altona district of Hamburg (coincidentally, later totally destroyed during Operation Gomorrah) and spent his formative years studying and training in several cities that in 1985 were located in the BRD.41 Semper’s first court theatre in Dresden, built between 1838 and 1841, was destroyed by fire in 1869.42 Following the May 1849 uprisings, the revolutionary architect had been forced to flee Dresden, together with his friend Richard Wagner, with bounties on their heads. After their beloved court theatre burned down two decades later, however, Dresdeners demanded that the Wettin rulers commission Semper to design a replacement on the same site. Although Saxony’s authorities granted Semper amnesty, they did not completely forget about his earlier revolutionary actions.43 A compromise was struck with Semper designing a new and enhanced theatre, which was constructed between 1871 and 1878 under his son Manfred’s supervision. It was this embellished second version, officially titled the Saxon State Opera House (Sächsische Staatsoper) but popularly known simply as the Semperoper, which succumbed to the February 1945 bombing. The legendary reputation of Semper’s opera house(s) in Dresden was reinforced by the strong connections with pre-eminent German composers, links that were mass-mediated in the BRD as underpinning German historical and cultural traditions. Richard Wagner premièred Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman (Der fliegende Holländer), and Tannhäuser at Semper’s first court theatre while based in Dresden during the 1840s (including a period as Saxony’s state conductor) before fleeing Saxony following the revolution. An impressed Wagner praised the venue as a ‘miracle harp’ (‘Wunderharfe’).44 Similarly, between 1901 and 1938 Richard Strauss premièred nine of his works – including Salome, The Knight of the Rose (Der Rosenkavalier), and Elektra – in the Semperoper,

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which he proclaimed as his favourite opera house and endearingly dubbed the ‘Eldorado of premières’ (‘Dorado der Uraufführungen’).45 Focusing on both Semper as a historical figure and the celebrated position his two Dresden opera houses had occupied in (pre-Nazi) German Kultur enabled the West German press to depict the reopening of the Semperoper as an event that transcended (con)temporary state divisions to hold pan-national significance. In 1985, one need not look to nineteenth-century figures such as Semper and Wagner to find prominent individuals with strong personal links to Dresden’s opera house as well as cities or towns now located in the BRD. Honecker himself, the man ultimately responsible for the rebuilding of the Semperoper, was a native Saarlander born in Neunkirchen near the French border. Thus, the DDR leader embodied the complex ‘dual-state and divided-nation’ personal experience shared by so many Germans. Sommer used this entwining of tradition to argue that the reopening of the Semperoper was equally important for East and West Germans alike.46 To illustrate why a shared Kulturerbe for the BRD and the DDR was unavoidable, Sommer employed the example of Germany’s most celebrated writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He pointed out that, although Goethe was born in Frankfurt-am-Main and died in Weimar, in 1985 it was anachronistic to speak of him being born in the BRD or dying in the DDR for in Goethe’s lifetime Germany had not yet even been unified let alone divided. According to Sommer, the Goethean legacy was emblematic of countless examples of individuals, institutions, historical events, and other aspects of the past that were shared German national treasures. And the Semperoper exemplified how the cultural harmony of the singular German nation superseded politico-ideological divisiveness. Such an interpretation allowed West Germans to relate to, and rejoice in, the reappearance of a German icon even though it was located outside of the BRD. As Monika Zimmermann proudly exclaimed in the FAZ on the eve of the reopening: ‘German reconstruction has a new monument: the Semper Opera House in Dresden. The place, the building, its master builder – every aspect embodies German history’ (‘Der deutsche Wiederaufbau hat ein neues Denkmal: die Semper-oper in Dresden. Der Ort, das Bauwerk, sein Baumeister – jeder Aspekt, für sich genommen, verkörpert deutsche Geschichte’).47

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Some West German publications were critical of East Berlin leading up to the reopening. Der Spiegel complained it was inexcusable that four decades had passed before such an important building finally was rebuilt.48 Conversely, several journalists prompted what perhaps can be best described as a ‘Denkmalpflege versus better roads’ debate. Their articles were critical of the SED’s generous expenditure on the preservation of historic monuments and buildings at a time when East Germans still lacked so many fundamental services in their everyday lives.49 Nonetheless, press reports in the BRD overwhelmingly were celebratory in nature and expressed gratitude toward the DDR for rebuilding a national treasure. In a sign of the relatively healthy German– German relations of the period, it was arranged for the reopening to be telecast live in both the BRD and the DDR in what Der Spiegel welcomed as an ‘all-German television celebration’ (‘gesamtdeutsches Fernsehfest’).50 As an official state event, the reopening commenced with a rendition of the DDR national anthem and so, as part of the telecast, it was heard across the BRD. Afterwards, Sommer remarked that on this particular occasion Auferstanden aus Ruinen met with approval west of the ‘borderblockade-system’ (‘Grenzsperrsystem’).51 It was a bitterly cold evening, so typical of Dresden in February. At the Theaterplatz, where an estimated 200,000 Dresdeners had congregated just hours earlier for the party rally, only a few thousand onlookers braved the biting conditions to catch a glimpse of the dignitaries attending the reopening. The party’s official interpretation of events described these locals as having formed a thick guard of honour (Spalier) to cheer and applaud wildly upon the appearance of the Central Committee of the SED led by General Secretary Honecker.52 West German journalists observed the arrival scenes somewhat differently. According to Winters, these same Dresdeners gathered inquisitively as the guests arrived just as their forebears had done to witness the arrival of Saxon kings. Winters added that, on this occasion, locals could observe prominent guests from the BRD, too.53 A more sceptical Foerster informed Der Spiegel readers that ordinary Dresdeners had silently observed the arrival of limousines carrying the upper class. They felt locked out, according to Foerster, because the new Semperoper was not yet, as promised, an opera house of the people.54

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Foerster’s gibe presumably referred to comments Intendant Schönfelder made during an interview published in the preceding week’s edition of Der Spiegel. Schönfelder had declared his mandate for directing the Semperoper was to ensure it would be ‘an opera house of the people’ (‘eine Oper des Volkes’).55 Schönfelder’s claim not only conformed to the socialist outlook of the DDR, but also could help justify the massive expenditure involved. Promoting the Semperoper as a facility for all East Germans acted as a counterargument to the ‘Denkmalpflege versus better roads’ debate that surfaced in the lead-up to the reopening and it offset any criticism of cultural elitism in the Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Staat. Although the guest list was dominated by luminary politicians and public figures from the DDR and abroad, some allowance was made to ensure the opening night would at least partially engage the ‘opera house of the people’ theme. A select few ordinary Dresdeners were invited to attend the lavish reopening as representatives of the working-class masses who had helped to rebuild the city. Erika Hohlfeld counted among the locals chosen. One of Dresden’s many tireless Trümmerfrauen in the immediate postwar period, a young and strong Hohlfeld actually had been chosen by Walter Reinhold to pose as the model for his Denkmal erected in front of the Rathaus in 1952.56 Three decades later, she was one of a few middle-aged local women invited to the reopening out of respect for the pioneering role Trümmerfrauen had played in Dresden’s post-war



Fig. 3.1

Dresden’s rebuilt state opera house, the Semperoper, reopened on 13 February 1985.

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reconstruction and rebirth. Prominent public figures and former rubble women mingling together at the official function, observed Jochen Steinmayr, made for a most unusual scene.57 The reconstruction was faithful to Semper’s original design except for a slight modification that was deemed necessary for the DDR’s new opera house of the people. Originally a large golden crown capped the royal theatre box in the centre of the dress circle, while the box’s lower tier featured the Wettin dynasty’s royal coat of arms. In 1985, the golden crown reappeared in what Steinmayr described as a ‘stunning work of reproduction’ (‘überwältigenden Rekonstructionsbau’).58 Significantly, however, the royal coat of arms was notably absent in the auditorium’s otherwise faithfully reproduced interior. The SED’s dedication to Denkmalpflege and Kulturerbe evidently had reached its limitations. Yet, any temptation to replace the coat of arms with one of the DDR’s socialist insignias was resisted. The initials E.S. were sculpted onto the central theatre box’s lower tier instead. This gesture honoured the Austrian conductor Ernst von Schuch, who spent four decades based in Dresden as the chief musical director of the Semperoper from the early 1870s until his death in 1914.59 It was a fitting decision given that the era Schuch presided over, which included several of Strauss’ premières, is widely acknowledged as the opera house’s ‘heyday’ (‘Glanzzeit’).60 In a nice touch, Schuch’s daughter Liesel, then 94 years old and herself a onetime opera singer who still resided in Dresden, was in attendance.61 An important decision had to be made regarding which opera would be performed at the reopening – a difficult choice given the long and distinguished list of composers and works synonymous with the Semperoper. The selection process perhaps was made somewhat easier by ruling out two of the most obvious candidates on ideological grounds. Hitler’s close association with the Wagner family and, similarly, Strauss’ awkward affiliation with the Nazis as an official musician of the Third Reich, meant their works were unsuitable as a première performance in a socialist state. In the event, a strong sense of history and Kulturerbe prevailed, with the honour conferred upon an even earlier favourite son of the Dresden music scene, Carl Maria von Weber. His work Der Freischütz was first performed in Dresden in 1822 (a year after its world première in Berlin), and henceforth it remained one of the most performed operas

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in the Elbflorenz. Moreover, when the Semperoper finally was forced to close its doors during the war on 31 August 1944, Der Freischütz had marked the occasion. This left Weber’s piece with the dubious honour of being the last work performed in the Semperoper prior to its destruction. Selecting Der Freischütz for the premiere precisely 40 years after Hitler’s war had seen the Semperoper destroyed represented yet another antifascist coup for East Berlin. Weber’s plot, with its focus on ‘the horrors of war and longing for peace’ (‘Kriegsschrecken und Friedenssehnsucht’), corresponded with the anti-war theme the state articulated earlier in the day at the mass rally.62 Honecker and his wife Margot occupied the central seats in the smallish former royal theatre box. With only limited seating available in the exalted box and the entire politburo in attendance, the premiere offered an opportunity to identify who belonged to the DDR’s elite political leadership. The Honeckers were flanked by Erich’s right-hand man and politburo chairman Egon Kranz (also in charge of DDR security), president of the Volkskammer Horst Sindermann, Willi Stoph, then chairman of the Council of Ministers (and keynote speaker at Dresden’s mass rally in 1970), politburo member and the DDR’s chief cultural ideologue Kurt Hager, and Economics Minister Günter Mittag, along with their respective partners.63 The overlooked members of the party- and state-leadership were seated in the adjacent ornate balconies forming the dress circle. East and West German reports disagreed about the quality of the performance along ideological lines. Hansjürgen Schaefer’s headline in the Neues Deutschland proclaimed Der Freischütz was greeted with ‘tempestuous applause for a brilliant première’ (‘stürmischer Applaus für eine glanzvolle Premiere’).64 Conversely, Der Spiegel reporter Foerster lambasted the performance as a poorly-interpreted socialist adaptation (‘Auch die Kunst ist Nebensache. Dieser romantische “Freischütz”, von den sozialistischen Kulturschaffenden … war kein Objekt für spitzfindige Musikkritiker’).65 While opinions were divided over the quality of the performance, there was general agreement that the long-awaited reopening of such a national treasure was cause for a cross-border, allGerman celebration. Hans-Otto Bräutigam attended in his role as the BRD’s permanent representative in the DDR. He was quoted in the

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Süddeutsche Zeitung acknowledging Bonn was ‘thankful that the DDR takes care of German heritage in such an exemplary manner’ (‘… dankbar, daß die DDR das deutsche Erbe in so exemplarischer Weise pflegt’).66 In addition to Bräutigam as the BRD’s official representative, several prominent West German politicians and public figures attended the reopening. The practice of inviting representatives from the BRD to Dresden’s Gedenktag had ceased in the early 1950s with the onset of the Cold War. The presence of Hans-Jochen Vogel (then SPD chairman in the Bundestag), the minister-president of Lower Saxony Ernst Albrecht, the chairman of the supervisory board of the Krupp corporation Berthold Beitz, and especially former chancellor Helmut Schmidt (all escorted by their wives) was welcomed as an indication of relatively amicable German–German relations in the mid-1980s.67 Nonetheless, East Berlin apparently made the most of the opportunity. State Secretary Gerhard Beil and Alexander Schalk-Golodowski, two of the SED’s foremost experts on Bonn, were strategically seated directly behind the West German dignitaries in attendance.68 If the two agents had hoped to engage in a little innocuous political banter with their intriguing guests, they were left disappointed. Albrecht commented that Dresden’s Gedenktag was ‘not the day for political talks’ (‘Dies ist nicht der Tag für politische Gespräche’).69 Albrecht was not alone in thinking Dresden’s Gedenktag was an improper setting for East–West political dialogue. Honecker and Schmidt evidently shared a similar viewpoint. Although the former had personally invited the latter to attend the reopening, and despite ample opportunity to turn the festive event into a much-publicised political engagement, they declined to be seen mingling with each other before, during, or after the première.70 Instead, a meeting was scheduled for East Berlin the following day, where the two men were set to discuss issues of mutual interest for the two Germanies. Honecker and Schmidt already had developed a rapport during earlier face-to-face meetings. In 1975, as the respective government heads, they sat side-by-side when signing the Helsinki Accords. As federal chancellor in December 1981, Schmidt had travelled to Werbellinsee in the DDR to hold discussions with Honecker at the height of the Polish crisis.71 Honecker had extended an open invitation to Schmidt to visit the DDR again. Though he never

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did take up the offer while still in office, in September 1983 Schmidt travelled to East Berlin to hold informal discussions with Honecker during the DDR rocket debate.72 In and out of office, then, Schmidt had shown himself to be an important conduit between Bonn and East Berlin during a sustained period of uncertainty. Honecker’s reception of Schmidt on 14 February 1985 met with positive reports in both Germanies.73 Although the rendezvous took place in East Berlin, Schmidt’s very public appearance in Dresden the day before meant their informal meeting was inextricably linked to the events of the fortieth Gedenktag. The overriding appeal of the state’s mass rally in particular had been for world peace, and from this perspective Schmidt’s presence in both Dresden and East Berlin could be seen as emblematic of a combined German willingness to promote the thawing of global Cold War tensions. While the Neues Deutschland emphasised Honecker’s authoritative role in receiving the former chancellor, overall it presented a balanced account. The party organ commented that both men agreed their respective German states ‘carried a heavy historical responsibility for peace and that everything possible had to be done in order to comply with that obligation’ (‘Erich Honecker und Helmut Schmidt stimmten darin überein, daß beide deutsche Staaten eine große geschichtliche Verantwortung für den Frieden tragen, und daß alles getan werden müsse, um dem zu entsprechen’).74 It further reported that in their wide-ranging discussions Honecker and Schmidt touched on the looming Geneva talks between the two superpowers and expressed a mutual hope for a positive outcome.75 In contrast, the Süddeutsche Zeitung claimed Schmidt remained concerned about the dangers presented by increasingly influential American and Soviet ‘guiding intellectual forces’ (‘Vordenker’), which to his mind were adversely affecting German–German relations.76 The same report also quoted Schmidt as having commented to journalists after the meeting’s conclusion that thankfully there was ‘no wintertime’ (‘keine Winterzeit’) in relations between the BRD and the DDR.77 In a glowing tribute to Dresden’s socialist-inspired rebirth in general, and the rebuilding of the Semperoper in particular, the Neues Deutschland journalist Hajo Herbell paired a famous lament with the DDR national anthem: ‘The tears cried by Gerhart Hauptmann over the destruction of

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Dresden are all dried up. Dresden has risen from the ruins, an achievement of which the entire nation is proud’ (‘Die Tränen, die Gerhart Hauptmann beim Untergang von Dresden weinte, sind versiegt. Dresden ist auferstanden aus Ruinen, eine Leistung, auf die unser ganzes Land stolz ist’).78 Not everyone, however, agreed with Herbell’s optimistic outlook that the time for shedding tears over Dresden’s destruction had passed. Whereas the two main state-centred arenas of articulation promoted positive contemporary messages – world peace at the rally, and socialist rebirth combined with Kulturerbe at the reopening – commemoration at the Frauenkirche ruins differed markedly. Dresden’s foremost site of memory was the setting for several forms of both state-centred and socially-based articulation, all of which shared one important commonality: these commemorative acts engaged the sombre theme of German wartime loss and suffering.

T h e F r au e n k i r c h e ru i n s

Foerster movingly described the reopened Semperoper as ‘stone turned into memory,’ which combined with other rebuilt architectural masterworks to capture how in 1985 ‘the dream of Dresden, how it was once upon a time, had become magnificent reality’ (‘Die Semperoper … ist, wie der Zwinger, die Hofkirche, die Kreuzkirche, Stein gewordene Erinnerung, der Traum vom Dresden, wie es einmal war, ist da prunkvoll Wirklichkeit geworden’).79 It can be argued, however, an even more impressive example of stone turned into memory – likewise a human construct, but of an entirely different nature – was located just a few hundred metres from the opera house. With the Heidefriedhof located on the city’s outskirts, the Frauenkirche Trümmerberg functioned as central Dresden’s most prominent reference point for public remembrance of the bombing victims and the city’s destruction. From early morning until midnight, numerous agents of articulation engaged in commemorative acts at the ruins. They included (separate) official ceremonies conducted by representatives of both German states during the day. These were followed late in the evening by the sociallyengineered practice that had commenced in 1982, whereby thousands

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partook in the silent candlelit march to, and congregation at, the Frauenkirche ruins at the end of the evening. In a small early morning ceremony, an ensemble from a local socialist youth organisation played Trauermusik at the ruins as NVA soldiers laid a large wreath of flowers. Like Hoffmann and Modrow who were dispatched out to the Heidefriedhof service, the NVA was allocated the role of representing the state in Honecker’s conspicuous absence. The wreath was placed upright on a stand strategically positioned behind the large bronze Mahntafel embedded into the ground three years earlier. It consisted of red and white carnations – the predominant colours of the SED’s insignia – and inscribed on the ribbon was the message: ‘Unforgotten are the victims of Hitlerite barbarism and the terrorbombing against Dresden’ (‘Unvergessen die Opfer der Hitlerbarbarei und des Bombenterrors gegen Dresden’).80 The wording of this message is intriguing. It made explicit reference to victims of fascism, which had been one of the DDR’s staple themes since its foundation. Yet the ribbon’s nondescript allusion to terror-bombing was in stark contrast to the Mahntafel next to which the wreath was laid, because it did not identify the bombers. Avoidance of naming those directly responsible for Dresden’s destruction was in keeping with the state’s political agenda on the fortieth Gedenktag. The ribbon’s inscription, then, can be read as further confirmation that Honecker, as evidenced by his rally address, was making a concerted effort not to upset the United States on the eve of the Geneva talks. After performing the wreath-laying ceremony, the NVA soldiers retreated from the scene in a militant fashion and FDJ members assumed the role of the state’s official representatives at the ruins. These uniformed, torch-bearing youth members of the National Front formed an ‘admonishing guard of honour’ (Mahnwache or Ehrenwache) around Honecker’s wreath and the adjacent Mahntafel.81 The FDJ was charged with the symbolic task of keeping a vigil at the site until midnight, the state’s announced curfew for public commemoration at the ruins.82 Normally an unpruned assortment of wild roses and overgrown weeds were the only flora decorating the Frauenkirche ruins. On the fortieth Gedenktag, however, Honecker’s wreath was but one of hundreds if not thousands of bouquets, single flowers, and other adornments

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placed at the foot of the snow-capped pile of blackened sandstone. These items included gifts and mementos, photographs, paper doves, and children’s drawings.83 Although they were left mostly by individuals or families, according to Hans-Rüdiger Karutz numerous wreaths were placed on behalf of political parties, trade unions, schools, state-owned businesses, and local and state associations of all kinds.84 One other wreath warrants special mention. In a modest midday ceremony, Bräutigam, acting in his role as Bonn’s permanent representative in the DDR, laid a wreath on behalf of the West German federal president Richard von Weizsäcker.85 Its colours, too, were symbolic, but unlike Honecker’s wreath it was national- rather than party-oriented: red carnations, yellow wattle, and black lilies. The attached ribbon simply carried the words: ‘President of the Federal Republic of Germany.’86 Bräutigam made a short speech before laying the wreath, in which he warned that 13 February should serve as a reminder of the ‘mutual responsibility of all Germans and both German states [that] such a war and such affliction never should be allowed to be repeated’ (‘Es liege in der “gemeinsamen Verantwortung aller Deutschen und beider deutscher Statten”, daß sich “ein solcher Krieg und eine solche Heimsuchung nicht wiederhole”’).87 These were the very sentiments echoed by Honecker and Schmidt during their much-publicised informal meeting in East Berlin the following day. According to Bräutigam’s interpretation, however, notions of German responsibility for wartime horrors constituted only one side of national remembrance on Dresden’s Gedenktag. After laying Weizsäcker’s wreath, Bräutigam further proclaimed 13 February a ‘day of mourning for all Germans’ (‘… der 13. Februar sei ein “Tag der Trauer für alle Deutschen”’).88 Such a comment was an example of the hybridisation of German–German memory even before the DDR’s collapse and the subsequent reunification process. Furthermore, Bräutigam’s remark recognised Dresden’s reputation as the nation’s Opferstadt, but it should not necessarily be read as a German claim for victim status. His reasoning for Dresden’s Gedenktag being a national day of mourning differed markedly from the revisionist claims that would be made by right-wing extremists two decades later on the sixtieth anniversary (Chapter 6). For Bräutigam, on 13 February 1985 East and West Germans alike should have reflected on the loss that

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resulted from the Dresden firebombing – both the tens of thousands of lives ended and the irreversible destruction of the ‘German Florence.’ It was the (ultimately self-inflicted) loss of Kultur in particular that made it a ‘day of mourning’ for all Germans. With a few terse comments, then, Bräutigam used Dresden’s Gedenktag as an arena in which to articulate a sophisticated perspective: whereas no one, least of all Germans themselves, should ever forget that Germany was responsible for the war, it did not expunge the fact that many individual Germans and the German Volk as a whole also endured untold loss and suffering. In still coming to terms with this loss, Bräutigam identified a national need to mourn a catastrophic event such as the destruction of Dresden. Read in this light, Weizsäcker’s wish to have a wreath laid on his behalf and Bräutigam’s remarks while performing this duty were far removed from the problematic attempts at historical relativisation that were to dog the Bitburg fiasco and the Historikerstreit shortly thereafter. Bräutigam’s remarks were analogous to the viewpoint that became prevalent in the post-reunification period, which acknowledged it had been a common experience for Germans during the Third Reich to be both victims and victimisers. The Bräutigam ceremony went unreported in the Neues Deutschland. The omission is reminiscent of the Soviet authorities’ stance in 1946, which dictated that under no circumstances whatever was 13 February to be portrayed as a ‘Trauertag.’89 It appears the party organ aimed to downplay melancholic themes like loss and suffering, instead preferring to advance the affirmative messages the state attached to the fortieth Gedenktag such as Dresden’s socialist-inspired post-war renaissance. It probably also reveals a reluctance on East Berlin’s behalf to promote awareness of non-DDR state-centred agents of articulation engaging in the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration. It was an altogether different story in the BRD, where Bräutigam’s poignant remarks were the most commonly quoted statements in press reports summing up the day’s events in Dresden. That Bräutigam acted on behalf of the federal president – and thus, by extension, the BRD in toto – explains why the West German press covered the modest ceremony so extensively. It also seems reasonable to conclude that Bräutigam’s comments both shaped and reflected West German views of Dresden’s symbolism as the

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Opferstadt and, as such, a paradigm of German wartime victimisation and sacrifice. In the two years following the first candlelit procession from the Kreuzkirche on the Altmarkt to the Frauenkirche ruins on the nearby Neumarkt on 13 February 1982, the number of participants had multiplied. Anticipating an even larger crowd on the milestone fortieth Gedenktag, EKD leaders registered the procession with local authorities hoping to avoid any potential confrontation with the state.90 According to Karutz, early in the evening small groups of ‘young Christians’ (‘Junge Christen’) already started to gather at the ruins. Forming circles, they quietly sang: ‘No fear in this land, no walls in the land, no mines in the land, to where we are going … Jesus Christ waits there, to where I am going’ (‘Keine Angst in diesem Land, keine Mauern in dem Land, keine Minen in dem Land, wohin wir gehen … Jesus Christus wartet dort, wohin ich geh’).91 These ‘young singers of faith’ (‘jungen Sänger des Glaubens’) were soon joined by thousands more converging on the ruins. At the conclusion of the ecumenical service conducted by Saxony’s Protestant State Bishop Johannes Hempel in the Kreuzkirche (attended by an estimated 5,000 people), a crowd of several thousand congregated outside the church.92 As the city’s bells tolled to mark the 20 minutes between when the full air-raid warning had sounded and the first bombs fell, the marchers set off for the Frauenkirche Trümmerberg. Following the pattern established in the previous three years, the overwhelming proportion of participants in the silent candlelit procession belonged to the younger generations. From the opposite direction, many well-dressed men and women made the short walk from the Semperoper to the ruins at the conclusion of Der Freischütz. It created, observed Foerster, an unusual blend of ‘finelydressed ladies and gentlemen’ (‘feingekleideten Damen und Herren’) mixing with the ‘youth of the ’80s’ (‘die Turnschuhgeneration’).93 Between 10.00pm and midnight, several thousand people from diverse backgrounds visited the Frauenkirche ruins. Somewhat fancifully, Jochen Zimmermann and Horst Richter informed readers of the Neues Deutschland that all these people had made ‘the traditional evening walk to the Mahntafel at the ruins of the Frauenkirche while all the belltowers rang out in remembrance of the 35,000 dead of 13 February’ (‘…

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mit dem traditionellen abendlichen Gang zur Mahntafel an der Ruine der Frauenkirche beim Geläut aller Turmglocken der 35,000 Toten des 13. Februar gedacht’).94 While many people had, indeed, made their way to the ruins during the 20-minute period in which Dresden’s bells tolled in morbid unison, Zimmermann’s and Richter’s claim that they did so to pay homage to the Mahntafel was a perverse manipulation of what transpired. It was the colossal Trümmerberg – laden with four decades of symbolism – that lured people to the site during the evening, not the propaganda tablet recently embedded at its base as a reaction to passive resistance against the state. After 10.00pm, the Frauenkirche ruins were surrounded by thousands of tiny candles flickering in ice-cold winds. The entire Neumarkt was lit up in this touching scene aptly described by Hinze as a ‘sea of lights’ (‘Lichtermeer’).95 It must have been an eerie sight to behold, particularly for survivors of the firestorm, for where there had been an all-consuming sea of flames or Flammenmeer 40 years earlier there now was a tranquil Lichtermeer. As had been the case in the previous three years, the procession to, and congregation at, the Frauenkirche site served two purposes: remembering the loss and suffering caused by the raid; and demonstrating passive resistance against the state. Besides some singing of hymns and recital of prayers, a silent approach generally was adopted at the ruins late in the evening. It is difficult to imagine a starker contrast to the marching music, flag waving, and other fanfare that characterised the earlier state-centred articulation on show at the midday mass party rally. Honecker and his East Berlin entourage did not make the walk from the Semperoper to the Frauenkirche ruins after the première of Der Freischütz. They retreated from the public realm, seeking the sanctuary offered by Dresden’s newly-opened luxury hotel, the Bellevue, located on the Neustadt side of the Elbe.96 Whereas no East Berlin politicians visited the ruins late in the evening, Lower Saxony’s minister-president Albrecht and former chancellor Schmidt (who, incidentally, also were staying at the Bellevue) were conspicuous figures at Dresden’s foremost site of memory. To protect himself against the biting cold as he walked along with his wife, Loki, Schmidt wore his famous black seaman’s cap (Prinz-Heinrich-Mütze) synonymous with his native Hamburg. According

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to Karutz, upon recognising the eminent visitor in their midst, locals broke out in spontaneous applause as the former West German leader solemnly paid his respects at the ruins.97 Albrecht reportedly ‘fought back the tears’ (‘kämpfte mit dem Tränen’) when confronted by the sight of the ruins enveloped by a Lichtermeer and adorned with flowers and decorations placed in remembrance of the victims.98 He mirrored the earlier (hybridising) words of Bräutigam by speaking of the ‘common German tale of woe’ (‘gemeinsamen deutschen Leidensgeschichte’). Agreeing that the very public presence of BRD politicians in the DDR was a welcome sign of improved German–German relations, Albrecht declared: ‘We hope to continue on this path’ (‘Wir hoffen, auf diesem Weg weiterzugehen’).99 As Albrecht departed into the darkness of night, according to Winters, local onlookers united in calling out to him: ‘Visit us again soon!’ (‘Besuchen Sie uns bald wieder!’).100 While some small groups quietly sang hymns and many others reflected in silent remembrance or demonstrated passive resistance at the snow-capped ruins as the fortieth Gedenktag drew to a close, FDJ members still kept vigil over Honecker’s wreath and the adjacent Mahntafel. At the stroke of midnight, they extinguished their torches and in marching order withdrew from the scene.101 The FDJ members’ departure brought to a close the official state-centred appropriation of the fortieth Gedenktag as an arena of politicised commemoration. The state’s specially-enacted curfew, meanwhile, forced all those still gathered around the ruins to promptly make their way home. A most extraordinary day was over.

C on c lu sion

After a temporary hiatus, in 1985 East Berlin emphatically staked its claim to retake control of setting the commemorative agenda for Dresden’s Gedenktag. This development represented a return to the pattern of the 1950s and 1960s when state-centred articulation of the destruction of Dresden had exploited 13 February as a highly-valued asset in the politics of commemorating the past. The meanings attached to the milestone fortieth Gedenktag, however, differed markedly from the

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anti-Western Cold War rhetoric that had prevailed earlier. The main theme that Honecker articulated in his chief address at the party rally was that, 40 years on, the destruction of Dresden served as a reminder and an obligation to promote world peace. Furthermore, the choice of 13 February 1985 as the date on which to reopen the Semperoper clearly indicated that the state sought to attach positive, self-affirming messages to the Gedenktag, providing an opportunity to juxtapose Dresden’s fascist-induced destruction and its socialistinspired reconstruction and rebirth. Although the rally implicitly acknowledged Dresden’s symbolism as the Opferstadt, it did so from a universal position. Notions of German wartime loss and suffering were noticeably downplayed at the two main state-orchestrated events. Conversely, various forms of commemoration that took place at the Frauenkirche ruins focused on remembering Dresden’s bombing victims and the city’s destruction. Examples included state-centred articulation from East and West German perspectives in the form of wreath-laying ceremonies as well as assorted socially-based manifestations of public commemoration. The thirteenth of February 1985 marked the end of an era. It proved Dresden’s last milestone Gedenktag under the direct influence of East Berlin and within the politico-ideological context of the Cold War and Germany’s division. Whereas the DDR soon would be consigned to history, the pattern firmly entrenched under its guidance throughout the previous four decades – the appropriation of Dresden’s Gedenktag as a commemorative politics asset – was set to continue during and after Germany’s reunification.

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4

Dresden Memory Politics in the Schwebezeit: 1989–90

Wedged between the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and Germany’s official reunification on 3 October 1990, Dresden’s forty-fifth Gedenktag occurred during what one prominent participant-observer described as the ‘time of uncertainty’ (‘Schwebezeit’).1 This suspended period, which came about due to the profound socio-political ‘turn’ of events known as the Wende, was equally characterised by uncertainty and exhilaration as the immediate future hung in the balance. The Wende, as unexpected as it was sudden, had an instantaneous impact on remembering the destruction of Dresden. In a time of shifting German memories, openings were created for new state-centred and sociallybased agents of articulation to appropriate Dresden’s symbolism as the Opferstadt as a contemporary political asset. This chapter consists of three sub-sections, each of which explores the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration in the Schwebezeit. In each case, the Frauenkirche ruins feature prominently. First, West German leader Helmut Kohl’s public address in front of the ruins in December 1989 is examined. Kohl used the occasion to guardedly but emotionally map out for the world his vision of ‘the unity of the German nation’ (‘die Einheit der Nation’). The second and largest section traces the efforts of a local citizens’ action group (Bürgerinitiative). Three months after its formation in November 1989, the Bürgerinitiative seized on the forty-fifth Gedenktag as the opportune arena of articulation in which to make its ‘Call from Dresden’ (Ruf aus Dresden) for global support to rebuild the Frauenkirche. Though widely embraced, the Ruf also met with some criticism that the church should not, indeed could not, be rebuilt at the ruins’ expense. Such arguments not only were based on the ruins’

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status as Dresden’s most prominent site of bombing memory, but also due to their worth as historical relics from a cultural heritage perspective. Finally, the chapter probes the main commemorative events conducted in Dresden on 13 February 1990. Occurring under the peculiar conditions created by the Wende, this particular Gedenktag was conducted within a context of statelessness. All three sub-sections suggest that, during the Schwebezeit, the politics of commemorating Dresden’s destruction was already undergoing a significant shift that saw East and West German interpretations hybridised into a BRDDR memory. The chapter also contains evidence of some early moves toward the cosmopolitanisation of Dresden war memories.

Koh l , t h e ru i n s , a n d ‘ T HE UNI T Y OF T HE NAT ION ’

On 19–20 December 1989, Kohl made a historic visit to Saxony’s capital. The trip’s official purpose was for the West German leader to hold preliminary discussions with his newly-instated East German counterpart, the Dresdener Hans Modrow. Though fruitful, the muchanticipated meeting was completely overshadowed by an impromptu event. Kohl had not been scheduled to make a public appearance in Dresden. Yet, so moved was the federal chancellor by the warm reception he received from locals, he felt compelled to somehow express his gratitude. Hurriedly a public address was arranged to take place that evening. At this event, staged on the Dresden Neumarkt where the Frauenkirche ruins served as an imposing backdrop, Kohl delivered one of the most important speeches of his career: he announced to the world his intention to reunify Germany.2 Kohl was unsure of what sort of reception awaited him in the DDR. Despite the Wende, many East Germans still passionately supported socialism and were alarmed at the prospect of being incorporated into – or consumed by – an expanded Bundesrepublik.3 On the eve of Kohl’s visit to Dresden, for instance, tens of thousands of East Berliners marched in support of the DDR’s sovereignty and against reunification.4 Upon landing at Dresden-Klotzsche airport, Kohl and his entourage

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were pleasantly surprised to be greeted by not only Modrow and his officials but also thousands of locals as ‘a sea of black-red-and-gold flags waved in the cold December air’ (‘ein Meer von schwarzrotgoldenen Fahnen wehte in der kalten Dezemberluft’).5 Thousands more jubilant Dresdeners lined the streets as the motorcade passed through the city centre. In his memoirs, Kohl later recalled that two banners in particular stood out due to their politically provocative messages: ‘The Federal State of Saxony welcomes the Chancellor’ (‘Bundesland Sachsen grüßt den Kanzler’); and ‘Kohl, Chancellor of the Germans’ (‘Kohl, Kanzler der Deutschen’).6 According to Kohl, scenes at Hotel Bellevue where he was staying were even more remarkable. A large crowd assembled outside shouting ‘Helmut, Helmut’ and ‘Deutschland, Deutschland.’ Moreover, in what represented a most stirring proclamation, the boisterous crowd then chanted repeatedly: ‘We are one people!’ (‘Wir sind ein Volk!’).7 In preceding weeks, the intoxicating catch-cry of East German demonstrators had been ‘We are the people!’ (‘Wir sind das Volk!’).8 By simply substituting the definite article ‘das’ with the attributive adjective ‘ein’, the anti-state slogan was transformed into a nationalist demand.9 Kohl was so moved by these scenes he insisted on addressing the locals before departing Dresden for Berlin, the second leg of his trip. Kohl’s speech in Dresden, on 19 December 1989, was to be the historic first occasion that the West German leader publicly addressed his fellow East German ‘fellow citizens’ (‘Mitbürgerinnen und Mitbürger’) on what still was DDR soil.10 Any of Dresden’s large open squares could have facilitated Kohl’s address. The Karl-Marx-Platz or the Altmarkt, as the scenes of so many anti-Western demonstrations during the DDR era, could have held a triumphalist appeal for the visiting West German leader. Likewise, perhaps the Theaterplatz was tempting given that, in February 1985, it had been the site of the SED’s last mass rally on a milestone Dresden Gedenktag and, moreover, Kohl, unlike his predecessor Helmut Schmidt, had not been among the prominent West German guests attending the reopening of the adjacent Semperoper. In any case, Dresden Oberbürgermeister Wolfgang Berghofer suggested to Kohl that the Neumarkt was a fitting choice because it, too, could accommodate a large crowd and the Frauenkirche ruins offered an impressive backdrop.11 Kohl

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liked the idea, and asked his chief-of-staff Walter Neuer to arrange the evening’s event while he and Modrow held their first round of talks.12 Only later in the afternoon did Kohl get the chance to retire to his suite and consult his team of advisors about a suitable theme for the speech. Given the spectacular reception locals had afforded Kohl, it was decided Dresden represented an ideal opportunity to publicly address the issue of reunification. For a number of reasons it was a problematic, even risky, topic just six weeks after the fall of the Wall. From a ‘domestic’ perspective reunification was by no means yet considered a fait accompli. Modrow, after all, had not welcomed Kohl to Dresden to discuss the DDR’s dissolution. On the contrary, he hoped to establish a dialogue in which East Berlin and Bonn could make the most of the changing conditions and further strengthen relations between the two separate German states. To this end, on the eve of Kohl’s visit Modrow had even presided over a name-change to the party (the SED morphed into the Party of Democratic Socialism or Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, PDS) and a Resolution for a New DDR was underpinned by recognition of the ‘democratic will of the people.’13 From an international standpoint, much consternation accompanied any thoughts of possible German reunification. Earlier in December, when US president George H.W. Bush had addressed NATO leaders in Brussels, he expressed support for the idea of reunification but specified certain ‘conditions’ would have to be met, not least that an expanded Federal Republic must continue to be anchored in the West.14 A day later, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev held dialogue with Kohl’s Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, he expressed grave ‘concerns’ over Bonn’s mounting interference in DDR affairs.15 Indeed, Kohl later recalled that what had made him most nervous about the speech’s provocative theme was the possibility of international backlash. He jotted down ‘keywords’ (‘Stichworte’) mindful that ‘every slip of the tongue would be misinterpreted in Paris, London, or Moscow as nationalistic’ (‘Jeder falsche Zungenschlag wäre in Paris, in London oder in Moskau als nationalistisch ausgelegt worden’).16 Wishing to avoid confrontation, Kohl evidently felt he could not risk using the potentially threatening term ‘reunification’ (Wiedervereinigung). Instead, he opted for the ambiguous phrase ‘the unity of the nation’ (‘die Einheit der Nation’).

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Prior to mounting the makeshift wooden stage, Kohl laid a wreath of flowers at the adjacent ruins. Fundamentally, however, his address had nothing to do with commemorating the destruction of Dresden. It occurred in December, two months before the Gedenktag. Furthermore, Kohl was not really concerned with reflecting on Germany’s problematic and remorseful past. Rather, his focus was on the future, with his emphasis on the inherent value of Germans realising ‘national unity.’ Yet the fact that the Frauenkirche ruins were chosen for this momentous speech meant that the politics of the past associated with Dresden’s destruction provided an important context from the inception of the reunification process. Kohl was well aware that the presence of a strong contingent of foreign journalists in Dresden to report on his talks with Modrow meant his impromptu public address was guaranteed widespread media coverage.17 He was cognisant that the international community at large, and neighbouring countries in particular, would be apprehensive about German reunification. The need to allay international concerns arguably made the Frauenkirche ruins such a fitting location for a speech of this nature. A broad spectrum of politically-charged messages had been articulated at this very site of memory over the preceding decades. On this occasion, the imagery of the ruins served as a jarring reminder of the price Germany continued to pay for having embraced Nazism. Such a message was not lost on Washington Post journalist Marc Fisher, whose front-page report recognised the Frauenkirche site’s longstanding function as an anti-war memorial.18 The two stumps of blackened sandstone that were the only segments of the church’s exterior to remain standing after the firestorm could be viewed as symbolising the two parts of the divided nation. One section was substantially larger than the other, yet both appeared shattered and hauntingly incomplete. At various intervals Kohl’s speech implicitly drew on this imagery to good effect. In the early evening of 19 December 1989, approximately 100,000 locals gathered at the Neumarkt square facing onto the ruins in order to hear what the federal chancellor from ‘over there’ (‘drüben’) had to say.19 According to Elizabeth Ten Dyke, a ‘fractious crowd’ greeted Kohl with not only cheers but also boos, with eggs thrown at the stage and one particularly witty banner criticising the notion of the DDR becoming a

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‘Kohlonie’.20 Nonetheless, judging by the overwhelmingly enthusiastic reception Kohl received, most Dresdeners liked what they heard as an air of anticipation laced with optimism enveloped the area.21 In a visual manifestation of BRDDR hybridisation, an assortment of large handpainted banners and flags dotted the impressive crowd. From a state perspective they were treasonous, whereas from a national viewpoint they were deeply patriotic. One banner, for instance, proclaimed Germany a ‘united fatherland’ (‘Deutschland: einig Vaterland’). Another politely yet brazenly pleaded with Herr Modrow to embrace rather than resist Wiedervereinigung. Dozens of inventive locals, meanwhile, doctored DDR flags by blocking or cutting out the state’s emblem of a wreath of wheat ears encircling a hammer and compass to be left with just the Schwarz-Rot-Gold flag of the BRD. Kohl reportedly was reduced to tears at the sight of being surrounded by makeshift West German flags while standing in Dresden in the heart of East German territory.22 Evidence that this experience in front of the ruins left an indelible impression on Kohl is provided later in the chapter. One of the largest Schwarz-Rot-Gold flags waving in the crowd was emblazoned with three words: FREEDOM – PEACE – UNITY (FREIHEIT – FRIEDEN – EINHEIT). It so happened that these overlapping and interlocking themes encapsulated the general thrust of Kohl’s address. His first reference to peace was expressed as heartfelt admiration for, and appreciation of, the manner in which DDR citizens had just carried out the first non-violent revolution in German history.23 Given that he had acknowledged the strong presence of foreign journalists already, Kohl’s emphasis on the (unusually) peaceful nature of the Wende can be interpreted as an attempt to demonstrate how Germans had learned from their nation’s characteristically violent past. A reunified Germany, so the argument followed, would not resemble Frederick the Great’s militaristic Prussia and nor would it adopt the expansionist tendencies that had typified the German Empire and then the Third Reich under Bismarck, the Kaiser, and the Führer. Brute force alone, Kohl wanted to assure the rest of Europe and the world, no longer was an answer to the German question. Kohl described the DDR’s peaceful revolution as ‘a demonstration in support of democracy, peace, and freedom, and for the self-determination of our people’ (‘eine Demonstration für Demokratie, für Frieden, für

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Freiheit und für die Selbstbestimmung unseres Volkes’). The last point, about Germans’ right to self-determination, was pivotal to plans for reunification. A conventional peace treaty was never signed by the victorious Allies and vanquished Germany at the conclusion of the Second World War, and then ensuing Cold War enmities made it virtually impossible for the Western Powers and the Soviets ever to reach a settlement. This meant, 45 years later, the two Germanies still were not in a legal position to autonomously determine such defining issues as sovereignty or reunification. Rather, they required the consent and cooperation of the four ‘occupying’ powers, a process that ultimately became commonly known as the Two-plus-Four Agreement.24 By talking about fundamental rights such as freedom and self-determination, Kohl introduced probably the strongest case for Germans receiving international support if they pursued reunification. The United Nations regards the principle of self-determination so highly that Article I of Part I of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (entered into force in 1976) stipulates: ‘All peoples have the right of selfdetermination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’25 The international community may have been understandably alarmed by Kohl’s words, yet, according to the United Nations, it had no real legal or moral right to prevent reunification. Even so, Kohl, aware that proposals for German reunification would cause anxiety internationally, stressed that Germans could not and would not realise self-determination at their neighbours’ expense.26 Not helping matters, though, were West German expellee associations, which were closely tied to the CDU since the Adenauer era and boasted strong links to Kohl’s government. Expellee lobby groups already had seized upon the Wende as an opening to reinvigorate their revanchist claims for a ‘right to Heimat’ (Recht auf Heimat), and most notably were agitating for a reassessment of the Oder-Neisse line.27 Such claims directly challenged Poland’s western border as (provisionally) determined by the Potsdam Agreement in July 1945 and officially recognised by the DDR and the BRD in 1950 and 1970 respectively. Since the advent of Ostpolitik, the matter had appeared settled. Moreover, in East German nomenclature the Polish border was euphemistically termed the ‘Oder-Neisse Frontier

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of Peace’ (Oder-Neiße-Friedensgrenze), which meant that so long as the DDR existed German–Polish boundary disputes essentially remained a non-issue. Suddenly, however, expellees’ revanchist claims emanating from the BRD took on a more threatening tone, especially in light of Kohl’s speech. Memories of the five brutal years following September 1939 gave Poles incontrovertible historical reasons for fearing a reunified Germany. Poland, then, was one neighbour in particular with legitimate grounds for recoiling at Kohl’s vision, especially given the probable political, economic, and maybe even military resurgence that could follow reunification. Kohl attempted to allay such fears with a few carefully chosen remarks. He warned his fellow Germans that their path into the future would be carefully observed ‘with much worry and also, by some, with fear’ (‘… daß uns auf unserem Weg viele mit Sorge und manche auch mit Ängsten beobachten’). Such reactions, continued Kohl, were only natural because: We, the Germans, do not live alone in Europe and the world. A glance at the map shows that everything we alter here must have repercussions on all of our neighbours, on the neighbours in the East and on the neighbours in the West.28

Kohl cautioned his audience – local Dresdeners and the (inter)national press alike – that ‘nothing good grows out of fear’ (‘aus Ängsten kann nichts Gutes erwachsen’). Seeking to reassure the Poles, Czechs, French and other Europeans who had suffered so terribly during two world wars, Kohl further declared: ‘And yet we, as Germans, must say to our neighbours: In view of the history of this century we have appreciation of a number of these fears. We will take them seriously.’29 It was within this context that the imagery of the Frauenkirche ruins, embodying Dresden’s status as the nation’s Opferstadt, came to the fore. The ruins served as a disturbing visual reminder of how, for Germans, nemesis had followed hubris. Furthermore, that such a historically, culturally, and spiritually important building had been destroyed and then left in a ruinous state for almost a half-century was emblematic of how Germans, too, had suffered during the war and continued to live with the consequences of the Nazi past. Kohl, then, could appropriate the Frauenkirche ruins as corporeal evidence for why a reunified Germany would covet peace.

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At the Frauenkirche ruins, a site he described as ‘rich in tradition’ (‘traditionsreichen’), Kohl announced to the world that his goal was to unify the nation whenever the ‘historical hour’ permitted (‘Mein Ziel bleibt, wenn die geschichtliche Stunde es zulässt, die Einheit unserer Nation’).30 At this juncture, Kohl further developed the cosmopolitan element of his message. Once again he interwove the themes of freedom and peace into his vision of a reunified Germany, promising it would not be realised at a cost for neighbouring countries. In arguably the most memorable section of his address, Kohl proclaimed: We say yes to the right to self-determination, a right that belongs to all peoples on this earth – including Germans, too. But, dear friends, this right of self-determination only makes sense for Germans if at the same time we do not lose sight of the security needs of others. We want a world in which there is more peace and freedom, which sees more cooperation and less conflict. The House of Germany, our house, must be built under a European roof. That must be our political goal.31

From the start of his chancellorship, argues Harold Marcuse, Kohl attempted to spearhead an aggressive realignment of (West) Germany’s ‘victim-based politics of the past.’32 Early on, probably the most notable features of this campaign were diplomatic errors in judgment and regrettable gaffes. The former included the Bitburg fiasco in May 1985, and his attendance at an expellee lobby’s controversial ‘Silesia remains ours’ (Schlesien bleibt unser) rally in Hanover the following month.33 The latter included Kohl’s infamous January 1984 remark while visiting Israel when he claimed to be personally free of guilt over the Holocaust because he belonged to the generation of Germans blessed with the ‘grace of late birth’ (‘Gnade der späten Geburt’).34 Conversely, Kohl’s December 1989 address in front of Dresden’s Frauenkirche ruins represented something of a personal and national triumph. Despite the impromptu nature of the event and subsequent short time to prepare his address, Kohl skilfully walked a political tightrope between stimulating national support and allaying international concerns. In doing so, he delivered what is widely regarded – including by Kohl himself – one of the most important and impressive speeches of his career.35 In his memoirs, Kohl reflected on the visit to Dresden as his ‘key experience in the German

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reunification process’ (‘Mein Schlüsselerlebnis im Prozess der deutschen Wiedervereinigung’).36 While visiting Dresden in December 1989, Kohl spontaneously took advantage of the anti-war imagery of the Frauenkirche ruins when announcing to the world his goal of reunification. It was the first manifestation of a new (and in this case state-centred) agent of articulation making the most of East Berlin’s emasculation by seeking to appropriate Dresden’s symbolism as the German Opferstadt as a contemporary political asset. If a local Bürgerinitiative were to prove successful, however, then serving as Kohl’s backdrop would be one of the last significant roles ever played by the Frauenkirche Trümmerberg in its preserved state as a ruinous anti-war Mahnmal. The Bürgerinitiative seized on the DDR’s collapse to launch its Ruf aus Dresden, a call for international help to reconstruct the city’s most beloved prewar building.

C h u rc h ov e r ru i n s ?

Once the Semperoper joined Dresden’s catalogue of reconstructed architectural gems, the former royal residential palace (Residenzschloss) and the Frauenkirche were the two most conspicuous masterworks still neither rebuilt nor redeveloped. During his chief address at the party’s mass rally on 13 February 1985, Honecker actually had announced that Dresden’s Residenzschloss would be the next major project undertaken as part of the DDR’s embrace of Kulturerbe.37 An overly-ambitious Honecker claimed the former royal residential palace would be completed within five years.38 By February 1985, then, of all Dresden’s leading prewar buildings of splendour only the Frauenkirche was neither rebuilt nor even slated for impending state-funded reconstruction. Nonetheless, around the time of the fortieth Gedenktag, talk about the church’s possible rebuilding had reached far beyond Dresden. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, for instance, Albrecht Hinze acknowledged the Saxon capital’s nearcomplete reconstruction and rebirth before exclaiming: ‘It still is undecided whether the Frauenkirche – formerly the city’s most famous landmark – should remain protected as an admonishing mountain of

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rubble or whether it will be rebuilt’ (‘Offen ist noch, ob die Frauenkirche, das einstige Wahrzeichen der Stadt, nur als mahnender Trümmerberg gesichert bleiben soll oder wieder aufgebaut wird’).39 Rebuilding the Frauenkirche evidently was again being mooted publicly in the mid-1980s. Nothing eventuated, however, primarily because state and church authorities continued to follow the pattern set in the previous four decades and for various reasons opposed the idea. During almost a half-century under socialist rule, rebuilding the Frauenkirche proved an unrealisable dream. Yet, due to the historical and cultural importance locals attached to the church, the idea of rebuilding Bähr’s ‘Stony Bell’ was never abandoned. Such sentiments were encapsulated in memories of the impressive sandstone dome as having served for two centuries as the ‘unforgettable crown of the Dresden cityscape’ (‘unvergeßlichen Krone des Dresdner Stadtbildes’).40 In February 1990, Monika Zimmermann eloquently outlined to readers of the FAZ the church’s unrivalled significance to Dresdeners the world over: ‘So long as this dome of the Frauenkirche no longer crowns the city, not only does Dresden have a gaping wound but also every Dresdener, irrespective of where they live now, has a bleeding heart.’41 Over time, the ruins themselves increasingly had become imbued with their own special meanings. Firmly established as Dresden’s paradigmatic bombing-related site of memory, the ruins’ functionality as a Mahnmal was strongly supported by church and state authorities alike. It meant supporters of reconstruction faced a double predicament: a continuing lack of support from authorities; and the fact that the ruins effectively had taken on a life of their own. By the late 1980s, then, no matter how badly native Dresdeners far and wide may have wished for the city’s gaping wound and their bleeding hearts finally to be healed, only something extraordinary could rectify the situation. In late 1989, just such a remarkable turning-point arrived unexpectedly in the form of the Wende. Identifying an opening, a small group of locals formed a Bürgerinitiative to campaign for the church’s reconstruction. Advantageously, the group evoked the city’s symbolism as the Opferstadt when making its worldwide Ruf aus Dresden. The decision of the Bürgerinitiative to go global with the appeal meant that social agency played a leading role in the post-DDR cosmopolitanisation of Dresden war memory and the past.

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The timing of the Ruf aus Dresden is most revealing because it was as calculated as it was emotive. A fortnight after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a select group of Dresdeners – each prominent in their chosen field – gathered at the home of local art dealer Heinz Miech. Agreeing the time was politically, socially, and emotionally ripe to launch a new campaign to rebuild the Frauenkirche, at a second meeting two days later, on 26 November 1989, a Bürgerinitiative was formally established.42 Ludwig Güttler, arguably Germany’s leading trumpet virtuoso, was elected as the spokesperson.43 The Bürgerinitiative could not reach unanimous agreement on the best moment to announce the Ruf. Some members suggested that striking immediately – during the euphoria enveloping Germany following the fall of the Wall – represented a most opportune moment. Initiating this line of argument was Karl-Ludwig Hoch, a Protestant pastor and architectural historian who as a boy had witnessed the firestorm from his home in Dresden-Plauen on the city’s outskirts.44 Hoch was so convinced that the group should act immediately, at the first meeting he presented a preliminary draft of an appeal he had tentatively labelled the ‘Ruf aus Dresden – 1989.’45 Conversely, a cohort led by Güttler argued against acting impetuously and instead proposed that, before going public with its intentions, the group should invite the church to come on board (‘… die Kirche mit ins Boot zu bitten’).46 Güttler’s reasoning for wanting to obtain the EKD synod’s support from the outset was two-fold. First, given that the EKD was the custodian of the ruins and the land, it not only showed courtesy but also would perhaps help to circumvent any future legal obstacles. Second, Güttler suggested that if, in the wake of the state’s collapse, church leaders could be persuaded to change their longstanding position then perhaps the EKD would even make a sizeable monetary contribution to the rebuilding project. Divided on the matter, the Bürgerinitiative voted repeatedly before finally adopting Güttler’s proposal to temporarily stall on making its intentions known publicly so that church authorities could be contacted beforehand. Having decided not to act immediately, the group agreed the most effective course of action would be to bide its time until mid-February to officially launch the Ruf.47 The idea was to harness the emotion of Dresden’s Gedenktag when appealing for (inter)national help to finance the ambitious project. That the Bürgerinitiative waited

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patiently for several weeks so that its appeal could evoke Dresden’s spirit as the Opferstadt reveals to what extent the city’s wartime destruction was a reference point in the politics of the past during the Schwebezeit. The Bürgerinitiative quickly swelled its numbers to 22 local citizens drawn from an eclectic mix of professional backgrounds. Besides the musician Güttler, Miech the art dealer, and the pastor Hoch, the group boasted another man of the cloth, five architects, four building engineers, three historians of art and church architecture, two scientists, two dentists, an actor, and one full-time Denkmalpfleger (several other members also were heavily involved in the local Denkmalpflege scene on a part-time basis).48 Their priority task in late 1989 was to canvass the synod for support, but this met with chequered success. EKD authorities announced they would do nothing to prevent the rebuilding project, yet they declined the invitation to ‘come on board’ and instead remained apathetic to the idea of reconstruction.49 Three interlocking factors – all underpinned by financial concerns – accounted for the synod’s lack of enthusiasm. First, from the 1940s onwards the EKD had consistently stated it could not afford to rebuild the Frauenkirche. Consequently, it supported the ruins’ functionality as a Mahnmal and, despite the changed political conditions in 1989–90, the synod saw no reason to alter its stance.50 Second, the EKD argued that the projected costs involved were unjustifiable given that, in the wake of the Wende, there were so many more practical ways for the church to spend its limited funds. (This line of argument mirrored the ‘Denkmalpflege versus better roads’ debate that had permeated some sections of the West German press at the time of the reopening of the Semperoper in February 1985; and which federal president Horst Köhler would later summarily dismiss on the occasion of the church’s reconsecration in October 2005.)51 Finally, the synod pointed out the Frauenkirche no longer had a community and central Dresden simply did not need another Protestant church. The city’s post-war socialist redevelopment essentially had abandoned the concept of centrally-located housing in favour of Stalinist gigantism and exaggerated spaciousness. The altered urban landscape meant the Kreuzkirche (which boasts over 3,500 seats) and the nearby Annenkirche easily could accommodate Dresden’s considerably reduced number

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of innercity Protestant churchgoers.52 On practical grounds, then, the EKD considered the (re)building of another church in central Dresden an unjustifiable indulgence. Meanwhile, initial contact made with the Dresden City Council also met with polite but firm refusals.53 Persistent in the face of rejection, the Bürgerinitiative nonetheless kept dialogue alive with both the synod and city council while also developing other strategies. Two other major tasks undertaken in late 1989 and early 1990 were redrafting the Ruf aus Dresden and writing special letters addressed to the British and American heads of state. The Bürgerinitiative sensed that, if financial assistance would not be forthcoming from the coffers of the synod or the city council, then the success or otherwise of their campaign could hinge on attracting international support. Accordingly, the final draft of the Ruf included a strong international dimension: We know that our Saxon state church has no resources at its disposal for the reconstruction of the Church of Our Lady. We know that neither our city nor our state can finance this building. We know that churches in the BRD have made possible the construction of many houses of God in our country. We also know that new buildings and the conservation of many old buildings facing decomposition are more essential than the reconstruction of the Church of Our Lady. Nonetheless: we do not wish to come to terms with the fact that this unique and magnificent structure should remain as ruins or even be cleared away. We are calling out for a worldwide campaign for the Dresden Church of Our Lady to be rebuilt into a Christian Centre of World Peace in the new Europe.54

A month prior to making the Ruf public, as an act of courtesy Güttler and the Bürgerinitiative formally articulated their intentions to Queen Elizabeth II and US president George H.W. Bush in private letters.55 Like the decision to wait until the Gedenktag to make the public announcement, the content of these private letters reveals how the

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Bürgerinitiative purposefully evoked Dresden’s reputation as the Opferstadt in its endeavour to attract international support for the campaign. Importantly, however, whereas the letters linked Dresden’s wartime and post-war fate to notions of victimisation and sacrifice, they were careful not to explicitly inculpate the two former Western Allies. Rather than trying to secure support based on of feelings of guilt, the Bürgerinitiative instead emphasised the strong historical and cultural ties to Dresden that Americans and Britons had enjoyed prior to the war and Germany’s subsequent division along Cold War lines. Without alluding to the bombers’ identity, the letters pointed out: ‘Formerly, the treasures of art of the Saxonian [sic] capital attracted innumerable visitors from England and America. For that reason, there existed the English quarter with an English church and the American quarter with an American church.’56 Furthermore, Dresden circa-1990 was described as a neglected city in ‘poor condition,’ which, unlike other European capital cities, still was ‘suffering from the deep wounds received during the war.’ The implication here was that Dresden was an Opferstadt in both war and peace, because not only had it been destroyed but also left in a relatively dilapidated state when trapped on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. Under the rubric of reconciliation, the letter to the Queen suggested that the end of the Cold War was an opportune time for a cosmopolitan commitment to rebuilding the Frauenkirche: The horrors of war and the Stalin tyranny being over, the rebuilding of the big dome over Dresden seems to us like the vision of the rainbow spanning across the whole world which God looks upon and seeks reconciliation for our endangered earth. We appeal to Her Honourable Majesty and to the citizens of Great Britain, to contribute to this work of reconciliation between God and man, between nations and continents.

That only the British and American heads of state were formally contacted in advance of the public launch of the Ruf is intriguing. Should it be construed simply as a pragmatic decision inasmuch as the Bürgerinitiative identified Britain and the United States as leading western countries that would be actively looking to influence Central and Eastern European affairs following the collapse of communism? Or is it perhaps an indication that the Bürgerinitiative believed the two nations directly responsible for Dresden’s destruction should feel a moral obligation to

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help finance the belated reconstruction of arguably its historically and culturally most significant building? Regardless, the letters sent to the Queen and President Bush stressed that the cultural loss associated with the Dresden bombing extended far beyond the city itself and even Germany’s borders. The many ‘architectural treasures’ destroyed in Dresden in February 1945, exclaimed the letter, were in fact ‘owned by the whole world.’ In locating the historical, cultural, and spiritual loss evoked by the still-to-be-rebuilt Frauenkirche within an international framework, the Bürgerinitiative was adopting a stance long-held by Fritz Löffler, who from the war’s end until his death in 1988 was one of Dresden’s best known art historians and a part-time Denkmalpfleger. Löffler was a vocal supporter of rebuilding the Frauenkirche, a duty he always asserted should be a ‘world concern’ (‘Weltangelegenheit’).57 The Ruf aus Dresden, publicly launched in the lobby of Hotel Bellevue, was by no means the first campaign seeking to rebuild the Frauenkirche. As detailed in Chapter 2, similar efforts had materialised as early as the 1940s and local Denkmalpfleger had continued to conserve the ruins throughout the decades expressly for the purpose of facilitating the church’s reconstruction.58 Yet the situation facing the Bürgerinitiative in 1989–90 differed markedly from what had confronted earlier campaigns. The Schwebezeit simultaneously presented some favourable but also problematic conditions. Previously, three major hurdles had stood in the way of rebuilding the Frauenkirche: disinterest on behalf of the EKD synod; state opposition; and, as a corollary of the first two barriers, financing such a grand project remained out of the question. The DDR’s demise seemed encouraging, but it really only eliminated one of these three longstanding obstacles blocking the church’s reconstruction. Moreover, earlier advocates of rebuilding had not faced the additional problem posed by the ruins’ growing status as Dresden’s foremost site of memory. By 1990, however, the prominent role the ruins played as a Mahnmal cast further doubt on whether the Frauenkirche ever could or should reappear at their expense. The Ruf aus Dresden immediately met with criticism from some quarters arguing that the Frauenkirche could not and should not be rebuilt at the ruins’ expense on historical, cultural, scientific, aesthetic, and ethical grounds. Critics claimed that the ruins were invaluable remnants

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of war and under no circumstances whatever should their iconic status be jeopardised.59 Underpinning all such arguments were principles set out in the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, commonly known as the Venice Charter of 1964. The Charter’s preamble states: Imbued with a message from the past, the historic monuments of generations of people remain to the present day as living witnesses of their age-old traditions…The common responsibility to safeguard them for future generations is recognised. It is our duty to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity.60

Although the Trümmerberg was less than a half-century old, according to the Venice Charter’s principles in no way did that diminish its historical value. Just as ancient ruins such as the Forum Romanum and Pompeii in Italy or the Acropolis in Athens stood as archaeological and architectural testaments to certain epochs in European history, the Frauenkirche ruins represented an important testimony to the midtwentieth century generally and the Second World War especially. So long as they remained undisturbed, the ruins could continue to serve this special function and, in accordance with the Charter’s preamble, be passed on to future generations. Most of the Venice Charter’s sixteen articles raise issues that challenged plans to disturb the Trümmerberg in order to reconstruct the Frauenkirche. ‘All reconstruction work,’ according to Article 15 concerning excavations, ‘should…be ruled out “a priori.” Only anastylosis, that is to say, the reassembling of existing but dismembered parts, can be permitted.’ Fortunately, in an astute move pre-dating the Venice Charter by almost two decades, Hans Nadler, Dresden’s chief Denkmalpfleger in the immediate postwar period, oversaw the original rubble-clearing from the Frauenkirche site with a view to adopting reconstruction methods based on anastylosis.61 Four decades later, Nadler, now a spritely octogenarian and member of the Bürgerinitiative, was instrumental in ensuring reconstruction plans would meet the principles of anastylosis as well as could be expected given the circumstances. Additional to the two sections of external wall still standing, hundreds of original stones salvaged from the ruins were to be incorporated into the reconstructed church. Stressing that it always had been intended that as much original

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material as possible would be incorporated, the Bürgerinitiative sought to allay concerns that a reconstructed Frauenkirche would be little more than a hollow reproduction. Nonetheless, even if the anastylosis problem could be overcome, rebuilding still did not completely conform to the Venice Charter because it could only be achieved at the expense of an existing monument worthy of preservation in its own right. Consequently, not until long after the Ruf succeeded and the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche proved spectacularly popular did the project very belatedly receive the support of the German Foundation for the Protection of Historic Monuments (Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz).62 If the Frauenkirche were to be rebuilt, there was no solution to the quandary of disturbing the ruins. At best, supporters of the Ruf could only offer a compromise: incorporating as much original material as possible – the two wall stumps plus individual stones – would ensure that far from being forgotten the ruins would be an integral feature of the reconstructed church. The blackened patina, which over the course of 250 years had formed on the original sandstone blocks, would contrast sharply with the golden colour of the new blocks. In effect, the church would appear to be rising out of, and towering above, the ruins – an impression subsequently encapsulated in the rebuilding project’s logo. Regardless of the feature role earmarked for the ruins, however, the idea of rebuilding remained wholly unacceptable for purists. In due course, the arbitrary placement of original stones in the reconstructed Frauenkirche, which are clearly discernible due to their centuries-old darkened patina, created debate over the artificial creation of ‘embedded memory.’63 The Venice Charter includes at least one passage the Bürgerinitiative could interpret as an endorsement for rebuilding the Frauenkirche. Article 7 states: A monument is inseparable from the history to which it bears witness and from the setting in which it occurs. The moving of all or part of a monument cannot be allowed except where the safeguarding of that monument demands it or where it is justified by national or international interest of paramount importance.

Whereas a number of arguments based on Article 7 could be mounted in favour of reconstruction, two points are especially worthy of discussion.

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First, if a monument is inseparable from both its history and setting then a strong case could be made that the ruins’ functionality as an anti-war Mahnmal was only of secondary concern to locals. Instead, the ruins primarily acted as a painful reminder that Dresden’s landmark building remained missing, which in turn embodied how the city still was coming to terms with its transformation from Kulturstadt to Opferstadt. Furthermore, the ruins had been a bombing-related site of memory for only four decades, whereas previously it had been the location of a Church of Our Lady in various incarnations (and slight variations in name) for almost a thousand years. As far as ‘history and setting’ were concerned, then, a persuasive case could be made in support of reconstructing the church over the ruins. Second, making sure the project qualified on the grounds of holding (inter)national ‘interest of paramount importance’ partially explains why, from the outset, the Bürgerinitiative stressed that a rebuilt Frauenkirche would function as a ‘Christian Centre of World Peace’ in the new Europe.64 A further advantage of promoting a reconstructed Frauenkirche as transcending the traditional roles of a Protestant church to serve a more universal purpose was that it helped to combat the aforementioned argument that the Kreuzkirche and the Annenkirche rendered superfluous the (re)building of another house of worship in sparsely-populated central Dresden. Essentially Dresden’s church ‘without a community’ would serve the world. In another sign that the cosmopolitanisation of Dresden memory politics already was emerging at the time of the forty-fifth Gedenktag, the Ruf closed: As far as we are concerned, 45 years after its destruction the time is now ripe to allow the Church of Our Lady to rise again as an engaging possession of European culture. For that reason we are calling for help from Dresden.65

Several press reports in early 1990 speculated on the likelihood of the Frauenkirche ever being rebuilt. The general consensus reached was that such an ambitious project would remain financially out of reach for the Opferstadt.66 Just days prior to the Ruf, Dankwart Guratzsch lamented that a reconstruction would cost an estimated 500 million marks (DDR) and so it was destined to remain ‘a dream…too expensive for Dresden’ (‘Ein Traum für 500 Millionen Mark. Zu teuer für Dresden’).67 A week

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later, Zimmermann reported on Güttler’s confident claims made at the launch of the Ruf that the funding required – even if it reached 160 million DM – would be secured by year’s end thus enabling reconstruction to commence. Zimmermann remained unconvinced, however, and pointed to the Residenzschloss as evidence that Dresden already seemed to be struggling financially with its ‘monument problems’ (‘Denkmalprobleme’).68 She observed that, despite Honecker’s bald declaration on the fortieth Gedenktag that Dresden’s former royal palace would be fully renovated within five years, the Residenzschloss still languished a long way short of its projected 1990 completion. According to Zimmermann, only 16 million of the 50 million East German marks promised by Honecker on 13 February 1985 had been spent. If half-completed projects looked in doubt of being finished in the foreseeable future, she concluded, it made little sense for Dresdeners to start new projects that would compete for what already was proving insufficient and unrealised funding. Although initial press reports did not share Güttler’s confidence that funding could be secured so quickly (if at all), such scepticism nonetheless was generally tempered by sincere encouragement for the campaign. Karlheinz Blaschke informed readers of the FAZ that East Germans’ daily lives remained haunted by the Second World War and its lingering repercussions. He argued that rebuilding the Frauenkirche could help East Germans finally leave those terrible experiences behind as a reunified Germany optimistically embraced the future.69 Blaschke’s vision of a nationally-supported project reflected the BRDDR hybridisation of memory in the Schwebezeit. Just days before the 1990 Gedenktag, Guratzsch had dismissed the dream of rebuilding the Frauenkirche as too expensive to contemplate seriously, yet, immediately following the announcement of the Ruf, he warmed to the idea. Also mirroring the hybridisation of German memory, on a number of levels Guratzsch recognised intrinsic worth in the campaign: Should the reconstruction of the church eventuate, not only would Dresden get back its most famous landmark and German Protestantism its architectonically most important work. Arising at the same time would be a historic monument to radical change and of the German unification process, a symbol of reconciliation and longing for peace.70

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Guratzsch, a former Dresdener, understood what the church’s reconstruction would mean to the city. More broadly he also recognised the architectural significance of the Frauenkirche and its unique sandstone dome. Furthermore, Guratzsch seemed to draw inspiration from Kohl’s address two months earlier when envisaging a rebuilt Frauenkirche could serve as a tribute to the Wende and the embodiment of reunification. He shared, too, the hopes of the Bürgerinitiative that the church would rise again as an act of reconciliation, a theme dealt with at length in the following two chapters. The above account has emphasised the international dimension of the Ruf aus Dresden because of the stress the Bürgerinitiative placed on securing worldwide support when launching its campaign at the time of the forty-fifth Gedenktag. As Chapter 5 reveals, after an inauspicious start the Ruf eventually attracted emphatic international support. Here it should be noted, however, most of the funding required for the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche actually was generated within reunified Germany itself. Dresden naturally was the fulcrum of the campaign, which was conducted by a registered fundraising organisation (Gesellschaft zur Förderung des Wiederaufbaus der Frauenkirche e.V.) established as the successor to the original Bürgerinitiative. In time, the fundraising campaign would encompass a variety of activities across reunified Germany: countless individual donations; public concerts and other events; commemorative stamps and coins commissioned by the federal government; donations raised by the EKD; while the most significant ongoing financial commitment was provided by Dresdner Bank.71 Much of the financial support came from sources based in what had formerly been the BRD (including Dresdner Bank, whose headquarters had long been located in Frankfurt-am-Main). This development indicates that the vision expressed by both Blaschke and Guratzsch in February 1990 – that rebuilding the Frauenkirche could be a national project symbolising the reunification process – was widely embraced. It is fitting, then, that one of the early protagonists was none other than Kohl, the so-called ‘reunification chancellor’ (Wiedervereinigungskanzler) on whom the experience of speaking in front of the ruins in December 1989 had left such an indelible impression. When Kohl celebrated his sixtieth birthday on 3 April 1990, invitations to the official reception at Bonn’s Beethovenhalle included a

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special request. Instead of personal gifts, Kohl asked guests to make a donation ‘on behalf of the citizens’ action group to the construction of the Frauenkirche’ (‘… für die Bürgerinitiative zum Aufbau der Frauenkirche’).72 While accompanying Kohl on his historic visit to Dresden the previous December, the CDU’s general secretary Volker Rühe had met Ludwig Güttler. In April, Rühe arranged a speciallycommissioned army aircraft to fly Güttler and the Virtuosi Saxoniae (a Dresden-based instrumental brass ensemble formed by Güttler) to Bonn for a surprise performance at Kohl’s birthday reception. Afterwards, Güttler presented Kohl with a scaled model of the Frauenkirche handcrafted by a local Dresden sculptor before he and the Virtuosi Saxoniae flew back to Dresden to perform at the Semperoper later that evening. Kohl’s magnanimous gesture resulted in the very substantial sum of more than 750,000 DM donated to the nascent Frauenkirche rebuilding campaign.73 It was one of the many and varied sources of funding that enabled a relatively prompt start to the project. This meant that, just as 13 February 1990 was the first Gedenktag not under direct communist influence, it also would be the last milestone Gedenktag on which the ruins remained undisturbed.

Dr e sde n ’ s s tat e l e s s G e de n k tag : 1 3 F e b rua ry 1 9 9 0

The forty-fifth Gedenktag was a unique experience. Occurring in the Schwebezeit, it effectively acted as a bridge from the Cold War era to the post-reunification period. For the previous 44 years, the parameters for (politically acceptable) public commemoration had been set first by Soviet occupational authorities and then the DDR’s partyand state-leadership. Following East Berlin’s disempowerment, the commemorative process in Dresden was more or less a stateless affair on 13 February 1990. Without state-centred arenas of articulation such as a mass rally setting the day’s agenda, locals could commemorate the destruction of Dresden ostensibly free of direct political influence. Furthermore, the void created by the absence of state influence meant that opportunities existed for socially-based agents of articulation

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to emerge and openly articulate their own messages on Dresden’s Gedenktag. Güttler, when arguing in November that the Bürgerinitiative should wait to publicly announce the Ruf, appears to have anticipated this development. Indeed, the well-prepared Bürgerinitiative successfully occupied a prominent space on the forty-fifth Gedenktag. Yet, whereas the Ruf aus Dresden would have the most significant and lasting impact, it certainly was not the only instance of new messages being attached to Dresden’s destruction following the Wende. On the eve of the forty-fifth Gedenktag, the former Dresdener and chief political reporter for the centre-left Süddeutsche Zeitung Christian Schütze returned to the city of his birth and childhood. Five years earlier, Schütze had travelled to Dresden to cover the events of 13 February 1985. In a reflective piece at that time, Schütze recalled how he had first heard the distressing news about Dresden’s destruction while camped at Karlsruhe’s Hauptbahnhof as a teenager drafted into the Wehrmacht during the final months of the war.74 Schütze later was forced to leave behind his destroyed Heimatstadt upon deciding to flee communism and pursue a journalism career in the BRD, and subsequently retained a deep-seated loathing for the East German regime. When he returned to Dresden to report on the looming Gedenktag in February 1990, one question was foremost on Schütze’s mind: ‘With what emotions does one look forward to a date in Saxony’s capital that, until now, has been monopolised by the SED régime for propaganda?’ (‘Mit welchen Gefühlen man in Sachsens Hauptstadt einem Datum entgegensieht, das bisher vom SED-Regime für Propaganda vereinnahmt wurde?’).75 Schütze poignantly described 13 February 1990 as a time of ‘difficult remembrance’ (‘schwieriges Gedenken’) both for him personally and Dresden as a whole. Whereas the Wende had unleashed a veritable tidal wave of euphoric optimism, Schütze recognised it still was far too early to ascertain what actually would emerge in its wake. This uncertainty was a point also stressed by Christoph Ziemer, EKD Dean (Superintendent) in Saxony, when interviewed by Schütze.76 It was Ziemer who described Germany as being in a ‘Schwebezeit,’ arguing that the nation’s future still very much hung in the balance. Ziemer employed a biblical metaphor to warn his fellow East Germans that much hard work lay ahead, because like the Israelites after their exodus from Egypt they were ‘not yet in the

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Promised Land but rather still stranded in the wilderness’ (‘Nun befinde man sich in ähnlicher Lage wie das Volk von Israel nach dem Auszug aus Ägypten: Noch nicht im gelobten Land, sondern in der Wüste’).77 Ziemer believed East Germans needed to embrace the Schwebezeit as an opportunity for catharsis and self-cleansing before being able to move forward. To fully capitalise on the altered conditions, he appealed for Dresden’s forty-fifth Gedenktag to serve as a day of communal selfreflection, something hitherto not possible at least publicly. Some intriguing anomalies emerged in 1990 as Dresden’s Gedenktag witnessed a dynamic shift in the politics of war memory and commemoration during the Schwebezeit. For instance, approximately 200,000 people had flocked to the state’s mass rally in 1985, whereas only a few thousand locals had risked being put under Stasi surveillance and gathered at the Frauenkirche ruins later that evening. Five years on, with no party rally or any other state-orchestrated events to attend, and freed from the Stasi threat, an estimated crowd of 200,000 Dresdeners gathered at the ruins in the two hours between the traditional tolling of the city’s bells and midnight. According to Guratzsch, the phenomenal turn-out at the ruins made this part of Dresden’s forty-fifth Gedenktag the largest commemorative event of its kind in German history.78 Oddly, however, unlike the remarkable media coverage afforded to the events of five years earlier, the commemorative practices articulated in Dresden on 13 February 1990 received scant attention in leading German newspapers. There are, perhaps, both international and domestic developments that help to explain why the forty-fifth Gedenktag failed to make national headlines. On 7 February 1990, the Central Committee of the Soviet Union sensationally relinquished its monopoly on political power, signalling that the collapse of Eastern European communism had reached as far as Moscow. Four days later, in a move signifying the end of apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years of imprisonment. In mid-February 1990, the tumultuous scenes unfolding in the Soviet Union and South Africa dominated world news. From a domestic perspective, for several months numerous issues created by the Wende and emanating from the DDR had proliferated in the German press. For six weeks prior to the 1990 Gedenktag, most of these reports were concerned with the subject of

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reunification – a theme Kohl had ignited during his visit to Dresden. On 13 February 1990, coincidentally, Bonn and East Berlin announced an agreement had been reached for a two-part process that would culminate in reunification later in the year. Given the intense focus on current affairs, both domestic and from abroad, it is little wonder that commemorative ceremonies in Dresden failed to generate the same level of interest as five years earlier. One result, as mentioned, was that the events of the 1990 Gedenktag went largely unreported. Additionally, there were very few commentaries about the Dresden firebombing, which stood in stark contrast to 1985 when the raid and its aftermath had generated much heated debate in the West German press.79 One article that defied this trend was published in the Neues Deutschland and written by the DDR’s foremost expert on the bombing war, Olaf Groehler.80 A further notable exception was the extensive coverage Die Welt afforded to events in Dresden on 13 February in both 1945 and 1990. In the fortnight prior to the forty-fifth Gedenktag, the Hamburg-based newspaper serialised the latest German edition of David Irving’s account of the destruction of Dresden.81 The four selected extracts focused on the military and political background leading to the decision to attack Dresden. The serialisation downplayed the role of Sir Arthur Harris, whom Irving had interviewed years earlier and admired as an uncompromising wartime commander.82 Conversely, Irving accused an ‘impatient’ Churchill of being the man directly responsible for ordering the raid. In the chosen extracts, Irving alleged the Churchill-inspired raid on Dresden killed 135,000 people and Die Welt neither questioned nor even qualified this inflated death toll. On the contrary, the newspaper accepted Irving’s figure as reliable and cited it repeatedly in all articles relating to Dresden appearing around the time of the Gedenktag. Irving’s inflated death toll of 135,000 victims suited the conservative West German newspaper’s longstanding derisory attitude toward the East German state (during decades of division, for instance, Die Welt always used quotation marks as mocking qualification whenever referring to ‘die DDR’). Indeed, references to 135,000 victims challenged the official East German figure of 35,000 deaths maintained since the immediate post-war period, and Die Welt argued the lower figure was the result of communist propaganda and in need of serious revision.83

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Also, in an enterprising (but somewhat tactless) move, Die Welt made the most of the opportunities created by the Wende and, looking to boost its readership in the east, distributed 2,000 free copies of its 13 February 1990 edition to Dresdeners passing by the Theaterplatz.84 Irving also personally made the most of the altered political conditions. On 13 February 1990, the man who three decades earlier had ‘told the outside world about what happened to Dresden’ finally gave his first public address in Saxony’s capital. Despite the fact that Irving’s account depicted the Western Allies in a very unfavourable light, he was never a welcome figure in the DDR. Irving’s constantly modified but consistently inflated six-figure death toll espoused in several revised editions of his book ran contrary to the DDR’s much lower official figure. Even long before Irving’s reputation became tarnished with Holocaust revisionism, his account of the destruction of Dresden (like Rodenberger’s) was never approved in the DDR where the Marxist-leaning interpretations of party demagogues Seydewitz and Weidauer were preferred. Irving finally visited Dresden on the fortyfifth Gedenktag and, at short notice, was scheduled to give a public address.85 A modest crowd of around 1,000 Dresdeners assembled midafternoon in the Kulturpalast to hear Irving reiterate his longstanding claim: Churchill was principally responsible for the merciless raid, which destroyed a defenceless city and claimed 135,000 lives – mainly women, children, the elderly, and wretched trekkers.86 Whereas Irving’s public appearance introduced a fresh element to the forty-fifth Gedenktag, some traditional rites of remembrance that took place throughout the day also showed some effects of the Wende. In a demonstration of city-church solidarity, Dresden’s Oberbürgermeister Berghofer and Saxony’s Superintendent Ziemer presided over all officially organised events. Berghofer conducted the customary mid-morning Heidefriedhof service, and on this occasion the wreath-laying was accompanied by speeches.87 In the absence of party functionaries, Hamburg’s Erster Bürgermeister Henning Voscherau gave the chief address. He was an inspired choice, not only because the two cities shared painful memories of bombing-induced firestorms but also because two years earlier Hamburg had joined Dresden’s growing list of European sister-cities. Voscherau was invited to speak on behalf of all

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the other sister-city delegates present at the Heidefriedhof ceremony. In a break from tradition, in 1990 the hordes of local trade union members usually summoned to the wreath-laying service remained at work.88 Party politics no longer set the commemorative parameters, meaning the manufactured atmosphere that had enveloped previous Heidefriedhof services was notably absent. The change in mood allowed those in attendance the chance for self-reflection very much in the manner Ziemer had envisaged. Moreover, official remembrance of Dresden’s unknown number of bombing victims was not limited to the Heidefriedhof. Several of the city’s other cemeteries were incorporated into the morning’s commemorative process. A particularly dignified addition, according to Dresden-Meissen’s Catholic priest Michael Ullrich, was the communal reflection conducted at Dresden’s Jewish cemetery.89 Never before had it been formally acknowledged as a Gedenktag site for remembering the city’s victims. The daytime void created by the lack of a party rally was partially filled by two innovative arenas of articulation. First, in the public domain the Dresden City Council staged a special ‘commemorative session’ (Gedenksitzung). According to a bemused Guratzsch, however, the Gedenksitzung, staged in the Semperoper, met with only limited success: those enquiring on the day were turned away, apparently because the event was ‘sold out’ (‘alles ausverkauft’), and yet many seats inside the Semperoper remained empty.90 Second, in a closed forum conducted in the Rathaus, Berghofer and Ziemer hosted city councillors, religious leaders, representatives of new political parties and factions as well as delegates from Dresden’s sister cities.91 Like in 1985, the Oberbürgermeister had invited the sister-city representatives to gather in Dresden on the Gedenktag to discuss contemporary issues of mutual interest. Special emphasis was placed on how best to work together to secure peaceful European relations. In the midst of a new world order taking embryonic shape, a core element of the forum’s agenda was the Europeanisation of the memory and meaning of Dresden’s destruction. Ziemer declared to the city’s guests attending the forum that ‘on this very day, Dresden must be integrated into European development, in order for peace to be able to take effect.’92 For almost a half-century, remembering the destruction of Dresden fundamentally had been a German activity

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(divided along Cold War lines). In 1990, however, it no longer made sense to conceptualise Dresden’s fate in the bombing war as relevant to Germans only. Instead, it needed to be contextualised within a broader – that is, cosmopolitan – framework of shifting European war memories. Old habits die hard. Despite the absence of state direction, the fortyfifth Gedenktag generally followed a pattern set in the DDR era: whereas secular events provided the focus for daytime activities, the evening was dominated by religious services followed by remembrance at the Frauenkirche ruins. Several Dresden churches conducted ecumenical services in remembrance of the city’s destruction and its bombing victims. In the restored Catholic Hofkirche the appropriate mood was set ‘with a long, dark lamenting sequence of notes’ (‘mit einer langgezogenen dunklen klagenden Tonfolge’) churned out by the church’s famed Silbermann organ that somehow had miraculously survived the firestorm.93 Catholic and Protestant clergymen shared the pulpit to articulate ecumenical messages. Dresden’s predominantly Christian population was told that, on the city’s most difficult and meaningful date, it was imperative to include the community’s non-Christian elements in the commemorative process. Reiterating Father Ullrich’s remarks from earlier in the day, Dresden’s small Jewish community in particular was to be embraced because its fate helped to ‘remind of German misdeeds’ (‘Sie erinnern an deutsches Unrecht’).94 The overriding message conveyed here was the same one that had prevailed in the period under Soviet occupation: 13 February must be viewed through the prism of Germans’ ultimate responsibility for embracing Nazism and engulfing Europe in a(nother) world war. The notion of deutsches Unrecht underpinning public articulation on the Gedenktag was a longstanding approach to remembering Dresden’s destruction. The singling out of Jews as special reminders of German wrongdoing, however, was an important new dimension. It indicates the move away from the DDR’s amorphous categorisation of Opfer des Faschismus already was underway during the Schwebezeit. Dresden’s urban landscape also helped to reinforce the service’s chief message that deutsches Unrecht must be the cornerstone of commemorating the city’s destruction. The Hofkirche in which the service was taking place once was complemented by Dresden’s first synagogue, designed and built by Gottfried Semper in 1838–40. For a

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Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.1

The rebuilt Hofkirche.

The Mahnmal on the site of the original Dresden synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht, 9 November 1938.

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century, the two houses of worship had stood like bookends at either end of the short Brühl Terrace overlooking the Elbe. Those attending the ecumenical service in the rebuilt Catholic cathedral on 13 February 1990 were reminded that it was not the bombing raid 45 years earlier to the day that had disturbed this equilibrium. Rather, deutsches Unrecht was evoked in the form of Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938, with those at the pulpit recalling: ‘First the synagogues burned, then the world’ (‘Erst brannten die Synagogen, dann brannte die Welt’).95 Now all that stands on the site of Dresden’s original synagogue is a small, unostentatious Mahnmal erected during the DDR era. Although the memorial is in the form of a menorah, its vague inscription simply makes reference to Opfer des Faschismus with no mention of the specific fate of Jews. Another decade was to pass after the forty-fifth Gedenktag before Semper’s original synagogue finally was replaced by a new one located directly across the road. The ecumenical service in Dresden’s main Protestant church the Kreuzkirche adopted a slightly different tone. On several occasions throughout the centuries prior to its destruction in the February 1945 firestorm, the Kreuzkirche had suffered extensive fire-induced damage during times of war and peace.96 The most infamous of these occasions took place in 1760, when Frederick the Great’s Prussian grenadiers heavily bombarded and ransacked the Kreuzkirche during the Seven Years’ War. Nonetheless, it always was painstakingly rebuilt and, dating back at least to the turn of the eighteenth century, the Kreuzkirche boasted a reputation for being Dresden’s finest venue for church music.97 Since its most recent (re)consecration on 13 February 1955, a highlight of Gedenktag remembrance in the Kreuzkirche was the annual performance of Mauersberger’s Dresdner Requiem.98 In 1990, the church’s famed Kreuzchor – whose history stretches over seven hundred years – again performed the requiem and on this occasion it struck a new chord. Dresdeners sitting inside the church that had been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt anew throughout the centuries could hear in the requiem an important message of hope and inspiration: no matter how disorienting or wretched the Schwebezeit might seem following the state’s political and economic collapse, their Heimatstadt had endured far worse experiences in the past. Afterwards, Oberbürgermeister Berghofer and

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Superintendent Ziemer jointly addressed the large crowd gathered in front of the Kreuzkirche in readiness to participate in the candlelit procession to the Frauenkirche ruins.99 Again they stressed the need for Dresdeners to make the most of second chances, suggesting that inspiration could be drawn from the city’s demonstrated historical capacity to overcome trauma and hardship. ‘On this day,’ Ziemer proclaimed, ‘the path into the future leads through remembrance’ (‘Der Weg in die Zukunft führt an diesem Tag über die Erinnerung’).100 Speaking on the Altmarkt, where the firestorm had consumed everything in its path and later some 6,800 bodies were mass-cremated, Berghofer declared triumphantly: ‘This city, which should have died, lives!’ (‘…diese Stadt, die sterben sollte, lebt!’)101 The message was that, although Dresden might be an Opferstadt, it was a durable one nonetheless. Furthermore, the Oberbürgermeister and the Superintendent reiterated the same message that had prevailed during the Hofkirche service. They implored the crowd to reflect on the entire sequence of events that ultimately led to Dresden’s destruction rather than just remember what happened on 13 February 1945. According to Guratzsch, Berghofer and Ziemer told the audience this meant acknowledging the ‘particular guilt of the German people, who started the war that also claimed the victims of Dresden’ (‘In ihren Gedenkreden mahnten Oberbürgermeister Berghofer und Superintendent Ziemer auch der eigenen Schuld des deutschen Volkes zu gedenken, das einen Krieg begonnen habe, dessen Opfer dann auch Dresden geworden sei’).102 Couched in these terms, it was a cautionary message to which locals had grown well-accustomed over the decades, ever since communist agents of articulation had appropriated Dresden’s Gedenktag as an anti-fascist commemorative politics asset in the immediate post-war period. The same warning from history would be employed by federal chancellor Gerhard Schröder in February 2005, as part of his attempt to defuse the controversy surrounding the resurgent German far-right movement’s appropriation of Dresden war memories (see Chapter 6). Arguably, it was during the final few hours of the 1990 Gedenktag that the immediate impact of the Wende on public commemoration of Dresden’s destruction became most palpable. As in every year since 1946, at 9.40pm all the city’s bells rang ‘their eerie song of the dead’ (‘ihr schauriges Totenlied’).103 The ensuing twenty minutes of tolling signalled

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that the time had come for the solemn candlelit procession to, and silent remembrance at, the Frauenkirche ruins. Between 1982 and 1989, the number of locals willing to participate in what was an implicit demonstration of passive resistance against the state had increased each year. Yet, never more than a few thousand had participated in the Schweigemarsch before gathering at the ruins until midnight. Prior to the 1990 Gedenktag, it was widely anticipated that a far larger crowd than usual would congregate at the ruins and there was uncertainty over what might eventuate. For instance, a new luxury hotel the Dresdner Hof (nowadays the Dresden Hilton), located roughly 100 metres from the ruins, celebrated its opening the week beforehand. The hotel announced on 8 February that it would temporarily close its doors on the Gedenktag due to the expected large crowd and concerns about potential unrest.104 The masses came, but fears of probable disorder proved ill-founded. In a remarkable manifestation of social agency, an estimated 200,000 people, now freed from East Berlin’s commemoration shackles, gathered around the Frauenkirche ruins on the forty-fifth Gedenktag. Even allowing for a considerable number of visitors making up part of the crowd, such a turnout meant that, on 13 February 1990, approximately every third Dresdener gathered at the ruins as commemorators, mourners, demonstrators, or participant-observers of some kind. Although the sea of lights (Lichtermeer) produced by tens of thousands of flickering candles created the effect of making central Dresden appear to be ablaze once again on 13 February, an air of tranquillity enveloped the massive crowd.105 The heightened tension of previous years was not evident. It appears that, as Ziemer had hoped, the Gedenktag proved an occasion for communal self-reflection concerning both the past and present: remembrance of the catastrophic events of 45 years earlier; and contemplation of the historic changes unfolding around them. Unlike the 1980s, what transpired at the ruins on 13 February 1990 no longer could be considered an implicit form of passive resistance against the state. Rather, the fact that roughly one-third of Dresden’s population gathered at the site can be viewed as an explicit celebration of the DDR’s demise as well as a desire to openly remember the bombing victims and the city’s destruction. The socially-

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manifested scenes around the ruins created a politically-charged atmosphere in their own unique way. It was the second instance since the fall of the Berlin Wall – along with Kohl’s address in December – where a six-figure crowd of Dresdeners had gathered at the Frauenkirche ruins, thus reinforcing the site’s status as the city’s most important public arena of articulation. The two occasions, according to Zimmermann, demonstrated how the timing was ‘politically ripe’ (‘politische Reife’) for Dresdeners en masse to express both their dissatisfaction with life in the DDR and their hopes that the Wende would lead to a better future.106 There was, perhaps, no more fitting location than the Frauenkirche ruins in the whole of the DDR to communicate such emotion. After September 1989, Dresden’s Saxon sister Leipzig, the scene of the original series of massively attended Monday demonstrations (Montagsdemonstrationen), was venerated as the undisputed hub of East German protest. The meeting point for the demonstrations, the Nikolaikirche (St Nicholas Church), garnered an international reputation as the cradle of the peaceful revolution while Leipzig itself was fêted as the DDR’s ‘City of Heroes’ (Heldenstadt).107 Yet the importance of events witnessed annually in Dresden at its Frauenkirche ruins in the years prior to 1989 was not completely overlooked in Germany. From 1982 onwards, and during a period in which state oppression successfully stifled other forms of mass dissent in the DDR, it was at the ruins each Gedenktag that East Germans’ only sizeable public displays of anti-government discontent took place.108 Several commentaries in February 1990 fittingly mentioned the pioneering role the ruins occupied as an anti-state arena of articulation in the lead-up to the Wende. Blaschke, when reflecting on what had occurred annually at Dresden’s ruinous site of memory during the 1980s, described it as the DDR’s foremost ‘scene … of resistance against overbearing state power’ (‘Ort … des Widerstehens gegen eine herrische Staatsmacht’).109 According to Guratzsch, it was Dresden’s ruined Frauenkirche rather than Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche that was the true ‘cradle of peaceful revolution in the DDR’ (‘Wiege der friedlichen Revolution in der DDR’).110 Put another way, some considered Dresden the Opferstadt, instead of Leipzig the Heldenstadt, to be the real origin of East German public dissent that culminated in the Wende.

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The Frauenkirche ruins inspired some intriguing metaphors at the time of the forty-fifth Gedenktag. Guratzsch likened the two sections of wall still standing as ‘sublime torsos from Roman times’ (‘Wie ein über alle Zeitlichkeit erhabener Torso aus römischer Zeit ragen die beiden stehengebliebenen Wandstücke aus dem Trümmerberg’).111 Captivated by the intangible force that radiated from the ruins, he viewed the Trümmerberg as simultaneously separating and joining the two wall stumps. For Guratzsch, then, Dresden’s Frauenkirche ruins were ‘like a German symbol of broken commonality’ (‘… wie ein deutsches Sinnbild zerbrochener Gemeinsamkeit sind die beiden Mauerstümpfe in ihren Trümmern gefesselt und in scheinbar unvereinbare Positionen auseinandergerissen’).112 Viewing the ruins as a constant reminder that the church had not been rebuilt, Blaschke likened the remnants of the Frauenkirche to: … towering upward like an admonishing outstretched pointer finger, like an enormous question mark rising up out of the earth of the Dresden Old Town – still an extensively undeveloped area of wreckage even though it was cleared of rubble a long time ago – which surrounds the mountain of rubble and its stones.113

Without the party- or state-leadership setting the commemorative agenda, the forty-fifth Gedenktag witnessed some noticeable shifts in dynamics. The traditional Heidefriedhof wreath-laying service was stripped of much (though not all) of its political connotations – the speeches were not made by SED functionaries, yet participants still had to walk along the cemetery’s Ehrenhain für Opfer des Faschismus in order to reach the ceremony. The void created by the absence of a stateorchestrated mass rally was officially filled by the public Gedenksitzung at the Semperoper and the closed forum at the Rathaus, while David Irving gave a public address at the Kulturpalast. The evening’s ecumenical services further enabled city and church leaders to join forces in articulating new messages to be attached to commemoration of Dresden’s destruction during the Schwebezeit. As both Dresden’s longstanding foremost bombing-related site of memory and, from 1982 onwards, increasingly contested terrain in the politics of commemoration, the Frauenkirche ruins served as the hub of public remembrance. The fact that practically every third Dresdener gathered at the ruins between

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10.00pm and midnight in the climactic finish to the day’s events was a most remarkable illustration of the fundamentally changed conditions at play in 1990.

C on c lu sion

The chapter has explored how, during the Schwebezeit, the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration underwent significant shifts as new state-centred and socially-based agencies of articulation emerged in the wake of the Wende. Six weeks prior to the forty-fifth Gedenktag, in December 1989 Helmut Kohl emerged as the first of several new agents of articulation seeking to attach new meanings and messages to Dresden the Opferstadt. While standing on what still was DDR soil and employing the Frauenkirche ruins as a most arresting backdrop, the BRD’s leader publicly expressed to the world his vision of a reunified German nation. The Wende also provided the impetus for a local Bürgerinitiative to organise a campaign to rebuild the Frauenkirche. Members of the Bürgerinitiative were motivated by the long-held belief that, despite the ruins’ functionality as a Mahnmal, the missing church was considered to be Dresden’s gaping wound that needed healing. That the Bürgerinitiative waited until the forty-fifth Gedenktag to publicly launch its worldwide Ruf aus Dresden reveals to what extent the group sought to harness the heightened emotions associated with the city’s most meaningful date. The Ruf was the most ambitious and, ultimately, most significant case of locals making the most of the radically changed political conditions on 13 February 1990. But many of the day’s other events also played important roles in setting the atmosphere in Dresden on the forty-fifth Gedenktag. With four decades of East Berlin’s control over Dresden’s commemorative agenda ended, new directions were possible. Clear signs of the BRDDR hybridisation of East and West German memories of Dresden’s destruction already were evident during the Schwebezeit. So, too, was some early evidence that the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration would become increasingly cosmopolitanised following the end of the Cold War. This is a theme developed at great length in the following chapter.

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5

A British Dimension to Dresden Commemorative Politics: 1992–2000

As discussed in Chapter 2, one of the most intriguing developments in Dresden commemorative politics during the Cold War era was the DDR’s marginalisation of Britain’s role in the city’s destruction. This was especially pronounced throughout the 1950s and 1960s, when East Berlin appropriated Dresden’s Gedenktag as an arena in which to direct its antiwestern rhetoric against the perceived ‘American imperialist warmongers’ and ‘Bonn Ultras’ of the present day rather than on the actual British firestormers of the past. After decades of being downplayed and even overlooked on Dresden’s annual Gedenktag, following reunification British involvement belatedly came to the fore. Between 1992 and 2000, the theme of German–British reconciliation became a cornerstone of commemoration in Dresden. Earlier, the presence of sister-city delegations had added a token international dimension to official Gedenktag proceedings. But the far more prominent involvement of British agents of articulation in the post-Cold War era lifted the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration to a new level of cosmopolitanisation. On 13 February in 1995 and again in 2000, British participation under the rubric of reconciliation was arguably the most significant development of the official commemorative process in Dresden. In order to fully understand and appreciate how and why reconciliation came to play such a pivotal role on the milestone fiftieth and fifty-fifth Gedenktage, it is first necessary to consider two earlier interconnected events, both of which featured a royal dimension and occurred in 1992. In May, HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother controversially unveiled a privatelycommissioned statue of Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris in the forecourt of the RAF church St Clement Danes in one of London’s main thoroughfares,

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Strand. Then, in October, HM Queen Elizabeth II, accompanied by her husband Philip, HRH Duke of Edinburgh, attended a special reconciliation service in Dresden’s Kreuzkirche during her first state visit to reunified Germany. Paradoxically, Bomber Command Association (BCA), the organisation responsible for the Harris statue, conceived it as not only a tribute to their wartime commander but all crew members who served under him, especially the more than 55,000 killed in action. Consequently, from the BCA’s perspective the monument had nothing whatever to do with memorialising the destruction of German cities, but rather it commemorated the RAF’s own sacrifices in the bombing war. According to Douglas Radcliffe MBE, the BCA’s secretary and last surviving member of the five-man steering committee formed to organise the Harris monument, members involved ‘never gave a second thought that the statue would be tied up with a single operation like Dresden.’1 Yet that is precisely what happened both leading up to, and on the day of, the unveiling. In turn, the BCA’s statue triggered a series of developments that culminated in reconciliation becoming a focal point of Dresden war memory and commemoration in the first decade following reunification. That an event in London, which ostensibly had nothing to do with memorialising Dresden’s destruction, inspired official British participation in commemorative events in Saxony’s capital in October 1992 and again on the 1995 and 2000 Gedenktage, highlights how the politics of the past often is a remarkably organic process. Furthermore, it demonstrates the complex interplay that can occur between manifestations of state-centred and social agency. Heeding the advice of Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper among others, this chapter largely resists the temptation to categorise commemorative events as examples of either the state-centred or the social agency form of articulation, because in many cases there was much overlap.2 This chapter begins with 1992 because of the impact that the Harris statue’s unveiling and the Queen’s state visit five months later had on Dresden’s next two milestone Gedenktage. In particular, the controversies in 1992 inadvertently inspired the founding of a British-based fundraising organisation, the Dresden Trust, committed to promoting German– British reconciliation. The Trust pursued its stated objective of fostering improved Anglo–German relations under the aegis of responding to the

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Ruf aus Dresden and making a substantial ongoing British contribution to the funding of the Frauenkirche rebuilding project.3 Through its endeavours the Dresden Trust was well received in Germany and proved a catalyst for the prominent British participation in high-profile official Gedenktag ceremonies in 1995 and 2000. The bilateral pursuit and promotion of Dresden-inspired British–German reconciliation between 1992 and 2000 included manifestations of state-centred and social agency, involving top politicians, church leaders, royalty, and ordinary citizens alike. Although reconciliation played a decisive role in setting Dresden’s commemorative agenda between reunification and the turn of the century, it was not the only theme articulated on the two milestone Gedenktage covered in this chapter. Furthermore, the strong British presence in official ceremonies had two important consequences. First, it helped to augment the cosmopolitanisation of Dresden war memories by increasing international awareness of, and interest in, both the fiftieth Gedenktag and the ongoing reconstruction of the Frauenkirche.4 Second, the extensive public engagement with the theme of reconciliation actually provided an ideal platform from which to advance the notion of Germans as war victims that had burgeoned following reunification. Put another way, the very idea that Dresden’s destruction necessitated British–German reconciliation implied that, at least in this one instance, Britain had inflicted upon German civilians an unreasonable degree of loss and suffering. Otherwise, no reason would have existed for singling out Dresden for such special reconciliatory treatment.

Hom ag e to a ha n g m a n , or m i su n de r s to od m e m or ia l i s at ion ?

In 1992, Dresden’s forty-seventh Gedenktag received scant attention in the national press.5 The distinct lack of interest was rather predictable given the firmly entrenched pattern, dating back to the 1950s, of ‘inbetween’ years attracting considerably less fanfare than the quinquennial ‘milestone’ years. There had been exceptions, of course, such as when the extraordinary new developments witnessed on 13 February 1982 attracted nationwide attention.6 A decade later, however, no such

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unexpected events materialised. The traditional commemorative events including the Heidefriedhof wreath-laying ceremony, ecumenical services and concerts in various churches, the tolling of the city’s bells, and silent remembrance at the Frauenkirche ruins all took place. But 13 February 1992 passed without noticeable incident, and so commemoration of the destruction of Dresden was not considered newsworthy outside of the city itself. It was a different story altogether when, two months later, war memories surrounding the Dresden firebombing were suddenly thrust into the international limelight. In May 1992, the BCA was set to unveil what it considered a modest yet fitting and long overdue tribute to Bomber Command’s tens of thousands of fallen servicemen and the Commander-in-Chief under whom they served. Although the monument was privately organised, its location in Strand was a most conspicuous public site. Moreover, that the monument took the form of a statue of the controversial wartime leader Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris sharply divided public opinion in Britain and roused widespread criticism in Germany. Consequently, the BCA’s broader motivations for commissioning such a memorial quickly became lost amid heated debate over the appropriateness or otherwise of honouring such a contentious figure almost a half-century after the war’s end. In other words, that it was an effigy of Harris dominated public discourse at the expense of the memory of the more than 55,000 crew members killed while serving in Bomber Command, whose fate remained largely overlooked. According to Radcliffe, however, no one directly involved with the project foresaw the ensuing controversy. Although the Harris statue is well-known and its controversial unveiling often is mentioned in passing, from a scholarly perspective surprisingly little has been written about it.7 Therefore, before delving any deeper into the reactions to, and reception of, the statue, including how memories of Dresden’s destruction became intertwined in the controversy, it is worth briefly outlining the context of its commissioning. For the BCA and its then 8,000-strong membership, the motivation for organising such a monument so long after the war stemmed from wanting to right several perceived wrongs, some of which dated from the immediate post-war period. As Chapter 1 discussed, Bomber

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Command’s erstwhile political champion Churchill privately moved to distance himself from the strategic area-bombing offensive against German population centres even before the war against Hitler had ended.8 The prime minister then publicly shunned Bomber Command’s efforts in his VE Day speech. Among other post-war affronts, Bomber Command, unlike other distinct military groups, did not have its own separate medal struck, while Harris alone among the British Empire’s high-ranking wartime commanders was not offered a peerage. It seems that, owing to the unpleasant nature of carpet-bombing population centres, in the immediate post-war period politicians from Churchill down wished to downplay Harris’ significant contribution to winning the war. As a corollary, Bomber Command’s former wartime crew members received little public gratitude. A noteworthy exception was the installation of a stained-glass window in Lincoln Cathedral dedicated to 5 Group on 8 May 1954.9 Nonetheless, by the late 1980s neither the government nor the RAF had commissioned any kind of permanent tribute to Bomber Command for public viewing in central London. The BCA had long felt slighted by this glaring oversight, particularly in light of the Command’s staggering casualty rate that saw more than 55,000 of some 127,000 wartime crew members killed in action. Although admittedly small in total numbers, proportionately speaking Bomber Command’s mortality rate of around 43 per cent dwarfed the losses sustained by Allied armies and navies (and all other RAF Commands, too).10 In fact, such a remarkably high casualty rate meant that, when it came to the bombing war, the crew members statistically faced far more likelihood of death in the air than did German civilians down below where the bombs fell. Earlier, on 30 October 1988, the Queen Mother, acting on behalf of the Fighter Command Association (FCA), unveiled a statue in the forecourt of St Clement Danes. The monument, dedicated to Fighter Command, took the form of a nine-foot bronze statue of its Commanderin-Chief during the Battle of Britain, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh (later Lord) Dowding. Like the BCA’s later monument, which was dedicated not only to Harris but also Bomber Command’s fallen crew members, the FCA’s statue was a tribute to Dowding and all wartime Fighter Command pilots. The plaque, however, relates specifically to Dowding

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and concludes with the sentence: ‘To him the people of Britain and of the free world owe largely the way of life and the liberties they enjoy today.’ For several reasons this statue’s unveiling passed without arousing controversy. First, despite his unceremonious wartime dismissal as C-inC Fighter Command, publicly Dowding has never been considered a contentious figure. Second, not even Germans could possibly begrudge any form of British memorialisation of Fighter Command’s crucial role in defending the homeland. In fact, St Clement Danes itself still bears pockmarks from Luftwaffe machine-gunfire as a vivid reminder of the very real threat that Dowding’s fighters had thwarted. Furthermore, due to its inspirational triumphs over adversity in the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, Fighter Command has enjoyed pre-eminence in the British national consciousness. The fighters’ legendary status was established in the House of Commons on 20 August 1940, when Churchill delivered one of his most famous wartime speeches. Retrospectively known as ‘The Few,’ this particular address was misinterpreted as a glowing endorsement only of Fighter Command’s efforts and not of Bomber Command’s endeavours, too. Discussing the air war, Churchill declared: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ Earlier that day, the prime minister had visited a Fighter Command base. So, when he immediately followed these words by saying ‘all hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day,’ it was widely misinterpreted that ‘the few’ exclusively referred to the fighters.11 According to Radcliffe, it has always irked former bombers that the phrase ‘the few’ became synonymous with Fighter Command, whereas it has been mostly forgotten that Churchill’s very next remark proclaimed: … but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets … aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss …and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power. On no part of the Royal Air Force does the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the daylight bombers.12

For a half-century, then, the bombers had felt as if they unjustly lived in the fighters’ shadow. So, when the FCA erected its monument the

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BCA looked on with mixed feelings. In no way did former Bomber Command service personnel resent the idea of honouring Dowding or commemorating Fighter Command’s wartime achievements. Nonetheless, Radcliffe says the old bomber boys felt it was ‘wrong, just plain wrong, to have old “Stuffy” Dowding out in front of the RAF church on his own like that.’ In effect, it was as if the lone monument now in St Clement Danes’ forecourt encapsulated how, for decades, Fighter Command had received all the public plaudits while Bomber Command remained neglected. The BCA believed Harris and his ‘old lags,’ as he had always endearingly referred to his crew members, deserved an equivalent tribute. Following the Dowding statue’s unveiling, some leading identities involved with the BCA (including the Association’s president, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Michael Beetham) were stirred into action. It was decided that the most fitting memorial would be a matching statue on the opposite side of the church’s forecourt. Whereas the FCA’s monument had met with no objections whatever, plans to erect an



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Fig. 5.1

Fighter Command statue of Lord Dowding with the RAF church St Clement Danes in the background.

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identical statue of Harris soon provoked criticism at home and abroad. Prominent among critics were a number of civic leaders of German cities badly damaged by bombing including Hildesheim, Pforzheim, Cologne, Hamburg, and Dresden.13 They argued there was no place in a new, peaceful, post-Cold War Europe for honouring such a controversial wartime figure, and any such move would only betray British insensitivity. All such claims were dismissed as absurd by ex-bombers such as Radcliffe directly involved in the project. The BCA steadfastly maintained its right to commission a privately-funded monument designed to give the ‘old lags’ equal representation and remembrance in front of the RAF church. Bomber Command’s more than 55,000 crew killed in action were especially deserving of a memorial, Radcliffe notes, because ‘they don’t have another one.’14 For someone like ex-navigator Radcliffe, who has devoted much of his life to preserving and promoting Bomber Command’s Second World War achievements and post-war legacy, immense pride was attached to the idea of the monument being in ‘Bert’ Harris’ likeness.15



Fig. 5.2

Scars of war: pockmarks from the Battle of Britain still evident on the exterior of St Clement Danes.

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Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the impetus for choosing such a design originally stemmed from the desire to complement the Dowding statue already erected. Put another way, the BCA’s decision to commission a statue of Harris as an all-encompassing tribute to Bomber Command’s wartime personnel was effectively predetermined by the FCA’s earlier and similar – yet wholly uncontested – actions built around Dowding. To oversee the project, the BCA formed a special steering committee comprised of its secretary Radcliffe and chairman Harry Burton along with Ken Batchelor, Bill Pilgram, and New Zealander Eddie Davidson. Despite their enthusiasm the project got off to a sluggish start when the RAF Benevolent Fund agreed to offer its support, but only after its ongoing commitments to another fundraising venture concluded. Consequently, although conceptualised in 1989, the project really only began in earnest in 1991. The initial delay caused some concern for the BCA steering committee, which was working to a self-determined deadline and, as Radcliffe noted years later, ‘it isn’t just a walk in the park putting up a new statue in the City of Westminster.’16 Although the FCA provided helpful information it compiled during the arduous application process for their earlier monument, there remained much for the BCA to achieve within a short timeframe.17 As its first press release made clear, however, the committee had a particular year in mind for the statue’s unveiling: Subject to the approval of the various authorities concerned, the Bomber Command Association proposes to erect a statue of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, in the forecourt of St Clement Danes in 1992. This will be the 50th Anniversary of Sir Arthur taking over Bomber Command and also the centenary of his birth. At the appropriate time, the Association will seek financial support from members, from those who served and are still serving in the Royal Air Force, and from members of the public. It is considered fitting that the statue should be erected alongside Lord Dowding. This would mean that we would be commemorating, outside our RAF Church, both the man who saved us from defeat in the Battle of Britain and the man who subsequently paved the way to victory.18

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Whereas the year for the unveiling was predetermined from the outset, only after all other details were finalised could a specific date be arranged. Following extensive consultations, the BCA settled on Sunday 31 May 1992 as the most convenient day for all the various organisations and individual functionaries officially involved in the ceremony. It was after this date was announced that the monument suddenly became engulfed in a controversy of international proportions, for the BCA steering committee unwittingly had selected the fiftieth anniversary of one of Harris’ earliest and most (in)famous carpet-bombings of a German city: the Thousand-Bomber-Raid on Cologne. An outraged Norbert Burger, Cologne’s Oberbürgermeister who had experienced Operation Millennium as a boy, led the charge in objecting to what was widely considered in his city to be a deeply insensitive and highly offensive decision to unveil such a statue on that of all days.19 Leading up to the unveiling, Burger personally wrote to the Queen Mother, who as the BCA’s longstanding royal patron had agreed to perform the ceremonial duties, pleading with her to reconsider.20 Part of Burger’s letter, published in The Guardian on 29 April, complained to the Queen Mother: ‘You will understand that I find it politically and morally tactless towards the



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Fig. 5.3

Plaque on the pedestal of the BCA’s memorial dedicated to Harris and his wartime crew members, especially the fallen.

A british D imension to D resden commemorative politics

victims that this of all dates has been chosen to unveil the memorial.’21 It was reported in both the British and German press that the Queen Mother’s polite but firm six-line response, issued from Clarence House by her private secretary Sir Martin Gilliat, reinforced her commitment to officiate at the ceremony.22 The terse reply further assured Burger ‘the date for the unveiling of the statue was not selected for any particular reason’ and the fact that it fell on the anniversary of the Cologne raid merely was an unfortunate coincidence.23 Radcliffe clarifies the situation by partially correcting Gilliat’s explanation: while it was true that it was purely coincidental that the unveiling was scheduled on the fiftieth anniversary of Operation Millennium, the date most certainly had not been chosen arbitrarily. Rather, it represented a juggling act to accommodate the needs of all parties involved, and 31 May simply presented itself as the most opportune date. ‘No matter what date we chose,’ remarks Radcliffe about the BCA’s supposed insensitivity, ‘somebody would have complained because we bombed every day or night … Anyhow, our choice was determined by events in 1992, not 1942.’24 With the Queen Mother’s participation confirmed, the unveiling could proceed as planned. To officially articulate their objections, the city councils of Cologne, Hamburg, and Dresden announced plans to conduct counter-acts of commemoration at precisely the same time as the Harris statue’s unveiling in London.25 Furthermore, Cologne’s Oberbürgermeister Burger formally requested that the inscription on the BCA memorial recognise not only the 55,000 Bomber Command airmen killed but ‘all victims of war and violence.’26 The BCA rejected the proposal out of hand, not in spite but simply because such a move was not in keeping with the privately-commissioned memorial’s original purpose.27 In response, Burger announced that the counter-remembrance service to be staged in Cologne’s centrally-located rebuilt church St Maria im Kapitol would honour all victims of the Second World War without prejudice, including the ‘brave men of the RAF who had died obeying orders.’28 Dresden’s Oberbürgermeister Herbert Wagner, meanwhile, organised for his city’s counter-ceremony to take place at its foremost site of bombing memory, the Frauenkirche ruins. Nonetheless, owing to the date (and Burger’s agitation including his exchange of letters with the Queen Mother being made public), it was Cologne and not Dresden that

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originally dominated discussion. Developments soon took a dramatic twist, however, and discourse concerning the apparent insensitivity of Cologne and 31 May receded into the background. On the eve of the unveiling, the destruction of Dresden emerged as the most prevalent case study used to criticise the erection of a statue ostensibly designed to pay homage to Harris. In Britain, this shift in focus from Cologne to Dresden was evident in several arenas of articulation: the press during the fortnight leading up to the unveiling; at a public peace rally conducted around St Clement Danes’ forecourt a week prior to the ceremony; and again on the day of the unveiling. An extensive commentary titled ‘The Firestorm rages on,’ published in The Guardian on 18 May, featured the bold-typed blurb: ‘Preparations to honour Arthur “Bomber” Harris and the dead of Bomber Command have flown into heavy flak over Dresden. John Ezard examines the cause of Britain’s most enduring embarrassment of the war.’29 Ezard’s piece encapsulated the polarity of the debate. On the one hand, quotations from the BCA’s secretary Radcliffe and chairman Burton defended the Association’s right to memorialise Harris and Bomber Command’s fallen heroes. Dresden’s Oberbürgermeister Wagner, on the other hand, was quoted as arguing that, although the ‘decision to attack this city for non-military purposes … was taken with a heavy heart,’ the Harris statue nonetheless was unacceptable because ‘nobody in history has ever erected a memorial to the hangman.’30 Furthermore, opposing viewpoints were baldly expressed by Hans-Henning Abendroth and conservative historian Andrew Roberts. ‘Had Harris been a German he would no doubt have been put on trial in Nuremberg,’ argued Abendroth in a letter to the editor of The Times, ‘but since he was British a statue is erected in his honour.’31 Roberts, lamenting what he viewed as Germany’s increasing forgetfulness of Nazi crimes, was quoted in the German press proposing that replicas of the Harris statue should be erected in every major German and Austrian city.32 In the week prior to the statue’s unveiling, two lengthy commentaries published in The Times on successive days also approached the HarrisDresden debate from contrasting perspectives. On 25 May, Daniel Johnson asked: ‘Can the Germans justly denounce a new memorial to “Bomber” Harris?’33 He adopted a hardline stance advocating Bomber

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Command’s ruthless policy of attacking German population centres and took the moral high ground when concluding: ‘The extreme hatred engendered by carpet bombing survives to this day in the inability of many Germans, even now, to make a clear moral distinction between Dresden and Auschwitz.’ The political commentator Anne McElvoy, meanwhile, had travelled to Dresden to gauge local reactions to the approaching unveiling.34 Her article in the ‘Life & Times’ supplement of the following day’s edition featured a 1946 photograph depicting the sea of debris still covering central Dresden a year after the attack. The accompanying headline set the tone for her highly critical commentary: ‘This is the real memorial.’35 McElvoy lamented the irreversible destruction of the Elbflorenz and, with a strong hint of consensus, observed: The Dresdeners with whom I spoke were not motivated in their opposition to the statue by a desire to get even for February 1945. They were simply disappointed and confused at the decision to pay public homage to a merchant of destruction.

McElvoy also mentioned unconfirmed reports that, in the wake of the Queen Mother’s participation in the Harris statue’s unveiling, Buckingham Palace was ‘apparently anxious to provide some gesture of reconciliation [and therefore had] decided to include Dresden on the itinerary of the Queen’s visit to Germany in October.’ Although the state visit in question had not been officially announced yet, McElvoy’s advanced information was further proof that, on the eve of the BCA monument’s unveiling, Dresden, as the paradigmatic German Opferstadt of the bombing war, had come to dominate the Harris controversy. A week prior to the unveiling, on Sunday 24 May Britain’s oldest secular pacifist organisation, the Peace Pledge Union, staged a demonstration march that ended at St Clement Danes’ forecourt. Canon Paul Oestreicher, retired Air Commodore Alastair Mackie, the pioneer of the 1950’s sit-down protests Pat Arrowsmith, and former chairman of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) Bruce Kent jointly led the peaceful march attended by approximately 150 protesters.36 Oestreicher, in his capacity as Director of International Ministry for Coventry Cathedral, announced the Church of England’s formal recommendation that no Anglican bishops attend the special service arranged for St Clement Danes immediately prior to the unveiling on the

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following Sunday.37 This recommendation was highly irregular because it meant the Queen Mother would not be accompanied by a bishop, which went against protocol for such occasions.38 Oestreicher was then foiled by police in his attempt to place a large replica of Picasso’s Dove of Peace on the spot awaiting the Harris statue. Seven smaller plywood doves were placed around the church’s forecourt instead, along with a placard and wreath of flowers. The placard’s message was universal: ‘To all the victims of mass civilian bombing during World War II.’ The wreath’s ribbon, however, carried a very specific dedication: ‘In memory of the people of Dresden 1945.’39 The trend of singling out Dresden for special mention in response to the Harris statue continued a week later – on the actual day of the unveiling. Late morning on Sunday 31 May 1992, Air Marshal of the RAF Sir Michael Beetham, officiating as BCA president, escorted the Association’s royal patron the Queen Mother into St Clement Danes to attend the special service conducted by the RAF’s Chaplain Brian Lucas. Besides ex-bombers, current RAF personnel, members of Harris’ extended family, and relatives of the 55,000 men killed in action, also in attendance were numerous official dignitaries and prominent public figures. These included, most notably, the recently retired ex-prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her husband, Sir Denis. In keeping with the Church of England’s recommendation, however, the Bishop of London the Rt. Revd. David Hope did not attend.40 Furthermore, no cabinet minister from the British Parliament’s House of Commons attended, which Woodrow Wyatt criticised as a predictable snub emblematic of the governmental degradation shown toward Harris dating back to Clement Attlee’s refusal to grant a peerage.41 Another notable absentee was Coventry’s Lord Mayor Don Ewart, who had been personally invited to represent the British city most synonymous with bombing. Ewart declined the offer, stating he had other, more pressing engagements to attend on the day.42 These included a special memorial service in Coventry Cathedral in remembrance of civilian victims of war, scheduled, like the Cologne, Hamburg, and Dresden counter-ceremonies, for the same time as the Harris statue’s unveiling.43 At 11.00am, Chaplain Lucas commenced his memorial service, which underscored the need to remember all victims of the Second World War.

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Fig. 5.4, 5.5

BCA royal patron the Queen Mother, escorted by Sir Michael Beetham, delivers her address prior to unveiling the Harris statue.

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Aware that he was engaging with what already was a highly-inflamed episode, Lucas avoided turning the service into a eulogising session for Harris. But he did weigh into the existing debate on two accounts. First, refuting widespread claims that erecting a statue of Harris could only emit negative messages and was not a welcome undertaking in the new Europe, Lucas endorsed the BCA’s project by focusing on the need to belatedly commemorate the crew members’ achievements and sacrifices. He proclaimed: ‘We salute them and we thank them and with them we remember their comrades who “bought it” and didn’t return. That memorial awaiting us is long overdue.’44 Second, Lucas took umbrage at the way the destruction of Dresden had been singled out in order to criticise the Harris statue. Dismissing all such claims as unreasonable, the Chaplain argued: ‘…to say a statue of Harris is a celebration of Dresden is just like saying a statue of Churchill is a celebration of the Dardenelles campaign.’45 The main problem with Lucas’ somewhat flawed claim, of course, is that Gallipoli was probably Churchill’s greatest military blunder, whereas Dresden was arguably Harris’ greatest success. By the conclusion of the 45-minute service, a large crowd consisting of supporters, protesters, and curious onlookers had gathered around the church’s forecourt in anticipation of the midday unveiling ceremony. An occasional Union Jack could be seen waving and one small handwritten placard read: ‘Gratitude to Bomber Harris and Bomber Command for their heroic part in the defeat of Nazi tyranny.’46 Signs and banners, however, were more prominent among the various enclaves of protesters. One such banner demanded attention due to both its sheer size and egregious similitude: ‘Harris=Eichmann.’ A considerable pocket of protesters milled around the front of Australia House directly across from the church’s forecourt. Two men in the group held up a large sign: ‘Protest on behalf of thousands [of] incinerated women and children.’47 Another banner read: ‘Honour 55,573 air crew, not Butcher Harris.’48 Attached to the barricades cordoning off the street were an assortment of screenprinted and handwritten placards. One carried the slogan first popularised during the Vietnam War by the international protest group Another Mother for Peace: ‘War is not healthy for children and other living things.’ Another read: ‘Remember the victims of war on all sides.’ And, simply but specifically, yet another reminded the crowd

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to ‘Remember Dresden.’ Two elderly women nearby held up their own handwritten signs. One personally attacked Harris: ‘Memorial to a mass murderer.’ The other, which was affixed to a wooden frame in the form of a crucifix, pleaded for absolution: ‘People of Dresden forgive us.’49 Reflecting the trend articulated in the press and at the Peace Pledge Union’s demonstration a week earlier plus Chaplain Lucas’ service inside the church, among demonstrators on the day Dresden once again was singled out as the exceptional case. Despite the volatile nature of the debate and ad hoc interspersion of supporters and demonstrators, the estimated crowd of 1,500 people outside the church had remained remarkably restrained while waiting for Lucas’ service to conclude and the unveiling ceremony to get underway.50 The atmosphere changed quickly, however, after Beetham and Lucas escorted the Queen Mother outside to the podium from where she was to deliver her address. Barely midway through her opening sentence, the Queen Mother was interrupted by a loud call of ‘murderer.’51 When she continued, the heckling intensified. Visibly shaken, the Queen Mother turned to Beetham asking whether she should carry on, and only upon receiving his assurances did she recompose herself and finish the short speech. Ezard pondered whether it was the first occasion in 72 years that the Queen Mother – an immensely popular member of the Royal Family – had been heckled in public.52 Typical of its yellow journalism, the following day The Sun ran a bold-typed blurb on its front page exclaiming: ‘Her lips quivered, her voice faltered, but at 91 Queen Mum defied the boo boys.’53 After her speech, the Queen Mother walked a few paces over to the monument. The nine-foot-tall bronze effigy of Harris was draped in a large Union Jack, while blue curtains concealed the four inscriptions on each side of the column below. As she pulled the cord to reveal the monument, a cacophony of cheers and jeers erupted.54 That shrilling chants of ‘shame’ and ‘murderer’ disrupted rousing renditions of ‘he’s a jolly good fellow’ encapsulated how the BCA’s private monument had so sharply divided public opinion. Ground-level noise was drowned out temporarily as City of Lincoln, the last operational Lancaster bomber, performed a solitary flyover to conclude the ceremony.55 The heckling during and after the Queen Mother’s address defied the Peace Pledge Union’s advanced plea for any demonstrators to maintain

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silence out of respect for the 55,000 dead bombers also being commemorated.56 Moreover, police were forced into action and arrested ten protesters after they attacked the statue with red paint.57 Robert Blackley, a 78-year-old Bomber Command veteran hit by some of the paint, was quoted in the Daily Telegraph as saying: ‘I think they are just being silly. If we hadn’t had people like Harris doing a job well, they would not have been able to be there demonstrating today.’58 The article further mentioned as an aside that Blackley had participated in the Dresden raid. His remarks echoed a widely-reported viewpoint exbombers expressed in regards to irony: the protesters only enjoyed the fundamental right to attend and freely voice their opposition to the BCA’s monument precisely because Bomber Command, under Harris, had helped win the war and thus secure Britain’s democratic traditions.59 Margaret Thatcher took this line of argument even further when explaining why she personally attended the unveiling: ‘I wanted to be here to pay tribute to all those who helped to win victory for freedom. Without that victory Germany would not have been free today.’60 Coming from Britain’s ‘Iron Lady’ at a time when she was openly critical of the Maastricht Treaty signed three months earlier, such a remark appears a thinly-veiled reminder that, however perverse it may have seemed, in one respect Germans owed Harris a debt of gratitude. Under his indefatigable leadership, Bomber Command had played a vital role in defeating Hitler and rescuing Europe – Germany included – from Nazi tyranny. Suggestions that Germans actually should be thankful to Harris and his bombers for freeing them from Nazism nonetheless would not have been welcomed in places like Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, or even Coventry, where official counter-ceremonies were being staged concurrently. Hamburg’s ceremony was a low-key affair, with wreaths laid at the city’s enormous park cemetery the Ohlsdorfer Friedhof.61 In the service at Coventry Cathedral, Provost John Petty said: ‘Reconciliation is the most important thing. Our thoughts are with Dresden and Cologne and they are very much in our prayers.’62 Sir Christopher Mallaby, the British Ambassador to Germany, attended Cologne’s ceremony as the esteemed guest of Oberbürgermeister Burger.63 Mallaby noted afterwards: ‘I think it correct that the British Ambassador be present. I am showing I want to

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participate and that relations between us are now happier.’64 While Mallaby was in Cologne, police were called in to protect the British Embassy in nearby Bonn. Violent clashes broke out when a group of around fifty masked left-wingers interrupted a demonstration staged by the neo-Nazi Free German Workers’ Party (Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, FAP).65 In Dresden, meanwhile, Oberbürgermeister Wagner officiated in a simple but poignant ceremony in which three large wreaths were laid at the Frauenkirche ruins.66 Generally speaking, and particularly in the case of Cologne, Sunday 31 May 1992 represented the climax to the Harris monument controversy. Once the statue was unveiled and the counter-ceremonies were concluded, there could be a sense of closure to the divisive affair. The opposite, however, proved the case for Dresden. The Harris statue’s unveiling ceremony ignited a series of developments that were to shape the cosmopolitanisation of Dresden war memory and commemoration throughout the following decade or more. And 31 May was not to be the only occasion in 1992 when British royalty became entangled in an international dispute over Harris, Dresden, and memorialisation of the bombing war.

Dr e sde n : t h e aw k wa r d bu t ob l ig atory i n t e r lu de

In July 1992, Buckingham Palace officially announced that, in October, Elizabeth II would embark on her first state visit to reunified Germany.67 Although the five-day visit commenced in the former West German capital Bonn, the itinerary had a distinctly eastern focus. Whereas two previous state visits to the BRD in 1965 and 1978 had included numerous West German cities, the 1992 trip represented the Queen’s first opportunity to set foot on former DDR soil.68 In the short time since the Wende, furthermore, Britain already had committed enormous financial support for redeveloping the former DDR territory.69 At a time when Europe’s 1992 currency crisis had led to widespread animosity between the two nations, the focus on visiting eastern cities served to highlight Britain’s considerable investment in, and support for, Germany’s

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reunification process.70 Accordingly, besides Bonn the cities slated for official functions or public appearances were Dresden, Leipzig, Potsdam, and the newly-reinstated capital Berlin. The purported reason for the state visit was to celebrate the reunification process as the culmination of (West) Germany’s successful postwar transformation into a leading model of democracy. Yet the decidedly eastern-centric schedule and certain key engagements in particular suggest that an ulterior motive underpinned the trip. Amid intensifying Anglo–German politico-economic tensions ignited by Maastricht and the currency crisis, and further fuelled by the Harris statue controversy, the Queen’s October visit could be seen as a concerted attempt to help foster better relations between the two nations. To achieve this end, a rich assortment of historical and contemporary themes that encapsulated the close links between Britain and Germany past and present were given precedence during the trip. These ranged from celebrating the strong family ties shared by British and German royalty over the centuries, through to promoting the entrepreneurialism shown by British Gas as the company got heavily involved in partnershipbuilding and service-providing in post-DDR Leipzig. It was, then, within this setting of emphasising the positive aspects of Anglo–German relations past and present that the Dresden leg of the trip presented a conundrum. McElvoy had postulated as early as May that, due to the Queen Mother’s contentious involvement in the unveiling of the BCA’s monument, Buckingham Palace had decided months prior to formally announcing the state visit that any itinerary must include Dresden as a sop. Indeed, after it had become so entwined in the Harris statue controversy, Saxony’s capital hardly could have been omitted from an official visit centring on former DDR cities without producing some kind of backlash in Germany. Such a move would have smacked of a British unwillingness – at the highest level – to confront even partially the nation’s leading role in the Dresden firebombing. Put another way, given Germany’s quasi-obsessive fascination with, and commitment to, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, if the Queen avoided Dresden the entire visit surely would have lost much of its credibility and worthiness as a bridge-building exercise.71 The question, then, was not whether to include Dresden, but rather how to include Dresden in what was an official visit designed to engender Anglo–German goodwill.

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Unlike the other cities chosen, Dresden seemed not to offer any usable themes for conveying positive Anglo–German relations.72 Probably the most symbolic moment of the carefully orchestrated trip was arranged for Berlin, where the Queen walked through the Brandenburg Gate before taking her first steps on former communist soil.73 Leipzig, as mentioned, represented an opportunity to promote Britain’s considerable economic commitment to helping reunified Germany redevelop its rundown former DDR territory.74 And Potsdam, by serving to highlight the two nations’ close historical ties, would offer an emotional conclusion to the trip. Prior to departing Germany, the Queen was scheduled to visit the former Prussian Residenzstadt to pay her respects at two graves: the tomb of her Great Aunt Victoria (‘Vicky’), the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and the wife of Imperial Germany’s 99-day Kaiser Friedrich III; and the sepulchre of Frederick the Great, whose maternal grandfather was Britain’s first Hanoverian monarch, King George I.75 In the case of Dresden, however, Britain’s reputation past and present was tainted by the city’s destruction and the controversy surrounding the Harris statue respectively. Looking to the future, then, represented the only viable choice for organisers to create a positive message to be articulated during the most awkward leg of the visit. It was determined that, given the circumstances, British–German reconciliation was the most usable theme. A special service of reconciliation was arranged for Dresden’s Kreuzkirche, which for two reasons was a fitting choice. For almost four decades, every Friday at midday the reconstructed church had held Prayers for Peace and Reconciliation (a tradition continued to this day).76 And, in 1985, the Kreuzkirche became Dresden’s second location – following the Diakonissenanstalt rebuilt with the help of British volunteers twenty years earlier – accepted into Coventry Cathedral’s Community of the Cross of Nails.77 The Kreuzkirche, then, already enjoyed a reputation as a home of faith-based reconciliation (including a British dimension) and now it was also set to become the fount of politically-oriented reconciliation. It was hoped the reconciliation service would inspire a flourishing Anglo–German friendship within the new European order, instead of world war foes simply tolerating each other in post-Cold War mutual cohabitation.

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On 16 July 1992, The Times published a brief announcement that the royal state visit to reunified Germany would include a reconciliatory act in Dresden: The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh will attend a service of reconciliation and remembrance in the city of Dresden, firebombed by the RAF in 1945, Buckingham Palace said yesterday. The announcement comes a month after the controversy over the unveiling by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother of a statue of Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, the former chief of Bomber Command. It is understood, however, that the plan was discussed long before the protests over the statue…Dr Ulrich Hoever, the Dresden city spokesman, said the Queen’s visit was a great honour and would help heal the wounds caused by the Harris statue.78

Speculation that plans were afoot ‘long before’ the controversy surrounding the Harris monument erupted casts some doubt over McElvoy’s earlier claims that Dresden would be visited specifically to placate critics of the Queen Mother’s official involvement. Quoting a representative from Dresden City Council as saying the visit would ‘help heal’ wounds caused by the BCA’s monument nonetheless reinforced the notion that the Queen’s appearance in Saxony’s capital inevitably would be linked to the recent Harris statue controversy and related question of British responsibility for the city’s destruction. Dresden, as the trip’s awkward but obligatory interlude, was planned as nothing more than a fleeting visit.79 On the penultimate day of the tour, the royal entourage would arrive at Dresden-Klotzsche airport north of the city and make its way via motorcade to the Kreuzkirche in prompt time for the late morning service. Immediately after the 45minute service, the motorcade would then make its way directly to Dresden’s nearby Hauptbahnhof, where Deutsche Bahn was to have a specially-commissioned train waiting to take the royal couple and their companions to the tour’s next destination, Leipzig. No sightseeing whatever was scheduled for Dresden as the most direct routes to and from the Kreuzkirche were mapped out. Unless counting the transitory moment between alighting on the Altmarkt and entering the church, not so much as even the briefest of public appearances was organised for anywhere in Saxony’s capital. Moreover, the Dresden stopover was to feature neither a public address nor any kind of opening for journalists

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to ask questions. Planners had ensured no discomfiting situation could materialise that would require the Queen to directly respond to the question of whether she should apologise on behalf of Britain for Dresden’s destruction.80 In sum, the Queen was scheduled to spend barely an hour in Dresden and, besides the reconciliation service, she would not participate in any other functions. Nonetheless, this briefest of all stopovers became the focal point of the British press’ advanced coverage of the looming tour. Alan Hamilton’s lengthy preview in The Times, for instance, ran with the headline: ‘Dousing the flames of Dresden.’81 Hamilton covered all aspects of the impending five-day trip, but devoted most attention to the Queen’s ‘poignant visit’ to Dresden for a reconciliation service at a time when the Harris statue’s unveiling still left many locals feeling ‘puzzlement, dismay and hurt.’ In Germany, both Die Zeit and the FAZ observed with bitter disappointment how the British yellow press (Journaille) had spent weeks prior to the visit drumming up fears and anti-German sentiment.82 Here, most galling for Joachim Fritz-Vannahme was that this ‘Kraut-bashing’ manipulated Dresden of all places (‘Ausgerechnet Dresden! ’).83 As for the prevailing question of whether the Queen would say sorry over Dresden, the Sunday Telegraph argued she should not even travel to the city because it would seem like a tacit apology and Kniefall in the spirit of Brandt’s remorseful actions at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial.84 Similarly, the Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Gerd Kröncke claimed a British colleague from the Telegraph confidently told him that, despite all the conjecture, the Queen was not visiting Dresden to apologise because quite some time still needed to pass before the moment would be right for Britain to say sorry. Instead, Kröncke’s colleague maintained, the Queen was travelling to Dresden simply to show that Britons, despite the alleged insensitivity of the Harris statue, did acknowledge Germans’ feelings.85 Once the agenda for the Dresden stopover was announced, the brevity of the visit and the absence of any proper public appearance or address made it clear no apology would be forthcoming. Attending a reconciliation service, then, was as far as the Queen and her advisors were willing to go on the Dresden issue. Whereas city and church officials were laying out the welcome mat, on the eve of the visit many ordinary Dresdeners were

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reported to be in a resentful mood, still smarting from the Harris statue controversy.86 Besides talk of a possible apology, locals also had debated whether the Queen should lay a wreath at the Frauenkirche ruins as a mark of respect to the raid’s unknown number of victims. Otherwise, some argued, the reconciliation service would be a hollow gesture. It is unclear at whose behest, but some middle ground was found and the motorcade’s initial route from airport to church was modified to incorporate a slight detour past the Frauenkirche ruins.87 This amendment, however, stopped short of including a break in the journey to accommodate the laying of a wreath at the ruinous site of memory. On the day of the visit, federal president Richard von Weizsäcker and minister-president of the new Free State of Saxony Kurt Biedenkopf greeted the royal couple at Dresden-Klotzsche airport. En route to the Kreuzkirche, the motorcade slowed down as it passed by the Frauenkirche ruins where an estimated 400 people had gathered.88 Rubble-clearing in preparation for the church’s reconstruction was not due to commence until January 1993, and so visibly the area remained essentially unchanged. Before the Queen’s motorcade passed by, an anti-Harris sign erected in front of the church since May was ‘bashfully’ turned facedown (‘Verschämt ist das Schild kurz vor der Vorbeifahrt der Queen flach auf die Mauer gelegt worden’).89 Peace campaigners who had gathered at the site held a vigil with lit candles as the motorcade drove past.90 Whatever Elizabeth II and Prince Philip thought of the sight went unreported, but judging by later developments it made a lasting impression (see below and Chapter 6). Curiously, along the short distance between the ruined Frauenkirche and the rebuilt Kreuzkirche a small pocket of ‘youths from Commonwealth countries boisterously cheered on their Queen and waved little Australian flags’ (‘Nur einige Jugendliche aus Commonwealth-Ländern jubelten ihrer Königin lauthals zu und schwangen australische Fähnchen’).91 Apparently other onlookers lining the route were decidedly indifferent in their reactions. A sizeable crowd gathered on Dresden’s windswept Altmarkt in anticipation of the motorcade’s arrival at the adjacent Kreuzkirche.92 Generally speaking, German and British press reports on what unfolded next differed markedly. The former tended to be sober accounts depicting both the good and bad elements of crowd behaviour, whereas the latter

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– with Fleet Street working on the dictum that sensationalism sells good copy – focused on the actions of a small but vociferous minority of radical right-wing protesters. The FAZ, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, and the Neues Deutschland all described the crowd as mainly consisting of ‘curious onlookers’ (‘Schaulustigen’) who acted in an affable and orderly manner, but also acknowledged that a small enclave of neo-Nazis threatened the generally calm atmosphere.93 Two protest banners – one referring to the recent Harris statue and the other concerned with the Dresden raid – were waved in front of the Kreuzkirche. The first demanded that the British ‘do away with the Harris disgrace’ (‘Weg mit dem HarrisSchande’) while the second, painted in blood red for dramatic effect, cited a Rodenbergeresque figure of 253,000 victims as individual eternal reminders of the ‘Anglo-American terror-bombing’ of Dresden (‘253.000 Opfer des anglo-amerikanischen Bombenterrors am 13./14. Februar 1945 mahnen ewig!’).94 According to German reports, these two signs were ‘barely detectable’ (‘kaum wahrnehmbar’) among the large crowd.95 In scenes reminiscent of the crowd reaction to the Harris statue’s unveiling in London, as the Queen and Prince Philip made their way to the church’s entrance they were met with a mixture of polite applause as well as boos and whistles. Eggs were thrown in their general direction, but fell wide of the mark. Saxony’s police spokesperson later announced that, despite the provocative actions of the minority group of right-wing extremists, overall the state authorities were ‘relieved and satisfied’ (‘erleichert und zufrieden’) with the day’s proceedings.96 Nonetheless, the following day some sensational headlines were splashed across the front pages of British newspapers. In typical fashion (particularly during Kelvin MacKenzie’s muckraking editorialship), the nation’s highest-selling tabloid The Sun published the most outrageous headline: ‘Nazi villains pelt Queen with eggs during peace mission.’97 The conservative tabloid the Daily Express, meanwhile, exclaimed: ‘This royal visit should have healed old wounds between Britain and Germany. Instead old scars have been ripped open again.’98 Even the upmarket stablemate of The Sun homed in on the actions of Dresden’s minority demonstrators with The Times running the headline: ‘Eggs hurled at Queen during Bomber Harris protest in Dresden.’99 Accompanying the headline were two highly suggestive photographs: a close-up of the

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Queen smiling and waving to the crowd; and a tight shot of the section of the crowd brandishing the two aforementioned protest banners. Although the banners’ German text was largely indecipherable and no translation was provided, the photograph clearly gave the impression of Dresdeners as a baying mob. The caption below read: ‘Demonstrators booed and threw eggs at the Queen when she arrived for a church service of reconciliation in Dresden, the German city heavily bombed in the second world war.’ The irony seems to have been lost on the paper’s editor that, by depicting the Dresden leg of the visit in such a sensational fashion to its enormous readership, The Times did at least as much damage in Britain to negate the Queen’s efforts to promote British–German reconciliation, as the handful of protesters themselves had achieved in Dresden. Furthermore, the provocative theme continued inside the paper courtesy of Hamilton’s report under the headline: ‘Jeers and cheers greet royal peacemaker in Germany.’100 The ‘jeers’ related to the Dresden stopover whereas the ‘cheers’ referred to the reception later in the day in nearby Leipzig. To accentuate this angle even further, two photographs accompanied Hamilton’s report. Underneath a small portrait of Harris the caption understatedly remarked that he ‘still inflames passions in Dresden.’101 Juxtaposed was a much larger photograph of the Queen being greeted enthusiastically by employees of British Gas in Leipzig. Hamilton also mentioned that Elizabeth II later opened the city’s public exhibition documenting the involvement of British companies in redeveloping Saxony’s post-reunification economy. Some German journalists observed with disdain the trend among the British press of distorting the Dresden stopover to sensationalise reports on the Queen’s state visit. Bernard Heimrich in the FAZ complained that the actions of a few right-wing extremists had stolen all the headlines in Britain.102 His article, furthermore, pointed out some of the more outlandish claims made in the British media, including that 50 neo-Nazis had been taken into preventative detention, were confirmed to be false by Dresden police.103 Having said this, however, the German press was not entirely immune to misinformed remarks, either. Discussing the link between the Harris statue and the protests occurring in Dresden, the Neues Deutschland wrongly claimed the Queen herself had unveiled the statue in May.104 In London,

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meanwhile, the BCA’s memorial was vandalised again with the word ‘shame’ daubed in red paint on the plinth while the bronze statue of Harris was covered in paint.105 Numerous dignitaries counted among the 3,000-strong crowd inside the Kreuzkirche, but not all high-level officials who had planned on attending were made welcome. Chief of Staff of the Bundesluftwaffe General Jörg Kuebart and the Commander of the RAF in Germany Air Marshal Sir Andrew Wilson had agreed to attend the service together. When Protestant Bishop of Saxony Johannes Hempel caught wind of their intentions, however, he announced his opposition to any uniformed air force members attending the special service. Kuebart and Wilson reluctantly respected his wishes.106 Officiating in his parish church, Hempel was one of three bishops, along with the Catholic Bishop of Dresden-Meissen Joachim Reinelt and Coventry’s Simon BarringtonWard, charged with jointly conducting the reconciliation service. At 11.15am, the royal couple entered the Kreuzkirche to the sound of the Dresden and Coventry choirs performing in unison.107 They were flanked by federal president Weizsäcker on one side and Saxony’s minister-president Biedenkopf and his wife Ingrid Kuhbier (the daughter of influential industrialist Fritz Ries) on the other. The church’s Cross of Nails, crafted out of roofing spikes from Coventry’s destroyed cathedral and presented when the Kreuzkirche was welcomed into the Community of the Cross of Nails in 1985, was on display.108 In the spirit of mutual understanding, bishops Hempel and Reinelt recited in English the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation whereas BarringtonWard delivered a sermon in German.109 Afterwards, Prince Philip, who briefly attended school in Germany and whose family enjoyed close ties with German royalty prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, read verses 3 to 7 of the Beatitudes from St Matthew ‘in slightly rusty but nonetheless melodious German’ (‘in leicht angerostetem, gleichwohl wohlklingendem Deutsch’).110 Reciprocating the courteousness, Biedenkopf then read verses 8 to 12 in English.111 The Queen, dressed in dark green, took no active part in the 45-minute service.112 She exited the Kreuzkirche to applause, and outside was handed a bouquet of yellow roses – the colour symbolising friendship – from a woman old enough to perhaps be a survivor of the raid.113

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Afterwards she was, according to Hamilton, ‘whisked from the church straight to the railway station.’114 Markus Lesch of Die Welt observed, somewhat acerbically, that when the motorcade departed from the Kreuzkirche it headed along St Petersburger Strasse, which had not existed prior to the bombing raid as rows of houses had been located there in its stead.115 Lesch refrained from adding that the destination – Dresden’s Hauptbahnhof – was home to some of the most appalling scenes on the night Bomber Command created the firestorm, with an unknown number of refugees located in and around the station killed in gruesome circumstances. Dresden’s Oberbürgermeister Wagner welcomed the Queen’s visit as ‘a clear gesture of intent for reconciliation’ (‘eine deutliche Geste des Versöhnungswillens’).116 Similarly, Biedenkopf summarised the Kreuzkirche service as a ‘gesture of reconciliation of high symbolic value’ (‘Versöhnungs-Geste von hohem Symbolwert’).117 The official view, however, did not necessarily convey the sentiments of all those present. Some locals with whom Lesch spoke afterwards expressed reserved appreciation of Elizabeth II’s gesture, including one elderly woman who lamented that ‘a few words’ from the Queen were missing (‘Mir fehlten von der Königin ein paar Worte’).118 Seventy-one-year-old Dresden pensioner Rudolf Bach conceded the royal couple’s appearance was ‘a step’ (‘ein Schritt’) in the right direction, but nonetheless felt that the idea of ‘reconciliation and the Harris monument just did not fit together’ (‘Versöhnung und Harris-Denkmal passen nicht zusammen’).119 In a witty play-on-words, Bach complained that the motorcade’s failure to stop at the Frauenkirche ruins meant the Queen’s visit to Dresden represented not reconciliation (‘Versöhnung’) but instead ridicule (‘Verhöhnung’).120 Once Dresden, the briefest but also the ‘most awkward’ (‘heikelste’) and perhaps also the ‘most moving’ (‘bewegendste’) leg of the trip, was out of the way, two final stopovers – Leipzig and Potsdam – made for a more pleasant conclusion to the visit.121 Unlike in Dresden, after alighting in Leipzig the royal couple wandered the streets freely and took in some of the city’s landmarks including, most notably, the Nikolaikirche – celebrated as the cradle of the DDR’s peaceful revolution.122 There the Queen mingled with several locals closely connected to the church who had been agents

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central to the underground peace movement. According to a report in Die Welt, she explained to Leipzig’s Oberbürgermeister Hinrich Lehmann-Grube that Britons thought of Leipzig with ‘enthusiasm and admiration’ (‘Begeisterung und Bewunderung’) because its famed Monday demonstrations were events that ‘changed the face of Europe’ (‘… haben das Gesicht Europas verändert’).123 The aforementioned meeting and greeting of local employees of British Gas and the opening of a special exhibition rounded out events in Leipzig. At the time of the Queen’s state visit in 1992, for Britain the Saxon sister cities Dresden and Leipzig effectively represented polar opposites. This explains why the former was a brief stop carefully orchestrated to minimise openings for a hostile response, whereas the latter was a half-day open tour of the city featuring close contact with locals. Concluding the state visit the following day, the royal couple laid wreaths at a British military cemetery in Berlin-Charlottenburg before travelling to nearby Potsdam where they visited the tombs of Elizabeth II’s Great Aunt ‘Vicky’ and Frederick the Great, both located within the surrounds of Sanssouci Palace.124 Following her death in 1901 (coincidentally the same year her mother, Queen Victoria, died), the German empress ‘Vicky’ was buried in the royal Prussian mausoleum inside Potsdam’s Friedenskirche situated within Sanssouci’s gardens.125 The Queen laid a bouquet of yellow roses – said to be ‘Vicky’s’ favourite colour – and remarked that it was a moving experience to lay a wreath of flowers at the grave of her Great Aunt.126 Accompanied by Brandenburg’s ministerpresident Manfred Stolpe, the royal couple then toured the splendid parks surrounding Sanssouci Palace in a horse-drawn buggy before paying their respects at the newly-determined final resting place of Frederick the Great. It was a moment rich in symbolism, for as the German press pointed out ‘Old Fritz’s’ mother Sophie-Dorothea of Hanover was King George II’s sister and his maternal grandfather King George I was the first Hanoverian king of Great Britain.127 Coupled with the ‘Vicky’ connection, visiting Frederick the Great’s grave helped tap into the close Anglo-PrussianGerman historical royal family ties that were heavily promoted in the German press during the trip. Visiting ‘Old Fritz’s’ new burial place also complemented the official theme of the state visit, namely the celebration of Germany’s reunification. In his will, Frederick the Great had requested

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he be buried in the grounds of his beloved Sanssouci, but his nephew and successor Friedrich Wilhelm III had not adhered to his wishes and instead buried him in the church of the Potsdam garrison. Frederick the Great’s body was exhumed during the Second World War and stored for safekeeping (the garrison being an obvious target of Western Allied bombers). During the Cold War, the BRD acted as custodian of the Prussian king’s remains. It was not until the DDR’s demise paved the way to reunification that ‘Old Fritz’ finally was buried on 17 August 1991 – the 205th anniversary of his death – in the surrounds of Sanssouci as he had wished. That the British monarch chose, 14 months later, to end her first state visit to reunified Germany by laying a wreath at the Prussian king’s grave was widely received in the German press as a respectful and fitting conclusion to the five-day trip.128 One commentary in The Times surely was too whiggish in its interpretation of the state visit’s impact. Its headline not only proclaimed that ‘we are all Berliners now,’ but, moreover, triumphantly declared the Queen’s stopover in Dresden had closed ‘a tired old chapter.’129 Nothing, however, could have been further from the truth. Combined with the earlier Harris statue controversy, the Kreuzkirche reconciliation service – or, more precisely, how the Dresden leg of the Queen’s state visit was distorted in British press reports – was about to inspire an exciting new chapter in the cosmopolitanisation of Dresden commemorative politics.

B r i ta i n r e sp on d s to t h e Ru f : t h e Dr e sde n T ru st

Most letters to the editors published in British newspapers engaging the Harris statue controversy simply argued for or against its appropriateness. For instance, a clerk from Cornhill parish who previously had walked past St Clement Danes every Sunday morning on the way to his own church bluntly exclaimed: ‘As from this coming Sunday I shall change my route to avoid passing that statue.’130 Conversely, a Dutchman who experienced the Luftwaffe attack on Rotterdam in May 1940 exclaimed:

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I am convinced that the bombing of Dresden shortened the war and therefore saved more lives than were lost in that bombardment. Every Dutchman who lived through the years of German occupation will wholeheartedly support a monument to honour the chief of Bomber Command and by him his brave men who boosted the morale of occupied countries and who risked and lost their lives in the battle of freedom.131

Belinda Heathcote’s letter to The Times published on 1 June 1992, however, adopted a more nuanced approach.132 She accepted that the opposing viewpoints were hopelessly irreconcilable for anyone personally affected by the subject, but argued neutral observers could and should be able to accept both perspectives as valid. In other words, Heathcote believed it was possible to appreciate how and why the statue was considered an insult in ‘cities which suffered such as Dresden did,’ while simultaneously realising why the BCA wished to commemorate ‘the young men who were sent on the raids in the belief that they were beating evil and did not return.’ Observing that Dresden’s destruction was the iconic bombing event now being most often cited in criticism of the Harris statue, Heathcote asked: Dresden has decided that the famous Frauenkirche will be rebuilt… Could not those who feel that, however sincere Harris and his young men were, Dresden was a horror which should never have happened, start a British fund to contribute to the rebuilding?

Heathcote’s proposal – effectively a plea for the establishment of some kind of organised British response to the Ruf aus Dresden – did not produce any immediate results. In fact, by the time the Queen visited Saxony’s capital in October 1992, almost three years had passed since the Bürgerinitiative had first called out for international assistance on the 1990 Gedenktag and yet still no organised effort to help fund the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche had materialised in Britain. There is no way of telling, but if the controversy surrounding Britain and the destruction of Dresden in May and October 1992 had been left to run its course, then like most public debates it probably would have petered out reasonably quickly. But a ‘small caucus of about a half-dozen’ Britons (initially including Heathcote, though ultimately she would not stay the course) was stirred into action by the Harris statue controversy and the Queen’s visit to Dresden.133 According to the chief instigator Alan

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Russell OBE, they were determined to become somehow involved in the cultivation of improved Anglo–German relations. The group’s conduct between late 1992 and early 1993 led to active British involvement becoming a cornerstone of the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration in the post-reunification period. Although individuals making up the group originally were disturbed by the Harris statue controversy in May, Russell recalls that it was not until after the Queen’s October visit to Dresden that they were sufficiently moved to band together and react. With no little irony, it was after British media reports had portrayed Dresdeners as an insolent and hostile horde of egg-throwers that the group, during an inaugural meeting held in London, decided it could best make a contribution to British–German reconciliation through the prism of Dresden. Russell earlier had felt morally compelled to make a personal protest against the Harris monument. When interviewed 14 years later, he vividly recalled attending the unveiling ceremony with a handmade placard condemning the Dresden bombing as ‘an illegitimate act of war.’ Having said this, however, Russell stresses that his actions were not directed against Harris personally but rather ‘the whole inhumane policy of area-bombing practised during the war.’ In a similar view to the one articulated by Heathcote, Russell could see the value in a monument honouring the memory of 55,000 dead crew members, but he questioned the tact shown by deciding on a statue of Harris, a move bound to upset and insult Germans. Furthermore, for Russell, who had just recently retired from serving the European Commission in Brussels, 1992 seemed a rather inopportune time to be unveiling such a controversial statue given that both the Maastricht Treaty and the European currency crisis already were straining Anglo–German relations. In the weeks following the unveiling, Russell established contact with a few people sympathetic to the outlook expressed through his Dresden-inspired protest placard. One of them was Coventry’s Canon Paul Oestreicher, who had co-led the Peace Pledge Union’s earlier demonstration at St Clement Danes’ forecourt. Disturbed by media reports depicting the Queen’s reconciliatory gesture in Dresden as anything but successful – which only seemed to compound existing animosities between the two nations – Russell, Oestreicher, and a handful of likeminded companions met to explore possible avenues through

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which they could further promote reconciliation. ‘Coincidentally it was at this time,’ recalls Russell, ‘the Ruf aus Dresden, which had not initially received the publicity it deserved, got a second hearing so to speak because of the Queen’s visit.’ Consequently, during its ‘very exploratory’ meeting in London, the group reached unanimous agreement that a most fitting way to pursue its objective of fostering better Anglo–German relations would be to answer the Ruf and actively support the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche. Russell recalls, however, initially ‘we had no idea what it might entail, but we knew simply that as representatives of a country which destroyed the Frauenkirche and the city we had a moral duty to try to help with their rebuilding.’ In summary, Anglo–German relations were at a low-point in 1992, a trend both shaped and reflected by the manner in which memories of the destruction of Dresden eclipsed public discourse concerning the Harris statue and the Queen’s first state visit to reunified Germany. Moved to react, a handful of concerned Britons decided Dresden’s project to rebuild its Frauenkirche offered an ideal platform from which to make a positive response. To realise their objective of promoting reconciliation by contributing to the Frauenkirche project, the British group founded a national fundraising organisation – fittingly called the Dresden Trust. The Dresden Trust was established in August 1993, but only after satisfying all the Charity Commissioner’s requirements could its national appeal be launched on 1 January 1994. Soon thereafter, to help the Trust get off the ground the Foreign Office invited Dresden’s Oberbürgermeister Wagner to London as its special guest. At a luncheon held at the stylish Goring Hotel, Russell, as co-founder and chairman of the Trust, met with Wagner and his press secretary along with Foreign Office officials to discuss inter alia how the new British organisation might contribute to the Frauenkirche rebuilding project. Though fundraising was an important issue in its own right, all parties recognised that the goodwill generated from a strong British contribution to the project would be invaluable in publicising and promoting German–British reconciliation.134 Almost four years had passed since the Ruf aus Dresden was made on the forty-fifth Gedenktag, and so far it had yielded little international response. In Dresden itself, however, a charitable body (Gesellschaft zur

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Förderung des Wiederaufbaus der Dresdner Frauenkirche e.V.) had been established to coordinate the fundraising needed for the rebuilding project. Directed by building engineer Dr Hans-Joachim Jäger and with the support of most of the original signatories of the 1990 Ruf, it already had made a vigorous start in close cooperation with the Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden, the foundation established to develop the site and oversee the rebuilding project.135 When in London, Oberbürgermeister Wagner therefore extended an invitation to the fledgling Dresden Trust to travel to his city and meet with representatives of the Gesellschaft and the Stiftung to determine how best the British organisation could and should contribute. The Trust readily accepted and Russell and Oestreicher led a small party to Dresden in the autumn of 1994. They inspected the Frauenkirche (re)construction site, where the first stones had been laid a few months earlier. That evening, two of the signatories of the Ruf aus Dresden, Jäger and art historian Jürgen Paul, hosted their British guests at a dinner in the city’s aptly named Hotel Coventry. Jäger and Paul ‘suggested in a very informal way’ that the orb and cross would be a most suitable part of the project to assign to the Trust. It would, they proposed, provide Britain with an opportunity to contribute on a number of levels – spiritually, financially, and practically. Russell describes how the Trust believed the symbolism would prove inspirational: We thought this was a wonderful idea because we couldn’t think of any more meaningful part of the church than the orb and cross and we seized on it immediately. We always thought it was a very generous thing for us to be offered. I think – in fact, I know from later conversations – some people in Dresden weren’t too pleased that this was offered to the British, because Saxony has such a fine tradition of skilled craft work and they really felt that this was something which they could and should make themselves. But there already was wind in the sails so to speak and … during the following year Bundespräsident Herzog confirmed that we were to do this. We were delighted and henceforth made it the centrepiece of our appeal.

Once entrusted with the orb and cross, the Dresden Trust was equipped with a clearly defined function. It meant the trustees had something tangible upon which to base their campaign when appealing to the

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people of the United Kingdom to support Anglo–German reconciliation through participation in a rebuilding project located on Saxon soil. In the following years, having the orb and cross as a focal point did, indeed, help the Trust to attract many financial sponsors and donors and to recruit numerous distinguished patrons and trustees. Separately and cooperatively, the Dresden Trust’s sponsors, donors, patrons, and trustees came to represent a ‘complete cross-section of British life and all shades of party-political opinion.’ Amongst the high-profile individuals who agreed to become patrons were: the Rt. Revd. Dr Simon Barrington-Ward, the Bishop of Coventry; Lord Bernbaum, the Vice Chancellor of London’s South Bank University; Baroness Lynda Chalker and Lords Radice and Steel, all experienced members of the House of Lords representing various parties; Lord Walker, the vice chairman of Dresdner Kleinwort (the investment arm of Dresdner Bank); Lord Watson of Richmond, the one-time president of both the Liberal Party and the British German Association; and, finally, the German-born Lord Dahrendorf, whose career encompassed the West German Bundestag, the European Commission, the London School of Economics, St Anthony’s College Oxford, and, following British citizenship and the granting of a peerage, membership of the British House of Lords. Russell describes Dahrendorf as the ‘archetypal German-Briton of the later twentieth century, who, as somebody standing across the frontiers of the two countries and loving them both, personified the very spirit of the Dresden Trust.’ Similarly, trustees included a variety of distinguished individuals with impressive track records linking them to Germany: Timothy Everard, the United Kingdom’s long-serving and last ambassador in East Berlin; Sir Nigel Broomfield, from 1993 to 1997 the ambassador to reunified Germany; and the entrepreneurial businessman John Beale. ‘Most importantly of all,’ notes Russell, ‘the Trust’s donors ranged from Her Majesty the Queen to a London taxi driver and children in primary schools.’ A number of patrons, trustees, and even ordinary donors travelled to Dresden when the Trust was invited to take part in the major ceremonial events staged on the fiftieth and fifty-fifth Gedenktage in 1995 and 2000 respectively.136 Some played passive roles, whereas others, such as Bishop Barrington-Ward, occupied places of prominence in the politics of commemoration. On both occasions, the Trust’s chief representative was

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its royal patron, Prince Edward, HRH the Duke of Kent. A senior member of the royal family, the Duke already was royal patron of the British German Association before becoming involved with the Trust. His first-hand knowledge of Germany acquired earlier during military service in the BRD and his command of the language won him high regard and much respect in Dresden. According to Russell, the Duke of Kent’s ‘contribution to reconciliation, which became a dominant theme in post-reunification Dresden, can scarcely be overstated.’ Russell furthers comments: In 1995, virtually all Dresdeners showed contrition and regret for the war that had issued from their country and which had finally destroyed their city. Some, however, voiced their sorrow and, occasionally, their bitterness about the suffering Dresdeners had endured. The Duke bridged both sets of feelings with skill and understanding.

T h e 1 9 9 5 G e de n k tag a n d a si g na l of i n t e n t

Amid the procession of war-related fiftieth anniversaries commemorated in 1995, public discourse in the Berlin Republic grappled with striking an acceptable balance between German responsibility for the war and German wartime loss and suffering. As the series of gegen das Vergessen announcements and the Brauner family’s response published in the FAZ (discussed in the introduction) make clear, Germans as victims and Germans as victimisers were not themes easily accommodated together.137 In Dresden on the milestone fiftieth Gedenktag, the issue was confronted head-on by federal president Roman Herzog. Not only did he openly recognise German war guilt, express gratitude for British collaboration in the Frauenkirche rebuilding project, and welcome the emergence of reconciliation, but also he expressed a desire to receive belated international recognition for the suffering Germans themselves had endured. Although not necessarily by design, the emphasis placed on reconciliation on this high-profile occasion actually had the effect of helping to fuel the wider debate about Germans as victims. This was because a corollary of the clamour regarding the need to reconcile over Dresden was the implicit notion that Germans had, indeed, suffered some kind of exceptional

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wrongdoing at the hands of the Western Allies. Two contrasting – even if not quite competing – themes thus prevailed on Dresden’s fiftieth Gedenktag. On the one hand, there was a strong desire among former foes to overcome the past by moving forward together peacefully. On the other hand, there was a push from within the reunified nation – led on this occasion by none other than federal president Herzog – to secure belated acknowledgment from the international community that during the war Germans had been victims as well as perpetrators. Previous reconciliatory acts carried out in Dresden – from young Britons helping to rebuild the Diakonissenkrankenhaus in 1965 to the Queen’s attendance of the special service in the Kreuzkirche in 1992 – had taken place quite separately from the annual rites of remembrance conducted each Gedenktag. Reconciliation effectively was kept discrete from mourning and commemoration. This trend was broken in February 1995, when reconciliation was a major theme of the official two-day commemorative process marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Dresden firebombing. It should not be overlooked that, along with the Dresden Trust, delegations were present from fledgling French and American organisations also committed to raising funds to help reconstruct the Frauenkirche.138 Nonetheless, the overall British presence in Saxony’s capital in mid-February 1995 was far stronger and, in particular, the Dresden Trust’s participation in official events unquestionably was much greater. The British dimension certainly attracted far more extensive coverage in the German press, largely on account of the concerted effort to articulate British–German reconciliation as a touchstone of Dresden commemorative politics on the occasion of the fiftieth Gedenktag. All major commemorative events staged in Dresden on 12–13 February 1995 featured some kind of active British participation under the rubric of reconciliation. Official proceedings commenced in the evening of 12 February with an ecumenical service in the Catholic Hofkirche.139 Saxony’s minister-president Biedenkopf once again was in attendance, on this occasion accompanied by Chancellor Kohl, who, since his speech in front of the Frauenkirche ruins in December 1989, had developed a special affinity for Dresden.140 Coventry’s Bishop Barrington-Ward was one of four religious leaders who conducted the

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service along with the Catholic Bishop of Dresden-Meissen Joachim Reinelt, the Protestant Bishop of Saxony Volker Kreß, and the Patriarch of St Petersburg Simon von Tichvin.141 Barrington-Ward again preached eloquently in German on the theme of reconciliation, just as he had done three years earlier at the Kreuzkirche service attended by the Queen. Bishop Reinelt delivered the main sermon. He first called for remembrance of the 35,000 victims of the Dresden raid before proclaiming that the city’s Gedenktag was an occasion to remember all civilian victims and all cities and villages destroyed in the Second World War.142 Here Reinelt singled out Coventry for special mention and reminded his audience the Luftwaffe had bombed Britain first. The four religious leaders then sought jointly to stress the importance of remembering contemporary victims suffering from violence, terror, and war, particularly in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. After the service, young people walked along the nave carrying large crosses bearing the names of cities destroyed throughout Europe in the Second World War, followed by survivors of the Dresden raid who, upon reaching the altar, laid a wreath as a ‘symbol of peace’ (‘Zeichen des Friedens’) dedicated to all civilian victims of war.143 Despite its emphasis placed on themes such as peace, understanding, and forgiveness, the ecumenical service did not pass without incident. A group of around two dozen left-wing dissenters had gathered in front of the Hofkirche to demonstrate against war and violence past and present. One of their banners read: ‘We mourn Dresden 1945 – Grozny 1995’ (‘Wir trauern Dresden 1945 – Grosny 1995’).144 Security was forced into action when the group confronted guests entering the church and chanted slogans such as: ‘German perpetrators are not victims’ (‘Deutsche Täter sind keine Opfer’); and the anti-nationalist ‘Never again Germany’ (‘nie wieder Deutschland’) in an obvious play-on-words with Germany’s ubiquitous pacifist phrase ‘never again war’ (‘nie wieder Krieg’). Inside the Hofkirche, meanwhile, more leftists attempted to unfurl a banner in front of the altar and distribute leaflets criticising the idea of commemorating German wartime loss and suffering. These protesters caused further disturbances by chanting similar slogans as they were promptly escorted out of the church.145 It was no coincidence only left-wing activists were noticeable. In advance, the Dresden City Council had announced a prohibition on

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all political demonstrations arranged by extreme organisations during the city’s official two-day commemorative period.146 Günter Deckert, chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD), defiantly declared his intention to appear in Dresden anyhow. Prior to embarking on his journey, however, Deckert was apprehended by police on Saturday 10 February and taken into preventative custody where he was to remain until after the conclusion of events late in the evening of Monday 13 February.147 In Dresden itself, city authorities had measures in place in case NPD members ignored the prohibition and, despite their leader’s temporary incarceration, still attempted to stage a neo-Nazi demonstration.148 The few leftist protesters present in Dresden apparently were not affiliated with any political organisation and, due to their quasi-anarchic approach to hijacking events, effectively slipped through the security network in place to prevent mass demonstrations. Dissenters not taken into custody after the Hofkirche episode reappeared at other commemorative events the following day. Furthermore, it seems likely these offenders were responsible for vandalism perpetrated out at the Heidefriedhof three days prior to the annual Gedenktag wreath-laying ceremony. Red paint was used to deface the cemetery’s large sandstone Denkmal dedicated to Dresden’s unknown number of bombing victims. Smeared over Max Zimmering’s inscription were the names Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka followed by what would become a familiar message of dissent during the coming days: ‘Deutsche Täter sind keine Opfer!’149 The graffiti was cleaned off thoroughly before the Gedenktag, when over 2,000 people travelled out to the Heidefriedhof to attend the half-hour morning ceremony.150 In keeping with tradition, Dresden’s Oberbürgermeister Wagner and minister-president Biedenkopf headed the procession of wreath-layers.151 They were followed by the parliamentary leader of the newly-formed Free State of Saxony, Erich Iltgen. On behalf of the numerous politicians representing the rest of reunified Germany, Hamburg’s Erster Bürgermeister Henning Voscherau (who had delivered the main address at the Heidefriedhof ceremony five years earlier) and Brandenburg’s minister-president Stolpe (who had escorted the Queen around Sanssouci Palace in October 1992) concurrently laid wreaths. Saxony’s chairman of the SPD

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Karl-Heinz Kunckel and former national party president Hans-Jochen Vogel jointly laid an SPD wreath, and delegates from other political parties did likewise. With Dresden, Saxony, and Germany all having been represented, it was time for international dignitaries to pay their respects. Leading the way were the Duke of Kent as representative of the British royal family and Sir Nigel Broomfield and Charles Redman, the ambassadors from Britain and the United States respectively, who simultaneously laid wreaths.152 Emissaries from eight of Dresden’s twelve war-damaged sister-cities, including Coventry’s Mayor Nick Nolan and Anatolij Sobtschak from St Petersburg, followed suit.153 A significant break in tradition then occurred, which was all the more remarkable given it transpired less than three years after General Kuebart and Air Marshal Wilson had been politely but firmly told uniformed air force officers were not welcome at the Kreuzkirche reconciliation service. Dressed in their full military uniforms, the Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr Klaus Naumann, the US Army Chief of General Staff John Shalikashvili, and the British Army’s highest-ranking officer based in Germany Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge approached the base of the Denkmal together to lay a single wreath.154 Thereafter they took a step back and, standing side-by-side, saluted. It was an extraordinary scene not simply because of the significance of the date and occasion. In Dresden, a city that prides itself as being among the most pacifist in Europe after having learned the hardest way about the futility of war, all forms of overt military presence including uniformed personnel are widely frowned upon.155 Accordingly, the sight of Naumann, Shalikashvili, and Inge standing in unison to collectively pay their respects to the victims of the Dresden raid was one of the most poignant moments of the entire two-day commemorative process. (Later the three military leaders also lit candles together when they visited the Frauenkirche site in the evening.)156 To round off the formal part of the Heidefriedhof ceremony, delegates from dozens of local and regional unions, sporting associations and clubs, work places, schools and the like added to the floral arrangements at the base of the Denkmal before a procession of literally hundreds of local families and individuals carrying bouquets or single flowers filed past to pay their respects.157 There were no speeches, just silence for the entire 30-minute ceremony.158 Spotted among the crowd by Die Welt

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journalist Markus Lesch, Coventry’s Bishop Barrington-Ward described the ceremony as ‘one of the most moving moments’ of his life (‘Das ist einer der bewegendsten Augenblicke meines Lebens’).159 Dresden’s fiftieth Gedenktag, as previously mentioned, took place amid a long and taxing succession of jubilee anniversaries marking a half-century since the Second World War and the Holocaust. According to Roger Boyes, Dresden’s special date thankfully was not turned into a highly-politicised episode, unlike the D-Day celebrations a year earlier when reunified Germany was snubbed by the former Allied nations, or how 27 January – the anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation – had been dogged by debate over who had the right to mourn.160 For Boyes, the peaceful and reconciliatory nature of Dresden’s fiftieth Gedenktag was a much-welcomed departure from the trend of jubilee war anniversaries being used as ‘political footballs.’ Dresden’s atmosphere was especially pleasing for the British, he argued, because the nation had been ‘nervous about the anniversary, remembering the unfriendly reception accorded the Queen in October 1992.’161 Boyes’ article in The Times expressed a collective British sigh of relief that it seemed, for Dresdeners, ‘the time of raw anger had passed.’162 Russell confirms this view, recalling that the concerted British effort to promote understanding and reconciliation was well-received and reciprocated in Dresden, meaning the open animosity toward ‘western imperialist warmongers’ and ‘Anglo-American terror-bombers’ that proliferated in the DDR era had dissipated. Yet Boyes’ assertion that, comparatively speaking, Dresden’s fiftieth Gedenktag was devoid of commemorative politics is problematic because it overlooks a simple but crucial point. It fails to consider how the emphasis placed on reconciliation in 1995 could be viewed as a politically-charged development in its own right. Arguably the most dynamic example of how the politics of war memory and commemoration shaped and coloured the reconciliatory atmosphere in Dresden at this time occurred at the Kulturpalast. The Kulturpalast, a box-shaped hall built in the 1960s as part of the DDR’s socialist-inspired redevelopment of Dresden’s Altstadt (and the scene of David Irving’s 1990 public speech discussed in Chapter 4), functioned as the afternoon’s focal point of commemoration. Leftist radicals gathered near the hall’s entrance and again chanted slogans

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similar to those heard in front of the Hofkirche the previous evening: ‘No tears for Dresden’ (‘Keine Träne für Dresden’); ‘Guard against the German victim cult’ (‘gegen das deutschen Opferkult’); and ‘never again Germany’ (‘nie wieder Deutschland’).163 Inside, prior to the event getting underway, more left-wing activists unfurled a part-English part-German banner in front of the stage: ‘No tears for Krauts! Deutsche Täter sind keine Opfer!’164 According to Christoph Dieckmann, the banner met with ‘sparse applause’ (‘schütterer Beifall’) from the crowd of around 1,700 people gathered in the Kulturpalast.165 Police arrested seven demonstrators and, to prevent them from causing further disturbances, detained them for the evening.166 Russell, who attended the event, recalls that these initial disturbances ‘failed to disrupt the main thrust of proceedings.’ The Duke of Kent and US ambassador Redman were introduced as the main guests of honour at the Kulturpalast ceremony.167 Proceedings commenced with Dresden’s Oberbürgermeister Wagner and Coventry’s mayor Nolan sharing the stage.168 Presenting a united front, they pleaded for their cities’ four-decade strong friendship to serve as a model for closer Anglo–German relations in future. In turn, their logic followed, just as Dresden and Coventry should serve to inspire Germany and Britain, combined the two nations could set the post-Cold War tone for the entire continent. Nolan concluded that ‘a new Europe must put aside old prejudices’ (‘ein neues Europa müsste alte Vorurteile ablegen’).169 Just as the Kulturpalast event started with a shared British–German effort to symbolise the reconciliation theme, so, too, did it conclude along similar lines. The American-born British conductor Yehudi Menuhin performed Mozart’s Requiem accompanied by the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra.170 If the joint address by Nolan and Wagner was the most symbolic act in the Kulturpalast, and the requiem was the cultural highpoint, what transpired in between held the most significance regarding the politics of the past. In delivering an extensive and emotional address, federal president Herzog covered a wide range of issues. He skilfully married the Dresden-inspired theme of German–British reconciliation with an argument for belated international recognition that, during the war, Germans had been victims, too.171 Herzog welcomed the fact that, through the Dresden Trust and in the spirit of reconciliation, Britain would be financing and providing the new orb and cross for the Frauenkirche. Yet the stimulating manner in

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which he engaged the topic of German loss and suffering subsequently attracted the most interest in the national press. Herzog began by commending Dresden for the warm welcome the city extended to its British and American guests at a time of painful remembrance. He also reserved special praise for the role of Dresdeners in having set an inspirational precedent when staging, every 13 February from 1982 onwards, the first major public demonstrations of passive resistance against the DDR government through the annual ‘Lichterprozession’ to the Frauenkirche ruins. By rejecting East Berlin’s anti-Western rhetoric, continued Herzog, Dresdeners had shown others how to open the doorway to a better future by emerging out of the shadows of the past (‘Sie haben gezeigt, daß sie – aus sich heraus – imstande waren, mit den Schatten der Vergangenheit so fertig zu werden, daß damit das Tor zu einer besseren Zukunft geöffnet wird’). Within this context the federal president exclaimed: Dresden is – above all else – a beacon of peace … How else would it be possible for us to have our British and American friends among us today led by HRH the Duke of Kent and the ambassador of the United States? We welcome them and their delegations with particular pleasure, not as representatives of enemies from the past but as friends of today.

Herzog also recalled how all Germans, even after a half-century since Hitler’s downfall, still carried with them ‘the scars of war’ (‘die Narben des Krieges’). Here he was not simply referring to Germany’s legacy as the quintessential Täternation. Rather, Herzog was suggesting that Germany still displayed ample evidence – including in a very literal sense – of the heavy scarring it had sustained both during the nation’s wartime defeat and subsequent decades of political division. For Herzog, then, Dresden the Opferstadt, first through its utter destruction and then relative neglect and stagnation under communism, encapsulated these two forms of German scarring. Accordingly, he seized on the fiftieth Gedenktag as the ideal arena of articulation in which to publicly champion the integration of the notion of Germans as victims into a more nuanced account of the war. Herzog argued it was acceptable for Germans to openly acknowledge there had been tremendous loss on both sides, or, put more bluntly, Germans no longer should be criticised

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by others for also wanting to remember their own suffering instead of exclusively casting themselves in the role of the perpetrator. Significantly, however, he balanced these remarks by categorically dismissing all claims that wartime victimisation could or should be subjected to some kind of settling of accounts: We protest against anyone at all who interprets our mourning in such a way as if we wanted to set off the crimes Germans committed on other peoples against our own victims of war and expulsion. One cannot counterbalance life against life, pain against pain, fear of death against fear of death, expulsion against expulsion, horror against horror, degradation against degradation. Human suffering cannot be balanced out [against other human suffering]. It must be overcome collectively, through compassion, reflection, and learning.

Arguing that war memories and commemoration are a double-edged sword, whereby Germans should be universally recognised as not only perpetrators but also victims, Herzog declared that ‘this is the message we must get out to the rest of the world [and] there is no better place in Germany from which to radiate this message than this city of Dresden’ (‘…das ist die Botschaft, die auch von Dresden aus in alle Welt gehen muß! Es gibt keinen Ort in Deutschland, von dem diese Botschaft besser ausgehen könnte, als diese Stadt Dresden’). On the city’s high-profile fiftieth Gedenktag, Herzog effectively appropriated Dresden’s symbolism as the German Opferstadt to appeal for unequivocal if belated international acceptance for the view that it was possible, indeed probable, many Germans had simultaneously inflicted and endured loss and suffering during the war. It was the kind of sentiment echoed two months later in the gegen das Vergessen announcements but vigorously contested by the Brauners’ counter-announcement on the eve of 8 May 1995. In February 1995, Dresden served as an arena of articulation in which reconciliation could be manipulated to advance claims that Germans were victims. Put another way, although reconciliation was premised on the notion of former foes overcoming the past to move forward harmoniously, the perceived need to reconcile over Dresden highlighted the belief that German civilians – at least in this particular case – had been subjected to an unreasonable degree of suffering. In fact, at this point in his address, Herzog actually raised the question of whether

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the Dresden firebombing had been unlawful, although he declined to provide a verdict himself – presumably out of respect for the British and American guests of honour in the audience. In any case, having such friends present in Dresden on 13 February 1995 only served to reinforce Herzog’s case: Together we are proceeding along a path called peace and understanding. Together we want to help close the wounds that still have not healed. Together we want to place ourselves [within a historical framework] where Germans were perpetrators but also where Germans were victims, too. And together we must fight to prevent war and totalitarianism, violence, and loss of Heimat from ever happening again.

Herzog’s main contention was that, not only did Germans possess the right to openly reflect on their national roles as both perpetrators and victims, but also that others should recognise this paradoxical nature of German war memories. Having made his point, Herzog returned to the theme of reconciliation to conclude his Gedenktag speech in the Kulturpalast. In doing so, he touched on the Dresden Trust’s commitment to helping fund the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche: When this former symbol of destroyed Dresden shines in a Dresden that has arisen once again, it will carry an orb and cross that will be provided by British donations. That will be a symbol capable of expression far stronger than words. This orb and cross, which will stand high above the city, will eternally remind us that we – a half-century after the destruction – have found one another.

Herzog’s concluding remarks segued nicely to the next event on the commemorative agenda, the evening’s traditional ecumenical service in the Kreuzkirche. As usual, it commenced with Mauersberger’s Dresdner Requiem followed by a memorial service. Bishop Barrington-Ward delivered another German-language sermon, described by Russell as ‘spell-binding.’172 On this occasion, Coventry’s bishop strongly endorsed Herzog’s view by provocatively asserting that, in destroying Dresden, Britons and Americans had ‘displaced our moral principles’ (‘Als britische und amerikanische Verbände diese Stadt zerstörten, hatten wir unsere moralischen Prinzipien verdrängt’).173 There followed a modest but richly symbolic ceremony organised by the Dresden Trust. The Duke of Kent presented Saxony’s Protestant State Bishop

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Volker Kreß with architectural sketches of the orb and cross to be funded, crafted, and gifted on behalf of the British people.174 The Duke, acting in his capacity as the Trust’s royal patron and speaking on behalf of his first cousin, Queen Elizabeth II, delivered a short explanatory speech: On behalf of the Queen and the people of the United Kingdom I offer you these sketches. The sketches are of the cross which we would like to give to you, to stand on the top of the dome of the Frauenkirche when it is rebuilt. We want this cross to be a symbol of the reconciliation between Britain and Germany. We give it in remembrance of those who died in Dresden in February 1945, and in the conviction that there will forever be peace between our two peoples. We deeply regret the suffering on all sides in the War. Today we remember especially that of the people of Dresden.175

After handing over the sketches, the Duke of Kent vowed to return to Dresden five years to the day in order to present the real orb and cross on the city’s fifty-fifth Gedenktag. He cut a popular figure in Dresden and his gesture on behalf of the British people was warmly reported in the German press, even if coverage of this small ceremony was overshadowed by Herzog’s earlier Kulturpalast address. In the FAZ, Bernhard Heimrich reported on the ‘official announcement that the Queen had made “a four-figure contribution” from her privy purse to the British Dresden Trust,’ which as a royal contribution to a charitable fund was the sort of matter usually ‘kept secret’ (‘Im Fall Dresden ist das die öffentliche Mitteilung, die Königin habe aus ihrer Privatschatulle “einen vierstelligen Betrag” für den britischen Dresden-Trust verfügbar gemacht. Königliche Zuwendungen für wohltätige Zwecke werden sonst geheimgehalten’).176 Back in Britain, The Times depicted the orb and cross as a ‘gift to ease Dresden’s painful memories’ and Boyes exclaimed: The Duke of Kent yesterday broke new ground in Anglo–German relations when he came close to apologising for the British role in the bombing of Dresden 50 years ago. Marking the anniversary of the raids, the Duke, representing the Queen, said in German: ‘We deeply regret the suffering on all sides in the war. Today we remember especially that of the people of Dresden.’177

Less than three years earlier, there had been widespread debate over whether the Queen would or should apologise for the destruction

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of Dresden. In the event, she had adroitly evaded the topic by not speaking publicly during her fleeting visit to Saxony’s capital. Now her first cousin – in Dresden as an esteemed guest of the city and on official duty as the representative of the Trust, of the British people, of the royal family generally and the Queen in particular – was seen to have come agonisingly close to offering a formal apology in a public address. This could be interpreted, as Boyes suggested, as a noteworthy expression of British national remorse over Dresden’s destruction. Concerning the Duke of Kent’s vow to return five years to the day in order to present the orb and cross, The Times mused: ‘Some Germans may interpret the present as a discreet apology. All can agree that it is a sincere act of reconciliation.’178 The Duke of Kent’s presentation and speech in the Kreuzkirche brought the formalities to a fitting close on Dresden’s milestone fiftieth Gedenktag. All that remained was the silent, candlelit march to the Frauenkirche as 129 bells from Dresden’s 47 churches rang out to mark the time between when the final air-raid alarm had sounded and the first bombs fell precisely a half-century earlier.179 ‘As the crowds milled around on a surprisingly warm evening,’ recalls Russell, ‘the sense of relief and rebirth was palpable.’

T h e 2 0 0 0 G e de n k tag a n d m a k i ng g o od on a p rom i se

Irrespective of however many visits may have been scheduled throughout the course of a year to discuss the design and manufacture of the orb and cross and other matters concerning the Frauenkirche rebuilding project, the Dresden Trust always ensured it was represented on each Gedenktag between 1996 and 1999. ‘Having been so fully integrated into the official commemorations in 1995,’ explains Russell, the trustees felt an annual British presence ‘was an essential element in the ongoing process of reconciliation.’ Each year, Dresden Trust representatives – trustees, patrons, and select donors – laid a wreath at the traditional Heidefriedhof morning ceremony, which on these (non-milestone) occasions was a comparatively ‘quiet and dignified’ gathering. The date also operated as

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a yearly countdown to when the Duke of Kent had pledged to return to Dresden on 13 February 2000 with the orb and cross. Within Britain, the Trust organised a travelling photographic exhibition, which, according to Russell, was designed partly to raise donations and partly to inform the British public about three interrelated subjects: the extent of damage inflicted on Dresden in February 1945; the city’s relative neglect and stagnation during the DDR era; and how the Frauenkirche project was inspiring the city’s post-reunification redevelopment and rebirth. The exhibition opened in the University Church in Oxford and visited 24 destinations covering all parts of the United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland where security problems resulted in the planned display in Belfast being cancelled). This and numerous other fundraising efforts, including concerts and art exhibitions designed to showcase Saxon history and culture, helped to promote interest in the project and to raise money. Consequently, in addition to the orb and cross, the Dresden Trust raised sufficient funds to finance a ground-floor window on the north-western side of the Frauenkirche – now unofficially known as the so-called ‘British Window’ – and to make regular donations to the overall rebuilding appeal.180 ‘While most of the funds,’ notes Russell, ‘came from the pockets of ordinary, interested Britons, Her Majesty’s Government made a generous contribution.’ Indeed, throughout this time the royal family maintained a keen interest in the Trust’s progress. Besides the unstinting encouragement and support provided by the Duke of Kent, other prominent members of the British royal family, from the highest level down, showed deep personal interest in the project. Confirming reports that first circulated in February 1995, Russell comments: The royal family was very supportive. Quite separately from the donation of Her Majesty’s Government, Her Majesty the Queen made a contribution from her own Privy Purse. Prince Charles sent a message of support to a particular event in Dresden and subsequently invited me to his private residence, Highgrove House, to explain to him what the project was all about and he demonstrated great interest in it.

It was, then, only fitting that the Great Court of Windsor Castle be the first point of display for the orb and cross following its completion. The Queen personally requested that the Trust exhibit its nine-metre high

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golden showpiece at Windsor Castle in December 1998, on occasion of the state visit by federal president Herzog.181 Called the ‘Cross of Peace’ in The Times, over the next eight months it went on display in four cathedrals throughout the United Kingdom, starting in Coventry and moving northwards to Liverpool and Edinburgh before returning to London where it remained on show in St Paul’s until its dispatch to Dresden for the formal presentation. The fifty-fifth Gedenktag, though substantially commemorated in its own right, paled in comparison with the events of five years earlier. Whereas the widely anticipated two-day commemorative process organised for the fiftieth jubilee in 1995 had attracted widespread media interest (just as the milestone fortieth Gedenktag had done a decade earlier), in 2000 press coverage was relatively subdued. Nonetheless, as the only special event arranged to complement the traditional rites of remembrance conducted annually, the orb and cross presentation was the pinnacle of the 2000 Gedenktag and accordingly it dominated reports in Germany and Britain.182 On a cold and wet afternoon, and in the presence of German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Saxony’s ministerpresident Biedenkopf, the Duke of Kent fulfilled the promise he made five years earlier. In eloquent German, the Duke simultaneously shaped and reflected the mood enveloping the occasion when he described the British-funded and crafted orb and cross as not only ‘a symbol of reconciliation already experienced’ (‘ein Zeichen für erlebte Versöhnung’), but also a sign of continuing British commitment to deepen friendship between the two peoples (‘…die Freundschaft zwischen unseren Völkern weiter zu vertiefen’).183 Accepting the orb and cross on behalf of the Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden, Bishop Kreß reciprocated these sentiments, declaring the British gift henceforth would crown the reconstructed Frauenkirche and serve as a ‘unique source of all reconciliation’ (‘eigentliche Quelle aller Versöhnung’).184 There was no settling of accounts, and instead a suitable balance between remembrance and forgiveness was struck as both parties articulated a clear understanding that the war had brought suffering to both sides. When the Dresden Trust had earlier sought tenders for the crafting of the orb and cross, the London-based silversmith company Grant MacDonald lodged the successful bid. It was then serendipitously

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discovered that Alan Smith, one of the company’s senior craftsmen, is the son of a former RAF Bomber Command pilot who participated in the Dresden raid. It also came to light that Smith was born and raised in Dresden’s British wartime counterpart and subsequent postwar sister-city Coventry, where learning his trade he had made some of the first replicas of the Cross of Nails.185 Smith enthusiastically accepted the role of team-leader for the eight month project, viewing it as a unique opportunity to settle an account for his late father, Frank, who had never fully come to terms with his role in the Dresden firebombing.186 According to Russell, everyone involved celebrated Smith’s personal association with the project as a ‘wonderfully symbolic coincidence treasured by all.’ On the occasion of the fiftyfifth Gedenktag and the presentation of the orb and cross crafted by Smith, the German press latched onto this remarkable story. Smith’s connection to the new Frauenkirche, following on from his father’s participation in the original’s destruction, was viewed as a deeply personal contribution towards the pursuit of British–German reconciliation inspired by Dresden.187 Whereas anti-DDR sentiment still had been evident in numerous German press reports in 1995, this trend had largely dissipated by the time of Dresden’s 2000 Gedenktag.188 There nonetheless appeared a couple of lingering exceptions. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the headline of Jens Schneider’s front-page article – ‘Auferstehung aus Ruinen’(literally ‘resurrection from the ruins’) – was a thinly-veiled mockery of the former DDR national anthem Auferstanden aus Ruinen.189 In Schneider’s case, talk of Dresden’s ruinous landscape referred not only to the effects of the wartime bombing and firestorm, but also decades of post-war socialistera decadence, as he argued it was only since reunification that the onetime-Kulturstadt-turned-Opferstadt finally was enjoying a rebirth. One unambiguous swipe taken at the former DDR was the brief FAZ article bemoaning that, more than a half-century after the war’s end, and despite a decade of extensive post-reunification redevelopment, in Dresden ‘the wounds still gaped open’ (‘die Wunden noch immer klaffen’).190 The unwritten assumption was that the Saxon capital’s fate in being located in the DDR had stifled its post-war reconstruction, especially in comparison to the astonishingly rapid recovery of West German cities that had

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prospered courtesy of capitalism. This (uncredited) article also defied the prevailing theme of reconciliation with some sneering comments about it taking British and American bombers only a few hours to destroy what had taken centuries to form into one of Germany’s most beautiful cities. It further pointed out, somewhat morbidly, during the Western Allies’ attack on ‘defenceless Dresden’ tens of thousands of people were ‘ripped to pieces, burned, or suffocated’ (‘Zehntausende Menschen wurden von den Bomben zerfetzt, verbrannten oder erstickten’).191 Couching the raid’s effects in such a graphic manner made this particular FAZ article the most provocative of the few reports in 2000 that actually identified the nationality of the bombers or mentioned Dresden’s unknown yet unquestionably high death toll. Just as in 1995, the numbers game regarding Dresden’s bombing victims that had been so prevalent in the Cold War era was not played out in February 2000.192 Reports simply used vague phrases such as ‘tens of thousands’ or ‘an estimated more than thirty thousand’ and no credence whatever was given to the kinds of exorbitant figures previously espoused by authors such as Rodenberger and Irving and subsequently promulgated by newspapers such as Die Welt as recently as 1990. German victimisation was not the dominant paradigm attached to Dresden’s 2000 Gedenktag. It nonetheless could be detected in some press reports, including ones that were openly provocative. In the FAZ, for instance, the Dresden bombing was described as: … a senseless attack from a military perspective [because it] struck refugees, women, children, and the elderly. The city was to a large extent undefended, an overflowing transit station for thousands who were fleeing the eastern part of the German Reich ahead of the advancing Red Army.193

Other articles, though less confrontational in tone, still mentioned that the Western Allies’ bombing attack and subsequent firestorm had ‘almost completely razed Dresden to the ground and more than 30,000 people lost their lives’ in the process (‘britischen und amerikanischen Bombenangriffe und der anschließende Feuersturm machten seinerzeit Dresden fast vollständig dem Erdboden gleich, mehr als 30.000 Menschen kamen Schätzungen zufolge ums leben’).194 Having said this, however, the subject of German wartime loss and suffering as symbolised by the destruction of Dresden generally

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was approached with subtlety. Reports in national newspapers that dealt with the prevailing theme of reconciliation often were buttressed by a peculiar twist: notions of war-related wiedergutmachen in this instance cast Germans in the unfamiliar role of the recipient.195 Yet the overriding message articulated in 2000 sounded very familiar: commemoration on 13 February must be underpinned by a sober understanding that Germans were ultimately responsible for the war and thus everything it encompassed, including Dresden’s immolation.

C on c lu sion

This chapter has tracked the emergence of British involvement in the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration in the post-Cold War period by linking together a remarkable chain of events starting in London in May 1992 and finishing in Dresden in February 2000. This process added an international dimension to Dresden’s high-profile fiftieth and fifty-fifth Gedenktage in 1995 and 2000 respectively. Some elements were state-centred, others manifested socially, whereas still others combined these two forms of agency. The trigger for this series of developments – the BCA’s privately-commissioned monument – was originally conceptualised, at least in the eyes of its planners, as an Anglo-centric memorial and as such was never supposed to be directly associated with German war memories. Yet, the fact that the monument was a statue of the controversial figure ‘Bomber’ Harris meant that it quickly became enveloped in an international controversy. Initial claims that a statue of Harris was inappropriate pointed out Cologne because the unveiling was unwittingly scheduled on the fiftieth anniversary of Operation Millennium. Soon, however, Dresden’s reputation as the paradigmatic Opferstadt saw it dominate the Harris statue controversy. Although the Harris statue was a privately-commissioned and independently-funded project, its prominent site in central London and, moreover, the Queen Mother’s official participation in the unveiling ceremony pushed the whole episode into the public domain. The ensuing controversy at least partially inspired Queen Elizabeth II’s reconciliatory visit to Dresden five months later, possibly scheduled as

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a sop to critics of the Harris statue generally and the Queen Mother’s involvement in particular. The Queen’s first state visit to reunified Germany occurred during a low ebb in relations between the two nations. The Dresden leg of the trip was officially described as an effort by the Queen, acting on behalf of the British people, to help pursue and promote reconciliation. It was hoped her appearance in Dresden would serve as an embarkation point for further efforts to improve Anglo– German relations within the new post-Cold War Europe. Local reactions to the visit varied from celebrating it as a welcome signal of intent to dismissing it as a contrived and hollow gesture that did not go nearly far enough because the Queen neither apologised nor even visited the Frauenkirche ruins. The Dresden stopover, which conspicuously lacked a public appearance of any kind and instead consisted purely of the special reconciliation service in the Kreuzkirche, was the most awkward part of the Queen’s time in Germany. Despite lasting less than two hours, in both the British and German press the Dresden leg proved by far the most reported aspect of the entire visit. The Harris statue controversy, combined with the Queen’s reconciliatory visit to Dresden that met with mixed reactions back in Britain, stimulated Alan Russell and some likeminded individuals to somehow make a positive contribution to improving Anglo–German relations. Their subsequent decision to establish a fundraising organisation in order to provide a (somewhat belated) British response to the Ruf aus Dresden had an immense impact on the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration in the first decade following reunification, especially on the milestone fiftieth and fifty-fifth Gedenktage in 1995 and 2000 respectively. The newfound spirit of British–German reconciliation, as symbolised by the orb and cross crafted for the Frauenkirche, was the prevailing theme on each occasion. Although, by its own humble admission, the Dresden Trust raised only a small part of the overall funds required for the church’s rebuilding, it eventually generated directly and indirectly from within Britain approximately €1.5 million – no mean feat for a project in Germany. Moreover, the Trust’s efforts were invaluable in attracting inordinate attention due to the symbolism evoked by its involvement as well as the resultant wider cultural impact.

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As for the British royal family generally, and the Queen especially, their commitment to both the Frauenkirche rebuilding project and the promotion of British–German reconciliation through the prism of Dresden did not end with the Duke of Kent’s presentation of the orb and cross on 13 February 2000. The following, and final, chapter commences by examining Elizabeth II’s continued engagement with the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration during her next state visit to Germany in November 2004, twelve eventful years after the Queen and her mother had first found themselves embroiled in controversy over the city’s destruction. The bulk of the chapter then focuses on the key developments leading up to, and on the occasion of, the milestone sixtieth Gedenktag in 2005. Following more than a decade of vigorous bilateral promotion of reconciliation, late 2004 and early 2005 witnessed a noticeable shift in the politics of Dresden’s destruction. New agents of articulation attempted to appropriate Dresden’s symbolism as the Opferstadt in order to advance the notion that Germans were victims. This confrontational approach met with stiff opposition, making the 2000 Gedenktag a highly-contested arena of articulation.

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Dresden as a Memory Battleground: 13 February 2005

The previous chapter traced the series of key events and developments responsible for Dresden’s Gedenktag taking on an international dimension in 1995 and 2000, arguing the impetus for change largely came from active British participation in, and promotion of, reconciliation. While reconciliation was the dominant theme, Dresden’s milestone fiftieth and fifty-fifth Gedenktage were also appropriated as arenas in which to articulate the view that the time had come for international recognition that Germans had been victims and not just victimisers. This chapter argues that, whereas the theme of reconciliation and the notion of Germans as wartime victims both continued to be prominent on the sixtieth Gedenktag, importantly their roles were reversed. In other words, while reconciliation remained a key theme in 2005, debates about German loss and suffering emerged as the prevailing – and certainly most controversial – aspect of the struggle for control over public commemoration of the destruction of Dresden. The shift in emphasis occurred despite concerted efforts during Queen Elizabeth II’s state visit, in November 2004, to promote ongoing British–German reconciliation through the prism of Dresden and its almost rebuilt Frauenkirche. Two interrelated factors account for this intriguing role reversal. First, the notion of Germans as victims as a leading paradigm in postreunification public discourse peaked early in the twenty-first century, particularly following the 2002 publications by Günter Grass and Jörg Friedrich.1 Representation and remembrance of German wartime loss and suffering impacted heavily on the politics of war memory and commemoration in the Berlin Republic at this time, and Dresden’s highprofile sixtieth Gedenktag proved no exception. Second, representing

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Germany’s resurgent far right, the NPD sought to appropriate Dresden’s symbolism as the Opferstadt as a key asset in its provocative push for historical revisionism. Over the previous six decades, the politicisation of memory meant that many different messages had been attached to the commemoration of Dresden’s destruction, but never before had the city’s Gedenktag promised to be such an openly and fiercely contested arena of articulation. On 13 February 2005, Dresden was a veritable memory battleground.

T h e Q u e e n a n d Dr e sde n : r e v i si t i n g a t h e m e , bu t n ot t h e c i t y

From 2 to 4 November 2004, Queen Elizabeth II undertook her fourth state visit to Germany. The trip followed shortly after a state visit to France and an official visit by US president George W. Bush to Britain. The reason for arranging the visit at this particular time, according to the British ambassador to Germany Sir Peter Torry, was to signal that ‘Germany is one of the UK’s three closest international partners.’2 In his foreword to the official press briefing for the visit, Torry emphasised that the British and German governments, acting under the international umbrellas of the EU and NATO, were ‘working more closely together than ever before.’3 His remarks about the closeness of Anglo–German relations in the new millennium were especially concerned with their strong economic links. Unlike the Queen’s previous state visit to reunified Germany 12 years earlier, which was dogged by the European currency crisis of 1992 along with tension caused by the Maastricht Treaty and the Harris statue controversy, the 2004 trip came at a most opportune time with Germany and Britain operating as major trading partners. In the previous year, Britain, with exports worth in excess of £55 billion, ranked as Germany’s third largest export market, while Germany ranked as Britain’s second largest export market with a combined total of almost £32 billion in exported goods and services.4 Furthermore, it was estimated that some 3,700 German companies actively invested in Britain during 2003–4, employing approximately 350,000 people and generating an annual turnover of €125 billion.5 The visit’s itinerary, according to Torry,

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was designed to ‘celebrate the deep friendship’ the two countries shared. To this end, stress was placed on collaborative research and development projects and business partnerships in the new millennium: The Queen’s programme will look to the future and emphasise the way our two countries are using innovation to tackle the challenges of the new century. A major conference on climate change at the British Embassy will underscore UK–German co-operation on one of the two priority themes for next year’s UK G8 Presidency. Visits to the New Museum in Berlin and the Design Centre in Essen will show how British architects are helping to rebuild Berlin and remodel the Ruhr. A day in Düsseldorf will allow the Queen to meet some of Britain’s most innovative investors in Germany including Dyson, Vodafone, Shell and BP. In Potsdam the Queen will hear how Rolls-Royce has created high-tech employment opportunities in the former GDR.6

According to the official line, then, the state visit principally was designed to celebrate ongoing close Anglo–German cooperation in the twenty-first century. Occurring at a time when the notion of Germans as victims pervaded war memory and commemoration in the Berlin Republic, however, meant that the difficult past the two nations had shared during the twentieth century could not be evaded. It was within this context that the symbolism evoked by Dresden as the Opferstadt emerged as a key issue, even though Saxony’s capital, which had been the awkward but obligatory interlude on the previous trip, was not included in 2004. The announcement of the Queen’s first state visit to Germany since the controversies of 1992, for instance, immediately reignited debate over whether she would or should apologise.7 Germany’s largest-selling tabloid Bild went on the front foot, demanding a formal apology for the destruction of Dresden.8 Despite Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s dismissal of all such demands as ‘absurd,’ the yellow press in both Germany and Britain continued to engage in debate over German collective guilt versus German civilians’ wartime loss and suffering in what the Telegraph dubbed a ‘phoney war of the tabloids.’9 Consequently, notwithstanding the 2004 state visit’s fundamental objective of promoting positive relations in the present and future, the Queen was forced to engage in the politics of the past during her brief tour of Germany. On four separate occasions within the three-day visit (all discussed below), Elizabeth II was a central figure in state-centred manifestations of

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war commemoration. Intriguingly, although the Queen did not visit Dresden again, in two of the four cases she revisited the theme of the city’s wartime destruction. The Queen’s first engagement with war memory and commemoration took place within 90 minutes of the royal couple’s formal arrival staged at Berlin’s Charlottenburg Palace. After two brief mid-afternoon meetings at the Chancellery – the first with Schröder, and the second with a small cohort of British and German students collaborating on a climate change research project – the Queen visited the New Guardhouse (Neue Wache). Situated on the capital’s famed avenue Unter den Linden, it was originally built in 1817–18 as a neoclassical Prussian national war memorial marking victory in the Napoleonic Wars. Throughout the twentieth century, however, the Neue Wache underwent several ideologically-driven transformations as it was appropriated by Wilhelmine imperialists, Weimar democrats, National Socialists, and DDR communists alike, and sequentially ‘each regime eradicated the previous state’s symbolic creations.’10 Finally, following reunification, Chancellor Kohl reconceptualised the Neue Wache yet again. Its inauguration in 1993 as the Central Memorial Site of the Federal Republic of Germany (Zentrale Gedenkstätte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland), on Germany’s National Day of Mourning (Volkstrauertag), effectively raised the Neue Wache to the level of being Germany’s equivalent to the Cenotaph in London.11 Beneath the Neue Wache the remains of an unknown soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim are buried in soil taken from Second World War battlefields and death camps.12 An enlarged replica of Käthe Kollwitz’s 1930s pieta-inspired anti-war sculpture known as ‘Mother with Dead Son’ (Mutter mit totem Sohn) now sits underneath an oculus and serves as the visual focal point in the otherwise empty guardhouse. On Tuesday 2 November at 15.50pm, the Queen, flanked by the Duke of Edinburgh and the British foreign secretary Jack Straw, entered the Neue Wache and laid a wreath in front of the Kollwitz sculpture. There were neither speeches nor any other pomp and ceremony. Moments later, the royal couple left to attend a private meeting with embassy staff.13 The Queen’s second engagement with the politics of the past was as spectacular as the Neue Wache wreath-laying had been unassuming. That evening, federal president Horst Köhler and his wife Eva Luise hosted a

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State Banquet at the Zeughaus in Berlin. The banquet, designated as the Köhlers’ formal ‘centrepiece of hospitality’ extended to the British royal couple during their visit, was attended by 250 prominent guests consisting of ‘members of the German Government, key figures in German society, and distinguished members of the British community in Germany.’14 Two speeches preceded the dinner: a cordial welcome from Köhler; followed by the Queen’s keynote address, officially billed as the ‘highlight of the evening.’15 Despite all the speculation about a possible apology for the destruction of Dresden, no such revelation materialised. Instead, she spoke in general terms of ‘the appalling suffering on both sides’ in the two world wars.16 In keeping with the three-day trip’s core theme, much of Elizabeth II’s speech centred on twenty-first century Anglo– German cooperation as she expressed hope that her visit would help to promote ‘looking to the future in our bilateral relations … and meeting the global challenges ahead.’ The Queen singled out as a tremendous ‘source of pride’ the leading role played by British architects in ‘Berlin’s reemergence as one of the world’s great cities’ through their involvement in such projects as the restoration of the Reichstag and the remoulding of the city’s renowned Museum Island (Museuminsel). Moreover, the imagery of Berlin’s revamped skyline made for a neat traversal from the theme of cooperation to reconciliation. The Queen suggested that, while Berlin, as the reinstated and reinvigorated capital, symbolised ‘the remarkable achievement of German re-unification,’ the British contribution to the reshaping of the city’s skyline was emblematic of ‘the reconciliation between our two countries.’ Having raised the theme of reconciliation, at this juncture the Queen declared: My admiration for your achievements is not limited to Berlin. The reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden is an inspiration to us all. I recall in particular the moment at Windsor Castle in 1998 when Prince Philip and I stood beside President and Frau Herzog to see the new orb and cross for the first time. At the Berlin Philharmonic tomorrow night we shall renew our support for this cause so full of powerful symbolism.

The evening gala concert at the Berlin Philharmonic mentioned by the Queen in her Zeughaus speech would be the fourth and final engagement with the politics of the past during the 2004 state visit. Earlier on the Wednesday, the royal couple travelled to the Commonwealth

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War Graves Commission Cemetery situated within Stahnsdorf ’s picturesque necropolis, the Südwestkirchhof. In total, 1,176 British and Commonwealth First World War soldiers who died from wounds or diseases between 1914 and 1919 are buried in the cemetery.17 Located in Brandenburg approximately 20 kilometres southwest of central Berlin, Stahnsdorf had belonged to the DDR during Germany’s division. As part of its responsibility for maintaining these Commonwealth war graves during the Cold War era, the British Military Mission to Soviet Forces in Germany (BRIXMIS) had conducted an annual Remembrance Day ceremony in the Südwestkirchhof. The BRIXMIS memorial service always attracted an impressive number of locals who apparently ‘came in spite of efforts by the GDR authorities to prevent them.’18 Accordingly, the wreathlaying ceremony Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attended on 3 November 2004 was designed not only to honour British and Commonwealth war dead, but also to ‘acknowledge the courage of local people who came voluntarily to watch the annual Remembrance Day ceremony during the GDR period.’19 The ambassadors of Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and India attended the ceremony, as did the Bishop of Berlin Dr Wolfgang Huber, who led prayers. Afterwards the royal couple met with selected Stahnsdorfers who had defiantly supported the BRIXMIS Remembrance Day ceremonies during the Cold War.20 That evening’s gala concert at the Berlin Philharmonic was described in the state visit’s official programme as ‘Her Majesty’s return hospitality following the State Banquet given by Federal President Köhler.’21 It was, however, so much more than that. As the Queen had explained in her Zeughaus address the previous evening, she and Prince Philip were hosting the Berlin event as a way of renewing their personal support for the reconstruction of Dresden’s Frauenkirche. Fourteen years after the Ruf aus Dresden, the church’s reconstruction was nearing completion. The concert was promoted as an appeal to raise funds to ‘go towards finishing the interior’ of the Frauenkirche.22 The programme noted that €93 million already had been raised for the project (including over £750,000 collected by the British-based Dresden Trust), while a further €5 million still were required. With leading British companies including Vodafone, MG Rover, Bentley, and the Royal Bank of Scotland among others contributing €260,000 to the appeal in advance, and the 1,850 guests ‘invited to make

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individual donations’ on the evening, the Queen’s gala event at the Berlin Philharmonic was guaranteed to make a considerable dent in the outstanding funds still required.23 Underpinning the evening was ‘a theme of reconciliation.’24 At the reception prior to the concert, the canapés served featured ‘a selection of fine British and German foods.’25 Just as the Queen’s visit to the graves of her Great Aunt ‘Vicky’ and Frederick the Great at Potsdam’s Sanssouci Palace twelve years earlier tapped into the strong links between the British and German (Prussian) royal families, the white wines chosen for the evening were inspired by royal history. During an 1845 tour of Prussia, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had attended a wine-tasting at a vineyard owned by G.M. Papstmann. Five years later, Queen Victoria granted Papstmann a special document as a mark of favour, allowing him to rename his vineyard Königin Victoriaberg in commemoration of her visit. The vineyard’s wines have been served to British royals visiting Germany ever since and accordingly they were the wines chosen for the Berlin Philharmonic gala event.26 As for the specialty dishes, the organic farm at Prince Charles’ private residence Highgrove House provided the lamb, while smoked trout and cheese came from the Scottish borderlands and Lancashire respectively.27 The concert programme featured music from German and British composers including Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten, performed by the Northern Sinfonia, a chamber orchestra based in Gateshead near Newcastle-upon-Tyne in north-east England.28 On the surface, the evening’s aim was to raise funds to help complete the Frauenkirche, but a strong undercurrent was the reinforcement of the Queen’s personal engagement with the theme of British–German reconciliation through the prism of Dresden. There were some important similarities and differences between the Queen’s two post-reunification state visits when it came to the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration. On the one hand, just as the Harris statue controversy had ignited debate over whether the Queen, as head of state, would or should apologise while visiting Dresden, twelve years later the renewed German Opferkultur, so prevalent in the new millennium, fuelled speculation about a possible apology. Although the appropriateness or otherwise of a formal apology for the Dresden

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firebombing generated heated debate in the press of both countries in 1992 and again in 2004, the Queen never directly engaged the issue. Instead of saying sorry for the past, she focused on articulating the positive messages of cooperation and reconciliation in connection with the present and future. On the other hand, after her brief but momentous stopover in 1992, the Queen did not visit Dresden again during the next state visit. When in Dresden in 1992, furthermore, she had not visited the Frauenkirche ruins, and yet the gala event of the 2004 trip – when Dresden was not even included on the itinerary – was an appeal to raise funds for the church’s imminent completion. Having said this, however, it must be remembered the Queen and several other prominent British royals had maintained great personal interest in the ongoing endeavours of the Dresden Trust, including making considerable private donations. Such sustained support indicates that reconciliation was a genuine theme of concern to the Queen and not something merely harnessed on occasions when she engaged in the politics of the past during visits to Germany. In November 2004, the three-day state visit generally and the Frauenkirche appeal concert at the Berlin Philharmonic in particular were well received in the German press. The trip was widely considered the latest successful instalment of the royal couple’s ongoing commitment to improving Anglo–German relations.

De p i c t i n g Dr e sde n as t h e ‘ B om b e n - Hol o c au st ’

The Queen’s special Frauenkirche appeal concert was a spectacular success. A month later, Sir Peter Torry travelled to Dresden and, in the church’s undercroft, the ambassador presented to Bishop Jochen Bohl a cheque for €358,000 as the total proceeds raised from the benefit concert.29 Even without a formal apology, the event underlined Britain’s sincere attempts – articulated from the highest level – to overcome the darker aspects of the two countries’ shared past. Shortly thereafter, however, some of the royal family’s reputation for goodwill was tarnished when Prince Harry’s Nazi faux pas made international headlines in mid-January 2005. His asinine decision to attend a friend’s fancy-dress party wearing

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a desert-style Wehrmacht uniform – featuring a Swastika armband – was considered damaging enough for EU justice ministers to contemplate a possible European-wide ban on the Swastika and other Nazi-related symbols.30 There would be no good time, of course, for The Sun to splash a photograph of ‘Harry the Nazi’ across its front page and for the image subsequently to be beamed around the globe.31 It was especially illtimed, however, for early 2005 was a period of heightened sensitivity to the politics of German war memory and commemoration. Prince Harry’s Nazi-related impropriety took place on the eve of the sixtieth anniversaries of two momentous events: the liberation of Auschwitz and the Dresden firebombing. Before, during, and after the Prince Harry controversy, Germany’s resurgent far right sought to appropriate these two dates, especially Dresden’s Gedenktag, as part of a campaign for historical revisionism. The charge was led by the NPD, whose mantra appeared to be the hijacking of public memory and commemoration of the Nazi past in order to gain (inter)national media exposure and then harness it as a contemporary political asset. In September 2004 (two months before the Queen’s state visit), the NPD attracted 9.2 per cent of votes cast in the elections for the Free State of Saxony.32 This meant the party gained 12 seats in Saxony’s state parliament (Landtag). In a nation with a population in excess of 80 million, this initial breakthrough of attracting around 190,000 votes in a state election was, as Jody Biehl of Der Spiegel remarked, only ‘small potatoes.’33 Nonetheless, the NPD’s result – it attracted virtually one in every ten voters in Saxony – came as somewhat of a shock to many observers of German politics both domestically and abroad. Yet, by no means was it a case of overnight success. The NPD formed in the BRD in 1964, as the successor party to the dissolved post-war nationalist German Imperial Party (Deutsche Reichspartei, DRP). After limited initial success, for decades it remained a discredited and isolated party perched on the extreme right of the BRD’s political fringes. The NPD really only surfaced as a seriously disturbing if not potentially menacing force in German politics in the new millennium, roughly coinciding with the reintensification of interest in notions of German wartime victimisation in mainstream public discourse. In 2003, Schröder’s federal government attempted to have the NPD legally banned on the

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grounds that its political platform and philosophy openly betray it as an undemocratic, neo-Nazi movement. The case collapsed, however, when a three-judge bench sitting in Karlsruhe and representing the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) discovered that government agents provocateurs had infiltrated the party and illegally obtained inside information over the course of two years.34 The government’s appeal subsequently was dismissed due to the infiltration, with Winfried Hassemer, Siegfried Bross, and Lerke Osterloh judging that ‘a government presence at the executive level within a party is tantamount to its influencing the party’s development of an informed opinion and activities.’35 The farcical, Watergate-esque episode materialised into a major embarrassment for the Red-Green coalition and a significant victory for the NPD and Germany’s far right. A newfound professionalism accounted for much of the NPD’s post2000 allure. Far from being mobilised by some kind of amateurish grabbag of violent skinheads and other anti-social, nationalist xenophobes, the party found itself ‘in the hands of a well-organised, politically savvy, suit-wearing leadership.’36 Curiously, the NPD attracted most of its support not from its earlier haunts in the West but rather in former DDR territory, where its provocative claims concerning Germans’ suffering provided grist to the mills of many disaffected and disillusioned Ossis unhappy with the harsh post-reunification reality. The NPD built its twenty-first century portrayal of Germans as victims upon two cornerstones. First, it made effective use of the high unemployment levels (exceeding 20 per cent in Saxony) combined with the Schröder government’s severe welfare reforms in order to highlight the contemporary economic hardship endured by many ordinary Germans. In logic eerily reminiscent to that employed by the Nazis prior to 1933, when the movement promoted itself as untainted by any active involvement in the failing Weimar ‘system,’ the NPD’s selfendorsement was largely based on having no responsibility whatever for any politico-economic problems besetting the Berlin Republic. Indeed, during an interview with the radical newspaper Junge Freiheit, party leader Udo Voigt expressed his unqualified admiration for Hitler as a ‘great German statesman’ who cured the ills of economic depression within a remarkably short time.37 The NPD further accused the

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Red-Green coalition of having amplified, rather than arrested, the CDU’s apparent earlier ‘failure’ to oversee a smooth transition to reunification. Second, the reintensified interest in German wartime victimisation in mainstream public discourse equipped the NPD with a powerful lobbying tool – the appropriation of war memories for political benefit. Although considered repulsive by most Germans, such an approach proved popular among a disenchanted minority. The question confronting the NPD leadership, then, was how best to employ this weapon. In essence, the challenge was to convert those people sympathetic to their messages of German victimhood into actual voters if not card-carrying members. After its September 2004 breakthrough result in Saxony, the following year loomed as a potential watershed for Germany’s NPD-led resurgent far-right movement, with state elections earmarked for Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia plus a federal election set for later in the year. Accordingly, both to attract media attention and garner increased support, the NPD identified two key arenas of articulation – Dresden on 13 February and Berlin on 8 May – as ideal occasions to stage mass demonstrations. Whereas hijacking Dresden’s milestone sixtieth Gedenktag certainly would have been a high-profile political stunt in its own right, by showing its hand three weeks earlier in a most sensational manner the NPD successfully drummed up an international media storm on the eve of Dresden’s most meaningful date. On 27 January 2005, the twelve NPD members of the Saxony Landtag caused uproar. In extraordinary scenes, they stormed out of a parliamentary sitting during what was supposed to be a minute’s silence to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz as well as to remember all victims of the Holocaust.38 The walk-out was a premeditated move, designed as part protest and part publicity stunt. During a session six days earlier, when the Auschwitz proposal was approved, NPD deputy leader and head of its caucus in the Saxony parliament Holger Apfel reacted by placing what essentially was a counter-proposal on the agenda. He argued that, if Holocaust victims were to be formally commemorated in the Landtag, then the state parliament also should make a similar gesture on 13 February in remembrance of ‘the terror attacks on the Saxony capital of Dresden.’39

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The NPD’s proposal was rejected, but not before a vigorous debate erupted during which Apfel rhetorically asked his fellow parliamentarians: ‘Ladies and gentleman! Are you just pretending or are you really so blind to the tragedy that the German people suffered?’40 The incident perhaps would not have warranted much attention except for the fact that, during his tirade, Apfel described the Dresden raid as a ‘bombing holocaust’ (‘Bomben-Holocaust’). This sensational remark made headlines in literally dozens of international media reports – from the New York Times to the New Zealand Herald, from Der Spiegel to the Sydney Morning Herald, and Al Jazeera to Haaretz – in the weeks leading up to Dresden’s sixtieth Gedenktag.41 During the debate, Apfel and his associates added further fuel by referring to Iraq as the latest instalment of ‘Anglo-American gangster politics,’ which had left a trail of civil devastation that can be traced back to the unnecessary and unlawful ‘Bomben-Holocaust’ that destroyed Dresden.42 When Apfel described the raid as ‘cold-bloodedly planned, industrial mass-murder’ his microphone was unplugged as other factions either turned their backs or left the room.43 Six days later, the NPD staged its walk-out as part of what one of its sitting members, the 30-year-old Jürgen Gansel, described as the party’s commitment to ‘taking up the political battle for historical truth, and against the servitude of guilt of the German people.’44 Afterwards, in an interview published in Die Welt, national party leader Udo Voigt explained the parliamentary walk-out actually was not meant to be viewed as a blanket refusal by the NPD to commemorate Holocaust victims. Rather, it was a protest over the Saxon parliament’s supposedly ‘selective’ approach to commemorating victimisation. The NPD’s sitting members apparently would have been willing to observe the minute’s silence for the Holocaust, but only so long as their fellow parliamentarians agreed to remember the destruction of Dresden with a similar tribute. According to Voigt, the party’s representatives initially did not ‘refuse to pay respect to the victims but saw no reason to think one-sidedly about the dead of Auschwitz.’45 The first stage of the NPD’s 2005 campaign to exploit war memories for contemporary political gain was spectacularly successful. ‘While most Germans were appalled,’ observed Roland Nelles and Gabor Steingart, ‘a clearly incorrigible minority quietly applauded the incident.’46 The

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furore placed the NPD in the media spotlight in the weeks leading up to Dresden’s sixtieth Gedenktag, as speculation mounted that the party would attempt to hijack the high-profile occasion. Following the rumpus in Saxony’s Landtag, both Schröder and his Minister of the Interior Otto Schily reignited talk of possibly appealing to Karlsruhe again for the NPD to be banned on the grounds of it being an undemocratic, neo-Nazi party.47 During an interview with the Jewish weekly newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, Schröder expressed a desire for his ‘Government to use every possibility to go down the road of a ban.’48 Schily was quoted in Der Spiegel complaining about the 2003 decision by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court to reject the government’s appeal to legally dissolve the NPD: ‘If the party had been banned, we wouldn’t be having these problems in Saxony today.’49 Such views, however, were not universally supported by their Red-Green colleagues. The SPD member of the Bundestag Sebastian Edathy, for instance, argued the government ‘must recognise that even right-wing extremists have constitutional rights.’50 Similarly, deputy editor of Die Zeit Bernd Ulrich warned the ‘point was to provide a political answer to the far right, not to muzzle them.’51 The public debate whether to ban the party was further complicated by Germany’s unmasterable past, for as Nelles and Steingart mused: ‘Weren’t the Nazis the ones who banned parties they didn’t like?’52 In addition to openly contemplating another attempt to have the NPD banned, the Schröder government also announced plans to pass legislation permanently prohibiting all political parties and interest groups from conducting public demonstrations at selected war- and Nazi-related sites across Germany.53 The impetus for the proposal came from the NPD’s announcement that it intended to stage mass demonstrations in Dresden on 13 February and, moreover, in Berlin on 8 May 2005. The federal government acknowledged it was legally too late to prevent the NPD from staging what it described as a so-called ‘mourning march’ (‘Trauermarsch’) of up to 7,000 protesters in Dresden.54 There remained sufficient time, however, to foil its plans for the Berlin rally in May, which party leaders already were promoting under the title: ‘60 years of liberation lies – down with the cult of guilt’ (‘60 Jahre Befreiungslüge – Schluß mit dem Schuldkult’).55 Correspondingly, the

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focal point of the proposed legislation concerned the establishment of a so-called ‘politics-free zone’ (Bannmeile) in central Berlin, enveloping many of the capital’s historically sensitive sites such as the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate plus the nearby national Holocaust memorial that was nearing completion. The latter – an expansive area in the vicinity of Hitler’s bunker, covered by some 2,700 undulating grey rectangular concrete stelae – had been ominously welcomed by one NPD member as ‘the foundation for the chancellery of the new German Reich.’56 There were widespread fears that, if hordes of right-wing extremists were allowed to participate in the NPD’s so-called Befreiungslüge rally in which the Brandenburg Gate was the designated embarkation point, the nearby Holocaust memorial could come under threat.57 In February, a more pressing concern was the question of what exactly would unfold in Dresden. Both the federal government and the local council were essentially helpless to prevent any possible far-right hijacking of the Gedenktag. ‘So long as the NPD is an established political party with seats in a state parliament,’ lamented Dresden’s Oberbürgermeister Ingolf Roßberg, ‘we cannot ban it from holding marches.’58 Nonetheless, the city council was responsible for one of the three very different yet complementary forms of countercommemoration planned for the Gedenktag in response to the looming threat from the far right. City officials announced that anyone planning to attend commemorative ceremonies in the city centre on 13 February 2005 should wear or carry white roses as a tacit demonstration of the city’s disapproval of the NPD’s planned misappropriation of the Gedenktag.59 White roses were selected because they are a German symbol of anti-fascism since becoming synonymous with internal opposition to the Third Reich (as embodied by Sophie and Hans Scholl and the White Rose resistance group in Munich). Local church leaders, meanwhile, announced plans to stage an open-air candlelit vigil at the Theaterplatz. Here, in front of the Semperoper, 10,000 candles would be lit to represent ‘the great light of admonition, of peace and reconciliation.’60 In the words of the Frauenkirche reverend Stephan Fritz, organisers hoped to show the world how Dresdeners are ‘champions of democracy.’61 Finally, what Ruth Elkins described as an ‘anarchist group’ and what Kyle James characterised as a ‘loose coalition

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of left-wingers’ announced plans to rally in Dresden under the banner ‘No Tears for Krauts.’62 A small group of protesters operating under this very slogan had first engaged in Dresden commemorative politics in 1995, when they attempted to interrupt the ecumenical service at the Hofkirche and later commemorative events at the Kulturpalast.63 A decade later, Dresden police were expecting upwards of a thousand quasi-anarchist, leftist demonstrators to converge on the city.64 Looking to dispel what it perceived as a ‘victim-myth’ shrouding Dresden, the group was planning a series of ‘decentralised actions’ aimed at undermining the NPD’s march.65 According to spokesperson Ellen Mertens, No Tears for Krauts believed it was ‘absolutely unacceptable that 60 years after the liberation of Nazi Germany, the perpetrators are being seen as victims.’66 On the eve of Dresden’s sixtieth Gedenktag, then, the commemorative battlelines were drawn as Saxony’s capital prepared to reflect on ‘the worst day in its history’ (‘… des schlimmsten Tages seiner Geschichte’).67

R e n e w e d f o c u s on l on g s ta n di n g c on t rov e r si e s

New dynamics injected by the NPD’s confrontational outbursts provoked the resurfacing of some old controversies. In 1995 and 2000, the press were preoccupied with the theme of reconciliation and devoted little attention to either the numbers game concerning Dresden’s death toll or the question of whether the city had been a legitimate military strategic target at the time it was destroyed.68 It was a very different situation in 2005, however, owing to reintensified interest in German wartime loss and suffering generally, and the far right’s appropriation of the memory of the Dresden ‘Bomben-Holocaust’ in particular. Questions about the unsubstantiated death toll and the raid’s disputed legitimacy received widespread attention (often intertwined with one another) precisely because these issues linked directly to the hotly debated theme of Germans as victims. Many reports on Dresden around the time of the sixtieth Gedenktag broached two questions that dated from the immediate postwar period but had

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been largely downplayed in the post-reunification period. First, was such a devastating attack on the city’s historic culturally-rich Altstadt militarily justifiable so late in the war? Second, how many people died – ‘only’ around 35,000 or perhaps hundreds of thousands? In fact, in an endeavour to silence right-wing revisionists by settling the death toll controversy once and for all, in 2005 the Dresden City Council appointed a special commission of historians to determine a conclusive figure. It was originally hoped the findings would be presented the following year, as part of Dresden’s 800th anniversary celebrations;69 ultimately, however, the carefully considered report, which settled on the comparatively low estimate of around 25,000 victims, was not released until October 2008.70 In February 2005, meanwhile, several reports simply stated death toll figures like ‘an estimated 35,000’ or the hazier phrase ‘tens of thousands’ of victims.71 Numerous others acknowledged that 35,000 was the commonplace and most likely number of victims, but nonetheless suggested that, because it had proven impossible to establish a definitive death toll, the higher estimates frequently expressed throughout the decades could not be ruled out categorically.72 Media reports in 2005 that discussed the Dresden death toll tended to fall into one of two broad categories. On the one hand, some pondered whether such a wild disparity in estimates can be explained by contemporary circumstances, such as the incalculable numbers of refugees swarming Dresden’s central streets on the night of the raid and an unknown number of victims’ bodies being unidentifiable (or unsalvageable) after having been reduced to ashes by the firestorm.73 On the other hand, some journalists dismissed outright any possibility of a death toll substantially higher than 35,000 victims and instead considered the longstanding discrepancies purely as a corollary of the far right’s ongoing spurious attempts to exploit the Dresden death toll for political gain.74 One such journalist, the Berlinbased correspondent of the Telegraph Kate Connolly, presented a rather confused account of the Dresden numbers game stating: ‘The figure – estimated between 35,000 and 400,000 – has never been officially fixed, allowing extremists to manipulate it for their own means.’75 As discussed in earlier chapters, however, by relying upon the findings of a special commission the DDR government had, indeed, fixed an official figure of

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35,000 deaths by the early 1950s and unwaveringly maintained this number until its collapse nearly four decades later.76 Connolly’s claim that a supposed failure ever to fix an official figure had allowed the far right to exploit the situation, then, was clearly misinformed. Rather, it always has been a case of many people – most prominently but not exclusively right-wing extremists – refusing to accept the DDR’s official figure, which they allege was a deliberate fabrication. In this respect, Germany’s NPD-led far right welcomed the tag of being historical revisionists at the time of the sixtieth Gedenktag precisely because they argued the history of Dresden’s destruction requires revising. This outlook received little sympathy from ‘Spiegel’s Daily Take’ on 14 February 2005: The loonies accuse the Allies of having committed ‘war crimes’ in Dresden and propagate propaganda from the National Socialist era that at least 200,000 were killed in the fire bombing. Serious scientific investigations have concluded that a total of 35,000 [were killed]. Now that’s what we call fuzzy math.77

The stimulating Israeli journalist and author Tom Segev took a more philosophical approach to discussing the longstanding politicallycharged dispute over Dresden’s death toll. He first established some clear moral boundaries by setting out the differences between the Holocaust and the Western Allies’ strategic bombing offensive, dismissing neoNazis’ crude calculation that ‘Auschwitz minus Dresden equals zero.’78 Yet Segev concluded soberly: ‘Nobody knows how many children were among the 35,000 citizens who were killed that day in Dresden; but you don’t have to be a neo-Nazi to know that they were not Nazis.’79 In other words, Segev recognised that, while their motives are questionable, some points made by right-wing extremists nonetheless are valid, and some German civilians killed in the bombing war were completely innocent victims. Similarly, without going so far as to support the far right’s historical revisionism, Philip Williams of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) pondered whether ‘it was morally right to reduce Dresden to rubble, leaving tens of thousands of its residents as charred corpses.’80 Kyle James of Deutsche Welle questioned why ‘between 35,000 and 135,000’ were killed in attacks that, ‘carried out when German forces were already on the retreat and the nation destined

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for defeat, achieved little militarily.’81 For decades these kinds of questions and comments had hovered over Dresden on 13 February before temporarily vanishing around 1995–2000 in the post-reunification midst of reconciliation. But, in 2005, they were clearly back on the agenda. Williams’ and James’ remarks were just two of several instances where the death toll was linked directly to the other major controversial issue widely discussed in 2005, namely whether Dresden was a justifiable military strategic target so late in the war. Many agreed the Dresden bombing was somehow special or unique, altogether different even from the Hamburg firestorm and, thus, the iconic event of the strategic area-bombing offensive against Germany and a synonym for the horrors of total war.82 Besides the lateness of the attack, such depictions of Dresden as the quintessential German Opferstadt were underpinned by the city’s pre-war reputation as Germany’s leading Kulturstadt. Even an NPD flier printed for distribution at its 2005 Gedenktag demonstration exclaimed: ‘There is only one place where the massive killing of innocent Germans and the destruction of German culture is assembled in one location – in Dresden.’83 As for whether the raid was militarily justifiable, there existed a broad spectrum of opinion as some journalists argued strongly for and others equally against. Still others refrained from passing judgment and simply noted that, in any case, the Dresden raid is destined to remain one of the most controversial events of the Second World War.84 The ‘Bomben-Holocaust’ tirades of NPD parliamentarians were not the only stimuli for widespread debate over whether Dresden was a justifiable target in February 1945. As mentioned in the introduction, the conflicting accounts presented by Jörg Friedrich and Frederick Taylor, in 2002 and 2004 respectively, polarised opinions and rejuvenated heated public debate on the issue.85 Friedrich’s engagingly written yet ultimately flawed account, in which he argues the Dresden raid served no military purpose and thus constituted a pointless massacre of civilians tantamount to a war crime, was almost universally shunned by academia but proved spectacularly popular with Germany’s general public.86 Conversely, Taylor’s book, which despite several shortcomings mounts a reasonably credible argument that Dresden remained a justifiable military-strategic target at the time it was attacked, was warmly embraced by scholars as a

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valuable corrective to Friedrich and earlier biased full-length accounts, yet it met with a mixed response from ordinary Germans.87 When he travelled to Dresden in January 2005 after being invited to appear at a public launch of the German translation of his book, Taylor became ‘the target of considerable anger in the city’ and required police protection after arriving at the Rathaus for the event.88 Once inside, Taylor found himself confronted by ‘more than 80 neo-Nazis’ who heckled him throughout his brief address.89 According to Telegraph correspondent Tony Paterson, it later emerged that Saxony’s ruling conservative Christian Democrats had failed in their attempts to prevent Taylor from speaking publicly in Dresden, to which the British author replied: ‘I found this almost worse than the behaviour of the neo-Nazis.’90 Having wholeheartedly embraced Friedrich’s sensational account earlier, Germany’s mass circulation tabloid Bild subsequently published a ‘series of articles and letters by enraged readers which claimed that Mr Taylor was a “scandal author.”’91 When interviewed by a very accommodating Der Spiegel a month after his appearance in Dresden, Taylor was asked whether he got the impression locals, six decades on, had become ‘open to a more nuanced view of what took place.’ His guarded response was that plenty of Dresdeners seem to ‘take a balanced view,’ whereas ‘others, of course, don’t.’92 Taylor diplomatically concluded it is the prerogative of individuals whether to harp on the violent and destructive nature of the attack on their Heimatstadt. In the same month that Taylor appeared in Dresden, he also participated in a public debate with Friedrich staged in Berlin.93 The volatile nature of this and other public forums the two antagonists appeared at together, such as at the Goethe-Institut in Amsterdam and television interviews in Germany, further fuelled public debate in early 2005 about the military justification of the Dresden raid.94 Some lazy journalism resulted in numerous English-language reports containing mistakes and misinformation concerning both the bombing raid and the commemorative practices subsequently conducted each Gedenktag.95 Concerning the events of 1945, both the BBC and the Qatar-based Al Jazeera English News Service stated that the Western Allies ‘were acting on a request from Moscow,’ while both the ABC and the Turkish Press carried reports claiming the Elbflorenz was attacked

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with a ‘storm of napalm-like chemical weapons’ in the ‘last days of the war.’96 Foreign journalists not well versed in Dresden’s tradition-laden annual rites of remembrance, meanwhile, depicted the commemorations conducted on 13 February 2005 as though they were novel developments concocted specially for the milestone sixtieth Gedenktag. Readers, for instance, could be forgiven for thinking the Heidefriedhof wreath-laying ceremony actually was arranged by, and for, representatives of the former Allied powers, because reports concentrated on their participation in the ceremony while failing to mention it was an annual practice.97 An exception was The Times correspondent Roger Boyes, who acknowledged the Heidefriedhof wreath-laying ceremony dates from the immediate post-war period. Even Boyes, however, failed to grasp that the ceremony frequently had been subjected to commemorative politics during the DDR era. Referring to the participation of right-wing extremists in the Heidefriedhof wreath-laying service in 2005, Boyes remarked: … German victim-groups moved forward to lay their flowers. Some of the ribbons read: ‘To the 350,000 innocent dead of Dresden’ – a huge exaggeration of the fatalities. The ultranationalists thus took over a ceremony that for the past six decades usually involved only a handful of locals with no special political agenda.98

Boyes evidently was unaware of how, for much of the Cold War, the DDR state had controlled the Heidefriedhof wreath-laying ceremony. Moreover, he entirely overlooked the fact that, since 1951, the grove in which the service is conducted has been dedicated to Opfer des Faschismus.99 If Boyes actually attended the mid-morning ceremony in 2005, he must have remained oblivious to the significance of the large Rondell and its fourteen anti-fascist pillars located half-way along the avenue. Similarly, Boyes and the select few other reporters who bothered to mention the ringing of Dresden’s bells to mark the exact time of the bombing 60 years earlier, did not mention it is an annual tradition stemming back to 13 February 1946. Instead, they gave the impression that the ceremony was a novel event implemented in 2005, which meant the historical and symbolic depth of this most moving of experiences was completely lost.100 The complexity of layers enveloping the politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration, which span more than a half-century and cover the entire spectrum of political ideologies, were missing in

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most English-language reports. Instead, these tended to depict Dresden’s high-profile sixtieth Gedenktag as something new and extraordinary rather than appropriately recognising it as the latest instalment in, and continuation of, a longstanding tradition.

R e c on c i l iat ion r e m a i n s a c e n t r a l p l a n k

Although this chapter primarily focuses on fresh developments evident around the time of the sixtieth Gedenktag, one theme that provided some continuity was reconciliation. Building on the post-reunification trend initiated by the Queen’s brief visit to Dresden in 1992, augmented on the 1995 and 2000 Gedenktage, and rekindled during the Queen’s latest state visit in November 2004, Dresden-inspired British–German reconciliation was officially promoted as a feature of the commemorative process on 13 February 2005.101 In particular, the almost-completed Frauenkirche served as the symbolic focal point of the reconciliation theme. Several reports identified the donations made from Britain under the auspices of the Dresden Trust as an especially poignant and important aspect of the overall project to rebuild the church.102 Canon Paul Oestreicher, who had co-led the Peace Pledge Union’s demonstration against the Harris statue in May 1992 and subsequently co-founded the Dresden Trust, went so far as to suggest the British contribution to the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche could be considered a direct, if discreet, substitution for an official apology. When interviewed by the ABC’s Europe correspondent Philip Williams and asked whether, sixty years on, the destruction of Dresden still called for ‘a heartfelt apology from the governments involved,’ Oestreicher replied: Apology is something that certainly the British find very difficult, but there are different ways of apologising. And if you consciously say, ‘We want to make a contribution to the rebuilding of your city, we know we are to blame for its destruction, we know this was a great tragedy in the midst of war.’ When the Royal Family itself as well as very simple people, poor people often, families of those who bombed the place, make a financial contribution to its rebuilding, it’s a practical way of saying we’re sorry even if the government doesn’t make formal declarations.103

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Figs 6.1, 6.2

Dresden’s reconstructed Frauenkirche. Notice the contrast between the blackened patina formed on original blocks reused in the reconstruction and the light golden colour of the new sandstone blocks.

D resden as a memory battleground

Eight months before its reconsecration (scheduled for October), on 13 February 2005 the Frauenkirche briefly opened its doors to the public for the first time with the main nave made accessible.104 In a modest ceremony on the same day, the church joined the Diakonissenkrankenhaus and the Kreuzkirche as Dresden’s third building invited into Coventry Cathedral’s Community of the Cross of Nails.105 Dean of Coventry Cathedral the Very Reverend John Irvine handed over to the Bishop of Saxony Jochen Bohl a cross constructed out of nails rescued from the roof of Coventry’s destroyed medieval cathedral. Although reconciliation was officially embraced and promoted on the sixtieth Gedenktag, it seems that on one account there remained limitations on how far the theme would be taken. The Bomber Command Association still was not encouraged to send any representatives to Dresden. Yet, as its president Sir Michael Beetham (who had escorted the Queen Mother during the unveiling of the Harris statue) remarked to Emma Gunby of the Scotsman, no one connected to the BCA had expected any such invitation to be forthcoming.106

M a k i n g a s tat e m e n t i n a b s e n t ia

German chancellor Gerhard Schröder had been in attendance when, on 13 February 2000, the Duke of Kent presented to Bishop Volker Kreß the new orb and cross for the Frauenkirche on behalf of the Dresden Trust. Five years on, despite being very outspoken during the lead-up to the occasion, Schröder did not travel to Dresden for the milestone sixtieth Gedenktag. Similarly, federal president Köhler, who had visited Auschwitz three weeks earlier to participate in official commemorations marking the anniversary of the camp’s liberation, also did not visit Dresden on 13 February 2005 (whereas eight months later both men attended the reconsecration of the Frauenkirche in October).107 That Germany’s two leading political figures decided not to appear in Dresden on such a high-profile occasion, despite being fully aware that the NPD planned to appropriate the memory of Dresden’s destruction in front of the global media, must be construed as a tacit political statement.

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Besides Schröder’s own attendance in 2000, within the previous two decades (West) German leaders including Helmut Kohl in 1995 and Helmut Schmidt (already out of office) in 1985, and not to forget Erich Honecker from a DDR perspective also in 1985, all had visited Dresden to mark a milestone Gedenktag. Likewise, Köhler’s predecessor Roman Herzog had been an influential agent of articulation on the 1995 Gedenktag. Yet, neither Schröder nor Köhler became directly involved in the politics of war memory and commemoration in Dresden on 13 February 2005. From nearby Berlin, however, Schröder issued a short, carefully-worded statement. In three paragraphs he trod a tightrope between showing compassion toward the exceptional degree of wartime loss and suffering experienced by Dresden and its populace while also strongly rejecting the far right’s push for a distorted revision of German victimisation: Today the people in Saxony and all of Germany remember the destruction of Dresden sixty years ago. Thousands of innocent people, among them many children and refugees, lost their lives in horrible ways. One of the most beautiful cities in all of Europe was destroyed. We mourn on this day for the victims of war and National Socialist tyranny in Dresden, in Germany, and in Europe. Sixty years after the war’s end … historical contexts get falsified. Even guilt and responsibility of Nazi Germany for the outbreak of the Second World War, for extermination and terror, has been denied. By every means we will stand up against these attempts to reinterpret history. We will not allow cause and effect to be reversed. Accepting responsibility for our history also means evil deeds and suffering are not to be balanced against one another. That is our obligation to all victims of the Nazi terror and the war, in particular the victims of Dresden. That is a common duty of all democrats. ‘Build bridges, live reconciliation’ – like it appears at the reconstructed Frauenkirche. That is the message of 13 February; a message that is likewise understood in Dresden just as in Coventry, Guernica, and other places that were the victims of the inhumanity of war.108

It was widely reported in international media reports that, despite not travelling to Saxony’s capital, Schröder nonetheless had felt compelled to engage in the politics of the past by issuing a formal statement. Virtually all focus was directed toward Schröder’s declaration of not allowing cause and effect to be reversed.109 It went completely unnoticed that

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another key notion of Schröder’s statement was remarkably similar to comments made by Herzog during his address in Dresden’s Kulturpalast a decade earlier to the day. On that occasion, a German president had argued against balancing or offsetting different victim groups against one another.110 Now a German chancellor likewise was arguing against attempts to establish some kind of historical balance sheet that used German loss and suffering as a counterweight to German responsibility for ‘misdeeds.’ Irrespective of the similarities, Herzog and Schröder had contrasting motivations for expressing such concerns. In 1995, Herzog mounted a case for the international community finally to recognise that, during the Second World War, Germans were not only perpetrators but in many cases victims. A decade later, Schröder pleaded with his fellow Germans to accept that, as part of their collective moral responsibility stemming from the nation’s past, they should never allow attempts to balance Nazi misdeeds against German misfortune. Schröder’s statement also articulated a viewpoint formulated by German communists as early as 1946, namely that Germans themselves were ultimately responsible for Dresden’s destruction because they had first embraced Nazism, then supported Hitler’s aggressive war, and overwhelmingly had not resisted his morally bankrupt criminal régime until the bitter end.

M i x e d m e s s ag e s a n d t h e s t ru g g l e ov e r c om m e m or at ion

Ignoring Schröder’s repeated warnings about misappropriating war memories, several thousand neo-Nazis from all over Germany (and apparently beyond) flocked to Dresden to participate in the NPD’s so-called Trauermarsch and other forms of far-right revisionist commemoration.111 As the strong contingent of skinheads who had travelled out to the Heidefriedhof to lay wreaths at the mid-morning ceremony headed back into central Dresden, they made their way to Saxony’s state parliament building, which the NPD had designated as the rendezvous for its Trauermarsch. Prior to embarking on this ‘mourning march,’ national leader Udo Voigt, his deputy and regional leader Holger Apfel, and other leading party figures addressed the gathering crowd.112

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In the middle of a small, makeshift stage erected adjacent to the parliament stood a lectern emblazoned with the slogan ‘We’re everywhere’ (‘Wir sind überall’). Hanging behind the lectern were Saxony’s state flag and the German national flag. On the stage, men in bomber jackets held four large crosses, each of which was marked with the name of a city or country subjected to American bombing: Hiroshima; Vietnam; Baghdad; and, of course, Dresden.113 The NPD’s use of crosses carrying names of war-afflicted cities was a new twist on an old theme. During the ecumenical service conducted in the Hofkirche on the fiftieth Gedenktag in 1995, white crosses bearing the names of cities such as Coventry, Cologne, Rotterdam, and Stalingrad had been carried along the nave in remembrance of all victims of the Second World War.114 In 2005, the NPD appropriated this same arresting imagery but changed the names in order to symbolise ongoing ‘American imperialistic warmongering.’ A supposed American predilection for bombing civil targets was a theme taken up by Apfel during his speech when he exclaimed: ‘They have left a trail of blood from the past to the present, via Dresden, Korea, Vietnam, Baghdad and – tomorrow possibly – Tehran. Terror and war have a name. And that name is the United States of America.’115 Like the DDR functionaries Max Seydewitz and Walter Weidauer had done in their full-length accounts of the Dresden raid first published in the 1950s and 1960s respectively, Apfel distorted the historical record concerning the destruction of the very city where he spoke by completely ignoring Britain’s leading role. Instead, he blamed the United States exclusively for converting Dresden from a European Kulturstadt into the German Opferstadt. Besides the tentative Tehran connection, making such allegations in Dresden on 13 February was anything but novel given the heavy state-centred promotion of the anti-capitalist notion of ‘American imperialist warmongers’ throughout much of the Cold War. Other speakers at the rally, however, expanded the NPD’s vitriolic rhetoric by referring to not only American but also British ‘gangster politics.’ Large rounds of applause met remarks that mirrored Jörg Friedrich’s interpretation of the Dresden firebombing being ‘Winston Churchill’s genocide.’116 Clearly unmoved by the reconciliatory efforts of the previous decade or more, Voigt demanded an official apology specifically from Britain (as opposed to the United States or the Western

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Allies in toto).117 Arguing Britain no longer could justify avoiding saying sorry for the destruction of Dresden, Elfriede Dobberstein claimed that only such an apology would allow Germans to forgive.118 Horst Mahler, party lawyer for the NPD, did not mince his words when interviewed at the rally by Philip Williams: ‘The right word, it is a bombing holocaust. It’s a crime, one of the major crimes in history and we should realise that our enemies are still our enemies and they’ll have to pay for that.’119 Besides denouncing the British and Americans as ‘mass murderers and gangsters,’ which continually met with rapturous applause, Voigt and Apfel also took aim at the German establishment on the grounds of collusion: first, Voigt dismissed Schröder’s comments and spoke of the need for historical revision so the suffering of Germans themselves no longer would be swept under the carpet; then, Apfel complained that the German government was responsible for cultivating a distinction between ‘first- and second-class victims of war.’120 As threatening as such remarks were coming from leaders of a political party with sizeable representation in the state’s parliament, perhaps the most alarming comments belonged to one of the many disaffected ordinary Germans gathered in the crowd. ‘My husband and I are NPD voters,’ remarked Anni Lutzner to Guardian correspondent Luke Harding before further admitting that ‘… we believe that the German state favours foreigners and the Jews.’121 Such alarming comments could be linked directly to the high unemployment rates in the former DDR territory and the rampant racism and xenophobia evident among those voters lured by the NPD’s neo-Nazi platform. As will be evidenced later in the chapter, however, such comments should not be construed as indicative of the general sentiment among most Dresdeners. At the rally’s conclusion, thousands of right-wing extremists set off on their Dresden Trauermarsch. A similar but far smaller version of this so-called ‘mourning march’ had been conducted in the previous two years under the banner of the neo-Nazi and self-proclaimed revanchist expellees organisation Junge Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen (JLO).122 Whereas the earlier marches had been low-key affairs that failed to attract widespread attention, the 2005 version met with a very different reception. On the one hand, being the milestone sixtieth Gedenktag guaranteed heightened media interest for all commemorative events conducted in

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Dresden. On the other hand, the NPD’s scandalous actions during the weeks leading up to the day meant the Trauermarsch, organised by the NPD with the JLO’s input, not only was heavily supported by Germany’s far right but also was a much-anticipated spectacle from the perspective of the global media. The Trauermarsch departed from the Saxon parliament and headed over the Marienbrücke to the Neustadt side of the Elbe before making its way back over to the Altstadt in a route approximately one kilometre long.123 According to reports aired on the daily current affairs program Tagesschau on Germany’s national broadcast consortium ARD, having attracted around 5,000 marchers from across the nation made it ‘one of the largest neo-Nazi demonstrations in the history of the Federal Republic’ (‘Es war einer der größten Neonazi-Aufmärsche in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik’).124 Similar claims, including that it actually was Germany’s single largest such postwar rally, were widely circulated in international press reports.125 Most but not all demonstrators were young skinheads wearing black bomber jackets and carrying flaming torches and an assortment of other provocative props including: banners denouncing the Dresden raid as a ‘BombenHolocaust’ and vowing ‘no forgiveness, no forgetting’ (‘kein Vergeben, kein Vergessen’); red, white, and black flags denoting the German national colours under the Kaiser and the Führer, some of which also included the NPD’s party emblem; handmade placards carrying various messages about Allied war crimes and German victimisation including promises that ‘the day of revenge will come’; and black balloons that were let go en masse to conclude the ‘mourning rites.’126 Adding to the eerie ambience, loudspeaker systems were carried along the route blaring nationalist tunes and music from Richard Wagner, the antisemite with strong ties to Dresden well-known to be Hitler’s favourite composer. In anticipation of likely clashes between left- and right-wing extremists, a strong police presence – including members of a special anti-riot task force equipped with water cannons – escorted the Trauermarsch along its designated route.127 Nonetheless, ugly scenes erupted as several thousand leftists, loosely mobilised by the international antifascist association Antifa and gathered under the banner of ‘No Tears for Krauts,’ confronted their neo-Nazi counterparts in the streets of central Dresden.128 To taunt their adversaries, the anti-fascist

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activists waved British, American, and Israeli flags and papier-mâché planes painted like RAF bombers as they chanted ‘Nazis out!’ (‘Nazis raus!’).129 Leftist extremists propagated both old and new messages in German and English including: ‘German perpetrators are not victims’ (‘Deutsche Täter sind keine Opfer’); ‘Remember Stalingrad’; ‘You lost the war’; ‘Thank you “Bomber” Harris’; and ‘Grandpa was a Nazi’ (‘Opa war ein Nazi’), a witty play-on-words clearly inspired by ‘Opa war kein Nazi’ (literally ‘Grandpa was no Nazi’), the influential multidisciplinary academic study of German families’ engagement with private Holocaust memory published in 2002.130 Police were forced to employ their water cannons at one stage when matters came to a head as the leftist counter-demonstrators attempted to blockade a bridge to prevent the Trauermarsch from re-entering the Altstadt.131 Police later reported that around 70 arrests had been made, including both neoNazi demonstrators and anti-fascist counter-demonstrators.132 These ugly scenes, created by mostly non-locals who converged on Dresden for its milestone sixtieth Gedenktag, marred the afternoon. In contrast, the evening witnessed far more dignified forms of commemoration in a mixture of state-centred and socially-based events arranged and conducted by local authorities in tandem with ordinary Dresdeners. Alarmed by the ever-increasing presence of neoNazis in their Heimatstadt on 13 February over the previous few years, and appalled by the NPD’s brazen attempts to appropriate Dresden’s symbolism as the German Opferstadt, tens of thousands of locals took to the streets wearing white roses.133 As requested by the Dresden City Council, they gathered at the Theaterplatz where, in front of the rebuilt Semperoper, they lit a sea of candles (Lichtermeer) in silent remembrance of the victims of war generally and the Dresden bombing especially. Making effective use of the international media gathered in the city, around the corner at the Altmarkt a group of unidentified locals sent out to the world their own special announcement concerning the unwanted right-wing politicisation of memory and commemoration of Dresden’s wartime destruction. Using countless tiny candles to articulate their short but striking message, they marked out in capital letters several metres high a blunt riposte to the NPD’s unwelcome political agitation and historical revisionism:

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This city is fed up with Nazis! (DIESE STADT HAT NAZIS SATT!).134

The notion of Dresdeners being sick and tired of Nazis had a doublemeaning. At face value, it showed contempt for the increasingly provocative attempts by Germany’s resurgent far right to whitewash history – to reverse cause and effect as Schröder put it – and to (mis)appropriate Dresden war memory and commemoration as a contemporary political asset. But on a deeper level, there was recognition, too, that Nazi Germany had been ultimately responsible for the war and thus Dresden’s immolation. As previous chapters have made clear, this anti-fascist message was a longstanding feature of state-centred commemorative politics enveloping Dresden’s Gedenktag: first, it was a touchstone of East Berlin’s Cold War politico-ideological rhetoric; then, following reunification, it became a central plank in Germany’s hybridised memory of Dresden’s destruction as leading political figures, including federal president Herzog in 1995 and Chancellor Schröder a decade later, warned their fellow Germans not to forget what events had paved the way to the Dresden firebombing of February 1945. On the sixtieth Gedenktag, this powerful message, which demands critical self-reflection, was reinforced by locals in a manner that reached around the globe. Informed reporters successfully located Dresden’s 2005 Gedenktag within the broader context of the reinvigorated public discourse on Germans as victims. Mixed receptions nonetheless proliferated in the press. Reports were divided over whether the NPD had succeeded in hijacking the day or if locally-inspired counter-messages of peace, reconciliation, and understanding would ultimately make the most lasting impression. In its European press review, Deutsche Welle observed that German newspapers generally focused on the positive aspects of the day and tended to downplay the NPD’s actions, whereas ‘newspapers elsewhere in Europe were harsher in condemning Germany’s far-right party and its attempts to distort the historical significance of the 60th anniversary … to [fit] their own purpose.’135 The day, according to Die Welt, was ‘a total flop’ for the NPD.136 Similarly, Der Tagesspiegel argued that the far right ‘did not win’ the struggle

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to control the meanings associated with Dresden’s destruction after their demonstration failed to attract wider support because locals ‘realized that the “march of mourning” was a propaganda show staged by people who misrepresent history.’137 According to the Regensburgbased Mittelbayerische Zeitung, the sight of 50,000 Dresdeners, banded together in silent remembrance ‘in memory of their parents, siblings and friends, was the only fitting answer to demonstrations by farright groups.’138 Freiburg’s Badische Zeitung, meanwhile, applauded Dresdeners for rejecting the NPD’s lure of historical revisionism and instead demonstrably showing to the world they fully understand ‘that the reason for the destruction of Dresden lay in the criminally offensive war waged by Hitler Germany.’139 The much-anticipated latest episode in the far right’s ‘revisionist history crusade’ was branded a failure in Der Spiegel, which concluded: ‘In Dresden’s battle of images, the city’s peace-loving residents definitely won.’140 The rather positive, self-assuring outlook among the German press was not exactly mirrored in many of the electronic reports beamed around the globe within hours of the events unfolding. Some of the more sensational headlines included: ‘Dresden anniversary overshadowed by neo-Nazi gathering’;141 ‘Clashes mar Dresden bombing commemoration’;142 ‘Far-right Dresden march draws thousands’;143 ‘Right-wing march mars Dresden event’;144 ‘Neo-Nazi demo overshadows Dresden memorial’;145 ‘Neo-Nazis hijack Dresden’s vigil’;146 ‘Neo-Nazis upstage memorial to victims of Dresden bombing’;147 and ‘Neo-Nazis hijack Dresden ceremony in the biggest far-right demonstration since Hitler.’148 Reports accompanying these rather breathtaking headlines generally depicted the NPD’s demonstration as an alarming and unfortunate success that at least marred if not ruined the sixtieth Gedenktag. Some other accounts, meanwhile, tended to agree with the German press’ outlook in believing – or perhaps hoping – repercussions stemming from the far right’s provocative actions would prove limited as the locals’ counter-messages ultimately left the most prevailing impression. Still others sought some middle ground, where reflection on German civilians’ wartime loss and suffering was considered healthy – just so long as history was not whitewashed to such a point where the victimisers became the victims.

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C on c lu sion

The politics of Dresden war memory and commemoration saw a number of competing messages articulated by state-centred and social agents in the lead-up to, and on the occasion of, the milestone sixtieth Gedenktag. Commencing with the Queen’s state visit to Germany in November 2004, and further propelled by German and British church leaders on 13 February 2005, ongoing reconciliation was a prevailing theme in connection with commemoration of the Dresden firebombing. In addition to reconciliation, commemorative events organised by local church and city officials also promoted self-reflection and communal remembrance. In other words, while it was considered imperative to look forward to a positive, peaceful, and cooperative future, it was deemed equally important to remember the victims and reflect on the horrors of war. For Germany’s menacing resurgent far right, however, Dresden’s high-profile Gedenktag represented a gilt-edged opportunity to advance calls for historical revisionism. Thousands of neo-Nazis from across Germany flocked to Dresden on 13 February 2005, heeding the NPD’s call for mass participation in its mock Trauermarsch. The NPD appropriated Dresden’s symbolism as the quintessential German Opferstadt as a political asset in order to advance its revisionist claims that Germans were victims of a ‘Bomben-Holocaust.’ Such provocative allegations, coupled with the party’s earlier staged walk-out of parliament during a minute’s silence for Holocaust victims, placed Saxony, and especially its capital, in the centre of a furore that made international headlines in early 2005. The NPD-led far right’s attempt to hijack Dresden’s sixtieth Gedenktag did not go unchallenged. On the contrary, it met with staunch opposition on governmental, legal, politico-ideological, and moral levels. Gerhard Schröder and Otto Schily considered resurrecting an appeal to have the NPD legally banned. They also announced the government’s intent to block all future political demonstrations from taking place in the vicinity of sites deemed inappropriate due to historical sensitivities. Schröder, furthermore, released an official statement vowing his government would not allow cause and effect to be reversed when dealing with any aspect of the Nazi past, including

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the Dresden firebombing. A loose collection of quasi-anarchists and anti-fascists travelled to Dresden in numbers more or less rivalling their neo-Nazi antagonists. Gathering under the banner ‘No Tears for Krauts,’ which had first surfaced in Dresden a decade earlier on the fiftieth Gedenktag, the leftists adopted an openly confrontational approach in response to the NPD-led Trauermarsch. Scenes turned ugly in the afternoon and police were even forced to intervene with water cannons to separate large groups of Neo-Nazi demonstrators and anti-fascist counter-demonstrators in central Dresden. In a preemptive move designed to derail NPD attempts to hijack the sixtieth Gedenktag, city officials along with local and state church leaders announced plans to augment the traditional rites of remembrance with some novel commemorative events. Those events practised annually such as the mid-morning Heidefriedhof wreath-laying ceremony, ecumenical church services, and the ringing of all the city’s bells were continued. In addition, a sea of lights was created at the Theaterplatz where, as requested by city council officials, tens of thousands of Dresdeners congregated wearing white roses as anti-fascist symbols. A special service was held in the nearly-finished Frauenkirche, which, eight months prior to its reconsecration, opened its doors to the public for the first time. Finally, arguably the day’s simplest yet most impressive message was articulated in glowing fashion on the Altmarkt, where an unidentified group of perturbed locals symbolically used candlelight when reclaiming ownership of Dresden’s Gedenktag. On 13 February 2005, they declared to the world that, six decades after its fascistinduced destruction, Dresden remained fed up with Nazis.

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Conclusion: Memory Work in Progress: Remembering the Past, Reflecting on the Present and Future Employing a slice-history methodology and focusing on quinquennial ‘milestone’ Gedenktage plus other ‘key incidents,’ this study has investigated the shifting dynamics of Dresden commemorative politics immediately before, during, and after Germany’s reunification. In asking what factors shaped developments during the two-decade period under scrutiny, special emphasis has been placed on analysing how commemorative processes were politicised. Accordingly, by reconfiguring Charles Maier’s stimulating thoughts in the wake of the Historikerstreit, underpinning this study is the concept of ‘the destruction of Dresden as a contemporary political asset.’1 Labelling Dresden as the paradigmatic bombing Opferstadt, the thesis also engages the highly-topical theme of Germans as victims. By tracking the continuities and discontinuities in public articulation of Dresden’s destruction, it provides further evidence that Germans have openly cast themselves in the role of victim far longer and to a much greater extent than what is often recognised. Prevalent claims of the breaking of some quasi-mythical ‘last taboo’ early in the new millennium certainly have been wide of the mark. As this study reveals in great detail, throughout six decades Dresden’s Gedenktag has been an occasion on which to publicly remember German wartime loss and suffering, and, indeed, this trend shows no signs of abating (see below). In framing the issues, this work has adopted the two overarching paradigms to studying war memory and commemoration identified by T.G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper as the state-centred and the social-agency approaches. Writing in 2000, Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper argued that there has been an unfortunate tendency among memory studies to adopt an ‘either-or’ standpoint, thereby setting up a false

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dichotomy between these two approaches as though they are ‘unrelated alternatives.’2 More recent memory works by Aleida Assmann plus Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider among many others have likewise advocated the benefits of moving away from ‘either-or’ options and instead adopting more nuanced approaches that allow for ‘as-well-as’ interpretations.3 Correspondingly, throughout this work considerable attention has been devoted to both the state-centred and social-agency perspectives. Furthermore, it synthesises leading manifestations of each approach into an overarching narrative of the politicisation of Dresden’s past. In addition, the substantive section of the thesis is framed by two further concepts. First, Dresden is identified as a prominent arena of articulation for the ‘BRDDR hybridisation’ of the politics of the past in reunified Germany immediately following the Wende. Second, a significant increase in the ‘cosmopolitanisation’ of Dresden war memory and commemoration in the post-reunification period can be observed. Notions of cosmopolitanism can be adopted for all manner of applications in memory studies, particularly in relation to the global age. Here the term cosmopolitanisation is applied to describe two interrelated developments: an expanded international dimension to Dresden commemorative politics; and the subsequent amplification of international media interest in, and coverage of, the topic. Regarding this last matter, this study also heeds the advice of Robert G. Moeller and pays close attention to the ways in which the destruction of Dresden was mass-mediated on and around the time of the milestone Gedenktage and other key events under scrutiny.4 It is, indeed, an extremely important exercise in its own right, for as Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver comment: ‘Catastrophes are ultimately defined by what is said about them.’5 And Dresden makes for a particularly enlightening case study. Chapters 1 and 2 provided broader historical context prior to the 1985–2005 period under intense examination. By presenting an overview of the strategic bombing offensive against Germany, Chapter 1 established that, although the Dresden raid proved exceptionally destructive, it was not exceptional by design. Rather, it was more or less typical for the time and, as such, it represented the logical culmination of the Western Allies’ bombing policy pursued from February 1942

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onwards. Even before the war’s end, however, the Dresden firebombing was being isolated from the rest of the extensive civil death and devastation visited upon German population centres during the bombing war. Much of the raid’s post-war notoriety stemmed from serious doubts raised over its military justification. It remained – indeed, remains – open to conjecture what factors had motivated such a heavy attack on the civic heart of a hitherto essentially undamaged city so late in the war. Dresden’s prewar reputation as a city of architectural splendour, artistic opulence, and high culture combined with the fact that Western Allied bombers had overwhelmingly ignored Saxony’s capital for years only served to reinforce the myth that the city had contained no significant war industry. Moreover, claims of a sixfigure death toll, which remain persistent to this day in spite of findings released by special commissions established in the 1950s and again within the past decade, helped to perpetuate the notion that the destruction of Dresden was a sui generis event. Following its February 1945 firebombing, Saxony’s capital immediately forfeited its longstanding reputation as a European Kulturstadt for a newfound standing as the German Opferstadt. Drawing from the excellent work of Gilad Margalit and Matthias Neutzner, Chapter 2 surveyed the major events and key developments in public representation and remembrance of the destruction of Dresden in the BRD and especially the DDR from the 1940s to the early 1980s. By outlining the main contours in Dresden commemorative politics during this period, the chapter provides a solid platform for the substantive ‘slices’ that follow. Chapters 3 to 6 presented a detailed analysis of Dresden war memory and commemoration between 1985 and 2005. Some appreciable shifts can be detected during this period of momentous socio-political change in Germany. In 1985, Dresden’s Gedenktag overwhelmingly was a state-centred arena of articulation with some social agency also evident in the public commemorative process. Over the ensuing two decades, the occasion became increasingly dominated by acts of social agency. Having said this, however, following reunification state-centred agents of articulation spanning the politicoideological spectrum have consistently sought to (mis)appropriate

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Dresden’s symbolism as the Opferstadt when attaching messages to the remembrance of the city’s destruction. Also, after initially undergoing a process of BRDDR hybridisation of German–German memory, another significant development has seen the increased cosmopolitanisation of Dresden’s Gedenktag as an arena in which to articulate war memory and commemoration. As the first ‘slice,’ Chapter 3 examined the milestone fortieth Gedenktag in 1985, focusing on three main case studies. Despite their manifest dissimilarities as events, the first two – the midday mass rally and the evening reopening of the Semper Opera House – are both instructive examples of how the DDR state sought to control this highprofile occasion. After a temporary hiatus in the 1970s and into the early 1980s, East Berlin’s interest in setting Dresden’s commemorative agenda had been re-ignited and these two events on the fortieth Gedenktag marked an emphatic return. Although the staging of a party rally represented the revival of a previous arena of articulation, significantly the messages disseminated (and the tone used) at the 1985 rally were different. The anti-Western rhetoric that had prevailed earlier in the Cold War no longer made sense owing to improved German– German relations and looming superpower talks in Geneva. Instead, at a time of heightened tension over the nuclear arms race, framing Dresden’s destruction as a warning and obligation to pursue and promote world peace and to prevent a ‘Euroshima’ from ever happening made the Gedenktag a highly usable memory politics asset. Reopening the Semperoper on the high-profile fortieth Gedenktag represented a politico-ideological coup for East Berlin. It implicitly juxtaposed the opera house’s (and, by extension, Dresden’s) fascist-induced destruction with its socialist-inspired reconstruction and rebirth, thus serving as a corporeal manifestation of the DDR’s national anthem Auferstanden aus Ruinen. The third case study in 1985 – remembrance at the Frauenkirche ruins – also featured some state-centred acts of commemoration including an official West German ceremony. Indeed, comments made by Hans-Otto Bräutigam, when laying a wreath on federal president Richard von Weizsäcker’s behalf, that Dresden’s Gedenktag should be acknowledged as a ‘day of mourning for all Germans’ can be considered a defining moment in the hybridisation of

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German–German war memories at a time when reunification was not even seriously on the agenda. Furthermore, the role of the Frauenkirche ruins as Dresden’s foremost site of bombing memory was reinforced by the acts of social agency that took place there in the evening. For several decades the ruins had functioned as arguably Germany’s most prominent anti-war Mahnmal, and during the 1980s the site also served as the focal point of passive resistance against the state. In exploring the politics of Dresden’s past in the heady months of 1989–90, the next ‘slice,’ Chapter 4, identified some important discontinuities already evident during the so-called Schwebezeit between the fall of the Berlin Wall and Germany’s official date of reunification on 3 October 1990. East Berlin’s disempowerment created space for new state-centred and social agencies of articulation to appropriate Dresden’s symbolism as the Opferstadt. When, in December 1989, West German leader Helmut Kohl chose the Frauenkirche ruins as the site at which to openly express to the world his vision of ‘the unity of the nation,’ his actions advanced both the hybridisation and cosmopolitanisation of Dresden war memory and commemoration. In choosing the 1990 Gedenktag as the opportune moment to announce its worldwide Ruf aus Dresden for (inter)national assistance to rebuild the Frauenkirche, the actions of a local Bürgerinitiative similarly promoted notions of both hybridisation and cosmopolitanisation. Finally, as the forty-fifth Gedenktag occurred at a time of virtual statelessness, manifestations of social agency moved to the forefront of the day’s commemorative process. The most remarkable scenes took place in the evening, when an estimated 200,000 people – effectively every third Dresdener – gathered at the Frauenkirche ruins. Yet, owing to the unbridled success of the Ruf, 13 February 1990 would be the last ‘milestone’ Gedenktag on which the ruins remained in their unaltered state as a Mahnmal before the rebuilding project gained momentum. Chapter 5, the most ambitious of the ‘slices,’ linked a series of developments that led from London in May 1992 to Dresden’s Gedenktag in February 2000. Although Dresden’s cultivation of European-wide sister-city partnerships from the late 1950s onwards can be viewed as a nascent attempt to ‘cosmopolitanise’ memory and commemoration of the city’s destruction, the international dimension

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of the Gedenktag reached new levels in the 1990s. The fact that this development largely was reactionary, rather than pro-active and premeditated, raises some intriguing points generally concerning war memory and commemoration. First, the politicisation of the past often stems from remarkably organic and unpredictable origins. In this case, the Harris statue unveiled in London was not supposed to have anything to do with remembering the Dresden firebombing, but it quickly became engulfed in international controversy and thus inadvertently helped to inspire the establishment of the British fundraising organisation the Dresden Trust. In turn, the Trust’s endeavours resulted in reconciliation emerging as the dominant theme on the high-profile fiftieth and fifty-fifth Gedenktage in 1995 and 2000 respectively. Second, the chapter identifies much overlap between social-agency and statecentred manifestations of war memory and commemoration. Third, how commemorative events are mass-mediated can be incredibly influential. After all, as Chapter 5 revealed, Fleet Street’s sensational coverage of first the Harris statue controversy and then the Queen’s visit to Dresden five months later played no small role in mobilising Alan Russell and others to somehow make a positive difference, culminating in the founding of the Dresden Trust. If it were not for the impact of the media in 1992, then, it is quite probable that the Trust never would have materialised and who knows what might have eventuated on Dresden’s subsequent milestone Gedenktage. Finally, though reconciliation was the dominant theme attached to Dresden’s Gedenktag, wider debates about German wartime victimisation also surfaced. The most notable example here is federal president Roman Herzog’s address in the Kulturpalast on 13 February 1995, in which he stressed that Germans should never try to settle accounts, but also argued the time had come for belated international recognition that Germans, too, had suffered terribly during the war. The final ‘slice,’ Chapter 6, depicted Dresden’s milestone sixtieth Gedenktag in 2005 as a memory politics battleground. It is an illuminating case of the dynamics at play when various conflicting state-centred and socially-based agencies of articulation compete for control over what messages are attached to a high-profile occasion. Much of the impetus came from Germany’s NPD-led resurgent far right

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looking to (mis)appropriate Dresden’s Gedenktag as a contemporary political asset. For six decades, Dresden had been represented and remembered as the paradigmatic German Opferstadt. Importantly, however, this notion typically had been buttressed by acknowledging that Germans were ultimately responsible for their own wartime loss and suffering. In 2005, the NPD’s historical revisionism eschewed this broader ‘cause and effect’ and, instead, described the Dresden raid as a ‘bombing holocaust’ in order to depict Germans as hapless victims. Whereas the German national press generally downplayed the NPD’s provocative antics and claimed that peaceful anti-fascist counterdemonstrations staged by locals won the struggle for control over Dresden war memory and commemoration, reports in the (electronic) global media were not so positive. Once again, this reinforces what a worthwhile exercise it is to scrutinise how events are mass-mediated. As acknowledged in the introduction, this study represents workin-progress. After the dramatic scenes of 2005, somewhat predictably – given the pattern set over the previous six decades – commemorations in Dresden on 13 February from 2006 to 2009 were comparatively more subdued affairs, and (inter)national media interest dropped accordingly. Having said this, however, it must be stressed that in these supposed ‘in-between’ years Dresden’s Gedenktag continued to be a far more contested arena than in previous decades. Intriguingly, the far right has conducted a so-called Trauermarsch each year (though not necessarily on the actual Gedenktag and instead, presumably for logistical convenience, sometimes on the nearest weekend). Similarly, locals have replicated variations of their candlelit ‘DIESE STADT HAT NAZIS SATT!’ message that first appeared in 2005 as well as forming human chains and other expressions of peace. How long these new Gedenktag ‘customs’ continue in future will be interesting to gauge, although obviously it will be necessary for locals to state that they are ‘fed up’ with fascists only so long as neo-Nazis persist with their attempts to (mis)appropriate memories of Dresden’s wartime destruction for contemporary political means. As could be expected, Dresden’s ‘milestone’ sixty-fifth Gedenktag in 2010 witnessed a demonstrable spike in not only activities but also media coverage. Besides all the usual commemorative events associated

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with the day for several decades, plus the more recent manifestation of neo-Nazis competing against anti-fascist leftists and peaceloving locals alike, a ‘new tradition’ was initiated. On 13 February 2010, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Dresden where, in the rebuilt Semperoper, he was bestowed with the honour of becoming the inaugural recipient of the Dresden Prize. Conceived by the registered voluntary association Friends of Dresden Germany (Friends of Dresden Deutschland e.V.) and carrying a prize of €25,000, the Dresden Prize is designed to recognise leading figures in the pursuit of peace and conflict resolution. Gorbachev, for instance, was selected due to his pivotal role in nuclear disarmament and ending the Cold War. In recognising the legendary multicultural conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and influential American war photojournalist James Nachtwey as the next Dresden Prize recipients in 2011 and 2012 respectively, the Friends of Dresden Germany clearly wants to extend its scope far beyond both politics and Europe when it comes to appropriating Dresden’s Gedenktag to celebrate and promote peace and conflict resolution annually. As for what the longer-term future holds for the politicisation of Dresden war memory and commemoration more generally, only time will tell. In light of the findings presented in the present study, however, it is difficult to imagine that 13 February will lose its powerful symbolism or political usability any time soon. As the ‘diamond jubilee’ seventy-fifth Gedenktag, 13 February 2020 certainly promises to be a high-water mark. For more than two centuries, Saxony’s capital – the world-renowned Elbflorenz – was celebrated as a European Kulturstadt. For how long will Dresden continue to be commemorated as the German Opferstadt?

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Notes Introduction









1 Rudolf Augstein, ‘8. Mai 1945 – Der Zusammenbruch oder die Stunde Null?’ Der Spiegel, 7 January 1985. All translations from original German sources are my own unless stated otherwise. 2 ‘8. Mai 1945 – gegen das Vergessen,’ FAZ, 7 April and 5 May 1995. For the first announcement in April, see also Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, 2001). 2. The second announcement advertised the group’s plans to stage a commemorative event (Gedenkveranstaltung) two days later on 7 May in Munich. 3 Alice Brauner is a Berlin-based political scientist, freelance journalist, and television program presenter. In the 1990s, she worked as an interviewer and advisor for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation before obtaining her doctorate from the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung der Technische Universität Berlin with a thesis on the antidemocratic and antisemitic tendencies of the new right in Germany. 4 ‘wider das Vergessen,’ FAZ, 6 May 1995. 5 ‘Film Producer Artur Brauner: A Dialogue about Humanity and Tolerance,’ Goethe-Institut Washington. http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/ was/acv/film/brauner/enindex.htm, link no longer active (2004 (accessed January 2006)). 6 ‘Public memory,’ according to James Young, ‘is never shaped in a vacuum, its motives never pure.’ See ‘Holocaust Museums in Germany, Poland, Israel, and the United States,’ in Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust, eds Konrad Kwiet and Jürgen Matthaeus (Westport, CT, 2004). 249. 7 Robert Emerson, ‘Working with “Key Incidents,”’ in Qualitative Research Practice, eds Clive Seale, et al. (London, 2004). 457–2. 8 Concerning the longstanding argument that Hitler initiated and then prolonged a war Germany was incapable of winning under his conduct, I am indebted to Prof. Dr Jost Dülffer for bringing to my attention Gotthard

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Breit, Das Staats- und Gesellschaftsbild deutscher Generale beider Weltkriege im Spiegel ihrer Memoiren (Boppard-am-Rhein, 1973). 9 Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA, 1995). Atina Grossman, ‘A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers,’ in West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society, and Culture in the Adenauer Era, ed. Robert G. Moeller (Ann Arbor, MI, 1997). Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945 (London, 2002). 10 Ernst von Salomon, The Answers of Ernst von Salomon to the 131 Questions in the Allied Military Government Frageboden, Constantine FitzGibbon trans. (London, 1954). Ernst von Salomon, Frageboden (The Questionaire), trans. Constantine FitzGibbon (Garden City, New York, 1955). The term ‘Nuremberg interregnum’ to denote the post-war years prior to Germany’s official division is borrowed from Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA, 1997). 11 ‘The United States Strategic Bombing Surveys (Summary Reports: European War; Pacific War),’ Air University Press. http://aupress.au.af. mil/Books/USSBS/USSBS.pdf, link no longer active (1945 (accessed June 2009)). Max Hastings, Bomber Command (London, 1979). 352. W.G. Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur (Frankfurt-am-Main, 2003). 11. Robert G. Moeller, ‘Germans as Victims? Thoughts on a Post-Cold War History of World War II’s Legacies,’ History and Memory 17 (Spring/Summer 2005). 151. Robert G. Moeller, ‘The Politics of the Past in the 1950s: Rhetorics of Victimisation in East and West Germany,’ in Germans as Victims, ed. Bill Niven (New York, 2006). 27. 12 Moeller, War Stories. 3. Moeller, ‘Germans as Victims?’ 151. Rainer Schulze, ‘The Struggle of Past and Present in Individual Identities: The Case of German Refugees and Expellees from the East,’ in Coming Home to Germany? The Integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic, eds David Rock and Stefan Wolff (New York, 2002). 38. 13 Quoted in Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The AngloAmericans and the Expulsion of the Germans; Background, Execution, Consequences (London, 1977). 87–8. 14 For an example they state: ‘It was not the Australian forces at Gallipoli that suffered the most casualties in that disastrous campaign, but it was only in Australia that the memory of Gallipoli engendered a new national consciousness.’ Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver, eds, The Memory of Catastrophe (Manchester, 2004). 7. 15 Ibid. 6. 16 Conceptually, notes Jost Dülffer, in German Opfer contains both a passive (victim) and a voluntary (sacrifice) connotation. See ‘Erinnerungspolitik und Erinnerungskultur – Kein Ende der Geschichte,’ in Eine Ausstellung

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17



18 19



20



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22



23

und ihre Folgen: Zur Rezeption der Ausstellung ‘Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944,’ Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Hamburg, 1999). 300. The idea of coupling hubris and nemesis to encapsulate the rise and fall of the Third Reich comes from the outstanding two-part Hitler biography by Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, 1st American ed. (New York, 1999) and Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis (London, 2000). Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (London, 2000). Daniel Hoffmann, Der Knabe im Feuer: Ein Erlebnisbericht von Dresdens Untergang (East Berlin, 1956). Alan Cooper, Target Dresden, 2nd revised ed. (2005). Axel Rodenberger, Der Tod von Dresden: Bericht vom Sterben einer Stadt in Augenzeugenberichten (Berlin, 1995). Max Seydewitz, Die unbesiegbare Stadt: Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau von Dresden, 4. verbesserte Auflage ed. (Berlin, 1961). David Irving, The Destruction of Dresden (London, 1963). Wolfgang Paul, …zum Beispiel Dresden: Schicksal einer Stadt (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1964). Walter Weidauer, Inferno Dresden: Über Lügen und Legenden um die Aktion ‘Donnerschlag,’ 7th ed. (Berlin, 1989). Götz Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte – Zerstörung – Folgen, Sonderausgabe. (Würzburg, 1998). Alexander McKee, Dresden 1945: The Devil’s Tinderbox (London, 1982). For examples spanning over four decades, see Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939– 1945, vol. III. Victory (London, 1961). Anthony Verrier, The Bomber Offensive (London, 1974). Hastings, Bomber Command. Dudley Saward, ‘Bomber’ Harris (London, 1984). John Terraine, The Right of the Line: The Royal Air Force in the European War, 1939–1945 (London, 1985). Henry Probert, Bomber Harris: His Life and Times (London, 2003). Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–45 (Berlin, 2004). Rolf-Dieter Müller, Der Bombenkrieg 1939–1945 (Berlin, 2004). To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the war’s end, from April to August the German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum, DHM) in Berlin displayed a temporary exhibition titled ‘1945 – The War and its Consequences: The War’s End and the Politics of Memory in Germany’ (Der Krieg und seine Folge: Kriegsende und Erinnerungspolitik in Deutschland). Several artefacts from the Dresden firebombing, including molten glass and a piece of the roof of the destroyed Frauenkirche, were displayed as focal points in the exhibition’s section dealing with the bombing war. An example from Australia involved a leading historian’s commentary celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of VJ Day. Reflecting on the extraordinarily horrific nature of the Second World War, he identified Dresden as the iconic event of the European bombing war. David Day,

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24



25



26



27



28



29 30 31



32



33

‘The Horrors and Legacy of World War II,’ The Australian, 15 August 2005. 8. In 2004, Australia’s then Shadow Foreign Minister (and future prime minister) Kevin Rudd inspected countries hit by the Boxing Day Tsunami. In describing what he saw when flying over the densely-populated areas most hardly hit, Rudd later told parliament: ‘The look of this from the air was like stepping back in history and looking at black-and-white film – a combination of Hiroshima and Dresden. I could think of nothing else, and it was something I had never seen in my life.’ MP for Griffith Kevin Rudd, ‘Indian Ocean Tsunami’ (House of Representatives, No 4), Parliament of Australia: Hansard. http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/reps/ dailys/dr080205.pdf, link no longer active (8 February 2005 (accessed November 2008)). For recent examples see Moeller, ‘Germans as Victims?’ Martin Evans, ‘Memories, Monuments, Histories: The Re-thinking of the Second World War since 1989,’ National Identities 8 (December, 2006). Jeffrey Olick, ‘Introduction,’ in States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection, ed. Jeffrey Olick (Durham and London, 2003). Jeffrey Olick, In the House of the Hangman: The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943–1949 (Chicago, 2005). Andreas Huyssen, ‘Air War Legacies: From Dresden to Baghdad,’ in Germans as Victims, ed. Niven. Leo Kuper, ‘Theoretical Issues Relating to Genocide: Uses and Abuses,’ in Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, ed. George J. Andreopoulos (Philadelphia, PA, 1994). 32–5. Helen Fein, ‘Genocide, Terror, Life Integrity, and War Crimes: The Case for Discrimination,’ in Genocide, ed. Andreopoulos. 99–100, 104–5. Israel W. Charny, ‘Toward a Generic Definition of Genocide,’ in Genocide, ed. Andreopoulos. 68–9. Donald Bloxham, ‘Dresden as a War Crime,’ in Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945, eds Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang (London, 2006). Addison and Crang, eds, Firestorm. Preface xi. Frederick Taylor, Dresden. Tuesday 13 February 1945 (London, 2005). Helmut Schnatz, Tiefflieger über Dresden: Legende oder Wirklichkeit? (Cologne, 2000). Walter Kempowski, ed., Der rote Hahn. Dresden im Februar 1945 (Munich, 2001). Gilad Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff auf Dresden. Seine Bedeutung für die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR und für die Herauskristallisierung einer historischen Kriegserinnerung im Westen,’ in Narrative der Shoah. Repräsentationen der Vergangenheit in Historiographie, Kunst und Politik, eds Susanne Düwell and Matthias Schmidt (Paderborn, 2002). For Margalit’s condensed account of the same research, see ‘Dresden und die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR,’ Historicum.net. http://www.historicum.

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34



35



36 37



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39



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43 44 45 46 47

net/themen/bombenkrieg/themen-beitraege/aspekte/art/Dresden_ und_die/html/ca/e2b0f02bb5/?tx_mediadb_pi1%5BmaxItems%5D=5 (28 March 2006 (accessed September 2006)). Neutzner’s overview of Dresden commemorative politics features as ‘Vom Anklagen zum Erinnern: Die Erzählung vom 13. Februar,’ in Das rote Leuchten: Dresden und der Bombenkrieg, eds Oliver Reinhard, Matthias Neutzner, and Wolfgang Hesse (Dresden, 2005). Elizabeth Corwin, ‘The Dresden Bombing as portrayed in German Accounts, East and West,’ UCLA Historical Journal 8 (1987). Christiane Hertel. ‘Dis/Continuities in Dresden’s Dances of Death,’ HighBeamEncyclopedia. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-6391 0536.html, link no longer active (3 January 2000 (accessed November 2008)). ‘Part One: Florence on the Elbe’ in Taylor, Dresden. 13–169. ‘Afterword: Commemoration’ in ibid. 477–86. Taylor’s account is extremely vague and, in keeping with his entire book, the referencing is infuriatingly poor. Bill Niven, ‘The GDR and Memory of the Bombing of Dresden,’ in Germans as Victims, ed. Niven 109–29. Anne Fuchs, After the Dresden Bombing: Pathways of Memory, 1945 to the Present (Basingstoke, 2012). The term ‘memory landscape’ is borrowed from Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870–1990 (Berkeley, CA, 2000). T.G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper, ‘The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration: Contexts, Structures and Dynamics,’ in The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, eds Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper (London, 2000). 16. Three particularly helpful introductions to the subject that survey the literature and map-out conceptual frameworks are ibid. 3–85. Jan-Werner Müller, ‘Introduction,’ in Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, ed. Müller (Cambridge, 2002). 1–38. Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, ‘Setting the Framework,’ in War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, eds Winter and Sivan (Cambridge, 1999). 6–39. Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper, ‘Contexts, Structures, Dynamics.’ 7. Ibid. 8–15. Ibid. 7. Ibid. For an excellent article that demonstrates the virtues of considering the overlap between various strands of public, private, and intergenerational German war memories, see Aleida Assmann, ‘On the (in)compatibility of guilt and suffering in German memory,’ German Life and Letters 59 (April 2006). 187–200.

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48 The term ‘European memoryscape’ is borrowed from Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, ‘Revised Introduction to the English Edition,’ in The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (Philadelphia, PA, 2006). 19. 49 Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche, eds, The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture (Urbana, IL and Chicago, 2002). Olick, ed., States of Memory. Niven, ed., Germans as Victims. 50 Matthias Hass, Gestaltetes Gedenken: Yad Vashem, das U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum und die Stiftung Topographie des Terrors (Frankfurtam-Main and New York, 2002). Young, ‘Holocaust Museums.’ 51 Herf, Divided Memory. Moeller, War Stories. Frank Biess, ‘“Pioneers of a New Germany”: Returning POWs from the Soviet Union and the Making of East German Citizens, 1945–1950,’ Central European History 32 (1999). 52 Koshar, Monuments to Traces. Siobhan Kattago, Ambiguous Memory: The Nazi Past and German National Identity (Westport, CT, 2001). 53 Klaus Neumann, Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany (Ann Arbor, MI, 2003). 54 Michael J. Hogan, ed., Hiroshima in History and Memory (New York, 1999). 55 William Kidd and Brian Murdoch, eds, Memory and Memorials: the Commemorative Century (Aldershot, 2004). 56 John Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, NJ, 1994). Especially helpful is Gillis’ introduction, ‘Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship.’ See also James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, CT, 1993). Olick, ed., States of Memory. 57 Steven C. Dubin, Displays of Power: Controversy in the American Museum from the Enola Gay to Sensation (New York, 1999). Michael J. Hogan, ‘The Enola Gay Controversy: History, Memory, and the Politics of Presentation,’ in Hiroshima in History and Memory, ed. Hogan (New York, 1999). Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, ed., Eine Ausstellung. 58 Martin Evans and Ken Lunn, eds, War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1997). Helmut Peitsch, Charles Burdett, and Claire Gorrara, eds, European Memories of the Second World War (New York/London, 1999). Joan Beaumont, ‘Australian Memory and the US Wartime Alliance: The Australian-American Memorial and the Battle of the Coral Sea,’ War & Society 22 (2004). Eleni Bastéa, ed., Memory and Architecture (Albuquerque, NM, 2004). Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington, IN, 1986). Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven and London, 2001). Lyn Spillman, ‘When Do Collective Memories Last? Founding Moments in the United States and Australia,’ in States of Memory, ed. Olick. Pam Maclean and

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59 60 61 62



63 64



65 66



67 68 69



70 71 72 73



74

Michele Langfield, ‘“Tinged by the Holocaust”: Gender, War and Jewish Identities,’ Australian Journal of Jewish Studies XVII (2003). Thomas Huber, ‘Holocaust Compensation Payments and the Global Search for Justice for Victims of Nazi Persecution,’ The Australian Journal of Politics and History 48. (March, 2002). Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper, ‘Contexts, Structures, Dynamics.’ 17. Ibid. Ibid. Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,’ Representations (1989). 7. Ibid. 12. Jörn Rüsen, ‘Holocaust Memory and Identity Building: Metahistorical Considerations in the Case of (West) Germany,’ in Disturbing Remains: Memory, History, and Crisis in the Twentieth Century, eds Michael Roth and Charles Salas (Los Angeles, 2001). 253. Ibid. The field is prodigious. For examples, see Gray and Oliver, eds, The Memory of Catastrophe. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1996). Roth and Salas, eds, Disturbing Remains. Rock and Wolff, eds, Coming Home to Germany? Barbara Misztal, ‘The Sacrilization of Memory,’ European Journal of Social Theory 7 (2004). ‘Introduction’ to Gray and Oliver, eds, The Memory of Catastrophe. 1–2. Winter and Sivan, ‘Setting.’ 18. Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge, 2005). For international perspectives, see also Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston, MA, 1999). Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London, 2000). Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper, ‘Contexts, Structures, Dynamics.’ 3. Levy and Sznaider, ‘Revised Introduction.’ 12. Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper, ‘Contexts, Structures, Dynamics.’ 3. Eric Langenbacher and Friederike Eigler, ‘Introduction: Memory Boom or Memory Fatigue in 21st Century Germany?’ German Politics and Society 23 (2005). 1. Comments by these four figures in 2003–4 encapsulated the prevailing attitude and main argumentative thrust behind Jewish and/or Polish accusations of ‘collective guilt.’ Anne Applebaum, ‘Germans as Victims. We Couldn’t Make this One up if We Wanted to!’ Jewish World Review (JWR). http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1003/applebaum_2003_ 10_16.php3, link no longer active (16 October 2003 (accessed January 2004)). Among other things, high-profile journalist and author Applebaum was at that time a member of the Washington Post editorial board. She is married to the Polish politician and writer Radoslaw

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75 76 77



78 79



80 81



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83

Sikorski. Slawomir Majman, ‘Viewpoint: Germans, more Humility,’ Warsaw Voice Online. http://www.warsawvoice.pl/index.phtml?pg=druk&a3216, link no longer active (21 August 2003 (accessed January 2004)). At the time, Majman was the outspoken senior political analyst for the Warsaw Voice. Bartosz Jalowiecki, ‘Lies the Germans tell Themselves,’ American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). http:// www.aei.org/include/news_print.asp?newsID= 19690, link no longer active (January 2004 (accessed January 2004)). Jalowiecki, a former president of the Warsaw-based Foundation for Polish–German Reconciliation, was program coordinator of the New Atlantic Initiative in Washington when he wrote this commentary. Marek Edelman (interviewed by Krysztof Burnetko and Jaroslaw Makowski), ‘No Need to Feel Sorry for the Germans,’ American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). http://www.aei.org/include/news_print.asp?new sID=19157&projectID=11, link no longer active (11 September 2003 (accessed January 2004)). Edelman, ‘No Need.’ Jalowiecki, ‘Lies.’ Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA, 1988). ‘Epilogue: Whose Holocaust? Whose History?’ in ibid. 160–72. Koshar, Monuments to Traces. 107–9, 258. For a brief history of the Neue Wache, see Chapter 6. Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, ed., Eine Ausstellung. See especially, Julius Schoeps and Rudolf Augstein, eds, Ein Volk von Mördern? Die Dokumentation zur Goldhagen-Kontroverse um die Rolle der Deutschen im Holocaust (Hamburg, 1996). Robert R. Shandley, ed., Unwilling Germans? The Goldhagen Debate (Minneapolis, MN, 1998). Geoff Eley, ed., The Goldhagen Effect: History, Memory, Nazism – Facing the German Past (2000). Franklin H. Littell, ed., Hyping the Holocaust: Scholars Answer Goldhagen (Marion Station, PA, 1997). István Deák, ‘The Goldhagen Controversy in Retrospect,’ in Essays on Hitler’s Europe (Lincoln and London, 2001). Anne Fuchs, ‘Towards an Ethics of Remembering: The WalserBubis Debate and the Other of Discourse,’ The German Quarterly 75 (Summer 2002). Kathrin Schodel, ‘Normalising Cultural Memory? The “Walser-Bubis Debate” and Martin Walser’s Novel Ein springender Brunnen,’ in Recasting German Identity: Culture, Politics, and Literature in the Berlin Republic, eds Stuart Taberner and Frank Finlay (2002). Hans-Georg Stavginski, Das Holocaust-Denkmal: Der Streit um das ‘Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas’ in Berlin, 1988–1999 (Paderborn, 2002).

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84 Moeller, War Stories. 198. 85 Bill Niven, ‘Introduction: German Victimhood at the Turn of the Millennium,’ in Germans as Victims, ed. Niven. 21. 86 Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration, Joel Golb trans. (New York, 2002). Moeller, War Stories. 87 Mary Fulbrook, ‘Nation, State, and Political Culture in Divided Germany, 1945–90,’ in The State of Germany: The National Idea in the Making, Unmaking, and Remaking of a Modern Nation-State, ed. John Breuilly (London and New York, 1992). Mary Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust (Cambridge, 1999). Grossman, ‘Question of Silence.’ Herf, Divided Memory. Naimark, The Russians in Germany. 88 Niven, ed., Germans as Victims. 89 Niven, ‘Introduction.’ 22. 90 Peter Graves, ‘Christa Wolf ’s Patterns of Childhood. An East German Confrontation with the Nazi Past,’ in How the Holocaust Looks Now: International Perspectives, eds Martin Davies and Claus-Christian Szejnmann (Hampshire, 2007). 50. 91 Niven, ‘Introduction.’ 22. Moeller, War Stories. 18–19. Moeller, ‘The Politics.’ 29. 92 Niven, ‘Introduction.’ 22. 93 Peter Monteath, ed., Ernst Thälmann: Mensch und Mythos (Amsterdam, 2000). For the Cuban island named after Thälmann, see Matthias Gebauer, ‘Schenkte Castro den Deutschen eine Karibikinsel?’ SpiegelOnline. http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,117432,00html (14 February 2001 (accessed June 2007)). 94 Quoted in Moeller, ‘The Politics.’ 30. 95 Ibid. 31. 96 For the resettlement and treatment of ethnic Germans in the SBZ and the DDR, see Philipp Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1956 (Göttingen, 1998). Philipp Ther, ‘Expellee Policy in the Soviet-Occupied Zone and the GDR: 1945–1953,’ in Coming Home to Germany?, eds Rock and Wolff. 97 Ibid. Schulze, ‘Struggle of Past and Present.’ 98 Ibid. Niven, ‘Introduction.’ 3. 99 Ibid. 4. Moeller, ‘Germans as Victims?’ 161. 100 Moeller, ‘Germans as Victims?’ 156. 101 Ibid. 157. Moeller, ‘The Politics.’ 31–2. 102 Daniel Levy, ‘Integrating Ethnic Germans in West Germany: The Early Postwar Period,’ in Coming Home to Germany?, eds Rock and Wolff. 103 For discussion of Erbschuld being rejected later, see A. Dirk Moses, ‘Stigma and Sacrifice in the Federal Republic of Germany,’ History and Memory 19 (2007). 154.

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104 Moeller, ‘Germans as Victims?’ 162. 105 For an engaging study, which actually warns against overstating the case of change, see Ruth Wittlinger, ‘Taboo or Tradition? The “Germans as Victims” theme in West Germany until the early 1990s,’ in Germans as Victims, ed. Niven. 106 Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht: die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914–1918 (Düsseldorf, 1961). 107 See generally, Douglas, Memory of Judgment. Frei, Adenauer’s Germany. 108 One way members of the ’68-ers generation sought to distance themselves morally from the sins of their fathers was the Väterliteratur sub-genre of writing of the 1970s and 1980s, in which they openly and critically questioned what their parents and grandparents either had known – or, worse still, had done – during the war. Caroline Wiedmer, The Claims of Memory: Representations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Germany and France (Ithaca, NY and London, 1999). 109 Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche, ‘Introduction: Noises of the Past,’ in The Work of Memory, eds Confino and Fritzsche. 2. 110 Herf, Divided Memory. 8. 111 Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective. Dülffer, ‘Erinnerungspolitik.’ 298–9. 112 Maier, The Unmasterable Past. Peter Baldwin, ed., Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians’ Debate (Boston, MA, 1990). Richard J. Evans, In Hitler’s Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past, 1st ed. (New York, 1989). 113 Gillis, ed., Commemorations. 114 Breuilly, ed., The State of Germany. Harold James, A German Identity: 1770 to the Present (London, 2000). 115 Richard J. Evans, Rethinking German History: Nineteenth-century Germany and the Origins of the Third Reich (London and Boston, MA, 1987). 116 Reinhard Alter and Peter Monteath, eds, Rewriting the German Past: History and Identity in the New Germany (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1997). 117 Young, Texture of Memory. Neumann, Shifting Memories. 118 Compare the titles of Mary Fulbrook’s Fontana History of Germany, 1918–1990: The Divided Nation (London, 1991) and Herf ’s Divided Memory. 119 For a brilliant comedic portrayal of the challenge East Germans faced, see Wolfgang Becker’s film Good Bye Lenin! (Germany, 2003). 120 Levy and Sznaider, ‘Revised Introduction.’ 121 The fusion of the initials of the BRD and the DDR to form the hybrid acronym BRDDR was popularised in sections of the German press during the reunification process. 122 For an insightful review article on publications about bombing, see Dietmar Süß, ‘“Heimatfront” und “People’s War”: Neue Literatur zur

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125 126 127 128

129 130



131 132 133 134

Geschichte des Luftkrieges,’ sehepunkte. http://www.sehepunkte. historicum.net/2004/07/6714.html (15 July 2004 (accessed November 2005)). Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur. An English translation was subsequently published as On the Natural History of Destruction: With Essays on Alfred Andersch, Jean Améry and Peter Weiss (London, 2003). Friedrich, Der Brand. Günter Grass, Im Krebsgang: Eine Novelle (Göttingen, 2002). The awkwardly-titled English translation is Crabwalk, Krishna Winston trans. (London, 2002). Eric Langenbacher, ‘(Review Article) The Return of Memory: New Discussions about German Suffering in World War II,’ German Politics and Society 21 (2003). Eric Langenbacher, ‘(Review Article) Competing Interpretations of the Past in Contemporary Germany,’ German Politics and Society 20 (Spring 2002). Christian Schütze, ‘Speaking the Unspeakable,’ Guardian Unlimited. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/aug/27/ londonreviewofbooks (27 August 2003 (accessed January 2004)). Nathaniel Popper, ‘Germans Reexamine their Own WWII Suffering,’ Forward. http://www.forward.com.issues/2003/03.10.03/news6.germany.html, link no longer active (2003 (accessed 19 January 2004)). Lothar Kettenacker, ed., Ein Volk von Opfern? Die neue Debatte um den Bombenkrieg 1940–45 (Reinbek, 2003). Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur. 17–18. Volker Hage, Zeugen der Zerstörung: Die Literaten und der Luftkrieg (Frankfurt-am-Main, 2003). For an excellent review article, see Robert G. Moeller, ‘Sinking Ships, the Lost Heimat and Broken Taboos: Günter Grass and the Politics of Memory in Contemporary Germany,’ Contemporary European History 12 (2003). For full-length accounts of the sinking of the Gustloff, see Christopher Dobson, John Miller, and Ronald Payne, The Cruelest Night (Boston, MA, 1979). Arthur Sellwood, The Damned don’t Drown: The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff (Annapolis, MD, 1996). Julian Preece, ‘Günter Grass: “The Man who Migrated across History,’” in Coming Home to Germany?, eds Rock and Wolff. Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur. 76. Friedrich had touched upon the subject briefly in the eighth chapter of his study mainly concerned with crimes committed by the German High Command on the Eastern Front. See Das Gesetz des Krieges: Das deutsche Heer in Rußland 1941 bis 1945. Der Prozeß gegen das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Munich, 1993). Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur. 76. Jörg Friedrich, Brandstätten: der Anblick des Bombenkriegs (Berlin, 2003). Niven, ‘Introduction.’ 14. Schütze, ‘Speaking the Unspeakable.’ Antoine Capet, Gerhard L. Weinberg, and Wilfried Wilms, ‘Dual Review of Jörg Friedrich. The

285

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135 136 137 138

139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146

147 148

149 150

Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945.’ H-net. http://www.hnet.org/~diplo/books/PDF/TheFire-DualReview.pdf (2007 (accessed July 2007)). Friedrich, Der Brand. 110. Ibid. 336. Allan Hall, ‘Poll shows Germans Tiring of “Harping” about the War,’ The Age, 17 January 2005. Kate Connolly, ‘Germans call Churchill a War Criminal.’ The Telegraph UK. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ germany/1413598/Germans-call-Churchill-a-war-criminal.html (19 November 2002 (accessed January 2004)). Schütze, ‘Speaking the Unspeakable.’ Luke Harding, ‘Germany’s Forgotten Victims,’ Guardian UK. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4779972-105806,00.html (22 October 2003 (accessed 19 January 2004)). Harding, ‘Germany’s Forgotten Victims.’ Jörg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945 (New York, 2006). For examples, see Peter Heigl, Toyland – Bomber über Nürnberg (Amberg, 2004). Oliver Volmerich, Als der Feuertod vom Himmel stürzte. Dortmund, 1943–1945. (Gudensberg-Gleichen, 2003). For example, see Christian Zentner, ed., Der Bombenkrieg: Feuersturm über Deutschland (St Gallen, 2005). Müller, Bombenkrieg. Schoeps, ed., Ein Volk von Mördern? Kettenacker, ed., Ein Volk von Opfern? Stephan Burgdorff and Christian Habbe, eds, Als Feuer vom Himmel fiel: Der Bombenkrieg in Deutschland (Munich, 2005). As one indication of the extent to which Friedrich became intricately linked to Dresden, the American sociologist Jeffrey Olick (wrongly) described Der Brand as ‘a best-selling book on the Dresden bombing.’ Olick, House of the Hangman. 27–8 n.6. Sebastian Dehnhardt, ‘Das Drama von Dresden,’ (Germany, 2005). I am indebted to Prof. Dr Sönke Neitzel, Prof. Dr Guido Knopp, and especially Vera Bertram, all of whom collaborated on the film and were most helpful in providing information through face-to-face meetings or personal correspondence in 2006. In 2006, the film also won a Magnolia Award and was nominated for the Banff World Television Award. ‘German TV’s “Dresden” Drama Bombs,’ Deutsche Welle. http:// www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1924774,00.html (6 March 2006 (accessed March 2006)). Erik Kirschbaum, ‘“Dresden” heats up,’ Variety. http://variety.com/2006/scene/news/dresden-heats-up-1117939304 (6 March 2006 (accessed March 2006)).

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151 ‘Gedanken zum Film von ZDF-Fernsehspielchef Hans Janke,’ ZDF. http:// www.fernsehfilm.zdf.de/ZDde/inhalt/30/0,1872,2328542,00.html?dr=1, link no longer active (2006 (accessed June 2007)). 152 ‘German “Dresden” Drama Bombs.’ 153 Quoted in ibid. 154 Quoted in ibid. 155 Kirschbaum, ‘“Dresden” heats up.’ 156 ‘“Dresden” sold to UK: Channel 4 acquires rights to ZDF’s two-part antiwar drama,’ ZDF. http://www.zdf.com/uploads/media/2006-04-03_-_ ZDF_PR_Dresden_sold_to_UK_01.pdf (3 April 2006 (accessed 12 June 2007)). 157 Moeller, War Stories. 12. 158 Moeller, ‘Germans as Victims?’ 181. 159 For a similar line of argument regarding German commemorative politics generally, see Andrew H. Beattie, ‘The Victims of Totalitarianism and the Centrality of Nazi Genocide: Continuity and Change in German Commemorative Politics,’ in Germans as Victims, ed. Niven. 160 Levy and Sznaider, ‘Revised Introduction.’ 161 Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper, ‘Contexts, Structures, Dynamics.’ 72. 162 Müller, ‘Introduction.’ 2. 163 Confino and Fritzsche, ‘Introduction.’ 3. Chapter 1

1 ‘Dresdner Barock,’ Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. http://www.kas.de/proj/ home/events/92/1/year-2006/month-3/veranstaltung_id-18688/index. html (March 2006 (accessed November 2006)). 2 ‘West and East,’ Manchester Guardian, 12 February 1945. 4. 3 Statistics compiled from ‘Liste der Luftangriffe auf Dresden und Umgebung,’ in Götz Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte – Zerstörung – Folgen, rev. ed. (Würzburg, 1998). 401. 4 Sebastian Cox, ‘The Dresden Raids: Why and How,’ in Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945, eds Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang (London, 2006). 226 n.36. 5 David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London, 2004). 480. 6 For these topics, see A.C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities (London, 2006) and Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young, eds, Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History (New York, 2009). 7 Hew Strachan, ‘Strategic Bombing and the Question of Civilian Casualties up to 1945,’ in Firestorm, eds Addison and Crang. 7–8. RolfDieter Müller, Der Bombenkrieg 1939–1945 (Berlin, 2004). 15–21.

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8



9



10



11



12



13



14



15



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17 18

Dudley Saward, Victory Denied: The Rise of Air Power and the Defeat of Germany, 1920–45 (London, 1985). 7–13. Alexander McKee, Dresden 1945: The Devil’s Tinderbox (London, 1982). 49–50. Müller, Bombenkrieg. 36–9. Reiner Pommerin, ‘Zur Einsicht bomben? Die Zerstörung Dresdens in der Luftkrieg-Strategie des Zweiten Weltkriegs,’ in Dresden unterm Hakenkreuz, ed. Pommerin (Cologne, 1998). 235–6. Frederick Taylor, Dresden. Tuesday 13 February 1945 (London, 2005). 101–2. John Terraine, The Right of the Line: The Royal Air Force in the European War, 1939–1945 (London, 1985). 46. Richard Overy, The Air War, 1939–1945 (London, 1980). 102–3. Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–45 (Berlin, 2004). 76. Harris was borrowing from Hosea 8–7 in the Old Testament. Arthur Travers Harris, Bomber Offensive (London, 1947). 52. A 4 June 1940 directive, for instance, stated: ‘In no circumstances should night bombing be allowed to degenerate into mere indiscriminate action, which is contrary to the policy of His Majesty’s Government.’ For the complete set of wartime RAF bombing directives, see Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939–1945, vol. IV. Annexes and Appendices (London, 1961). (Hereafter all volumes cited as SAOG plus vol.) 107–83. For the above quotation, 113. Quoted in Bomber Command Association ed., The Means of Victory: A Tribute to the Men and Women of Bomber Command and their Leader, Sir Arthur Harris (London, 1992). 5. At this early stage of the war, the raid on Mannheim was an isolated case of Bomber Command targeting a city centre. It was an exception to, rather than indicative of, the existing policy. See Max Hastings, Bomber Command (London, 1979). 93. Taylor, Dresden. 129. Müller, Bombenkrieg. 81. Friedrich, Der Brand. 78–9. For Coventry, see 117–25. Müller, Bombenkrieg. 78–86. Hastings, Bomber Command. 93–4. Reproduced as ‘Appendix 13: Report by Mr Butt to Bomber Command on his Examination of Night Photographs, 18th August 1941’ in Webster and Frankland, SAOG IV. 205–13. Hastings, Bomber Command. 109. For the Butt Report, see also Webster and Frankland, SAOG I. Preparation. 178–80. Overy, Air War. 110. Friedrich, Der Brand. 82. Taylor, Dresden. 132–3. Butt generally divided his statistical analysis into three categories: French ports; Germany as a whole; and the Ruhr. Success rates ranged from bad to worse in keeping with increased defence levels. Webster and Frankland, SAOG IV. 205–13. ‘Directive XXII’ of 14 February 1942, reproduced in ibid. 143–8. Ibid. 143.

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19 The ‘Primary Industrial Areas’ were the Rhine-Ruhr cities Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, and Cologne. The ‘Alternative Industrial Areas’ were the northern ‘coastal’ cities Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, and Emden. Ibid. 146. For GEE, see especially Webster and Frankland, SAOG II. Endeavour. 90–6, 101–4. 20 These 11 cities were Hamburg, Kiel, Lübeck, and Rostock in the north, Frankfurt-am-Main, Mannheim, Schweinfurt, and Stuttgart in the south, and the central Berlin, Kassel, and Hanover. Webster and Frankland, SAOG IV. 146. 21 Ibid. 144. 22 Ibid. 23 ‘Städtische Kinderklinik fiel Britenbomben zum Opfer,’ Essener Stadt Anzeiger, 15 February 1942. The article features several graphic photographs of the damage caused to the clinic. The present author’s neighbour during a year-long stay in Cologne, Peter Gickler, was born and raised in Essen and, as a toddler, was a patient in the clinic on the night it was bombed. I am indebted to Herr Gickler for providing photocopies of the article. 24 Quoted in Dudley Saward, ‘Bomber’ Harris (London, 1984). 125. 25 Quoted in Hastings, Bomber Command. 147–8. Friedrich, Der Brand. 86–7. Taylor, Dresden. 142–3. 26 Hastings, Bomber Command. 147–8. Taylor, Dresden. 142–3. Müller, Bombenkrieg. 116–17. Friedrich, Der Brand. 86. 27 ‘Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram Serial No T.493/2, addressed “Former Naval Person to President,” marked Personal and Secret, dated 29 March 1942,’ (AIR 8/424, The National Archives, London). 28 Quoted in Pommerin, ‘Zur Einsicht bomben?’ 244–5. Friedrich, Der Brand. 182. 29 Webster and Frankland, SAOG I. 339–40, 403–10. Also the May 1942 entry in ‘Bomber Command Campaign Diary’ (Hereafter cited as BCCD and month or title of entry.) Royal Air Force. http://www.raf.mod.uk/ bombercommand/diary.html, link no longer active (accessed 2006) Hastings, Bomber Command. 151–2. Friedrich, Der Brand. 89–90. 30 Christian Zentner, ed., Der Bombenkrieg: Feuersturm über Deutschland (St Gallen, 2005). 38. 31 BCCD May 1942. Hastings, Bomber Command. 151–2. Taylor, Dresden. 146. 32 BCCD May 1942. Hastings, Bomber Command. 152. Taylor, Dresden. 526. 33 Reproduced in Webster and Frankland, SAOG I. 331–2. 34 For discussions, see ibid. 332–6. Hastings, Bomber Command. 128. Pommerin, ‘Zur Einsicht bomben?’ 240. Friedrich, Der Brand. 90. 35 Henry Probert, Bomber Harris: His Life and Times (London, 2003). 185.

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36 Müller, Bombenkrieg. 11–14. Stephen A. Garrett, Ethics and Airpower in World War II: The British Bombing of German Cities (New York, 1993). 4. 37 Friedrich, Der Brand. 296. McKee, Devil’s Tinderbox. 11. 38 W.G. Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur (Frankfurt-am-Main, 2003). 11. 39 Hastings, Bomber Command. 226. 40 Webster and Frankland, SAOG I. 475. 41 Oliver Volmerich, Als der Feuertod vomHimmel stürzte (GudensbergGleichen, 2003), 24. 42 Alan Cooper, The Air Battle of the Ruhr: RAF Offensive March to July 1943 (Suffolk, 2001). 134. Hastings, Bomber Command. 203. 43 For a detailed breakdown of statistics, see Friedrich, Der Brand. 437–8. 44 Hastings, Bomber Command. 199. 45 All occurring in 1943, they were: Munich (208 deaths); Duisburg (272); Essen (461); Stuttgart (619); and Dortmund (693). Friedrich, Der Brand. 20. 46 Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 15. 47 Ursula Büttner, ‘“Gomorrha” und die Folgen der Bombenkrieg,’ in Hamburg im ‘Dritten Reich’, ed. Die Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg (Göttingen, 2005). 617. See also Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Strategischer Luftkrieg und Völkerrecht,’ in Luftkriegführung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Ein internationaler Vergleich, ed. Horst Boog (Bonn, 1993). 359–60. 48 Estimates are vague and vary slightly. McKee, for instance, claims ‘at least 48,000’ were killed. Devil’s Tinderbox. 59. Hastings estimates 42,000 deaths. Bomber Command. 207–8. Garrett says ‘over 40,000’ died on the night of the firestorm without taking into consideration the other five raids. Ethics and Airpower. xii. Büttner says a ‘most conservative calculation’ (‘vorsichtigsten Berechnung’) is 34,000 victims. “Gomorrha”. 618. 49 Büttner, ‘“Gomorrha.”’ 615–16. 50 Ibid. 630–2. 51 Fenner Brockway, German Diary, Left Book Club. (London, 1946). 36–7. 52 Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 403–8. 53 For wartime rumours, see Jeremy Crang, ‘Victor Klemperer’s Dresden,’ in Firestorm, eds Addison and Crang. 86. Sönke Neitzel, ‘The City under Attack,’ in Firestorm, eds Addison and Crang. 69. McKee, Devil’s Tinderbox. 144–5. Taylor, Dresden. 16. 54 See entries for 29 May and 15 September 1944 in Victor Klemperer, The Klemperer Diaries 1933–1945, Martin Chalmers trans. (London, 2000). 752, 789. According to wartime rumours Gisela Neuhaus heard, Churchill’s aunt supposedly lived on Dresden’s famed Weißen Hirsch.

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55



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59



60 61



62



63



64



65 66



67

Quoted in Walter Kempowski, ed., Der rote Hahn. Dresden im Februar 1945 (Munich, 2001). 28. In 16 raids on Berlin a total of 9,111 sorties were flown, while a further 11,113 sorties were flown in the other 19 raids. Statistics compiled from ‘Battle of Berlin’ entry in BCCD, and Hastings, Bomber Command. 260–1. For the Battle of Berlin, see Webster and Frankland, SAOG II. 190–211. Quoted in Webster and Frankland, SAOG II. 48, 190. Hastings, Bomber Command. 257. McKee, Devil’s Tinderbox. 60. Müller, Bombenkrieg. 184. Birgit Horn, ‘Angriffsziel “Haddock.” Bombenangriffe auf Leipzig,’ Historicum. net. http://www.historicum.net/themen/bombenkrieg/themen- beitraege/ staedte-regionen/art/Angriffsziel_H/html/ca/45294864b6/?tx_mediadb_ pi1%5BmaxItems%5D=6 (March 2006 (accessed June 2006)). Statistics compiled from Taylor, Dresden. 197–8. Hastings, Bomber Command. 260–1. And the ‘Battle of Berlin’ entry in BCCD. Of 779 aircraft dispatched some 97 bombers failed to return home, whereas on this occasion Nuremberg sustained only minor damage. See Martin Middlebrook, The Nuremberg Raid (Glasgow, 1973). BCCD August 1944. Hermann Knell, To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences in World War II (2003). 59. In the 1960s, Webster and Frankland estimated 8,500 victims. SAOG II. 236n1. Hastings later loosely estimated somewhere between 8,000–12,000 victims. Bomber Command. 325–6. The city’s official website claims over 11,000 were killed. ‘Darmstädter Stadtgeschichte 20. Jahrhundert,’ Wissenschaftstadt Darmstadt. http://www.darmstadt.de/kultur/geschichte/02648, link no longer active (accessed March 2009). Christian Groh, ‘Pforzheim – 23. Februar 1945,’ Historicum.net. http:// www.bombenkrieg.historicum-archiv.net/themen/pforzheim.html (24 April 2005 (accessed June 2008)). For Würzburg’s experience in the bombing war, see especially Knell, To Destroy a City. See also on the city’s official website, ‘Schicksalstag 16. März 1945,’ Würzburg-Online. http://www.wuerzburg.de/tourismus/ geschichte/schicksal/index.html (accessed July 2009). Friedrich, Der Brand. 311–17. BCCD September 1944. Henry Probert, ‘The Commander-In-Chief,’ in The Means of Victory: A Tribute to the Men and Women of Bomber Command and their Leader, Sir Arthur Harris, ed. Bomber Command Association (London, 1992). 18. ‘The United States Strategic Bombing Surveys (Summary Reports: European War; Pacific War),’ Air University Press. http://aupress.au.af. mil/Books/USSBS/USSBS.pdf, link no longer active (1945 (accessed June 2009)). 6. (Hereafter USSBS.) See also Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur. 11.

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68 Hastings, Bomber Command. 352. 69 For a highly problematic and completely decontextualised but comprehensive account of the cultural heritage Germany lost in the bombing war, see ‘Stein’ in Friedrich, Der Brand. 517–39. 70 Statistics compiled from Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 402. Horn, ‘Angriffsziel “Haddock.”’ Friedrich, Der Brand. ‘München – Haupstadt der Sirenen,’ Bayerisches Fernsehen – BR-Online. http://www.br-online. de/bayern-heute/thema/kriegsende/luftkrieg-muenchen.xml, link no longer active (accessed October 2008). 71 Anthony Clayton, ‘Dresden, 1206–1918,’ and ‘Appendix I: The House of Wettin in Dresden,’ both in Dresden: A City Reborn, eds Anthony Clayton and Alan Russell (Oxford, 2001). 72 Martin Gilbert, Second World War (London, 1989). 638–9. See also Probert, Bomber Harris. 319–20. 73 Probert, Bomber Harris. 319, 327 n.28. Cox, ‘Why and How.’ 27–8. Taylor, Dresden. 531. 74 Quoted in Taylor, Dresden. 217–18. See also ibid. 75 United States Department of State, ‘Minutes and Related Documents. Part III. The Yalta Conference’ (US Government Printing Office). http://digital. library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1945 (accessed September 2010). 76 Ibid. 605. 77 Garrett, Ethics and Airpower. 3. McKee, Devil’s Tinderbox. 100–2. Taylor, Dresden. 207–8. 78 Webster and Frankland, SAOG III. Victory. 101. Cox, ‘Why and How.’ 22. 79 Quoted in Cox, ‘Why and How.’ 27. 80 Quoted in ibid. 23. 81 Sinclair’s paraphrase quoted in Webster and Frankland, SAOG III. 101. See also Hastings, Bomber Command. 341. Pommerin, ‘Zur Einsicht bomben?’ 242–3. Cox, ‘Why and How.’ 22. 82 Cox, ‘Why and How.’ 52–3. 83 Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur T. Harris, ‘Despatch on War Operations: 23rd February, 1942, to 8th May, 1945,’ (AIR16/487, The National Archives, London). 31. 84 See especially Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 25–33. 85 Ibid. 31–2. 86 12 October 1944 entry in Klemperer, Klemperer Diaries. 799. 87 See especially Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 35–47. Also Taylor, Dresden. 223–6. 88 For the 16 January raid, see especially Chapter 5: ‘Erwachen im Januar’ in Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 62–76. Unexploded bombs from this particular raid, states Bergander, were being discovered in Dresden’s old cemetery the Alten Annenfriedhof during the 1990s. 89 Quoted in Hastings, Bomber Command. 339. McKee, Devil’s Tinderbox. 65.

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90 Tami Davis Biddle, ‘Wartime Reactions,’ in Firestorm, eds Addison and Crang. 103. Taylor, Dresden. 216–17. McKee, Devil’s Tinderbox. 104–5. 91 ‘Chronik der Stadt Magdeburg,’ Sachsen-Anhalt – Wir stehen früher auf. http://www.sachsen-anhalt.de/LPSA/index.php?id=6675, link no longer active (accessed April 2008). 92 Cox, ‘Why and How.’ 29. 93 See Webster and Frankland, SAOG II. 161–2. Cox, ‘Why and How.’ 30–2. 94 ‘Summary of Operations Night 13/14th February 1945,’ (AIR14/3080, The National Archives, London). 95 Ibid. See also Cox, ‘Why and How.’ 46. Taylor, Dresden. 320–1. 96 Neitzel, ‘City under Attack.’ 74. 97 Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 138–64. Taylor, Dresden. 378. 98 Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (London, 2000). 99 The most comprehensive inventory is the ‘Schluβmeldung über die vier Luftangriffe auf den LS-Ort Dresden am 13., 14. und 15. Februar 1945 vom 15. März 1945,’ reproduced verbatim in Walter Weidauer, Inferno Dresden: Über Lügen und Legenden um die Aktion ‘Donnerschlag’, 7th ed. (Berlin, 1989). 206–21. 100 Quoted in ‘Sachsen im Netz: “Zitate”’, SZ-online. http://www.cityguidedresden.de/stadtportraet/base.asp?rubrik=stadtportraet&unterrubrik=z itate, link no longer active (accessed September 2008). 101 Neitzel, ‘City under Attack.’68. 102 Taylor, Dresden. 5, 158, 330–4. Neitzel, ‘City under Attack.’ 69. Furthermore, even his hunting cabin in isolated Grillenburg boasted a shelter. For an article including photographs, see ‘MutschmannBunker in Grillenburg am Jagdschloß,’ Bunker und andere ehemalige Militäranlagen im Weißeritzkreis. http://havel-web.de/index.htm (accessed August 2008). 103 Olaf Groehler, ‘Der strategische Luftkrieg und seine Auswirkungen auf die deutsche Zivilbevölkerung,’ in Luftkriegführung, ed. Boog. 342. 104 Axel Rodenberger, Der Tod von Dresden: Bericht vom Sterben einer Stadt in Augenzeugenberichten (Berlin, 1995). 16. 105 Friedrich, Der Brand. 358. 106 ‘Terror gegen Flüchtlinge aus dem Osten: Amtliche Londoner Bestätigung über die Bombenangriffe,’ Der Angriff 14 February 1945. 1. ‘Bombenterror gegen Flüchtlinge: Eine amtliche Londoner Bestätigung,’ Dresdner Zeitung 13 February 1945. 1. 107 Quoted in Taylor, Dresden. 422. 108 Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 214. 109 Quoted in ibid. 215–16. And Neitzel, ‘City under Attack.’ 74. 110 Ibid.

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111 Hastings, Bomber Command. 342–3. 112 ‘Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram Serial No D. 83/5, addressed to General Ismay for COS Committee, and CAS Portal, marked Top Secret and dated 28 March 1945,’ (CAB 120/303, The National Archives, London). For discussions, see Webster and Frankland, SAOG III. 112. Hastings, Bomber Command. 343–4. McKee, Devil’s Tinderbox. 270– 1. Friedrich, Der Brand. 169. Taylor, Dresden. 431–4. Davis Biddle, ‘Wartime Reactions.’ 114–16. 113 Webster and Frankland, SAOG III. 112. 114 Hastings, Bomber Command. 344. 115 Webster and Frankland, SAOG III. 117. 116 Probert, Bomber Harris. 344. Hastings, Bomber Command. 347–52. 117 Quoted in Reynolds, In Command. 480–1. 118 The present author’s edition, from 1995, is Rodenberger, Tod von Dresden. 119 Elizabeth Corwin, ‘The Dresden Bombing as portrayed in German Accounts, East and West,’ UCLA Historical Journal 8 (1987). 74. 120 Rodenberger, Tod von Dresden. 16, 101, 173. 121 Corwin, ‘German Accounts.’ 75. Matthias Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen zum Erinnern: Die Erzählung vom 13. Februar,’ in Das rote Leuchten: Dresden und der Bombenkrieg, eds Oliver Reinhard, Matthias Neutzner and Wolfgang Hesse (Dresden, 2005). 146. Gilad Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff auf Dresden. Seine Bedeutung für die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR und für die Herauskristallisierung einer historischen Kriegserinnerung im Westen,’ in Narrative der Shoah. Repräsentationen der Vergangenheit in Historiographie, Kunst und Politik, eds Susanne Düwell and Matthias Schmidt (Paderborn, 2002). 203. 122 Rodenberger, Tod von Dresden. 17. Throughout his account, Rodenberger vaguely speaks of ‘hundreds of thousands of dead’ (‘Hunderttausenden von Toten’). See, for example, 16. 123 Max Seydewitz, Die unbesiegbare Stadt: Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau von Dresden, 4. verbesserte Auflage ed. (Berlin, 1961). Whereas the first two editions appeared simply as Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau von Dresden, for subsequent editions the rather more sensational title Die unbesiegbare Stadt (literally ‘the invincible city’) was added. 124 Ibid. 188–91. 125 Corwin, ‘German Accounts.’ 80. 126 Wolfgang Paul, …zum Beispiel Dresden: Schicksal einer Stadt (Frankfurtam-Main, 1964). 127 Corwin, ‘German Accounts.’ 80. 128 David Irving, The Destruction of Dresden (London, 1963). For an excellent summary of Irving’s controversial career, see Richard J. Evans, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial (New York, 2001).

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129 The first German translation appeared in 1964, published by Sigbert Mohn Verlag in Gütersloh. The earliest German edition in possession of the present author is David Irving, Der Untergang Dresdens (Reinbek, 1967). 130 See Saundby’s foreword in ibid. 9–10. 131 Ibid. 204–13. See also Evans, Lying About Hitler. 151–2. 132 See especially Chapter 4 ‘The Bombing of Dresden,’ in Evans, Lying About Hitler. 149–84. Also, ‘Appendix B: Counting the Dead,’ in Taylor, Dresden. 503–9. 133 Evans, Lying About Hitler. 169. 134 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 156. 135 Evans, Lying About Hitler. 149–84. 136 The present author’s copy, from 1989, is the revised Weidauer, Inferno Dresden. 137 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 151. 138 See especially ‘Forderte die Sowjetunion den Angriff auf Dresden’ in Weidauer, Inferno Dresden. 80–9. 139 Ibid. 57–71. For discussions, see also Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 200–1. Taylor, Dresden. 515–18. 140 See Weidauer, Inferno Dresden. 63–4. 141 Heisenberg’s 1963 interview quoted in ibid. 63. 142 See especially ‘Will man mit Toten ein Geschäft machen?’ in ibid. 110– 27. Also 6–7. 143 Ibid. Also Corwin, ‘German Accounts.’ 82. 144 Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 145 Götz Bergander, ‘Erinnerungen des Augenzeugen Götz Bergander an die Bombardierung Dresdens (Rückblick),’ in Deutsche im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Zeitzeugen sprechen, eds Johannes Steinhoff, Peter Pechel, and Dennis Showalter (Munich, 1989). 324–9. 146 Taylor, Dresden. 264. 147 See especially Chapter 12 ‘Flüchtlinge – Tote’ in Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg. 210–31. 148 See especially Chapter 11 ‘Phosphor – Tiefangriffe’ in ibid. 186–209. 149 McKee, Devil’s Tinderbox. 150 Alexander McKee, Dresden 1945: Das deutsche Hiroshima, Liesl Nürenberger-Körbler trans. (Hamburg and Vienna, 1983). 151 Ibid. 11. 152 Ibid. 54. 153 Ibid. 222–4. 154 Ibid. 44. 155 Ibid. 321.

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notes to pages 8 3 – 8 9

Chapter 2



1 Gilad Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff auf Dresden. Seine Bedeutung für die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR und für die Herauskristallisierung einer historischen Kriegserinnerung im Westen,’ in Narrative der Shoah. Repräsentationen der Vergangenheit in Historiographie, Kunst und Politik, eds Susanne Düwell and Matthias Schmidt (Paderborn, 2002). For a condensed version available electronically, see ‘Dresden und die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR,’ historicum.net. http:// www.historicum.net/themen/bombenkrieg/themen-beitraege/ aspekte/art/Dresden_und_die/html/ca/e2b0f02bb5/?tx_mediadb_ pi1%5BmaxItems%5D=5 (28 March 2006 (accessed September 2008)). Matthias Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen zum Erinnern: Die Erzählung vom 13. Februar,’ in Das rote Leuchten: Dresden und der Bombenkrieg, eds Oliver Reinhard, Matthias Neutzner, and Wolfgang Hesse (Dresden, 2005). 2 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 190. 3 Ibid. 189–90. 4 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 144. 5 Frederick Taylor, Dresden. Tuesday 13 February 1945 (London, 2005). 448. 6 Quoted in Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 133. See also Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 190. 7 Quoted in ibid. 8 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 191. Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 133. 9 Quoted in Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 133. 10 Ibid. 134. 11 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 191. 12 For Weidauer’s later full-length account, see Chapter 1, 76–8. 13 Quoted in Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 191. 14 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 134. 15 Ibid. 135. 16 Quoted in Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 191. Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 133. 17 See Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 192. Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 135–6. 18 Ibid. 19 Quoted in Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 136. 20 Quoted in ibid. 137. 21 For Seydewitz’s account, see Chapter 1, 73–4 22 Seydewitz quoted in Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 137. 23 Seydewitz quoted in ibid. 24 Ibid. 137–8. 25 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 193–4. Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 138. 26 Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, 2001).

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27 Translated by and quoted in Elizabeth Corwin, ‘The Dresden Bombing as portrayed in German Accounts, East and West,’ UCLA Historical Journal 8 (1987). 75. 28 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 202–3. 29 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 139–40. Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 194–5. Taylor, Dresden. 448–9. 30 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 141. 31 Quoted in Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 195. 32 Karl-Marx-Platz is today renamed the Palais-Platz, a name derived from its location in front of Dresden’s famed Japanese Palace. 33 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 141. 34 Ibid. The foundation stone marking the commencement of the reconstruction of the Altstadt was not laid until 1 May 1953. 35 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 196. 36 Quoted in Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 140–1. 37 ‘Dresden:Heidefriedhof’SozialistischeGedenkstätten.http://www.sozialistischegedenkstaetten.de/sa/Dresden/Heidefriedhof/heidefriedhof.shtml (accessed November 2006). 38 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 189–91. 39 Ibid. 189. 40 I am indebted to Professor Reiner Pommerin of the Technische Universität Dresden and his former PhD student Simone Simpson who provided this information via personal correspondence in May 2006. 41 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 196–7. 42 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 148. 43 Quoted in ibid. 149. 44 Quoted in Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 197. 45 Corwin, ‘German Accounts.’ 89. 46 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 198. 47 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 148. 48 Ibid. 49 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 198. 50 Quoted in ibid. 51 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 147. 52 Ibid. 149. 53 Ibid. 134–5. Hans-Peter Altmann, ‘Dresdner Trauermusik: Gedenken am 13. Februar,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17–18 February 1990. ‘Feuilleton’ 15. 54 Taylor, Dresden. VII. Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 135. 55 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 135. 56 Ibid. 148. 57 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 200. 58 Ibid. 204.

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59 Quoted in ibid. 204. Also Robert G. Moeller, ‘The Politics of the Past in the 1950s: Rhetorics of Victimisation in East and West Germany,’ in Germans as Victims, ed. Bill Niven (New York, 2006). 33. 60 For Rodenberger’s account, see Chapter 1, 72–3. 61 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 203. 62 Ibid. 63 Moeller, ‘The Politics.’ 64 Theodor Adorno, ‘What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?’ in Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective, ed. Geoffrey Hartman (Bloomington, IN, 1986). 114–26. See also Theodor Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, Henry Pickford trans. (New York, 1998). 65 Alf Lüdtke, ‘“Coming to Terms with the Past”: Illusions of Remembering, Ways of Forgetting Nazism in West Germany,’ The Journal of Modern History 65 (September 1993). 66 Adorno, ‘What Does?’ 116. 67 Erdmann later served as president of CISH (Comité International des Sciences Historiques/International Committee of Historical Sciences) and wrote its official history. His original 1987 German version, Die Ökumene der Historiker, was updated and translated into English as Toward a Global Community of Historians: the International Historical Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences 1898– 2000, eds Jürgen Kocka, Wolfgang Mommsen, and Agnes Blänsdorf, Alan Nothnagle trans. (New York, 2005). 68 Quoted in Corwin, ‘German Accounts.’ 79. 69 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 153. 70 Corwin, ‘German Accounts.’ 80. 71 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 153. 72 These formal partnerships were of special importance to the DDR in this period, after Nikita Khrushchev’s long-running effort to secure official international recognition for the Soviet satellite state had ended in failure at his June 1961 Vienna Conference with newly-elected US president John F. Kennedy. 73 Paul Oestreicher, ‘Out of the Fire – The Enduring Friendship of Coventry and Dresden,’ in Dresden: A City Reborn, eds Anthony Clayton and Alan Russell (Oxford, 1999). 46–9. 74 Quoted in Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 152. 75 Ibid. 153. 76 Ibid. 77 Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 205. 78 See Chapter 1, 74–6. 79 See Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 156. 80 Quoted in Margalit, ‘Der Luftangriff.’ 204–5.

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81 82 83 84 85



86 87



88 89 90 91 92



93



94

Quoted in ibid. 205. Quoted in ibid. Ibid. Quoted in Corwin, ‘German Accounts.’ 84. See especially Merrilyn Thomas, Communing with the Enemy: Covert Operations, Christianity and Cold War Politics in Britain and the GDR (Bern, 2005). Oestreicher, ‘Out of Fire.’ 46–9. Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 154–5. After thirteen years of groundwork by Berlin-based EKD representatives, Aktion Sühnezeichen finally was established in 1958 as an all-German program. Political division quickly made collaborative work untenable, however, and from the early 1960s until the end of the Cold War the program was conducted separately in both Germanies before merging again after reunification. See ‘Die Teilung der Aktion Sühnezeichen 1961,’ Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste. http://www.asf-ev.de/ueber_uns/ asf_geschichte/die_teilung_der_aktion_suehnezeichen_1961, link no longer active (accessed April 2007). Oestreicher, ‘Out of Fire.’ 47. Ibid. 46–9. Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 154–5. Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 153. Quoted in ibid. Hans Nadler, ‘Der Erhalt der Ruine der Frauenkirche nach 1945,’ Dresdner Hefte 32 (1992). 28–32. As early as 4 August 1945, the Frauenkirche was prioritised as one of Dresden’s six most historically and culturally significant buildings when the Cultural Department of the Saxon State Administration (Landesverwaltung Sachsen – Kulturabteilung) convened its first post-war Salvage and Reconstruction Meeting (Bergung-Wiederaufbau-Sitzung). The first page of the meeting’s minutes is reproduced as Article 3.45 in Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden ed., Die Frauenkirche zu Dresden: Werden – Wirkung–Wiederaufbau (Ausstellungskatalog) (Dresden, 2005). 95. Renowned local artist Dore Mönkeymeyer-Corty designed the Spendenengel for the 1945 Christmas. Tickets for the 1948 Wiederaufbaulotterie cost 1RM and prize-money was set at 105,000RM. Artefacts from these and other assorted fundraising efforts were displayed in the Dresden City Museum’s exhibition Die Frauenkirche zu Dresden: Werden – Wirkung – Wiederaufbau. (Hereafter DCMFE.) The exhibition ran for five years, from October 2005 until December 2010. For the fundraising-related artefacts, see Ausstellungskatalog. 98–9. Nadler, ‘Der Erhalt der Ruine.’ 25–34. Ausstellungskatalog. 94–5. Andreas Friedrich, The Frauenkirche in Dresden: History and Rebuilding, ed. Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden, Rosemarie Nitschke trans. (Dresden, 2005). 67–9.

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95 Nadler, ‘Der Erhalt der Ruine.’ Hans Nadler, ‘The Battle to Conserve: Securing the Ruins of the Frauenkirche,’ in Dresden, eds Clayton and Russell. 91–2. 96 Heinrich Magirius, ‘Die Frauenkirche darf nicht in Schönheit sterben,’ Die Welt, 13 February 1990. 3. 97 Writing in 1990, Heinrich Magirius (Nadler’s successor as head curator of Dresden’s Institut für Denkmalpflege) reflected on what he described as repeated attempts by Stalinists to remove the Frauenkirche ruins as part of an overall stratagem to ‘clear up’ the centrally-located Neumarkt. Ibid. 98 Nadler, ‘Battle to Conserve.’ 92. 99 Ibid. Examples of architectural sketches and scaled models of city planning designed around the Frauenkirche site from the 1970s and 1980s featured in the DCMFE and are reproduced in Ausstellungskatalog. 110–13. See also Ingolf Roßberg, ‘Die Frauenkirche und die Dresdner Innenstadtplannung,’ Dresdner Hefte 32 (1992). 63–70. 100 The Gedenktafel was Article 3.42 in the DCMFE. See Ausstellungskatalog. 94. 101 Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 157. 102 ‘Ostpolitik: The Quadripartite Agreement of September 3, 1971,’ US Diplomatic Mission to Germany. http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ga5710903.htm (accessed April 2007). An excellent catalogue of photographs taken during the two meetings plus other momentous Ostpolitik occasions is available electronically as ‘Images – The New Ostpolitik and German–German Relations,’ German History in Documents and Images. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_imglist.cfm?sub_ id=113§ion_id=15 (accessed April 2007). 103 The Treaty of Moscow and the Treaty of Warsaw were signed in August and December 1970 respectively. 104 The Quadripartite Agreement (also known as the Four Power Agreement) was signed in September 1971 and came into effect in June 1972. The Transit Agreement came into effect in May 1972. 105 Its formal title is the Treaty concerning the Basis of Relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic (Vertrag über die Grundlagen der Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik). A full transcript is available electronically as ‘Deutschdeutscher Grundlagenvertrag 1972,’ Deutscher Bundestag. http://www. bundestag.de/geschichte/parlhist/dokumente/dok07.html, link no longer active (1972 (accessed May 2007)). 106 For an engaging collection of essays, written between 1961 and 1990, arguing against Germany’s political reunification and generally in favour of two states in one nation, see Günter Grass, Two States – One Nation?, Krishna Winston and A.S. Wensinger trans. (San Diego, 1990).

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107 108 109 110 111



112 113 114 115

116

117

118 119 120 121 122

Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 158. Ibid. 155. Ibid. 157. Ibid. 158. Christian Schütze, ‘Schwieriges Gedenken in der Schwebezeit,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10–11 February 1990. Ibid. Quoted in ibid. Neutzner, ‘Vom Anklagen.’ 159. Robert F. Goeckel, The Lutheran Church and the East German State: Political Conflict and Change under Ulbricht and Honecker (Ithaca, NY and New York, 1992). For a television interview conducted with Kalex in November 2004, which is available electronically, see ‘Johanna Kalex,’ Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung: Jugend Opposition in der DDR. http://www. jugendopposition.de/index.php?id=67 (accessed November 2008). See also ‘Dresden und die Gruppe Wolfspelz,’ Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung: Jugend Opposition in der DDR. http://www.jugendopposition. de/index.php?id=637 (accessed February 2007). The group’s radical approach drew the ire of Protestant State Bishop Johannes Hempel, who disapprovingly referred to them as ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ (‘Wölfe im Schafspelz’). To better reflect their peaceful intentions, recalls Kalex, the group twisted his analogy to be ‘sheep in wolves’ clothing’ and henceforth became known as Wolfspelz. The group remained active throughout the 1980s and beyond the DDR’s collapse. See ‘Dresden und die Gruppe Wolfspelz.’ ‘Dresden und die Gruppe Wolfspelz.’ Ibid. Uly Foerster, ‘Es lastet und es blutet,’ Der Spiegel, 18 February 1985. 28–9. Matthias Gretzschel, Die Dresdner Frauenkirche (Hamburg, 2006). 8. Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden (eds), Ausstellungskatalog (Dresden, 2005). 94.

Chapter 3

1 Peter Jochen Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes – eine gemeinsame Leidensgeschichte,’ FAZ, 15 February 1985. 3. ‘Requiem für die Opfer des 13. Februar 1945,’ Neues Deutschland, 15 February 1985. 2. ‘Dresden: Begegnung mit Bischof von Coventry,’ Neues Deutschland, 15 February 1985. 2. Hans-R Karutz, ‘Die Kreuzkirche, Ort der Einkehr und Sammlung,’ Die Welt, 15 February 1985. 3.

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2 ‘Partnerstädte bekraftigten Mitverantwortung für Frieden: Kommunalpolitiker wurden in der Elbestadt empfangen,’ Neues Deutschland, 15 February 1985. 1–2. Representatives from Rotterdam also attended, although it did not become one of Dresden’s sister cities until 1988. In the early to mid-1980s, Würzburg attempted to forge formal ties with a DDR city. The preferred options were narrowed down to Erfurt, Potsdam, and Dresden, with Saxony’s capital finally chosen on the basis of the two cities’ similar experiences in the bombing war. Despite concerted efforts on Würzburg’s behalf, nothing eventuated. See ‘Patenschaften aus Ruinen,’ Rheinischer Merkur/Christ und Welt, 9 February 1985. 8. 3 Hermann Heckmann, ‘Das Denkmal als gute Stube,’ Rheinischer Merkur/ Christ und Welt, 2 February 1985. 17. 4 See, for examples, Rudolf Augstein, ‘8. Mai 1945 – Der Zusammenbruch oder die Stunde Null?’ Der Spiegel, 7 January 1985. Carl Karstens, ‘Der 8. Mai 1985 – ein dreifaches Vermächtnis,’ and Rüdiger Altmann, ‘Die Katastrophe der Befreiung,’ both in Rheinischer Merkur/Christ und Welt, 16 February 1985. 3. 5 In order of appearance the articles were: Gunter Hofmann, ‘8. Mai – Der sperrige Gedenktag: Geschichte verdrängen oder Geschichte bewältigen, das ist die Frage,’ Die Zeit, 18 January 1985. 3. Michael Stürmer, ‘8. Mai – keine Angst vor gemischten Gefühlen,’ Die Zeit, 25 January 1985. 4. Hans Mayer, ‘8. Mai – Als der Krieg zu Ende war,’ Die Zeit, 1 February 1985. 3. Saul Friedländer, ‘8. Mai: Bewältigung – oder nur Verdrängung?: Bei der deutschen Suche nach der Identität kann die Geschichte auf der Strecke bleiben,’ Die Zeit, 8 February 1985. 7. Golo Mann, ‘8. Mai – Gedenktage, die Wunden aufreißen,’ Die Zeit, 15 February 1985. 9–10. Michael Howard, ‘8. Mai – Ende der europäischen Ära: Die Ursachen and Folgen des amerikanischsowjetichen Handschlag bei Torgau and der Elbe,’ Die Zeit, 22 February 1985. 10. 6 Mann, ‘Gedenktage.’ 7 Manfred Schwartz, Klaus Lange, Reinhard Kniekamp, Dr Siegfried Bork, Janne Jannens, Hans List, Dr Heinz Rau, Gernot Göpel, Kurt Asendorf, Georges Reymond, ‘Leserbriefe: Ewige Schuld?’ Die Zeit, 8 February 1985. 32. 8 See, for examples, Friedrich Karl Fromme, ‘Dresden – zu Ende des Krieges noch eine Friedensinsel?: Der “dreifache Schlag” der Briten und Amerikaner vor vierzig Jahren,’ FAZ, 13 February 1985. 11. Christian Schütze, ‘Eine Banausenjugend in der Kunststadt,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13 February 1985. 8. Theo Sommer, ‘Traum und Trauma: Dresden 1845, 1945, 1985 – deutsche Daten,’ Die Zeit, 15 February 1985. 1. 9 Sommer, ‘Traum und Trauma.’

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10 Michael Cullen, ‘Auferstanden aus Ruinen: Die Wiedereröffnung der Dresdner Semper-Oper 40 Jahre nach dem Untergang der Stadt,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9–10 February 1985. ‘Feuilleton’ III. 11 Ernst-Otto Maetzke, ‘Eine Jahrhundertkatastrophe dokumentiert: Der Abschluß der Fernseh-Reihe über den Bombenkrieg – Dresden,’ FAZ, 26 January 1985. 12. 12 For responses (all published in the FAZ), see Wilhelm Küpper, ‘Für Dresdner keine Streitfrage,’ and Nora Lockner, ‘Bürger ohne Bewußtseinsstörung,’ both on 2 February 1985. 8. Hans Fischer, ‘Die Angriffe auf Dresden,’ 8 February 1985. 10. Horst Reh, ‘Die Anfänge des Luftkriegs gegen Zivilbevölkerung,’ and Harold Heinicke, ‘Beschossene Dresdner,’ both on 13 February 1985. 8. Dieter Krantz, ‘Ist Bombardierung von Wohngebieten völkerrechtswidrig?’ 14 February 1985. 9. 13 Olaf Ihlau, ‘Zurückblicken von konträren Standpunkten: DresdenDiskussion in England,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15 February 1985. 3. 14 ‘Im Gedenken an die Opfer des 13. Februar,’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 1985. 2. 15 Ibid. For this ceremony, see below, 137. 16 Jochen Zimmermann and Horst Richter, ‘Erich Honecker auf der Großkundgebung der Elbestadt: Dresden ist Mahnung und Verpflichtung zum Frieden,’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 1985. 1–2. 17 Quoted in Uly Foerster, ‘Es lastet und es blutet,’ Der Spiegel, 18 February 1985. 28–9. Albrecht Hinze, ‘Die Nacht der vielen Kerzen,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15 February 1985. 3. 18 Quoted in Hinze, ‘Die Nacht.’ 19 Zimmermann, ‘Mahnung und Verpflichtung.’ Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ 20 Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’ See also Hinze, ‘Die Nacht.’ 21 Even some West German reports otherwise sceptical of the state-centred mass rally acknowledged that applause for Honecker appeared genuine. For instance, Hinze, ‘Die Nacht.’ 22 As part of the DDR’s cult of personality built around Honecker, virtually every reference to him in the Neues Deutschland included with monotonous regularity his full official title of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED and Chairman of the State Council of the DDR (Generalsekretär des ZK der SEDund Vorsitzenderdes Staatsrates der DDR). 23 The Willenserklärung read out by Otte was reproduced verbatim in the party paper as ‘Willenserklärung: Der Dresdner zum 40. Jahrestag der Zerstörung ihrer Heimatstadt,’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 1985. 3. Unless stipulated otherwise, all further quotations from, and references to, the Willenserklärung are taken from this source. 24 Quoted in Zimmermann, ‘Mahnung und Verpflichtung.’

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25 Erich Honecker, ‘Es geht heute um das Überleben der Menschheit und um die Existenz unserer Erde,’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 1985. 3. The heading translates as: ‘Today it is a matter of the survival of humanity and the existence of our world.’ Unless stipulated otherwise, all further quotations from, and references to, Honecker’s speech are taken from this source. For this particular quotation, see also Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ 26 This remark was widely cited. See, for instance, Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ 27 Although many reports quoted or paraphrased this section of Honecker’s address, none made the important symbolic connection with the Rondell. Hinze’s abridged version of the speech, for instance, implied Honecker mentioned only Dresden, Coventry, Warsaw, Rotterdam, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki – a distortion that failed to grasp the full imagery of the places cited. 28 Albrecht Hinze, ‘Honecker ruft zu Friedensbemühungen auf – Staatssekretär Bräutigam: 13. Februar ein Tag der Trauer für alle Deutschen,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 February 1985. 1. 29 Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’ 30 Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ 31 Talks were set to commence on 12 March 1985. Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko died on 10 March. Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded him immediately, meaning these Geneva talks were the first major negotiations under Gorbachev’s leadership. For documents available electronically, see ‘To the Geneva Summit: Perestroika and the Transformation of US–Soviet Relations,’ The National Security Archive. http://www.gwu. edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB172/index.htm (22 November 2005 (accessed December 2008)). 32 On 16 June 1979, Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signed SALT II in Washington, DC. It was to no avail, however, because US Congress refused to ratify the treaty. It signalled the death knell for détente, and relations soon soured even further when the Soviet Union became embroiled in Afghanistan at the year’s end. No meaningful agreements over arms limitations or reductions could be reached prior to Gorbachev’s ascension to power. 33 According to the Neues Deutschland, Honecker’s remarks were greeted with strong applause (stärker Beifall). 34 Honecker, ‘Es geht.’ See also Zimmermann, ‘Mahnung und Verpflichtung.’ Hans-R Karutz, ‘Dresden: ‘Tag der Trauer für alle Deutschen’ – Honecker kündigt Wiederaufbau des Konigsschlosses an,’ Die Welt, 14 February 1985. 4. 35 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Charles Atkinson trans. (London, 1926).

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36 Quoted in Zimmermann, ‘Mahnung und Verpflichtung.’ 37 The music for the DDR national anthem was composed by Hanns Eisler (best known for his collaborative work with close friend Bertholt Brecht). Communist poet Johannes Becher wrote the lyrics in 1949. 38 Whereas the Frauenkirche site remained covered in rubble, both the Semperoper and the Residenzschloss had been cleared of bombing debris and those parts of their external structure still standing were reinforced to facilitate reconstruction at a future stage. 39 See, Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870–1990 (Berkeley, CA, 2000). 269–83. Mary Fulbrook, Fontana History of Germany, 1918–1990: The Divided Nation (London, 1991). 299–306. 40 Koshar, Monuments to Traces. Heckmann, ‘Das Denkmal.’ Albrecht Hinze, ‘Zweckmäßiger, wohnlicher und schöner?’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13 February 1985. 8. 41 For a West German article on Gottfried Semper, see Claus Zöge von Manteuffel, ‘Ein Meister der glanzvollen Überbauwelt: Die Widersprüche des Gottfried Semper,’ FAZ, 9 February 1985. ‘Bilder und Zeiten.’ For articles that highlighted Semper’s central role in the rich history of Dresden’s opera houses and other architecture (for example, he also designed Dresden’s first synagogue, which was destroyed during Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938), see also Dankwart Guratzsch, ‘Die Botschaft des alten Semper,’ Die Welt, 15 February 1985. 3. Klaus Geitel, ‘Ein Aufbruch zurück zu glanzvollen Zeiten,’ Die Welt, 15 February 1985. 3. Monika Zimmermann, ‘Dresdner Denkwürdigkeiten,’ FAZ, 13 February 1985. 1. ‘Der Freischütz mit der Wunderharfe,’ Der Spiegel, 11 February 1985. ‘Kultur.’ Heckmann, ‘Das Denkmal.’ Cullen, ‘Auferstanden.’ 42 For a history of Dresden opera houses in general and the Semperoper in particular, see Heinrich Magirius, The Semper Opera in Dresden: History, Equipment, Iconography, Tony Crawford and Marcel Saché trans. (Leipzig, 2004). Magirius, a Dresdener born in 1934, was state curator at the Saxon Office of Historic Preservation, Dresden. 43 Ibid. 23. 44 ‘Der Freischütz.’ 45 Quoted in ibid. For other articles discussing Wagner and/or Strauss in connection with Semper’s two opera houses in Dresden, see Guratzsch, ‘Die Botschaft.’ Geitel, ‘Ein Aufbruch.’ Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ Zimmermann, ‘Dresdner Denkwürdigkeiten.’ 46 Sommer, ‘Traum und Trauma.’ 47 Zimmermann, ‘Dresdner Denkwürdigkeiten.’ 48 The article alleged that two million East German marks already had been collected by the early 1950s, but, after a temporary roof was constructed

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49



50



51 52



53 54 55 56



57 58 59 60



61 62 63

to preserve the standing walls from decaying any further, decades of hollow promises from the SED passed before the Semperoper finally was restored. ‘Der Freischütz.’ See especially Heckmann, ‘Das Denkmal.’ Hinze, ‘Zweckmäßiger.’ Zimmermann, ‘Dresdner Denkwürdigkeiten.’ Karutz, ‘Tag der Trauer.’ ‘Der Freischütz.’ On the eve of the event, Michael Cullen remarked: ‘In Dresden and Dortmund, east and west of the Elbe, one will be able to follow the proceedings live on television.’ Cullen’s choice of Dortmund presumably was for literary effect in pairing two Dtowns that were destroyed by bombing. Nonetheless, his selection of the working-class Ruhr city Dortmund instead of, say, the more chic Düsseldorf (also decimated by bombing during the war) reinforced Dresden’s reputation as a centre of German high culture. Cullen, ‘Auferstanden.’ Sommer, ‘Traum und Trauma.’ Elvira Mollenschott, and Günter Görtz, ‘Eines der weltbedeutendsten Opernhäuser in neuem Glanz: Erich Honecker und weitere Gäste aus dem In- und Ausland beim Festakt zur Eröffnung,’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 1985. 1–2. Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’ Quoted in ‘Der Freischütz.’ For Reinhold’s Denkmal, see Chapter 2, 92, 93. For an interview and photograph of Hohlfeld in 1985, see Hajo Herbell, ‘Der Untergang und Wiedergeburt der Stadt an der Elbe: Dresden – 40 Jahre danach,’ Neues Deutschland, 9–10 February 1985. 9–10. See also Jochen Steinmayr, ‘Alles nachgemacht – und doch so fein,’ Die Zeit, 22 February 1985. 67. Steinmayr, ‘Alles nachgemacht.’ Ibid. Magirius, Semper Opera. 17. Quotation taken from Steinmayr, ‘Alles nachgemacht.’ See also Magirius, Semper Opera. Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ Steinmayr, ‘Alles nachgemacht.’ Quotation taken from Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’ Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ Winters’ article is accompanied by a large photograph of the Honeckers and others seated in the former royal box, which is juxtaposed with a photograph of the Schmidts sitting with other prominent West German guests. Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’ Foerster’s article featured a photograph of Honecker and company standing and applauding in the box. Mollenschott, ‘Eines der weltbedeutendsten.’ This front-page article also featured a photograph of those occupying the former royal box. Some West German reports mocked Honecker

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64



65 66 67



68 69 70 71



72 73



74 75 76 77 78



79

as a present-day imitation of the Saxon kings of old. See, for example, Zimmermann, ‘Dresdner Denkwürdigkeiten.’ Hansjürgen Schaefer, ‘Stürmischer Applaus für eine glanzvolle Permiere,’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 1985. 4. Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’ Quoted in Hinze, ‘Honecker ruft.’ Hinze, ‘Die Nacht.’ Hans-R Karutz, ‘Dresden gedenkt der Nacht der Bomben: Operneröffnung und Gottesdienst / Neues Luxushotel,’ Die Welt, 12 February 1985. 4. Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’ Quoted in ibid. Hinze, ‘Honecker ruft.’ For a contemporary overview of the Werbellinsee meeting, see ‘East –The Schmidt-Honecker Meeting,’ OpenSocietyArchives. http:// www.osaarchivum.org/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/26-11-4.shtml, link no longer active (accessed December 2009). For a recent analysis, see Detlev Brunner, ‘Nicht rufen: Auf Wiedersehen!’ Zeit-Online. http:// zeit.de/2006/49/A-Guestrow (2006 (accessed January 2007)). Karutz, ‘Dresden gedenkt.’ For examples of West German accounts, see ‘Honecker empfängt Helmut Schmidt: Keine Winterzeit in den Innerdeutschen Beziehungen, sagt der ehemalige Kanzler,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15 February 1985. 1–2. Hinze, ‘Die Nacht.’ For an East German interpretation, see ‘Erich Honecker empfing Helmut Schmidt,’ Neues Deutschland, 15 February 1985. 1. It is worth noting here that, although Honecker’s meeting with Schmidt made the front page of the party organ, it was only a snippet. In comparison, the day’s headlining article, which spilled over to the second page, summarised international press reports on Honecker’s party rally speech on Dresden’s fortieth Gedenktag. Correspondents of the DDR’s press agency Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (ADN) from Moscow, London, Washington, Bonn, Prague, Peking, Vienna, Paris, and Havana provided very favourable reports on the local press reactions to Honecker’s speech. See ‘Starke internationale Beachtung für die Rede Erich Honeckers in Dresden: Ausführliche Berichterstattung in den Medien über Großkundgebung Anstrengungen der DDR zur Sicherung des Friedens hervorgehoben,’ Neues Deutschland, 15 February 1985. 1–2. ‘Erich Honecker empfing.’ Ibid. ‘Honecker empfängt Schmidt.’ Ibid. Herbell, ‘Untergang und Wiedergeburt.’ For Hauptmann’s lament, see Chapter 1, 66. Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’

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80 The ribbon’s inscription was widely quoted in the West German press. See, for examples, Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ Karutz, ‘Tag der Trauer.’ 81 Hinze used the term Mahnwache in his article, ‘Die Nacht,’ whereas Karutz used the term Ehrenwache in his report, ‘Tag der Trauer.’ 82 Karutz, ‘Die Kreuzkirche.’ 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Reports did not disclose why the ceremony took place at the same time as the mass rally staged around the corner at the Theaterplatz. In any case, this meant the Bräutigam ceremony passed without attracting much attention. According to Karutz, only a small crowd of around 150 locals gathered at the ruins at this time, after having heard about it on the morning report of West German radio, the Deutschlandfunk. Karutz, ‘Tag der Trauer.’ 86 Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ 87 Quoted in Hinze, ‘Honecker ruft.’ 88 Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ Hinze, ‘Honecker ruft.’ Karutz, ‘Tag der Trauer.’ 89 See Chapter 2, 84. 90 Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’ 91 Karutz, ‘Die Kreuzkirche.’ 92 Ibid. Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ 93 Foerster, ‘Es lastet.’ 94 Zimmermann, ‘Mahnung und Verpflichtung.’ 95 Hinze, ‘Die Nacht.’ Karutz also used the term Lichtermeer to describe the candlelit procession to the ruins. Karutz, ‘Tag der Trauer.’ 96 The new hotel, built and owned by a Japanese-Swedish consortium, was the only first-class hotel in Dresden at the time. The name ‘Bellevue’ had strong historical roots. Prior to the war, Dresden’s grandest hotel, located adjacent to the Semperoper, had been called the Bellevue. Strauss, among many others, had resided permanently in the Bellevue while based in Dresden. The February 1945 raid destroyed the original hotel, which was never rebuilt. Locals apparently pleaded with the foreign consortium to build the new Bellevue on the original’s stillvacant site, but the idea was rejected. See Jürgen Engert, ‘Kurz nach zwölf in Dresden,’ Rheinische Merkur/Chrust und Welt, 23 February 1985. 5. Karutz, ‘Dresden gedenkt.’ 97 Karutz, ‘Die Kreuzkirche.’ 98 Ibid. 99 Winters, ‘Gutes und Unverkraftetes.’ 100 Ibid. 101 Karutz, ‘Die Kreuzkirche.’

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Chapter 4









1 Christoph Ziemer, Saxony’s EKD Dean, quoted in Christian Schütze, ‘Schwieriges Gedenken in der Schwebezeit,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10–11 February 1990. 3. 2 On 28 November, Kohl had presented to the Bundestag his ‘ten-point program for overcoming the division of Germany and Europe.’ His address in December, however, was the first occasion in which he discussed his aspirations to ‘unite’ Germany in an open arena. Kohl’s November plan is reproduced as ‘Zehn-Punkte-Programm zur Überwindung der Teilung Deutschlands und Europas,’ in Die Deutsche Vereinigung: Dokumente zu Bürgerbewegung, Annäherung und Beitritt, eds Volker Gransow and Konrad Jarausch (Cologne, 1991). 101–4. 3 For an engrossing fictional depiction, see the tragicomedy film by Wolfgang Becker, Good Bye Lenin! (Germany, 2003). 4 ‘Zehntausende Berliner für Souveränität der DDR: Kundgebung gegen Wiedervereinigung,’ Neues Deutschland, 20 December 1989. 1. 5 Helmut Kohl, Erinnerungen. 1982–90 (Munich, 2005). 1020. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 For a contemporary newspaper article that effectively captured the Zeitgeist, see Reinhard Steiger, ‘Wir sind das Volk,’ FAZ, 6 January 1990. ‘Bilder und Zeiten.’ Accompanying the article is a classic photograph of East Berliners in a street demonstration. Walking past the Palast der Republik, which among other things housed the DDR’s Volkskammer, the crowd carried large banners and signs proclaiming ‘Wir sind das Volk!’ and (referring to the Berlin Wall) ‘40 Jahre DDR – 28 Jahre eingemauert.’ 9 For insightful discussions published shortly after the period in question, see Mary Fulbrook, ‘“Wir sind ein Volk”? Reflections on German Unification,’ Parliamentary Affairs 44 (1991). John Breuilly, ed., The State of Germany: The National Idea in the Making, Unmaking, and Remaking of a Modern Nation-State (London and New York, 1992). 10 In his memoirs, Kohl published an abridged, annotated version of the speech as part of his extensive recollections of the brief but momentous December 1989 visit to Dresden. See ‘Schlüsselerlebnisse’ in Kohl, Erinnerungen. 1020–8. A verbatim transcript of the speech is available electronically as ‘Kohl-Reden 138–142 (“Ziel bleibt die Einheit der Nation”),’ 2+4 Chronik. http://www.2plus4.de/abstracts. php3?year=1989&month=12 (19 December 1989 (accessed May 2006)). Unless stipulated otherwise, all quotations from the speech are sourced from this full-version transcript. 11 Kohl, Erinnerungen. 1020.

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12 Ibid. 1021. 13 See ‘SED/PDS Resolution for a New GDR,’ German History in Documents and Images. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_ document.cfm? document_id=2882, link no longer active (17 December 1989 (accessed March 2008)). 14 ‘U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush’s Conditions for Unification,’ German History in Documents and Images. http://germanhistorydocs. ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=2874 (4 December 1989 (accessed April 2008)). 15 ‘Mikhail Gorbachev’s Concerns about Reunification,’ German History in Documents and Images. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_ document.cfm?document_id=2883 (5 December 1989 (accessed April 2008)). 16 Kohl, Erinnerungen. 1022. 17 Ibid. 1022–3. 18 Marc Fisher, ‘East Germans Hail Visiting Kohl,’ Washington Post, 20 December 1989. See also Serge Schmemann, ‘Upheaval in the East: Kohl Strives to Address Hope and Fear on Unity,’ New York TimesOnline. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1D912 3CF932A15751C1A96F948260 (21 December 1989 (accessed November 2007)). 19 Contemporary estimates varied slightly but most were around the 100,000 mark, the figure Kohl later cited in his memoirs. Kohl, Erinnerungen. 1026. 20 Elizabeth Ten Dyke, Dresden: Paradoxes of Memory and History (New York, 2001). 233–4. Kohl’s version of events published in his memoirs makes no mention whatever of any negative elements in the crowd. His account of the two-day visit to Dresden is entirely positive. 21 Several snippets of edited audio recordings of Kohl’s address are available on the internet, which indicate the parts where the crowd were most responsive. See ‘Rede des Bundeskanzlers Dr Helmut Kohl am 19. Dezember 1989 in Dresden,’ Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin (Besucherdienst: Tonmaterial). http://www.parlament-berlin.de/pari/web/wdefault.nsf/ vHTML/F12_3-00013?OpenDocument (1989 (accessed May 2006)). Also, ‘Rede des Bundeskanzlers Kohl am 19. Dezember 1989 in Dresden,’ wer-weiss-was. http://www.wer-weiss-was.de/theme86/article609002. html#609712 (1989 (accessed May 2006)). 22 Fisher, ‘East Germans Hail.’ Dankwart Guratzsch, ‘In den Ruinen keimte der Wille zur Freiheit,’ Die Welt, 13 February 1990. 3. For Kohl’s recollection, see his Erinnerungen. 1022–4. 23 Kohl, Erinnerungen. 1024. 24 The so-called Two-plus-Four Agreement (referring to the two Germanies plus the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union) resulted in

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26



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the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany being signed in Moscow on 12 September 1990. This paved the way for Germany’s official reunification on 3 October 1990. See ‘The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, September 12, 1990,’ United States Diplomatic Mission to Germany. http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ 2plusfour8994e.htm (accessed April 2005). ‘United Nations General Assembly International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,’ Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm, link no longer active (Ratification: 16 December 1966; Entry in Force: 23 March 1976 (accessed February 2008)). For reports that discussed this point, see Schmemann, ‘Kohl Strives.’ Fisher, ‘East Germans Hail.’ Issues relating to the expulsion and expellees were not limited to the Oder-Neisse line in the German press at the time. Questions regarding Volksdeutsche still living in the Soviet Union, for instance, also were raised. For examples, ‘Die deutsche Frage – gleich zweifach,’ FAZ, 10 February 1990. 12. ‘Die Rußlanddeutsche werden nicht länger ignoriert,’ FAZ, 5 January 1990. 9. ‘Rußlanddeutsche stellen Moskau ein ‘Ultimatum,’’ FAZ, 8 February 1990. 1. Kohl, Erinnerungen. 1025–6. Ibid. Ibid. 1025. Ibid. 1026. Harold Marcuse, Legacies of Dachau: the Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933–2001 (New York, 2001). 358. Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Germany after Bitburg: Kohl’s Troubled Conscience,’ The New Republic 193 (15 July 1985). For a fascinating commentary that locates this episode in a broader context, see Andrei Markovits, ‘A New (or Perhaps Revived) “Uninhibitedness” toward Jews in Germany,’ Jewish Political Studies Review 18 (Spring 2006). For Kohl’s views on the speech’s importance, see his Erinnerungen. 1020–8. In 2005, Kohl received the Franz-Joseph-Strauß-Prize in Munich. Both the Bavarian leader Edmund Stoiber, in his speech upon conferring the award, and Kohl himself, in his recipient’s speech, singled out for special mention the historic speech in front of the ruins. See, ‘Rede des Bayerischen Ministerpräsidenten Dr Edmund Stoiber zur Verleihung des Franz Josef Strauß-Preises in München am 30. September 2005,’ Hanns-SeidelStiftung. http://www.hss.de/downloads/FJSP_2005_Rede_Stoiber.pdf (2005 (accessed January 2007)). And ‘Rede des Preisträgers Dr Helmut Kohl anlässlich der Verleihung des Franz Josef Strauß-Preises am 30. September 2005 in München,’ Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung. http://www.hss.de/

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38 39



40



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43



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downloads/FJSP_2005_Rede_Hemut_Kohl.pdf (2005 (accessed January 2007)). For a work stressing the importance of this particular speech, see Günter Müchler, ‘(Book Review) Ein unrühmliches Stück SPD-Geschichte. Daniel Friedrich Sturm: “Uneinig in die Einheit,’” Deutschlandradio. http://www.dradio.de/dkultur/sendungen/politischesbuch/548437 (2006 (accessed January 2007)). Kohl, Erinnerungen. 1020. Erich Honecker, ‘Es geht heute um das Überleben der Menschheit und um die Existenz unserer Erde,’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 1985. 3. Finishing touches still were being added a quarter-century later. Albrecht Hinze, ‘Honecker ruft zu Friedensbemühungen auf – Staatssekretär Bräutigam: 13. Februar ein Tag der Trauer für alle Deutschen,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 February 1985. 1. Karlheinz Blaschke, ‘Die Trümmer des Krieges: Die Dresdner Frauenkirche soll wieder aufgebaut werden,’ FAZ, 13 February 1990. ‘Feuilleton’ 33. Monika Zimmermann, ‘Ruine oder Kirche? Frauenkirche, Schloß, Neumarkt – Dresdner Denkmalprobleme,’ FAZ, 17 February 1990. ‘Feuilleton’ 2. Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden ed., Die Frauenkirche zu Dresden: Werden – Wirkung – Wiederaufbau (Ausstellungskatalog). (Dresden, 2005). 114–15. Güttler is a native of Saxony, but not originally from Dresden. Born during the war in Sosa (a small village nestled in the Erzgebirge), he first moved to Dresden in 1969 aged 26. Güttler traces his staunch commitment to the rebuilding campaign to two key experiences. First, as a student in Leipzig during the late 1960s, he witnessed the demolition of the university’s gothic church on state leader Walter Ulbricht’s express orders. ‘Perversely,’ explains Güttler, the church was demolished ‘under the slogan: Leipzig is to become more beautiful’ (‘Pervers. Und das unter dem Motto: Leipzig soll schöner werden’). Yet, he continues, all it achieved was to rob Leipzig of its identifying symbol as a university-city (‘Statt dessen habe man Leipzig seines Identitätszeichens als Universitätsstadt beraubt’). Second, during a concert tour of Italy in the mid-1970s, Güttler admired the classical beauty in the architecture. While in Venice he was particularly taken by the domed Maria della Salute church: ‘And there I had the [Dresden] Frauenkirche suddenly before my eyes’ (‘Und da hatte ich auf einmal die Frauenkirche vor Augen’). For a 2005 interview (on occasion of the church’s reconsecration), see Stefan Seewald and Sven Felix Kellerhof, ‘Ruf aus Dresden: Initiator Ludwig Güttler mahnt die Elbstädter, guten Gebrauch vom Geschenk Frauenkirche zu machen,’ WELTamSONNTAG. http://www.wams.de/data/2005/10/30/792678. html?prx=1 (2005 (accessed November 2005)). For a 2005 interview (on occasion of the church’s reconsecration), see Jörg Marschner, ‘Das eingelöste Versprechen,’ SächsischeZeitung-Online.

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45 46 47



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50



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52



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http://www.sz-online.de/special/frauenkirche/artikel.asp?id=982203, link no longer active (22 October 2005 (accessed November 2005)). Ausstellungskatalog. 114. Quoted in ibid. Ibid. Andreas Friedrich, The Frauenkirche in Dresden: History and Rebuilding, ed. Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden, Rosemarie Nitschke trans. (Dresden, 2005). 75. For a full list of the signatories’ names, professions, and qualifications, see Article 3.123 ‘Ruf aus Dresden, 13. Februar 1990,’ in Ausstellungskatalog. 114–15. Not until March 1991, after more than a year of heated debate, did the Saxony EKD synod vote in favour of reconstruction with 46 supporting votes and 26 against. See Clara Paul, Dresden’s Frauenkirche: a Symbol of Reconciliation, Cornelia Müller trans. (Meissen, 2004). 34–5. Also Zimmermann, ‘Ruine oder Kirche?’ ‘Inferno vor 45 Jahren: Dresden gedenkt der Bombenopfer – Kranzniederlegungen im Ehrenhain für 29000 Tote,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 February 1990. 6. For 1985, see Chapter 3, 130–1. Speaking at the reconsecration in 2005, Köhler exclaimed: ‘Hatte nicht Ostdeutschland Straßen, Dächer, Fabriken nötiger als einen teuren Kirchbau? Aber eine Gruppe von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern sagte: Dresden braucht mehr! Und spätestens heute erkennen wir: Diese Bürger hatten recht! Menschen leben vom Brot, aber eben nicht vom Brot allein.’ Quoted in Horst Köhler: ‘‘Dieser wunderbare Bau ist mehr als ein Gebäude,’’ Berliner Morgenpost. http://www. morgenpost.de/content/2005/10/31/politik/789177.html, link no longer active (31 October 2005 (accessed November 2005)). See also ‘Landmark Dresden Church completes Rise from the Ashes,’ Deutsche Welle-World. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1758986,00. html (29 October 2005 (accessed November 2005)). A series of nine photographs taken from the same vantage point atop Dresden’s Rathaus tower between 1945 and 1997 are published in Oliver Reinhard, Matthias Neutzner, and Wolfgang Hesse, eds, Das rote Leuchten. Dresden und der Bombenkrieg (Dresden, 2005). 253–61. Depicted in the foreground of each photograph is the tower’s famous angel – August Schreitmüller’s sandstone sculpture ‘Die Güte’ (‘Goodness’) – with her outstretched hand above the Innenstadt in the background. The photographs chart the progress of central Dresden’s redevelopment spanning a half-century. See also Michael Schmidt, Der Untergang des alten Dresden in der Bombennacht vom 13./14. Februar 1945 (Dresden, 2005). The Dresden City Council took even longer than the EKD synod to decide whether to financially support the rebuilding project. Finally,

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on 20 February 1992, councillors announced the city council would cover 10 per cent of the total building costs. Friedrich, History and Rebuilding. 87. The official ‘Ruf aus Dresden – 13. Februar 1990’ is reproduced in Hans-Joachim Jäger, ‘Die Bürgerinitiative: “Gesellschaft zur Förderung des Wiederaufbaus der Frauenkirche Dresden e.V.”’ Dresdner Hefte 32 (1992). 98–100. A copy of the letter addressed to Queen Elizabeth II and signed by Güttler on behalf of the Bürgerinitiative featured as Article 3.126 in the Dresden’s City Museum’s Frauenkirche exhibition, but is not reproduced in the exhibition’s catalogue. I made a verbatim transcript of the letter whilst visiting the exhibition in February 2006. All following quotations and paraphrases rely on my notes. The two former churches were the English church St John’s located on the Wiener Platz and the American church All Saints. Quoted in Zimmermann, ‘Ruine oder Kirche?’ Heinrich Magirius, ‘Die Frauenkirche darf nicht in Schönheit sterben,’ Die Welt, 13 February 1990. 3. Friedrich Karl Fromme, ‘Wird die Frauenkirche in Dresden wieder aufgebaut? Bürgerinitiative sucht Unterstützung,’ FAZ, 12 February 1990. 9. For an article depicting Löffler as the ‘protector of the myth of Dresden’ published three years before his death, see Hermann Rudolph, ‘Fritz Löffler: Hüter des Mythos Dresden – Kunsthistoriker, Kritiker, Denkmalpfleger, und dazu eine Institution,’ Die Zeit, 15 February 1985. 67. See Chapter 2, 105–6. Friedrich, History and Rebuilding. 76–7. For this and all subsequent quotations from the Charter, see ‘Committee for drafting the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments The Venice Charter. International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites,’ Documentation Centre of UNESCO and ICOMOS. http://www.international.icomos.org/charters/ venice_e.htm, link no longer active (1964 (accessed July 2006)). For reflective accounts, see Hans Nadler, ‘Der Erhalt der Ruine der Frauenkirche nach 1945,’ Dresdner Hefte 32 (1992). 25–34. Hans Nadler, ‘The Battle to Conserve: Securing the Ruins of the Frauenkirche,’ in Dresden: A City Reborn, eds Anthony Clayton and Alan Russell (Oxford, 2001). 91–2. Tony Joel, ‘Reconstruction over Ruins: Rebuilding Dresden’s Frauenkirche,’ in The Heritage of War, eds Martin Gegner and Bart Ziino (London, 2012). 216 n.7. Mark Jarzombek, ‘Disguised Visibilities: Dresden/‘Dresden,’’ in Memory and Architecture, ed. Eleni Bastéa (Albuquerque, 2004). 55–6. Besides being outlined in the official Ruf aus Dresden, the concept of the Frauenkirche serving as a Christian Centre of World Peace also

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67 68 69 70 71



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73 74



75 76 77 78



79 80

was emphasised in press reports. See, for examples Carola Lauterbach, ‘Ruf aus Dresden an die Welt,’ Neues Deutschland, 13 February 1990. 4. Fromme, ‘Bürgerinitiative sucht Unterstützung.’ ‘Inferno vor 45 Jahren.’ Jäger, ‘Die Bürgerinitiative.’ 100. For instance, ‘Inferno vor 45 Jahren.’ Zimmermann, ‘Ruine oder Kirche?’ Dankwart Guratzsch, ‘Gleich nach der Premiere werden die Tore wieder geschlossen,’ Die Welt, 8 February 1990. 26. Dankwart Guratzsch, ‘Gedenken an die Dresdner Nacht des Grauens,’ Die Welt, 15 February 1990. Guratzsch, ‘Gleich nach.’ Zimmermann, ‘Ruine oder Kirche?’ Blaschke, ‘Die Trümmer.’ Guratzsch, ‘In den Ruinen.’ The bank’s philanthropic actions perhaps can be best considered as part of a belated, post-reunification coming to terms with its Nazi past. Dresdner Bank profited heavily from its involvement with the Nazi regime, including being the preferred bank of the SS. In the late 1990s, Dresdner Bank, like several other major German companies with problematic pasts from the Nazi era, commissioned a comprehensive study into its activities during the Third Reich. The findings of the exhaustive seven-year study were published in February 2006. See Klaus-Dietmar Henke, ed., Die Dresdner Bank im Dritten Reich, 4 vols. (Munich, 2006). For a commentary on the Dresdner Bank example, see Marc Young, ‘Hitler’s Willing Bankers,’ Spiegel-Online. http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,401575,00.html (2006 (accessed December 2006)). For an examination of the overall trend, see S. Jonathan Wiesen, ‘Public Relations as a Site of Memory: The Case of West German Industry and National Socialism,’ in The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture, eds Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche (Urbana and Chicago, 2002). Quoted in Ausstellungskatalog. 117. Also, an original program from Kohl’s birthday reception was displayed in the Dresden City Museum’s Frauenkirche exhibition. Ibid. 117. Christian Schütze, ‘Eine Banausenjugend in der Kunststadt,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13 February 1985. 8. Schütze, ‘Schwieriges Gedenken.’ Ibid. Quoted in ibid. Dankwart Guratzsch, ‘200 000 Menschen gedachten in Dresden der Bombennacht/David Irving: Churchill mitverantwortlich für 135 000 Tote,’ Die Welt, 15 February 1990. 1. See Chapter 3, 117–19. Olaf Groehler, ‘Der Bombenkrieg zog tiefe Furchen im Erinnerungsvermögen,’ Neues Deutschland, 10–11 February 1990. 13.

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81 ‘Teil I. “Vor 45 Jahren: Der ‘Donnerschlag’ leitet den Untergang Dresdens ein,”’ 31 January 1990. 8. ‘Teil II. “Ungeduldig riet Churchill zum Angriff auf Dresden,”’ 2 February 1990. 7. ‘Teil III. “Der Schlag gegen Dresden wurde ‘unvermeidlich,’”’ 5 February 1990. 8. ‘Teil IV. ‘Bis zuletzt gab es Bedenken wegen Dresden,’’ 7 February 1990. 8. For discussion of Irving’s book, see Chapter 1, 75–6, 102–3. 82 In January 2006, Irving gave his first interview from an Austrian prison cell while awaiting trial for Holocaust denial. During the interview, with German academic Malte Herwig, Irving reiterated his longstanding admiration for Harris as ‘a great commander.’ See Malte Herwig, ‘‘Hitler? He was good in parts,’’ The Observer, 22 January 2006. 12–13. 83 Similarly, Fromme sardonically referred to 35,000 as ‘die “amtliche” Angabe’ in the DDR before suggesting 100,000 was a more probable death toll. Friedrich Karl Fromme, ‘Ein Überrest aus dem zerbombten Dresden,’ FAZ, 13 February 1990. 4. 84 See the photograph and caption accompanying the report by Guratzsch, ‘Gedenken.’ 85 Guratzsch, ‘200 000 Menschen.’ 86 Ibid. Hans-Peter Altmann, ‘Dresdner Trauermusik: Gedenken am 13. Februar,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17–18 February 1990. ‘Feuilleton’ 15. 87 ‘Gedenken an die Zerstörung Dresdens,’ FAZ, 14 February 1990. 3. ‘Inferno vor 45 Jahren.’ ‘Gedenken an das Dresdner Inferno: 100 000 ehrten Bombenopfer,’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 1990. 2. 88 Guratzsch, ‘Gedenken.’ 89 ‘Inferno vor 45 Jahren.’ 90 Guratzsch, ‘Gedenken.’ 91 Ibid. ‘Gedenken an das Dresdner Inferno.’ ‘Inferno vor 45 Jahren.’ Schütze, ‘Schwieriges Gedenken.’ 92 Quoted in ‘Inferno vor 45 Jahren.’ 93 Guratzsch, ‘Gedenken.’ 94 Quoted in ibid. 95 Quoted in ibid. It was not the first occasion such sentiments had been conveyed at the time of Dresden’s Gedenktag. In the late 1980s, Bishop Albrecht Schönherr, acting as spokesman of the Association of Protestant churches in the DDR, recalled that prior to Dresden’s destruction in the February 1945 firestorm, books and then synagogues were burned in the city just like everywhere else in Nazi Germany. Schütze, ‘Schwieriges Gedenken.’ 96 See ‘Zeittafel,’ Dresdner-Kreuzkirche. http://www.dresdner-kreuzkirche. de/index.html, link no longer active (accessed June 2006). Also, Bill Niven, ‘The GDR and Memory of the Bombing of Dresden,’ in Germans as Victims, ed. Bill Niven (New York, 2006). 109. Anthony Clayton, ‘Dresden, 1206–1918,’ in Dresden, eds Clayton and Russell. 9–26.

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97 Matthias Gretschel, Die Dresdner Frauenkirche (Hamburg, 2006). 70–3. 98 See Chapter 2, 94–5. 99 The Neues Deutschland reported that, in addition to Berghofer and Ziemer, Coventry’s Lord Mayor David Carius also addressed the crowd. The report, however, contains no details regarding what Carius said. ‘Gedenken an das Dresdner Inferno.’ 100 Quoted in Monika Zimmermann, ‘Ein Meer von Lichtern auf dem Dresdner Altmarkt,’ FAZ, 15 February 1990. 3. 101 Quoted in ibid. 102 Guratzsch, ‘200 000 Menschen.’ 103 Guratzsch, ‘Gedenken.’ 104 Guratzsch, ‘Gleich nach.’ 105 Zimmermann, ‘Ein Meer.’ 106 Ibid. 107 For Leipzig’s ongoing central role during five cycles of Montagsdemonstrationen conducted between 1989 and 1991, see Susanne Lohmann, ‘The Dynamics of Informational Cascades: the Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig, East Germany, 1989–91,’ World Politics 47 (October 1994). 42–101. 108 The bravery of those demonstrators who participated in the annual candlelit march to, and congregation at, the Frauenkirche ruins during the 1980s cannot be overstated. Not only did they risk being placed under Stasi surveillance, but also from year to year it remained unknown how police and other authorities would react on the night. Even as late as October 1989, as Elizabeth Ten Dyke argues, those disgruntled East Germans participating in the massive Montagsdemonstrationen to voice ‘increasingly insistent calls for reform’ did so without any real way of knowing whether the state would resort to violent intervention in order to quash the protests. ‘Memory and Existence: Implications of the Wende,’ in The Work of Memory, eds Confino and Fritzsche. 155. 109 Blaschke further exclaimed: ‘Hier wurde jahrelang eine Art und Weise des gewaltlosen, stummen Protestes eingeübt, die dann im entscheidenden Augenblick des 8. Oktober 1989 dem Volk das Bewußtsein seiner Macht gab. Die Ruine der Frauenkirche ist nicht irgendeine Kirchenruine, sie ist einer der Ausgangspunkte für die “Wende” des Herbstes 1989.’ Blaschke, ‘Die Trümmer.’ See also Fromme, ‘Bürgerinitiative sucht Unterstützung.’ 110 Guratzsch, ‘In den Ruinen.’ 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 Blaschke, ‘Die Trümmer.’

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Chapter 5









1 ‘Interview with Douglas Radcliffe MBE,’ (31 July 2006). All further quotations from, and paraphrasing of, Radcliffe are taken from this interview. 2 See introduction, 12. 3 ‘Interview with Alan Russell OBE,’ (2 August 2006). Unless referenced otherwise, all information contained in this chapter concerning the Dresden Trust is derived either from this interview or our subsequent written correspondence. 4 Besides the British involvement, similar American and French organisations were successfully established to help fund the reconstruction of Dresden’s Frauenkirche. Given that this chapter focuses on the politics of commemoration rather than the actual rebuilding project, however, it does not discuss the lesser American and French participation in commemorative ceremonies and instead concentrates on the leading British involvement. 5 The most notable exception was Friedrich Karl Fromme, ‘Die mächtige Kuppel schien zunächst unversehrt,’ FAZ, 13 February 1992. 11. The Neues Deutschland did not print an article of any kind, but featured a photograph of evening traffic passing the Semperoper. The accompanying caption described it as Dresden’s ‘Lichtermeer’ circa 1992, a reference to the low-key nature in comparison with previous years. Interestingly, the caption also quoted a death toll estimate of 45,000 victims, a departure from the staple 35,000 figure the paper always cited during the DDR era. ‘Dresden anno 1992…’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 1992. 12. 6 See Chapter 2, 111–15. 7 One minor exception is the short Postscript in Henry Probert, Bomber Harris: His Life and Times (London, 2003). 416–18. 8 Chapter 1, 69–71, 69, 70. 9 During the war, all of 5 Group’s home-bases were situated throughout Lincolnshire. For black-and-white photographs of the window and the unveiling ceremony, plus press cuttings reporting on the event collected by the Air Ministry, see ‘Lincoln Cathedral: Bomber Command Memorial Window,’ (AIR 2/12177, The National Archives, London). 10 Furthermore, countless other Bomber Command crew members were wounded or captured as POWs, meaning only a distinct minority actually completed their tour(s) of duty without serious injury or incarceration. 11 Even the editor of Churchill’s complete speeches (misleadingly) claims: ‘In this speech Churchill coined the phrase “The Few” to describe the R.A.F. fighter-pilots. The phrase stuck.’ Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches1897–1963, vol. VI (New York, 1974). 6261.

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12 Quoted in ibid. 6266. 13 Klaus Neumann, Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany (Ann Arbor, 2003). 91. Neumann references Hildesheim and Pforzheim. The latter three are discussed below. 14 At the time of writing, another monument dedicated to the 55,573 RAF bomber crew members killed in the Second World War was nearing completion. Located in Green Park, London, and entitled the RAF Bomber Command Memorial, it was due to be unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in June 2012. 15 With great fondness throughout our two-hour conversation, Radcliffe constantly referred to Harris as ‘Bert,’ a nickname seldom used in public discourse with the far more peremptory ‘Bomber’ and ‘Butcher’ (or ‘Butch’) preferred. 16 Radcliffe further recalled that a major obstacle faced was that, on the side of the church on which the BCA was proposing to erect its monument, the pathway belongs to the Lord Mayor. ‘We needed to leave a passage,’ quipped Radcliffe, ‘because I don’t suppose the Lord Mayor would like to walk around and be confronted by “Bert” Harris.’ 17 The BCA commissioned Faith Winter, the sculptor who previously had created the Dowding statue, to sculpt the Harris statue. Also, the same two architects who had engineered the computations for the Dowding statue were commissioned once again for the Harris memorial, which ensured uniformity between the two complementary monuments. ‘Radcliffe Interview.’ See also Robin Young, ‘Wraps off “Bomber” Harris,’ The Times, 22 February 1992. 14. John Young, ‘Protests focus on Statue unveiling,’ The Times, 30 May 1992. 5. 18 A facsimile copy of original Press Statement is in possession of the author, provided by Douglas Radcliffe. 19 When I attended a dinner party in Cologne in 2006, and explained the nature of the research I was undertaking, every local resident present could remember vividly the widespread resentment in Cologne toward the Harris statue at the time of its unveiling fourteen years earlier. All considered it a tactless episode, and most still clearly harboured animosity when discussing the subject, referring to Harris on numerous occasions as a ‘Schweinehund’ (meaning a bastard). 20 Michael Evans, ‘Royal date upsets Cologne,’ The Times, 29 April 1992. 3. David Sharrock, ‘Queen Mother drawn into Bomber Harris row,’ The Guardian, 29 April 1992. 20. Ben Fenton, ‘Protests fail to mar Bomber Harris Tribute,’ The Daily Telegraph, 1 June 1992. 1, 3. Ian Murray, ‘“Rubble Women” haunted by Horror of Carpet Bombing,’ The Times, 30 May 1992. 5. ‘Remembering them All,’ The Times, 30 May 1992. 15. Albert Schäffer, ‘“Die äußersten Schrecken des Krieges ins Heim bringen”: Der “Tausend-Bomber-Angriff ” auf Köln vor fünfzig Jahren,’ FAZ, 30

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21 22



23 24



25 26



27 28



29 30



31 32 33 34 35



36



37 38



39 40

May 1992. 7–8. ‘Kontroverse um “Schlächter” von Dresden,’ Neues Deutschland, 29 May 1992. 1. Sharrock, ‘Queen Mother drawn.’ For examples, ibid. Evans, ‘Royal date.’ Daniel Johnson, ‘A Blitz for a Blitz: Can the Germans justly denounce a new Memorial to “Bomber” Harris?’ The Times, 25 May 1992. 10. Anne McElvoy, ‘This is the Real Memorial,’ The Times, 26 May 1992. ‘Kontroverse um “Schlächter.”’ Quoted in Sharrock, ‘Queen Mother drawn.’ Radcliffe made this remark during our 2006 interview, and it was a point he also was quoted as making in the press at the time. See ibid. For brief descriptions of these events, see below, 186, 188–90, 196–7. Burger quoted in Murray, ‘“Rubble Women” haunted.’ See also John Ezard, ‘“Bomber” Harris statue unveiled to Jeers, Cheers and Scuffles,’ The Guardian, 1 June 1992. 3. ‘Radcliffe Interview.’ Ian Murray, ‘Cologne mourns Civilians and Pilots as Victims of War,’ The Times, 1 June 1992. 5. Murray, ‘“Rubble Women” haunted.’ Robin Gedye, ‘Germans unload their Guilt,’ The Daily Telegraph, 1 June 1992. 3. John Ezard, ‘The Firestorm rages on,’ The Guardian, 18 May 1992. 21. Burger quoted in ibid. For similar quotations, see also ‘Kontroverse um “Schlächter.”’ And McElvoy, ‘The Real Memorial.’ Likewise, a commentary in the Braunschweiger Zeitung described the Harris statue as a ‘gespenstische Huldigung’ and further added he ‘…war ein Massenmörder. Er führte Krieg gegen Städte. Hunderttausende ziviler Opfer belasten sein Konto.’ See summary published as ‘Gespenstische Huldigung,’ FAZ, 1 June 1992. 2. ‘History’s verdict on “Bomber” Harris,’ The Times, 29 May 1992. 15. ‘Kontroverse um “Schlächter.”’ Johnson, ‘Blitz for a Blitz.’ McElvoy, ‘The Real Memorial.’ The inspiration for the commentary’s heading stemmed from the remarks of an elderly local art dealer Johannes Kühl: ‘Just look at Dresden. It can never be what it was and that is the price we pay for starting the war and backing Hitler’s ugliness. In the end we lost one of the most precious things man has – a beautiful and harmonious environment. Bomber Harris’s memorial is all about you.’ John Ezard, ‘Church snub cheers Harris protesters,’ The Guardian, 25 May 1992. 5. Ibid. Young, ‘Protests focus.’ On this matter, Oestreicher announced: ‘I am sure Clarence House accepts that no offence is intended.’ Quoted in Ezard, ‘Church snub.’ Young, ‘Protests focus.’ Fenton, ‘Protests fail.’

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41 Woodrow Wyatt, ‘Ministers have been insensitive to Bomber Harris’s Memory,’ The Times, 2 June 1992. 12. 42 ‘Coventry stays Home,’ The Times, 30 May 1992. 14. 43 Craig Seton, ‘Coventry Prayers echo in the Ruins,’ The Times, 1 June 1992. 5. 44 Lucas quoted in Peter Victor, ‘Tempers flare as Bomber Veterans honour Harris,’ The Times, 1 June 1992. 5. See also, John Hamshire, ‘Salute to a Great Briton,’ Daily Mail, 1 June 1992. 1–2. Ezard, ‘“Bomber” Harris statue.’ Fenton, ‘Protests fail.’ 45 Lucas quoted in Ezard, ‘“Bomber” Harris statue.’ 46 See photograph accompanying Victor, ‘Tempers flare.’ 47 For this group of protesters see the footage of the unveiling ceremony, including crowd scenes, contained in the documentary ‘Luftangriff auf Dresden,’ (Germany, 2003). 48 Fenton, ‘Protests fail.’ 49 For footage, see the documentary ‘Luftangriff auf Dresden.’ 50 Estimate taken from Fenton, ‘Protests fail.’ 51 For audio-visual footage see ‘Luftangriff auf Dresden.’ 52 Ezard, ‘“Bomber” Harris statue.’ 53 Tony Snow, ‘Mother Courage,’ The Sun, 1 June 1992. 1, 4. 54 Ezard, ‘“Bomber” Harris statue.’ Fenton, ‘Protests fail.’ John Edwards, ‘Our Mission accomplished,’ Daily Mail, 1 June 1992. 6–7. 55 Fenton, ‘Protests fail.’ 56 A representative of the PPU explained: ‘We do not approve of the bombing of Germany which killed 600,000 civilians, but that does not mean that we do not regret the 55,000 members of Bomber Command who died in the raids.’ Quoted in ibid. 57 Peter Victor, ‘Ten arrested at Harris Protest,’ The Times, 1 June 1992. 1, 18. 58 Quoted in Fenton, ‘Protests fail.’ 59 Not only was it a widely-cited view in contemporary reports, Radcliffe also expressed this sentiment when interviewed fourteen years later. 60 Quoted in Ezard, ‘“Bomber” Harris statue.’ Also, Victor, ‘Tempers flare.’ Hamshire, ‘Salute.’ 61 ‘Zwist um “Bomber” Harris schürt allerorts Emotionen,’ Neues Deutschland, 1 June 1992. 3. ‘Harris-Denkmal in London enthüllt: Breite Zustimmung in der britischen Bevölkerung,’ FAZ, 1 June 1992. 4. 62 Quoted in Seton, ‘Coventry Prayers.’ 63 Gedye, ‘Germans unload.’ Murray, ‘Cologne mourns.’ 64 Quoted in Gedye, ‘Germans unload.’ 65 Even worse unrest transpired a few kilometres away in Bad Godesberg after the scuffle in front of the embassy had been dispersed. Nine police were injured and eight protesters arrested. Murray, ‘Cologne mourns.’

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66 ‘Harris-Denkmal.’ ‘Zwist um “Bomber.”’ Gedye, ‘Germans unload.’ Murray, ‘Cologne mourns.’ 67 ‘Royal Dresden visit,’ The Times, 16 July 1992. 2. 68 Cities included on the itinerary in either 1965 or 1978 included Mainz, Bremen, Kiel, and Hanover, while the Queen visited the then capital Bonn as well as West Berlin on both occasions. She also visited West Berlin again in 1987 on the occasion of the city’s 750th anniversary celebrations. See ‘HM The Queen’s State Visit 2–4 November 2004: Previous Visits by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip,’ Britische Botschaft. http://www. britischebotschaft.de/statevisit/en/former_visits/index.htm, link no longer active (accessed May 2008). 69 ‘Die Sachsen bleiben sachlich,’ FAZ, 23 October 1992. 3. ‘Die Queen in Bonn: Wir Briten sind Europäer,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20 October 1992. 2. ‘‘Berlin war Brennpunkt der Hoffnung,’’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 22 October 1992. 2. 70 For discussions of the link between the currency crisis and the Queen’s state visit, including quotations regarding this matter made by both the Queen and federal president Weizsäcker, see Bernhard Heimrich, ‘Die Runde Deutschmark gegen Königin gewann die Königin,’ FAZ, 24 October 1992. 2. Joachim Fritz-Vannahme, ‘Königlicher Glanz über grauer Politik,’ Die Zeit, 23 October 1992. 2. ‘Die Queen in Bonn.’ 71 Along these lines, journalist Bernhard Heimrich, who covered Dresden’s key commemorative events throughout the 1990s for the FAZ, wrote a commentary in February 1995 titled ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung auf englisch: Britannien und die Erinnerung an Dresden,’ FAZ, 13 February 1995. 3. 72 For discussions of the trip’s entire itinerary, see Günther Gillessen, ‘Bläser blasen vom Balkon, drunten erschallt freudiges Geschrei,’ FAZ, 20 October 1992. 2. Günther Gillessen, ‘Ein Fest wie für eine Großfamilie,’ FAZ, 21 October 1992. 9–10. ‘Die Queen in Bonn.’ 73 ‘Berlin war Brennpunkt.’ ‘Die Queen in Bonn.’ 74 For Leipzig’s positive symbolism, see ‘Königin Elisabeth in Dresden und Leipzig,’ FAZ, 23 October 1992. 1. Also ‘Die Sachsen.’ 75 For the Potsdam leg of the trip, see below, 207–8. 76 ‘Kirche Gottesdienste,’ Dresdner-Kreuzkirche. http://www.kreuzkirchedresden.de (accessed February 2006). 77 ‘Community of the Cross of Nails: Centres,’ Coventry Cathedral. http:// www.crossofnails.org/centres, link no longer active (accessed April 2006). For the Diakonissenanstalt (incorporating the Deaconess Hospital), see Chapter 2, 104. Also, in coincidental symmetry, just as two decades separated the acceptance of Dresden’s first two locations, precisely another twenty years passed before the rebuilt Frauenkirche became the city’s third member of the Community of the Cross of Nails. See Chapter 6, 255.

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78 ‘Royal Dresden visit.’ 79 Günther Gillessen, ‘Die bewegendste und heikelste Stunde einer Reise,’ FAZ, 23 October 1992. 3. ‘Die Queen in Dresden mit Pfiffen empfangen,’ Die Welt, 23 October 1992. 1. ‘Berlin war Brennpunkt.’ 80 In both countries, considerable speculation and debate about a possible apology surrounded the lead-up to the visit. See below, 201–2. 81 Alan Hamilton, ‘Dousing the Flames of Dresden,’ The Times, 16 October 1992. 14. 82 Quote taken from Fritz-Vannahme, ‘Königlicher Glanz.’ See also Heimrich, ‘Die Runde.’ ‘Königin Elisabeth in Dresden.’ 83 He further added: ‘…für die Londoner Sensationspresse eine ‘Neue Schlacht um England’ führte.’ Fritz-Vannahme, ‘Königlicher Glanz.’ 84 Ibid. 85 Gerd Kröncke, ‘Madam ist versöhnend, aber sorry sagt sie nicht,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 23 October 1992. 3. 86 Markus Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung,’ Die Welt, 23 October 1992. 3. Gillessen, ‘Die bewegendste.’ Kröncke, ‘Madam ist versöhnend.’ 87 For descriptions of the original route and subsequent amendments (but no explanation as to how the changes came into effect), see ‘Die Queen in Dresden.’ Gillessen, ‘Die bewegendste.’ ‘Berlin war Brennpunkt.’ 88 Gillessen, ‘Die bewegendste.’ 89 ‘Die Sachsen.’ 90 Kröncke, ‘Madam ist versöhnend.’ 91 See ‘Die Sachsen.’ 92 Estimates provided in the German press varied between ‘only a few hundred’ to approximately 3,000 people. See ibid. Also, ‘Gedenken in Dresden an die Weltkriegsopfer: Pfiffe und Buhrufe empfingen die Queen,’ Neues Deutschland, 23 October 1992. 1. Presumably, lower estimates referred purely to those onlookers who gathered in front of the Kreuzkirche, whereas the higher figures also included attendees of the reconciliation service inside the church. 93 Quotation taken from ‘Die Queen in Dresden.’ See also Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ Fritz-Vannahme, ‘Königlicher Glanz.’ ‘Königin Elisabeth in Dresden.’ ‘Die Sachsen.’ Kröncke, ‘Madam ist versöhnend.’ Heimrich, ‘Die Runde.’ 94 Both banners quoted in Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ For photographs of the banners, see Kröncke, ‘Madam ist versöhnend.’ ‘Eggs hurled at Queen during Bomber Harris protest in Dresden,’ The Times, 23 October 1992. 1. 95 Quotation taken from ‘Die Sachsen.’ See also Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ Heimrich, ‘Die Runde.’ 96 Quoted in Heimrich, ‘Die Runde.’ 97 Quoted in ‘Britische Presse kritisiert Eierwerfer beim Queen-Besuch,’ Die Welt, 24 October 1992. 3.

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98 Quoted in ibid. 99 ‘Eggs hurled.’ 100 Alan Hamilton, ‘Jeers and Cheers greet Royal Peacemaker in Germany,’ The Times, 23 October 1992. 11. 101 Furthermore, the bold-type blurb used to catch readers’ attention exclaimed: ‘The Queen focused on reconciliation in Dresden, but, for some, it is still too soon to erase the scars caused by Arthur “Bomber” Harris.’ Ibid. 102 Heimrich, ‘Die Runde.’ See also ‘Polizei in Dresden widerspricht britischen Zeitungsberichten,’ FAZ, 24 October 1992. 2. 103 Heimrich, ‘Die Runde.’ 104 ‘Gedenken in Dresden.’ 105 Alan Hamilton, ‘Bomber Harris Statue coated in Paint,’ The Times, 30 October 1992. 1. 106 Gillessen, ‘Die bewegendste.’ 107 Hamilton, ‘Jeers and Cheers.’ 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. Gillessen, ‘Die bewegendste.’ ‘Die Queen in Dresden.’ Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ 110 Quotation taken from Kröncke, ‘Madam ist versöhnend.’ See also Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ ‘Die Queen in Dresden.’ Gillessen, ‘Die bewegendste.’ For Prince Philip’s immediate family’s connections to the Third Reich see Jonathan Petropoulos, Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany (2006). 111 Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ Kröncke, ‘Madam ist versöhnend.’ Gillessen, ‘Die bewegendste.’ ‘Die Queen in Dresden.’ Hamilton, ‘Jeers and Cheers.’ 112 According to Kröncke, the Queen had let it be known through her press secretary that she can understand a little German, but had the text of Barrington-Ward’s German language sermon translated. Kröncke, ‘Madam ist versöhnend.’ 113 Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ 114 Hamilton, ‘Jeers and Cheers.’ 115 Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ 116 Quoted in ibid. 117 Quoted in ‘Gedenken in Dresden.’ 118 Quoted in Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ 119 Quoted in ibid. 120 Quoted in ibid. 121 According to Günther Gillessen: ‘Der Besuch in Dresden war nicht nur der menschlich bewegendste, sondern auch der politisch heikelste der ganzen Reise.’ Gillessen, ‘Die bewegendste.’ A front-page report in Die Welt similarly argued Dresden ‘war der heikelste’ part of the visit. ‘Die Queen

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122 123 124

125 126 127 128 129 130 131

132 133 134

135

in Dresden.’ Markus Lesch described it as the Queen’s most awkward stopover, but also ‘…der atmosphärische Hohepunkt ihres DeutschlandBesuchs.’ Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ Hamilton, ‘Jeers and Cheers.’ ‘Polizei in Dresden.’ Quoted in ‘Die Queen in Dresden.’ See also ‘Königin Elisabeth in Dresden.’ ‘Die Sachsen.’ Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ Almost 3,000 British soldiers are buried in the cemetery. ‘Die Queen am Grab von Friedrich dem Großen,’ Die Welt, 24–5 October 1992. 1. ‘Königin Elisabeth am Grab der Kaiserin Viktoria in Sanssouci: Der Abschluß des Staatsbesuchs in Potsdam,’ FAZ, 24 October 1992. 2. ‘Königin Elisabeth am Grab.’ ‘Die Queen am Grab.’ ‘Die Queen am Grab.’ For examples Peter Scherer, ‘Alte Affären: Der König und die Briten,’ Die Welt, 23 October 1992. 3. Lesch, ‘Zeichen der Versöhnung.’ ‘Die Queen am Grab.’ For the positive symbolism evoked by these family ties, see ‘Königin Elisabeth am Grab.’ ‘Die Queen am Grab.’ Gillessen, ‘Ein Fest.’ For a sceptical view, see Fritz-Vannahme, ‘Königlicher Glanz.’ ‘We are all Berliners now: the Queen’s Visit closes a tired old Chapter,’ The Times, 23 October 1992. 17. John Gaze’s letter to the editor included under the umbrella heading: ‘History’s verdict.’ Erick Kettner’s letter to the editor included under the umbrella heading: ‘Dresden Reconciliation,’ The Times, 1 June 1992. 15. Similarly, in the same collection of letters to the editor M. A. Bicknell aimed a thinlyveiled barb in the direction of German critics: ‘The statue is not about the glory of war, or the devastation of cities, or the killing of civilians…The statue is about sustained courage, determination, and steadfastness even unto death, against the most murderous and bloody regime yet seen on the face of earth. And if it serves as a reminder to us, and to those who so avidly supported that regime, that such things must never again be allowed to happen, then it will serve a double purpose.’ Heathcote’s letter inspired the headline for the edition’s Dresden-related letters to the editor. Ibid. ‘Russell Interview.’ Donations from major sponsors led by Dresdner Bank and the numerous Förder- und Freundeskreise that sprang up across reunified Germany already were proving immensely beneficial. So, while British fundraising avenues still was a main consideration in talks with the Dresden Trust, it was not necessarily the most pressing issue. For details, see ‘Stiftung Frauenkirche,’ Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden. (accessed May 2008).

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136 Russell notes that, later on, many also travelled to Dresden on the occasions of the raising up of the orb and cross in 2004 and the (re)consecration of the Frauenkirche the following year (events that fall outside the scope of this chapter). 137 See introduction, 1–3. 138 The French organisation was the Association Frauenkirche Paris. Along with the Dresden Trust, the American-based organisation, Friends of Dresden Inc., was one of the two main foreign contributors to the Frauenkirche rebuilding project. 139 See, for examples, ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst in der Kathedrale gedenkt Dresden seiner Zerstörung,’ FAZ, 13 February 1995. 1–2. Heimrich, ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung auf englisch.’ Peter Philipps, ‘Kommentar: Tage des Gedenkens,’ Die Welt, 13 February 1995. 1. Markus Lesch, ‘Dresden gedenkt aller Kriegstoten: Ökumenischer Gottesdienst eröffnet Feierlichkeiten zum 50. Jahrestag der Zerstörung der Stadt,’ Die Welt, 13 February 1995. 1. 140 ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst.’ Lesch, ‘Dresden gedenkt aller Kriegstoten.’ 141 ‘Glockengeläut für den Frieden,’ Die Welt, 14 February 1995. 8. ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst.’ Philipps, ‘Kommentar.’ 142 Lesch, ‘Dresden gedenkt aller Kriegstoten.’ 143 Quoted in ibid. 144 Quoted in ibid. See also ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst.’ 145 ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst.’ Lesch, ‘Dresden gedenkt aller Kriegstoten.’ 146 ‘Herzog: Die Bombenangriffe der Alliierten nicht gegen Untaten im NS-Staat aufrechnen,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 February 1995. 1. ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst.’ Lesch, ‘Dresden gedenkt aller Kriegstoten.’ 147 Ibid. 148 ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst.’ 149 ‘Gedenkstein in Dresden besprüht,’ Die Welt, 11 February 1995. 2. 150 Crowd estimation taken from Markus Lesch, ‘Trauer ohne Groll in Dresden: “Wir brauchen alle Vergebung,”’ Die Welt, 14 February 1995. 8. 151 Albert Funk, ‘Ein Mahnmal, das den Namen Dresden trägt: Offizielles Gedenken und stille Trauer,’ FAZ, 14 February 1995. 3. Also for the remaining order of wreath-layers. 152 Ibid. See also ‘Herzog: Aus der Vergangenheit lernen und die Wiederkehr des Schreckens verhindern,’ FAZ, 14 February 1995. 1–2. ‘Herzog: Opfer nicht aufrechnen – Einstige Gegner legen Kränze an Dresdner Massengräbern nieder,’ Die Welt, 14 February 1995. 1. Lesch, ‘Trauer ohne Groll.’ ‘Herzog: Die Bombenangriffe.’ 153 Funk, ‘Ein Mahnmal.’

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154 For accounts including photographs, see ‘Herzog: Opfer nicht aufrechnen.’ And ‘Herzog: Die Bombenangriffe.’ For accounts only, see ‘Herzog: Aus der Vergangenheit.’ Lesch, ‘Trauer ohne Groll.’ 155 For a British report that discussed this matter at length, see Roger Boyes, ‘Uniforms stir unease in pacifist Dresden,’ The Times, 14 February 1995. 10. 156 A photograph of the three officers lighting candles together at the Frauenkirche accompanied ibid. 157 Funk, ‘Ein Mahnmal.’ 158 ‘Herzog: Opfer nicht aufrechnen.’ 159 Quoted in Lesch, ‘Trauer ohne Groll.’ Barrington-Ward further explained how, as a nine year old boy, he had experienced the Coventry raid and thus knew how terrifying bombing raids were. He also recalled having first heard about Dresden’s destruction, while studying in Berlin in 1953, from fellow university students who had witnessed the attack as children. For a commentary written by Barrington-Ward, see ‘Sharing in Dresden’s sorrow,’ The Times, 14 February 1995. 16. 160 Roger Boyes, ‘Duke of Kent expresses British regret for suffering of Dresden,’ The Times, 14 February 1995. 1 161 Ibid. 162 Ibid. 163 Quoted in ‘Herzog: Die Bombenangriffe.’ Lesch, ‘Trauer ohne Groll.’ 164 Quoted in Christoph Dieckmann, ‘Dresden abgehakt,’ Die Zeit, 17 February 1995. 6. 165 Ibid. Crowd figure taken from ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst.’ 166 Lesch, ‘Trauer ohne Groll.’ 167 ‘Herzog: Aus der Vergangenheit.’ 168 ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst.’ ‘Herzog: Aus der Vergangenheit.’ Lesch, ‘Trauer ohne Groll.’ 169 Quoted in ‘Herzog: Aus der Vergangenheit.’ 170 Funk, ‘Ein Mahnmal.’ Lesch, ‘Dresden gedenkt aller Kriegstoten.’ 171 A verbatim transcript of Herzog’s speech was published as ‘Bundespräsident Herzog stellt am 50. Jahrestag der Zerstörung die Versöhnung in den Vordergrund: ‘Dresden ist ein Fanal gegen den Krieg,’’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 February 1995. 5. All quotations and paraphrasing of Herzog’s speech hereafter are taken from this transcript. For further reports including extensive quotations and paraphrasing see also ‘Der Bundespräsident und das Leid der Völker,’ Die Welt, 14 February 1995. 8. ‘Herzog: Opfer nicht aufrechnen.’ ‘Herzog: Die Bombenangriffe.’ ‘Herzog: Aus der Vergangenheit.’ 172 For further details, see ‘Mit einem überkonfessionellen Gottesdienst.’ ‘Herzog: Aus der Vergangenheit.’ Funk, ‘Ein Mahnmal.’ Dieckmann, ‘Dresden abgehakt.’ ‘Glockengeläut.’

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173 Quoted in ‘Herzog: Die Bombenangriffe.’ 174 Bernhard Heimrich, ‘Der Stellvertreter in Dresden,’ FAZ, 13 February 1995. 12. ‘Herzog: Die Bombenangriffe.’ Funk, ‘Ein Mahnmal.’ Boyes, ‘British regret.’ ‘Fire from the Sky: a Gift to ease Dresden’s painful Memories,’ The Times, 13 February 1995. 19. BarringtonWard, ‘Sharing.’ 175 English translation quoted in ‘Remembering Dresden,’ German Embassy London. http://www.london.diplo.de/Vertretung/london/en/02/An_ _Embassy__in__Belgrave__Square/Remembering__Dresden__Seite. html, link no longer active (accessed April 2007). 176 See Heimrich, ‘Der Stellvertreter.’ 177 Boyes, ‘British regret.’ 178 ‘Fire from the Sky.’ 179 ‘Glockengeläut.’ Lesch, ‘Trauer ohne Groll.’ ‘Herzog: Aus der Vergangenheit.’ Funk, ‘Ein Mahnmal.’ 180 Russell states that the Trust funded the window glazing and framework plus the 110 sandstone bricks – at a cost of £1,000 each – required to encase the ‘British Window.’ 181 ‘Dresden Cross presented at Windsor,’ BBC News. http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/225369.stm (December 1998 (accessed May 2007)). 182 For examples, Jens Schneider, ‘Auferstehung aus Ruinen: Am Sonntag erhält Dresden das Kuppelkreuz für die Frauenkirche,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12–13 February 2000. 1. Jens Schneider, ‘‘Ein Zeichen für erlebte Versöhnung’: Herzog von Kent übergibt das von der britischen Bevölkerung gespendete Kuppelkreuz für die Frauenkirche,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 February 2000. 5. ‘Dresden erinnerte an Zerstörung 1945: Kuppelkreuz für die Frauenkirche übergeben,’ Neues Deutschland, 14 February 2000. 4. ‘Vor fünfundfünfzig Jahren: Dresdens Zerstörung,’ FAZ, 12 February 2000. 4. ‘Duke leads Dresden Tribute,’ BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/641423.stm (13 February 2000 (accessed May 2007)). 183 Quoted in Schneider, ‘‘Ein Zeichen.’’ 184 Quoted in ibid. 185 ‘Russell Interview.’ See also ‘Dresden Cross.’ Also, ‘Duke leads.’ And Fran Kelly, ‘Restored Church in Dresden symbolises Reconciliation,’ ABCOnline. http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2004/s1140784. htm (27 June 2004 (accessed May 2007)). 186 ‘Russell Interview.’ Also, ‘Dresden Cross.’ 187 For examples, Schneider, ‘Auferstehung aus Ruinen.’ Schneider, ‘“Ein Zeichen.”’ ‘Dresden erinnerte.’ ‘Vor fünfundfünfzig Jahren.’ 188 A noteworthy example from 1995 was Fromme’s lengthy article in which he argued on three accounts Dresden continued to suffer after

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189 190 191 192

193 194 195

its wartime destruction: first, in the early post-war period salvageable ruins were left to decay as Soviet occupational authorities and then East Berlin failed to implement either widespread rebuilding or preservation policies; second, the SED’s alleged policy of Abräumungspolitik meant that heavily-damaged but nonetheless salvageable buildings of historical and cultural significance, such as the Sophienkirche, were inexplicably demolished as part of the rubble-clearing in the 1950s; and, finally, the DDR’s ongoing incapacity to ever adequately rebuild and redevelopment Dresden’s Altstadt. Friedrich Karl Fromme, ‘Vernichtung auf einen Schlag: Die Bombardierung Dresdens vor fünfzig Jahren,’ FAZ, 11 Februar 1995. ‘Bilder & Zeiten.’ For other 1995 articles that demonstrated a clear anti-DDR bias, see also Christoph Dieckmann, ‘Dresden klagt nicht an,’ Die Zeit, 10 February 1995. 3. ‘Elbflorenz starb, Dresden wurde wieder zum Garten der Musen,’ Die Welt, 13 February 1995. 10. Funk, ‘Ein Mahnmal.’ Schneider, ‘Auferstehung aus Ruinen.’ ‘Vor fünfundfünfzig Jahren.’ Ibid. In 1995, only three reports mentioned the disputed nature of the death toll. Fromme (who five years earlier had suggested 100,000 victims was a likely figure) accepted recent low estimates provided by Götz Bergander (35,000) and Friedrich Reichert, a local Dresden civil servant who, after consulting cemetery records following the DDR’s demise, had arrived at an even lower figure of 25,000 victims. Fromme, ‘Vernichtung.’ A commentary in the FAZ simply argued that, 50 years on, the dispute over Dresden’s death toll should come to an end out of respect for the victims. ‘Dresden: Ein Zeichen,’ FAZ, 13 February 1995. 1. A snippet titled ‘Zahlenstreit’ in Die Welt observed that estimates had swayed from anywhere between 25,000 and 400,000 victims over the years, putting this down to old reports from propagandistic newspapers and doctored documents being cited as proof while hard facts were ignored. Such a claim was incredibly hypocritical given that, just five years earlier, Die Welt itself had frequently cited David Irving’s estimate of 135,000 dead (for discussion, see Chapter 4, 168–9). Die Welt, 14 February 1995. 8. The disputed death toll was not a major talking point in press reports in February 2000. ‘Vor fünfundfünfzig Jahren.’ Quotation taken from Schneider, ‘‘Ein Zeichen.’’ For similar comments, see also Schneider, ‘Auferstehung aus Ruinen.’ For examples, ‘Dresden erinnerte.’ ‘Vor fünfundfünfzig Jahren.’ Schneider, ‘Auferstehung aus Ruinen.’ Schneider, ‘‘Ein Zeichen.’’

329

notes to pages 2 3 3 – 2 3 5

Chapter 6







1 For discussion, see introduction, 30–3. 2 Sir Peter Torry, ‘The Queen’s State Visit to Germany – Press Briefing – Foreword by British Ambassador,’ Britische Botschaft. http://www. britischebotschaft.de/statevisit/en, link no longer active (2005 (accessed April 2005)). Torry pointed out that, being her fourth state visit, the Queen’s impending trip to Germany would bring the total to the same number of state visits she had made to the United States and France. 3 Ibid. 4 ‘Further Background’ in Visit Programme, Britische Botschaft. http://www.britischebotschaft.de/statevisit/en/programme/index. htm.3, link no longer active (accessed April 2005). 5 Ibid. And Torry, ‘Foreword.’ 6 Torry, ‘Foreword.’ 7 For discussions, see especially Jochen Wittmann, ‘“Sorry” ist manchmal das schwerste Wort – Vor dem Deutschland-Besuch der Queen: Debatte um Bombenangriffe,’ SZ-Online. http://www.sz-online.de/nachrichten/ artikel.asp?id=706471 (28 October 2004 (accessed March 2006)). Andreas Tzortzis, ‘Germany asking if Queen will Apologize,’ International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/30/berlin_ed31.php, link no longer active (October 2004 (accessed June 2006)). Luke Harding, ‘German Tabloid demands Apology from Queen for Wartime Raids,’ GuardianUnlimited. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1341271,00.html (2 November 2004 (accessed May 2007)). See also James Woudhuysen, ‘Dresden: Don’t Apologise – Understand,’ Sp!ked-Essays. http://www. spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA8B9.htm, link no longer active (8 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Philip Williams, ‘Correspondent’s Report – Remembering the Dresden bombing: 60th Anniversary (Interview with Paul Oestreicher),’ ABC. http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/ content/2004/s130401.htm, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). And ‘UK Officials mark Dresden Bombing,’ BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/4261367.stm (2005 (accessed 14 February 2005)). 8 Harding, ‘German Tabloid demands Apology.’ Tzortzis, ‘Germany Asking.’ Also ‘Demand for Apology from Queen,’ The Hindu. http://www.hindu. com/2004/11/03/stories/2004110305231400.htm (November 2004 (accessed July 2007)). 9 For Schröder’s comment about absurdity, see ‘Queen recognises Germans’ Wartime Suffering,’ ABC. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/ 200411/s1233585.htm, link no longer active (2004 (accessed April 2005)). For the Telegraph remark, see ‘Your View: The Queen to visit Dresden,’ Telegraph UK. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/

330

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10



11



12



13 14 15 16



17



18 19 20



21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

2004/11/02/udresdenview.xml, link no longer active (3 November 2004 (accessed July 2007)). For an informative discussion that traces these transformations, see Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870– 1990 (Berkeley, CA, 2000). 107–9, 193–4. Quotation taken from 108. ‘Denkmale in Berlin: Neue Wache,’ Berlin.de – Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung. http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/denkmal/ denkmale_in_berlin/de/unter_den_linden/neue_wache.shtml ((accessed 8 August 2007)). ‘Queen honours War Dead in Germany,’ BBC News. http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3973651.stm (2004 (accessed April 2005)). Visit Programme. 3. Also, ‘Queen honours War Dead.’ Visit Programme. 5. Ibid. For a verbatim transcript, see ‘Speech given by Her Majesty The Queen in Zeughaus, State Banquet, 2 November 2004,’ Britische Botschaft. http:// www.britischebotschaft.de/statevisit/en/press/state_banquet.htm, link no longer active (2004 (accessed April 2004)). All further quotations from, and paraphrasing of, the speech are taken from this transcript. For this quotation, see also Luke Harding, ‘Queen: Both Sides Suffered in the War,’ Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1342144,00. html (2004 (accessed November 2004)). ‘Queen recognises Germans’ Wartime Suffering.’ And ‘Queen honours War Dead.’ The breakdown consists of: British 1,130; Australian 20; Canadian 15; South African 4; New Zealander 3; Indian 2; nationality unknown 2. Visit Programme. 9. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. For further discussion and a photograph of the Queen at the ceremony, see ‘Der Südwestkirchhof Heute,’ Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf. http://www.suedwestkirchhof.de/index_2.htm (accessed July 2007). Visit Programme. 10. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 11. Ibid. Ibid. Further augmenting the closeness of Anglo–German relations, it was noted the British conductor Sir Simon Rattle had been chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra since 2001. Ibid. 12. See also ‘Orchestra plays for Bombed Church,’ BBC News. http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/3971261.stm (1 November 2004 (accessed

331

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29



30



31



32



33

July 2007)). ‘Queen honours War Dead.’ Also ‘Queen in State Visit to Germany,’ BBC News. http:news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/ europe/3974297.stm (2004 (accessed August 2005)). Katja Solbrig, ‘Besuch der alten Damen,’ SZ-online. http://www.szonline.de/nachrichten/artikel.asp?id=741193 (16 December 2004 (accessed March 2006)). ‘Queen hilft Frauenkirche,’ SZ-online. http:// www.sz-online.de/nachrichten/artikel.asp?id=737777 (11 December 2004 (accessed March 2006)). Roland Nelles and Gabor Steingart, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing Party evokes Ghosts of Past,’ Spiegel-Online. http://www.spiegel.de/ international/spiegel/0,1518,339604,00.html (31 January 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Jody Biehl and Charles Hawley, ‘Should Germany’s History become Europe’s?’ Spiegel-Online. http://www.spiegel.de/ international/0,1518,337722,00.html (20 January 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Ian Traynor, ‘Dresden Parliament in Uproar at neo-Nazi Outburst,’ Guardian UK-Online. http://www.guardian.co.uk/ print/0,3858,5109653-103532,00.html (22 January 2005 (accessed February 2005)). The Sun broke the story before it went worldwide. It purchased (for less than £15,000, not £100,000 as rumours first suggested) a photograph taken of Harry dressed in the Nazi outfit at the party and ran it as front-page news under the headline ‘Harry the Nazi.’ See Lisa O’Carroll and John Plunkett, ‘Sun threatens Mail over Harry Photos,’ GuardianUnlimited. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jan/14/ dailymail.sun (14 January 2005 (accessed July 2007)). The ‘Harry the Nazi’ scoop won the annual British Press Awards gong for Best Front Page. See Steve Busfield, ‘British Press Awards as they happened…’ GuardianUnlimited. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/mar/20/ pressandpublishing1 (20 March 2006 (accessed July 2007)). According to calculations published in Der Spiegel, this percentage amounted to around 190,000 votes received out of a total just in excess of two million votes cast. Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ See also Luke Harding, ‘Schröder races to Halt neo-Nazi “Funeral March” in Dresden,’ Guardian UK-Online. http://www.guardian.co.uk/ print/0,3858,5124611-103532,00.html (2005 (accessed February 2005)). Luke Harding, ‘Nazis Out!’ Guardian UK Online. http://www.guardian. co.uk/print/0,3858,5124505-103532,00html, link no longer active (11 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Germany seeks to curb Far Right,’ BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/ europe/4256877.stm (2005 (accessed February 2005)). Jody Biehl, ‘Is the Right Wing gaining in Germany?’ Spiegel-Online. http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,323122,00.html (14 October 2004 (accessed February 2005)).

332

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34 Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ 35 Quoted in ibid. 36 Andrew McCathie, ‘Germany’s Hard Right plans Mass Show of Power,’ The Age (Melbourne), 12 February 2005. 19. 37 Quoted in Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ Biehl, ‘Is the Right gaining?’ See also Emma-Kate Symons, ‘Neo-Nazi Shadows cast over Dresden,’ The Australian-Online. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/ 0,5942,12238446,00.html, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). For additional eulogising remarks about Hitler made by Voigt in a Die Welt interview, including the bald assertion that ‘only a great leader can commit great crimes,’ see Frank Ellmers, ‘Schroeder: Germans shouldn’t forget Past,’ HeraldTribune.com. http://www.heraldtribune.com/ apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050213/API/502130593, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Schroeder warns Germans against forgetting Nazi Past,’ Jerusalem Post. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/ Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1108321453027, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Alexandra Hudson, ‘Neo-Nazis march as Dresden remembers War Dead,’ Reuters. http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7612528, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests,’ SydneyMorningHerald-Online. http://www. theage.com.au/news/Breaking-News/Dresden-bombing-anniversaryprotests/2005/02/14/1108229886495.html?oneclick=true (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Far-right Rally casts Pall over Dresden Memorial,’ Associated Press CTV.ca. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/print/ CTVNews/1108320393532_30/?hub=W, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). 38 See, for examples, McCathie, ‘Germany’s Hard Right.’ Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ Ray Furlong, ‘Dresden Raid still a Raw Nerve,’ BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4257827.stm (2005 (accessed February 2005)). Harding, ‘Nazis Out!’ 39 Apfel’s proposal was made under the heading: ‘The Views of the Saxony State Government and the Parliament on Memorial Services to Commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Terror Attacks on the Saxony Capital of Dresden.’ Quoted in Reiner Burger, ‘A Target for Bombs, a Source for Propaganda,’ FAZ.NET. http://www.faz.net/s/ Rub9E75B460C0744F8695B3E0BE5A30A620/Doc~E82419D9CACC D42268C1FDB8F300F276~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html, link no longer active (11 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)) . 40 Quoted in ibid. 41 For examples, see Richard Bernstein, ‘Germany Seeks Tighter Curbs on Protests by Neo-Nazi Party,’ The New York Times. http://www.nytimes. com/2005/02/12/international/europe/12germany.html (12 February 2005

333

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42



43 44 45



46 47

(accessed February 2005)). ‘Cloud over Dresden’s 60-Year Reflection,’ New Zealand Herald. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_ id=2&ObjectID=10010931 (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Carsten Volkery, ‘A War of Words,’ Spiegel-Online. http://www.spiegel.de/ international/0,1518,339833,00.html (2 February 2005 (accessed 14 February 2005)). Melanie Haape, ‘Allied “Holocaust” sparks German Row,’ Sunday Herald. http://www.sundayherald.com/print47425, link no longer active (30 January 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests.’ Also ‘Right-wing march mars Dresden Event,’ AlJazeera.net. http:// english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B9946FC4-7431-4BFF-90500CC92953E317.htm, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Galia Limor, ‘Today we Remember Everyone,’ Haaretz. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/533044.html, link no longer active (28 January 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Mimi Hanaoka, ‘The Dresden Holocaust?’ InTheFray.com. http://inthefray.com/html/print.php?sid-996, link no longer active (2005 (accessed 14 February 2005)). Kyle James, ‘The Struggle over Dresden’s Symbolism,’ Deutsche Welle. http://www.dw-world. de/dw/article/0,1564,1484619,00.html (11 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Kate Connolly, ‘Horror of Dresden Bombing divides Nation: Debate still rages over whether City’s Wartime Destruction was Justified,’ Telegraph UK. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable. jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/10/wdres10.xml, link no longer active (10 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Germans mark 60th Anniversary of Dresden Fire Bombing,’ ABC. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/ 200502/s1301809.htm, link no longer active (2005 (accessed February 2005)). Alexandra Hudson, ‘Schroeder attacks neo-Nazis as Dresden recalls,’ Reuters Alertnet. http://www.alertnet.org/printable.htm?URL=/thenews/ newsdesk/L12680661.htm, link no longer active (12 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Schroeder warns.’ Harding, ‘Nazis Out!’ Harding, ‘Schröder races.’ Furlong, ‘Dresden Raid.’ Symons, ‘Neo-Nazi Shadows.’ Traynor, ‘Dresden Parliament in Uproar.’ Tony Paterson, ‘Ministers plan to Outlaw neo-Nazi Rallies,’ Independent UK-Online. http://news.independent.co.uk/ low_res/story.jsp?story=610276&host=3&dir=73, link no longer active (12 February 2005 (accessed 14 February 2005)). Quoted in Traynor, ‘Dresden Parliament in Uproar.’ Haape, ‘Allied “Holocaust.”’ Paterson, ‘Ministers plan.’ Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ Paterson, ‘Ministers plan.’ Symons, ‘Neo-Nazi Shadows.’ Quoted in Traynor, ‘Dresden Parliament in Uproar.’ Volkery, ‘War of Words.’ Quoted in Hudson, ‘Schroeder attacks.’ Symons, ‘Neo-Nazi Shadows.’ ‘Right-wing march.’ Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ ‘Schroeder vows to Ban Neo-Nazi Party,’ The Age (Melbourne), 12 February 2005. 19. Harding, ‘Schröder races.’ Paterson, ‘Ministers plan.’

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49 50



51



52 53



54



55



56 57 58

‘Germany seeks to curb.’ Hugh Williamson, ‘Germany to ban Far-Right Rallies at Nazi-linked Sites,’ FinancialTimes.com. http://news.ft.com/ cms/s/f8fd11c4-7cd6-11d9-bf35-00000e2511c8.html (12 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Bernstein, ‘Germany plans.’ Quoted in ‘Schroeder vows.’ Harding, ‘Schröder races.’ Also ‘Germany seeks to curb.’ Tony Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Vow to Stage anti-British Protests on 60th Anniversary of Dresden Raids,’ Telegraph UK. http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/ news/2005/02/06/wdres06.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/02/06/ixnewstop. html, link no longer active (6 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Quoted in Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ Quoted in ibid. Similar concerns about compromising Germany’s liberal democratic rights were voiced by the Green’s leader in parliament Volker Beck and the party’s domestic policy expert Silke Stokar. Quoted in Ruth Elkins, ‘Neo-Nazi Threat in Dresden Anniversary,’ IndependentUK. http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story= 610577&host=3&dir=73, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ Haape, ‘Allied “Holocaust.”’ Bernstein, ‘Germany seeks.’ ‘Schroeder warns.’ ‘Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests.’ Ellmers, ‘Schroeder: Germans shouldn’t forget.’ Kate Connolly. ‘Police use Water Cannon to Quell Violent Protest at Neo-Nazi Rally,’ Telegraph UK. http://www. telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/ 2005/01/31wnazi31.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/01/31/ixportal.html, link no longer active (31 January 2005 (accessed February 2005)). James, ‘The Struggle.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Vow.’ Harding, ‘Schröder races.’ Symons, ‘Neo-Nazi Shadows.’ Elkins, ‘Neo-Nazi Threat.’ Volkery, ‘War of Words.’ ‘8. Mai 1945–2005: 60 Jahre Befreiungslüge – Schluß mit dem Schuldkult,’ JN – Jungen Nationaldemokraten. http://www.befreiungsluege.de, link no longer active (2005 (accessed September 2007)). For a critical view, see ‘60 Jahre danach: Feierstunden, Demos und Reden zum Tag der Befreiung,’ Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland. http://zentralradtjuden. de/de/article/304.html, link no longer active (2005 (accessed September 2007)). Quoted in Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ Ibid. Haape, ‘Allied “Holocaust.”’ Quoted in Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Vow.’ Tony Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack Dresden Ceremony in the Biggest Far-right Demonstration since Hitler,’ IndependentUK. http://www.news.independent.co. uk/europe/story.jsp?story=610866, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)).

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59 ‘Weiße Rosen als Zeichen gegen Intoleranz und Rechtsextremismus,’ SueddeutscheZeitung.de. http://www.suedeutsche.de/deutschland/artikel/ 692/47645/article.html, link no longer active (2005 (accessed August 2007)). ‘Dresden erinnert an Bombardierung vor 60 Jahren,’ Tagesschau.de. http:// www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID4061162,00.html, link no longer active (2005 (accessed 28 August 2007)). Burger, ‘A Target.’ Volkery, ‘War of Words.’ Hudson, ‘Schroeder attacks.’ Paterson, ‘Ministers plan.’ ‘Cloud over.’ James, ‘The Struggle.’ 60 Quoted in Burger, ‘A Target.’ See also Volkery, ‘War of Words.’ James, ‘The Struggle.’ 61 Quoted in Volkery, ‘War of Words.’ 62 Elkins, ‘Neo-Nazi Threat.’ James, ‘The Struggle.’ 63 See Chapter 5, 219–20. 64 James, ‘The Struggle.’ Harding, ‘Schröder races.’ Connolly, ‘Horror of Dresden.’ ‘Germans mark 60th Anniversary.’ Uwe Meinhold, ‘Germans mark WWII Dresden Fire Bombing, Extremists rally,’ Turkish Press. http:www.turkishpress.com/world/news.asp?id=050213205447.4d32pyv z.xml (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). 65 ‘Victim-myth’ quoted in Alexandra Hudson. ‘Far Right threatens to mar Dresden Bombing Anniversary,’ Reuters AlertNet. http://alertnet.org/ printable.html?URL=/thenews/newsdesk/L1245456.htm, link no longer active (12 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Decentralised actions’ quoted in Elkins, ‘Neo-Nazi Threat.’ 66 Quoted in Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Vow.’ 67 Quote taken from Reiner Burger, ‘60 Jahre danach – Dresden gedenkt des schlimmsten Tages seiner Geschichte,’ FAZ.net. http://www.faz.net/s/ Rub28FC768942F34C5B8297CC6E16FFC8B4/Doc~E09B8D2F9C89844 F7A1681A983D635DD7~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html (11 February 2005 (accessed March 2006)). For further overviews, see also James, ‘The Struggle.’ Jens Pabst, ‘Der Kampf um das Gedenken von Dresden,’ Tagesschau. de. http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/ 0,1185,OID4064030_ REF_NAV,00.html, link no longer active (2005 (accessed August 2007)). 68 See Chapter 5, 214–30. 69 Frank Ellmers, ‘Allied Bombing of Dresden scars Germans to this Day,’ AZCentral. http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0213dresden13. html, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Looking for the Answers to the Questions,’ FAZ.NET. http://www.faz. net/s/Rub9E75B460C0744F8695B3E0BE5A30A620/Doc~E4303731DF 10349C690F711A1EE0F8E9E~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html, link no longer active (11 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Connolly, ‘Horror of Dresden.’ 70 Landeshauptstadt Dresden, ‘Erklärung der Dresdner Historiker-kommission zur Ermittlung der Opferzahlen der Luftangriffe auf die Stadt Dresden

336

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am 13./14. Februar 1945.’ http://www.dresden.de/media/pdf/presseamt/ Erklaerung_Historikerkommission.pdf (2008 (accessed November 2008)). For the release of the findings, see also Sven Felix Kellerhoff, ‘Zahl der Dresden-Toten viel niedriger als vermutet,’ Welt-Online. http://www.welt.de/ kultur/article2518024/Zahl-der-Dresden-Toten-viel-niedriger-als-vermutet. html (1 October 2008 (accessed November 2008)). 71 For slightly varying examples, see: ‘…killed tens of thousands of people, mainly civilians’ in Philip Williams, ‘Clashes mar Dresden Bombing Commemoration,’ ABC. http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2005/s1302025. htm (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Götz Bergander quoted as saying ‘the documents all indicate it was about 35,000’ in Luke Harding, ‘Dresden was a Dead-City – Everything was Burnt,’ The Observer UK. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/13/secondworldwar.germany (2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘…an estimated 35,000’ cited in ‘Schroeder warns.’ Also in ‘Neo-Nazi Demonstration in Dresden,’ Pravda. http:// newsfromrussia.com/world/2005/02/14/58253_.html, link no longer active (2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Germans mark Bombing of Dresden,’ BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4261263.stm (2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Dresden bombing anniversary protests.’ Hudson, ‘Schroeder attacks.’ ‘In a few short hours, at least 35,000 civilians lost their lives’ quoted in Woudhuysen, ‘Dresden: Don’t Apologise.’ And ‘…killed more than 35,000’ in Roger Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack Dresden’s Vigil,’ TimesOnline. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-3-1483455-3,00. html, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). 72 Volkery, ‘War of Words.’ Caroline Gammell, ‘Dresden Bombing Claims anger British RAF Veterans,’ Scotsman. http://news.scotsman.com/latest. cfm?=4121344, link no longer active (11 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Erik-Michael Bader, ‘Gedenken – Dresden,’ FAZ.net. http://www. faz.net/s/RubFC06D389EE76479E9E76425072B196C3/Doc~EF9A62D9 0D2B44CD2AE1809312050AC89~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html (12 February 2005 (accessed March 2006)). Murdo Macleod and Allan Hall, ‘Dresden braced for neo-Nazi Bombing Anniversary Clashes,’ Scotsman. http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=166832005 (2005 (accessed February 2005)). Emma Gunby, ‘Dresden Anniversary Overshadowed by Neo-Nazi Gathering,’ Scotsman. http://news.scotsman. com/latest.cfm?id=4128285, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Neo-Nazi Demo overshadows Dresden Memorial,’ ITV.com. http://www.itv.com/news/world_895561.html, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). And ‘Germans mark 60th Anniversary.’ 73 ‘3,000 neo-Nazis march in Dresden,’ International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/bin/rint_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/02/13/news/ dresden.html, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed February

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75 76



77 78



79 80 81



82



83 84



85 86 87

2005)). ‘Cloud over.’ Hudson, ‘Schroeder attacks.’ Hudson, ‘Neo-Nazis march.’ And ‘Right-wing march.’ ‘Germans mark 60th Anniversary.’ Connolly, ‘Horror of Dresden.’ ‘Spiegel’s Daily Take: Dresden Remembers, Neo-Nazis suffer Bad Amnesia,’ SpiegelOnline. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,druck-341717, 00html, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Connolly, ‘Horror of Dresden.’ Furthermore, although not official in the strict sense of the word, Bergander’s meticulously researched definitive account, first published in the BRD in 1977, reinforced claims of a 35,000 death toll. ‘Spiegel’s Daily Take.’ Tom Segev, ‘After 60 years, Dresden still shapes German Identity,’ Haaretz. http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/539791.html, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Ibid. Williams, ‘Correspondent’s Report.’ James, ‘The Struggle.’ For a similar outlook, see also Wolfram Nagel, ‘Remembering Dresden,’ Deutsche Welle. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/ article/0,2144,1484715,00.html (13 February 2005 (accessed November 2005)). See especially, Ute Thofern, ‘Opinion: Confronting Myth in Dresden,’ Deutsche Welle. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1486647,00. html (12 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Ellmers, ‘Allied Bombing.’ Williams, ‘Correspondent’s Report.’ Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack.’ Conversely, James Woudhuysen argued, rather persuasively, Dresden should not be viewed as a special case in the bombing war. Woudhuysen, ‘Dresden: Don’t Apologise.’ Quoted in Burger, ‘A Target.’ For favourable comments, see Gammell, ‘Dresden Bombing.’ Harding, ‘“Dresden was a Dead-City.”’ Thofern, ‘Opinion.’ ‘Leader – Casualties of Total War,’ GuardianUK. http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/ story/0,14058,1411436,00.html (2005 (accessed February 2005)). Volkery, ‘War of Words.’ For critical remarks, see Segev, ‘After 60 Years.’ Ellmers, ‘Allied Bombing.’ ‘Looking for the Answers.’ James, ‘The Struggle.’ Williams, ‘Correspondent’s Report.’ Connolly, ‘Horror of Dresden.’ See introduction, 34. See introduction, 30–3. For an example of a very favourable review published at the time of the sixtieth Gedenktag, see Volker Ullrich, ‘Bomben auf Dresden: Das Buch des britischen Historikers Frederick Taylor über die Zerstörung der Elbestadt ist fair und versöhnend zugleich,’ Die Zeit – Literature. http:// zeus.zeit.de/text/2005/07/P-Taylor (10 February 2005 (accessed March 2006)).

338

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88 89 90 91 92



93 94



95



96



97

Volkery, ‘War of Words.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Vow.’ Taylor quoted in ibid. Ibid. Charles Hawley, ‘Spiegel Interview with Frederick Taylor: “Dresden Bombing is to be Regretted Enormously,”’ Spiegel-Online. http://www. spiegel.de/international/0,1518,341239,00html (11 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Ibid. On 13 February 2005, Friedrich and Taylor partook in a public debate staged at the Goethe-Institut in Amsterdam, moderated by Dutch journalist, editor, and historian Ben Knapen. See ‘60 Years After – the Bombing of Dresden,’ RISQ. http://www.risq.org/article403.html, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed October 2005)). For examples of other debates between the two authors, see ‘Warum Dresden verbrennen musste,’ Das Erste online – Kulturreport. http://www3.mdr. de/kulturreport/280304/thema_dresden.html, link no longer active (2005 (accessed November 2005)). ‘Militärische Logik oder blanker Terror? Die Operation “Thunderclap”: Streitgespräch zwischen Frederick Taylor und Jörg Friedrich am Montag, den 24. Januar 2005, um 19.30 Uhr im Ethnologischen Museum Berlin (Moderation: Christian Richter).’ (7 January 2005) A copy of the invitation is in possession of the author. Besides the most important instances discussed above, some of the other more glaring errors included Emma Gunby’s claim that Schröder was in Dresden on the Gedenktag. See ‘Dresden Anniversary Overshadowed.’ And two reports by Tony Paterson indicated extraordinarily sloppy journalism. First, his claim that the Frauenkirche was ‘funded by donations from Britain and other countries’ completely overlooked the fact Germans themselves had donated most of the funds. See ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack Dresden.’ Second, Paterson claimed: ‘Anti-British and American feeling remained strong in Dresden after the collapse of Communism in 1989. An egg was thrown at the Queen when she visited the city for the 50th anniversary of the bombing in 1995 and she was unable to get out of her car.’ The incident to which he was referring (discussed in Chapter 5) not only happened during her state visit in 1992, but she already was out of her car and entering the Kreuzkirche when it happened, meaning his account was wrong in every respect! See ‘Neo-Nazis Vow.’ For the Moscow claim, see ‘Germans mark Bombing of Dresden.’ ‘Rightwing march.’ For the napalm-like chemical weapons claim, see ‘Germans mark 60th Anniversary.’ Meinhold, ‘Germans mark WWII.’ For ‘last days,’ see Williams, ‘Clashes mar.’ To cite just two examples among many of accounts that completely neglected the traditional (German) aspect of the Heidefriedhof ceremony:

339

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98 99 100

101

102

103 104 105

106 107

‘Commemorations began with the US and British ambassadors silently laying wreaths at a Dresden cemetery where some of the bombing’s victims are buried.’ Ellmers, ‘Schroeder: Germans shouldn’t forget.’ And: ‘Sunday began with a wreath-laying ceremony, attended by the ambassadors of Allied nations the US, UK, France and Russia and accompanied by solemn music from a brass quintet.’ In ‘Germans mark Bombing of Dresden.’ For similar examples, see: ‘Schroeder warns.’ Also ‘UK Officials.’ And ‘Dresden Raid Remembered,’ Sky-News.com. http:www.sky.com/ skynews/article/0,,30200-13299160,00.html, link no longer active (2005 (accessed February 2005)). Gunby, ‘Dresden Anniversary Overshadowed.’ Hugh Williamson and Joerg Wagner, ‘Far-right Dresden March draws Thousands,’ FinancialTimes.com. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/df8cfbf87deb-11d9-ac22-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=1.html (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘3,000 neo-Nazis.’ ‘Far-right Rally casts Pall.’ Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack.’ See Chapter 2, 91 Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack.’ Patrick Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try to Hijack Dresden’s Memorial Day,’ Telegraph UK. http:www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/14/wdres14.xml&sSheet=/ portal/2005/02/14/ixportal.html, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Williamson, ‘Far-right Dresden March.’ ‘Germans mark Bombing of Dresden.’ For general comments and various quotations from figures including Dresden’s Oberbürgermeister Roßberg, Saxony’s leader Georg Milbrandt, and Coventry Canon Paul Oestreicher, see ‘Looking for the Answers.’ Williams, ‘Correspondent’s Report.’ Hudson, ‘Neo-Nazis march.’ Segev, ‘After 60 Years.’ James, ‘The Struggle.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Vow.’ For examples, see ‘Dresden’s Symbolic Heart rises from the Ashes of Firestorm,’ SydneyMorningHerald-Online. http://www.smh.com.au/news/ Wor l d / D re s d e ns- s y mb ol i c - h e ar t - r i s e s - f rom - t h e - a s h e s - of firestorm/2005/02/13/1108229856322.html?oneclick=true (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Thofern, ‘Opinion.’ Hudson, ‘Far Right threatens.’ ‘Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests.’ Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ Quoted in Williams, ‘Correspondent’s Report.’ ‘Dresden’s Symbolic Heart.’ James, ‘The Struggle.’ Hudson, ‘Neo-Nazis march.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack Dresden.’ Ellmers, ‘Allied Bombing.’ Gunby, ‘Dresden Anniversary Overshadowed.’ ‘Neo-Nazi Demo overshadows.’ Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack.’ Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests.’ ‘Germans mark Bombing of Dresden.’ ‘UK Officials.’ Connolly, ‘Horror of Dresden.’ Gunby, ‘Dresden Anniversary Overshadowed.’ For Köhler’s passive participation in the Auschwitz liberation ceremony, see ‘World marks Auschwitz Liberation,’ BBC News. http://news.bbc.

340

notes to pages 2 5 6 – 2 5 7

108

109

110 111

112

co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4210841.stm (28 January 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Nelles, ‘Rise of German Right-Wing.’ Elkins, ‘Neo-Nazi Threat.’ On the same day, Schröder and his Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer led a special memorial session conducted in the Reichstag. Limor, ‘Today we Remember Everyone.’ Gerhard Schröder. ‘Erklärung von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder zum 60. Jahrestag der Zerstörung Dresdens,’ MVregio. http://www.mvregio. de/nachrichten_d/2641.html, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed August 2007)). For reports that included the ‘cause and effect’ quotation, see ‘Schroeder warns.’ Ellmers, ‘Schroeder: Germans shouldn’t forget.’ ‘UK Officials.’ ‘Germans mark Bombing of Dresden.’ ‘Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests.’ ‘Dresden Raid Remembered.’ Gunby, ‘Dresden Anniversary Overshadowed.’ ‘Right-wing March.’ Williamson, ‘Far-right Dresden March.’ Meinhold, ‘Germans mark WWII.’ ‘3,000 neo-Nazis.’ Luke Harding, ‘Neo-Nazis upstage Memorial to Victims of Dresden Bombing,’ GuardianUK. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5126176-103532, 00html, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ ‘Far-right Rally casts Pall.’ See Chapter 5, 214–15, 220–3. Estimates varied slightly, but generally ranged between 3,000 and 5,000 neo-Nazis present in Dresden on the sixtieth Gedenktag, which corresponded with the figure released by local police. See ‘3,000 neoNazis.’ ‘Right-wing March.’ Williamson, ‘Far-right Dresden March.’ ‘Farright Rally casts Pall.’ ‘Neo-Nazi Demo overshadows.’ Hudson, ‘NeoNazis march.’ ‘Schroeder warns.’ Jeffrey Donovan, ‘Germany: Neo-Nazis Parade in Dresden on Anniversary of Bombing,’ Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty. http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/02/21efb95a4dc7-976d-2870c4b9937a.html, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). Ellmers, ‘Schroeder: Germans shouldn’t forget.’ ‘UK Officials.’ ‘Germans mark Bombing of Dresden.’ ‘Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests.’ ‘Dresden Raid Remembered.’ Gunby, ‘Dresden Anniversary Overshadowed.’ Meinhold, ‘Germans mark WWII.’ Harding, ‘Neo-Nazis upstage.’ One report stipulated it was ‘at least 5,000.’ See Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ Another said it was ‘more than 5,000.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack Dresden.’ Finally, another estimated 6,000 neo-Nazi demonstrators were present in Dresden. Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack.’ According to Ruth Elkins, meanwhile, although most of these neo-Nazis were from across Germany there were some ‘from as far away as Sweden and Spain, as well as an Austrian contingent.’ Elkins, ‘Neo-Nazi Threat.’ For almost ten minutes of amateur footage of the rally recorded during Voigt’s speech (including scenes of the crowd and shots of the stage), see ‘Udo Voigt’s NPD rally speech: Dresden Bombenholocaust 13 Februar

341

notes to pages 2 5 8 – 2 6 0

113 114 115 116



117 118 119 120 121 122

123

124

2005 1/3,’ youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEaAHEqqHe0, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed July 2007)). Ibid. Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ See Chapter 5, 32–3. Quoted in Harding, ‘Neo-Nazis upstage.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack Dresden.’ ‘Neo-Nazi Demo overshadows.’ Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ Harding, ‘NeoNazis upstage.’ According to Harding, one speaker made reference to Churchill wishing ‘to roast’ Germans. Presumably this comment stemmed from the prime minister’s oft-quoted infamous remark to Sinclair in January 1945 about ‘basting the Germans in their retreat from Breslau.’ See Chapter 1, 62. ‘3,000 neo-Nazis.’ Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis Hijack.’ Williams, ‘Clashes mar.’ Quoted in Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ Meinhold, ‘Germans mark WWII.’ Harding, ‘Neo-Nazis upstage.’ Established in Würzburg in 1991, the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen changed its name to the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland – keeping the same initials JLO – in November 2006. For its own explanation as to why an expellees organisation linked to East Prussia chooses to mourn the destruction of Dresden annually, see ‘(JLO) Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland, 13. Februar: Dresden gedenken,’ JLO – Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland. http://www.ostpreussen.org (accessed October 2008). For short clips of footage taken from the 2003 and 2004 Gedenktag ‘mourning marches’ (along with many other neoNazi demonstrations across Germany) staged by the JLO, see ‘Medien,’ Oi!Krach. http://www.oikrach.com/medien.php, link no longer active (2003-4 (accessed 4 November 2007)). The clip from the 2004 rally features a heavy metal version of the song Bomber über Dresden by the German neo-Nazi hard rock outfit Sleipnir. For a five-minute clip of digital footage, see ‘Trauermarsch Dresden 2005,’ youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGVCj5P58bQ, link no longer active (2005 (accessed August 2007)). For general descriptions of the march, see Hudson, ‘Neo-Nazis march.’ Harding, ‘Neo-Nazis upstage.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack Dresden.’ Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack.’ Germans mark Bombing of Dresden.’ ‘Schroeder warns.’ Ellmers, ‘Schroeder: Germans shouldn’t forget.’ ‘Spiegel’s Daily Take.’ ‘Right-wing march.’ ‘Neo-Nazi Demo overshadows.’ Williamson, ‘Far-right Dresden March.’ Quotation taken from transcript of ‘Neonazis aus ganz Deutschland zusammengekommen,’ Tagesschau.de. http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/ meldungen/0,1185,OID4061162,00.html, link no longer active (2005

342

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125

126

127

128

129 130 131 132 133

134

(accessed August 2007)). See also Jens Pabst, ‘Der Kampf um das Gedenken von Dresden,’ Tagesschau.de. http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/ meldungen/0,1185,OID 4064030_REF_NAV,00.html, link no longer active (14 February 2005 (accessed August 2007)). For examples, see Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack Dresden.’ ‘European Press: Dresden’s Marred Anniversary,’ Deutsche Welle. http://www.dw-world. de/dw/article/0,1564,1489206,00.html (14 February 2005 (accessed February 2005)). ‘Spiegel’s Daily Take.’ Gunby, ‘Dresden Anniversary Overshadowed.’ Williamson, ‘Far-right Dresden March.’ ‘Neo-Nazi Demo overshadows.’ Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack.’ Harding, ‘Neo-Nazis upstage.’ ‘Weiße Rosen als Zeichen gegen Intoleranz und Rechtsextremismus,’ SueddeutscheZeitung.de. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/deutschland/ artikel/692/47645/article.html, link no longer active (13 February 2005 (accessed August 2007)). Donovan, ‘Germany: Neo-Nazis.’ ‘Spiegel’s Daily Take.’ Ellmers, ‘Schroeder: Germans shouldn’t forget.’ For a short clip of riot police cordoning off anti-fascist counterdemonstrators, see ‘Trauermarsch Dresden 2005: Antifa-Aufmarsch,’ youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_wX1JFCik, link no longer active (2005 (accessed August 2007)). Press reports estimated around 4,500 anti-fascists counter-demonstrated. For this and other details of the clashes including police intervention, see Hudson, ‘Neo-Nazis march.’ ‘Neo-Nazi Demo overshadows.’ Boyes, ‘NeoNazis hijack.’ ‘Dresden Raid Remembered.’ ‘Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests.’ ‘Schroeder warns.’ Meinhold, ‘Germans mark WWII.’ ‘3,000 neoNazis.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack Dresden.’ Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ See especially Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack.’ Harding, ‘Neo-Nazis upstage.’ Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall, ‘Opa war kein Nazi’: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis (Frankfurt-am-Main, 2002). Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack Dresden.’ ‘Neo-Nazi Demo overshadows.’ Hudson, ‘Neo-Nazis march.’ Some press reports estimated around 50,000 Dresdeners gathered in the ­ Altstadt wearing white roses in the evening. For estimates and general descriptions of events, see ‘Germans mark Bombing of Dresden.’ Meinhold, ‘Germans mark WWII.’ Hudson, ‘Neo-Nazis march.’ Ellmers, ‘Schroeder: Germans shouldn’t forget.’ ‘Spiegel’s Daily Take.’ ‘Schroeder warns.’ ‘Germans mark 60th Anniversary.’ ‘Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests.’ ‘Dresden Raid Remembered.’ Williams, ‘Clashes mar.’ Much of the wit contained in the original German is lost in translation. For photographs, see ‘Spiegel’s Daily Take.’ Bishop, ‘Neo-Nazis try.’ For quotations, see also Ellmers, ‘Schroeder: Germans shouldn’t forget.’ ‘Schroeder warns.’ Meinhold, ‘Germans mark WWII.’ ‘Dresden

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135



136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148

Raid Remembered.’ Hudson, ‘Neo-Nazis march.’ ‘Dresden Bombing Anniversary Protests.’ German newspapers surveyed included the major dailies Die Welt and Der Tagesspiegel along with Freiburg’s Badische Zeitung and Regensburg’s Mittelbayerische Zeitung. Non-German newspapers surveyed were Le Monde from France, Spain’s El Pais, and The Times of London. See ‘European Press.’ Quoted in ibid. Quoted in ibid. Quoted in ibid. Quoted in ibid. ‘Spiegel’s Daily Take.’ Gunby, ‘Dresden Anniversary Overshadowed.’ Williams, ‘Clashes mar.’ Williamson, ‘Far-right Dresden March.’ ‘Right-wing March.’ ‘Neo-Nazi Demo overshadows.’ Boyes, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack.’ Harding, ‘Neo-Nazis upstage.’ Paterson, ‘Neo-Nazis hijack Dresden.’

Conclusion





1 For further discussion, see introduction, 17, 39–40. 2 T.G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper, ‘The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration: Contexts, Structures and Dynamics,’ in The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, eds Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper (London, 2000). 7. 3 Aleida Assmann, ‘On the (in)compatibility of guilt and suffering in German memory,’ German Life and Letters 59 (April, 2006). Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, ‘Revised Introduction to the English Edition,’ in The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (Philadelphia, 2006). 4 Robert G. Moeller, ‘Germans as Victims? Thoughts on a Post-Cold War History of World War II’s Legacies,’ History and Memory 17 (Spring/ Summer 2005). 181. 5 ‘Introduction’ to Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver, eds, The Memory of Catastrophe (Manchester, 2004). 6.

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Bibliography In dealing with contemporary history, it is remarkably difficult to determine clearly-defined categories based on what constitutes a primary or secondary source. This dilemma is all the more pronounced for a work that not only deals with very recent events, but also pays considerable attention to analysing the texts from which much of the information is derived. Consequently, rather than dividing the bibliography along ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ classifications, I have chosen to break it into what I consider to be the most user-friendly system based on the following categories of sources: interviews and personal correspondence; unpublished archival materials; print media; websites; films; and books, book chapters, and journal articles. Interviews and Personal Correspondence

Open-ended Interviews

Douglas Radcliffe MBE, secretary of Bomber Command Association. (RAF Museum London, 31 July 2006.) Alan Russell OBE, co-founder and chairman of the Dresden Trust. (Chichester, 2 August 2006.)

Personal Correspondence

Information obtained via face-to-face meetings or written correspondence with the following people was used in the thesis and referenced accordingly in the notes: Vera Bertram, Broadview-TV Prof. Dr Guido Knopp, ZDF Prof. Dr Sönke Neitzel, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz Prof. Dr Reiner Pommerin, Technische Universität Dresden Alan Russell OBE, co-founder and chairman of the Dresden Trust

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Unpublished Archival Materials The following Air Ministry and War Cabinet folders housed in The National Archives (Public Records Office) in London were accessed in 2005–6. Specific reports or memoranda cited in the thesis are fully referenced in the notes. AIR 20/2955 ‘Publicity for Bomber Command’ AIR 20/4229 ‘Notes on the Work of Bomber Command’ AIR 8/258 ‘Bombing Policy’ AIR 8/423 ‘Air Bombardment Policy: Cabinet Discussions’ AIR 8/424 ‘Bombing Policy’ AIR 40/1680 ‘Dresden: Target Information Sheet; District Target Map; Zone Map Information Sheet; Land Use Zone Map’ AIR 34/605 ‘Dresden: Surveillance Photographs and Bombing Reports, Oct. 1944/Mar. 1945’ AIR 14/3080 ‘Group Summaries – Night, Feb. 1945’ AIR 40/803 ‘Dresden Bombing Reports, Feb. 1945’ AIR 40/1494 ‘Bombing Reconnaissance Reports’ AIR 16/487 ‘Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur T. Harris – Despatch on War Operations: 23rd February, 1942, to 8th May, 1945’ AIR 2/12177 ‘Lincoln Cathedral: Bomber Command Memorial Window’ CAB 120/303 ‘RAF: Allied Bombing Policy’ Print Media The following newspapers and news magazines were accessed as hard copies or on microfilm in the designated years. Full references, including page numbers, are provided for all individual articles in the notes. Essener Stadt Anzeiger, 1942 FAZ, 1984–2000 Daily Mail, 1992 Der Angriff, 1945 Der Spiegel, 1984–95 Die Welt, 1984–2000 Die Zeit, 1984–2000 Dresdner Zeitung, 1945 Guardian (Manchester/London), 1945, 1985–95 Neues Deutschland, 1984–2000 Rheinischer Merkur/Christ und Welt, 1984–5 Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1984–2000 The Age (Melbourne), 2005 The Australian, 2005

346

bibliography

The Daily Telegraph, 1992 The Observer (London), 1992, 2005–6 The Sun (London), 1992 The Times, 1985–95 Washington Post, 1989–90 Websites The following websites are cited in the notes, where full details are provided including: author (if known); article or page name; site name; date of uploading or most recent update (if known); most recent access date; and URL. 2+4 Chronik Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin (Besucherdienst: Tonmaterial) Air University Press Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste AlJazeera.net American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC-Online) AZ-Central Bayerisches Fernsehen – BR-Online BBC News Berlin.de – Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung Berliner Morgenpost Britische Botschaft Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung: Jugend Opposition in der DDR Bunker und andere ehemalige Militäranlagen im Weißeritzkreis Coventry Cathedral CTV.ca Das Erste online Deutsche Welle (and Deutsche Welle – World) Deutscher Bundestag Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM) Deutschlandradio Die Zeit Documentation Centre of UNESCO and ICOMOS Dresden.de Dresdner-Kreuzkirche FAZ.net Financial Times.com Foreward German Embassy London

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German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) Goethe-Institut Washington GuardianUnlimited UK Haaretz Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung Herald-Tribune.com historicum.net H-net Independent UK Online International Herald Tribune Online InTheFray.com ITV.com Jerusalem Post Online Jewish World Review (JWR) Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland (JLO) Jungen Nationaldemokraten (JN) Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung MVregio New York Times New Zealand Herald Online Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Oi!Krach Open Society Archives Parliament of Australia: Hansard Philadelphia Inquirer Pravda Online Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Reuters Alert RISQ Royal Air Force Sachsen-Anhalt – Wir stehen früher auf Sächsische Zeitung – Sachsen im Netz (SZ-Online) Scotsman sehepunkte Sky-News.com Sozialistische Gedenkstätten Spiegel-Online Sp!ked-Essays Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden SueddeutscheZeitung.de Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf Sydney Morning Herald Online (SMH) (including Sunday Herald Online) Tagesschau.de

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Telegraph UK Online The Australian Online The Hindu The National Security Archive The Observer UK Online Times Online Turkish Press US Diplomatic Mission to Germany Variety Warsaw Voice Online Welt-Online (including WELTamSONNTAG) wer-weiss-was Wissenschaftstadt Darmstadt Würzburg-Online youtube ZDF Zeit-Online Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland Films Becker, Wolfgang. Good Bye Lenin! 121 mins. Germany: Sony Pictures Classics, 2003. Dehnhardt, Sebastian. Das Drama von Dresden. 90 mins. Germany: broadview. TV/ZDF, 2005. Luftangriff auf Dresden. 53 mins. Germany: E-M-S, 2003. Richter, Roland Suso. Dresden. 180 mins. Germany: ZDF/teamWorx, 2006. Books, Book Sections and Journal Articles The following published works are cited in the notes. Addison, Paul, and Jeremy Crang, eds Firestorm: the Bombing of Dresden, 1945. London: Pimlico, 2006. Adorno, Theodor. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Translated by Henry Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. — ‘What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?’ In Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective, edited by Geoffrey Hartman. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986. Alter, Reinhard, and Peter Monteath, eds Rewriting the German Past: History and Identity in the New Germany. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997.

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‘Appendix I: The House of Wettin in Dresden.’ In Dresden: A City Reborn, edited by Anthony Clayton and Alan Russell. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Ash, Timothy Garton. ‘Germany after Bitburg: Kohl’s Troubled Conscience.’ The New Republic 193 (1985). Ashplant, T.G., Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper. ‘The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration: Contexts, Structures and Dynamics.’ In The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, edited by Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper. London: Routledge, 2000. Assmann, Aleida. ‘On the (in)compatibility of guilt and suffering in German memory.’ German Life and Letters 59, no 2 (2006). Baldwin, Peter, ed. Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians’ Debate. Boston, MA: Beacon, 1990. Bastéa, Eleni, ed. Memory and Architecture. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2004. Beattie, Andrew H. ‘The Victims of Totalitarianism and the Centrality of Nazi Genocide: Continuity and Change in German Commemorative Politics.’ In Germans as Victims, edited by Bill Niven. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Beaumont, Joan. ‘Australian Memory and the US Wartime Alliance: The Australian-American Memorial and the Battle of the Coral Sea.’ War & Society 22, no 1 (2004). Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall, 1945. London: Viking, 2002. Bergander, Götz. Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte – Zerstörung – Folgen. Sonderausgabe. Würzburg: Flechsig, 1998. — ‘Erinnerungen des Augenzeugen Götz Bergander an die Bombardierung Dresdens (Rückblick).’ In Deutsche im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Zeitzeugen sprechen, edited by Johannes Steinhoff, Peter Pechel, and Dennis Showalter, Munich: Schneekluth, 1989. Biess, Frank. ‘“Pioneers of a New Germany”: Returning POWs from the Soviet Union and the Making of East German Citizens, 1945–1950.’ Central European History 32, no 2 (1999). Bloxham, Donald. ‘Dresden as a War Crime.’ In Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945, edited by Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang. London: Pimlico, 2006. Bomber Command Association, ed. The Means of Victory: A Tribute to the Men and Women of Bomber Command and their Leader, Sir Arthur Harris. London: Charterhouse, 1992. Breit, Gotthard. Das Staats- und Gesellschaftsbild deutscher Generale beider Weltkriege im Spiegel ihrer Memoiren. Boppard-am-Rhein: Boldt, 1973. Breuilly, John, ed. The State of Germany: The National Idea in the Making, Unmaking, and Remaking of a Modern Nation-State. London: Longman, 1992. Brockway, Fenner. German Diary. London: Gollancz, 1946.

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Index Note: page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Abendroth, Hans-Henning 190 Acropolis (Athens) 160 Adenauer, Konrad 19, 94; government 24, 96, 150 Adorno, Theodor 96–7 Afghanistan 216 Aktion Sühnezeichen (Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, ARSP) 104, 299n.87 Albrecht, Ernst 134, 141–2 Al Jazeera 244; English News Service 251 Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities 12 Anglo-German relations, see reconciliation Annenkirche (Dresden) 116, 156, 162 Another Mother for Peace (protest group) 194 Antifa (militant antifascist group) 260 Antonov, Aleksei 60 Apartheid (South Africa) 167 Apfel, Holger 243–4, 257–9 Applebaum, Anne 16 ARD (German public broadcaster) 260 Aris, Helmut 121 Arrowsmith, Pat 191 Ashplant T.G. 12–14, 16, 44, 180, 266 Association of Dresden Citizens in the Federal Republic (Verband Dresdner Bürger in der Bundesrepublik) 96 Association Frauenkirche Paris 326n.138 Athens 160 Attlee, Clement 192 Augstein, Rudolf 1 Augustus II the Strong (Elector Frederick Augustus I, Wettin dynasty) 59–60 Augustus III (Wettin dynasty) 59 Auschwitz: anniversary of liberation 219, 241, 243, 255; as superlative debt for Germans 3, 15, 17–18, 27, 31, 96–7, 104, 118, 191, 217, 244, 249; juxtaposed with Dresden 17, 96, 104, 118, 191, 217, 241, 243–4, 249; trials 25–6, 103; name inscribed at Dresden cemetery’s Rondell 101

Australia 202, 238; Australia House (London) 194; national remembrance of Gallipoli 276n.14; Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) 249 Bach, Johann Sebastian 239 Bach, Rudolf 206 Badische Zeitung (Freiburg) 263 Baedecker raids 52 Baghdad 258 Bahr, Egon 109 Bähr, George 107, 111, 154 Balkans 15, 28 Barenboim, Daniel 273 Barrington-Ward, Simon 205, 213, 215–16, 219, 223, 324 n.112, 327n.159 Basic Treaty (Grundlagenvertrag) 109 Batchelor, Ken 187 Battle of Berlin (1943 bombing campaign) 53, 55, 291n.55 Battle of Britain 183–4, 186, 187 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 251 Beale, John 213 Beatitudes from St Matthew (in Kreuzkirche) 205 Beetham, Sir Michael 185, 192, 193, 255 Beethoven, Ludwig van 239 Beethovenhalle (Bonn) 164–5 Beil, Gerhard 134 Belfast 226 Bellevue (Dresden hotel) 141, 146, 159, 308n.96 Belzec (Nazi extermination camp) 97 Bentley (car manufacturing company) 238 Bergander, Götz 8, 63, 78–9, 119, 329n.192 Bergen-Belsen 101 Berghofer, Wolfgang 146, 169–70, 173–4 Berlin 2, 15, 18, 23, 45, 68, 122, 146, 207–8, 243, 245–6, 251, 256, 277n.22, 289n.20, 299n.87, 322n.68, 327 n.159; Airlift 88–9; Battle of (1943 bombing campaign) 53, 55, 291n.55; bombed by US forces (1945) 64; bombing target as part of Thunderclap 61; bombing target designated by Soviets 60;

363

the dresden firebombing Berlin continued capital of reunified Germany 8, 9, 18, 20–1, 26, 29, 43, 198–9, 214, 233; Cold War division 109; East Berlin see DDR; part of so-called bomb-line in WWII 61; première of Der Freischütz 132; protests against reunification 146; Queen’s state visit to (1992) 43; Queen’s state visit to (2004) 234–40; Red Army’s advance on 4; West (during Cold War) 79, 118 Berlin Wall 78, 98, 309n.8; fall of 29, 40, 144, 155, 176, 270 Bernbaum, Lord 213 Biedenkopf, Kurt 202, 205–6, 215, 217, 227 Biehl, Jody 241 Bild (Germany) 235, 251 Bismarck, Otto von 127, 149 Bitburg (political affair) 27, 139, 152 Bizone (joined occupied sectors of Germany) 83 Blackley, Robert 196 Blaschke, Karlheinz 163–4, 176–7 Blitz 184 Bloxham, Donald 9 Blücher, Franz 96 Bohl, Jochen 240, 255 Bomber Command 45; area-bombing directive 49; and Berlin 53, 55; Churchill’s oscillating support for 48, 69, 70, 70–1, 183; and Cologne 51–2; and Darmstadt 56; doubleblow technique 50–1, 67; and Dresden 55, 62–7, 88, 206, 209, 228; and Hamburg 53; ineffective early in war 48–9; and Leipzig 55; and Lübeck 50; and Nuremberg 55; Oil Plan 48; and Pforzheim 56–7; and the Ruhr 53; under SHAEF 55; and Würzburg 57 Bomber Command Association (BCA) 57, 255; and commissioning of Harris statue 180–90; Bork, Siegfried 118 Bosnia 16, 216 Boyes, Roger 219, 224–5, 252 BP (British Petroleum) 235 Brandenburg Gate 199, 246 Brandstätten (Jörg Friedrich) 32 Brandt, Willy 26; and Ostpolitik 108–9, 201 Brauner family 1–4, 6, 18, 23, 214, 222, 275n.3 Bräutigam, Hans-Otto 133–4, 138–40, 142 Bremen 55, 289 n.19, 322n.68 Breslau (Wrocław) 98, 116; German retreat from 62, 342n.116 Bretschneider, Harald 112 Britain 30, 41, 48, 79, 190; air war commemoration 119, 182–4, 186, 187, 190–1, 196, 201, 204; during bombing war 48, 52, 61, 68, 88, 91, 98, 104, 179, 181–4, 186, 187, 258; and reconciliation 34, 42–3, 104, 158, 164, 179–232, 233, 237, 239–40, 246–7, 250, 253–6, 262, 264, 271 British Embassy: Berlin (2004) 235–6; Bonn (1992) 197

British Expeditionary Force 48 British Gas (in Leipzig) 198, 204, 207 British German Association 213–14 British Military Mission to Soviet Forces in Germany (BRIXMIS) 238 Britten, Benjamin 239 BRIXMIS (British Military Mission to Soviet Forces in Germany) 238 Brockway, Fenner 54 Broder, Major 84–5 Broomfield, Sir Nigel 213, 218 Bross, Siegfried 242 Brühl Terrace (Dresden) 173 Brussels 147, 210 Buchenwald (concentration camp) 22, 28; name inscribed at Dresden cemetery’s Rondell 101 Buckingham Palace (London) 191, 197–8, 200 Bundesministerium für Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge, und Kriegsbeschädigte (Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War-Damaged Citizens) 24 Burger, Norbert 188 Bürgerinitiative (citizens’ action group in Dresden) 41, 144, 153–66, 178, 209, 270 Burton, Harry 187 Bush, George H.W. 147, 157–9 Bush, George W. 234 Butt, D.M. 48–9 Butt Report 48–9 Büttner, Ursula 54, 290n.48 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 191–2 Canada 238, 331n.17 Cenotaph (London) 236 Central Cinema Company (CCC-Filmkunst) 2 Central Committee of the Soviet Union 167 Chalker, Baroness Lynda 213 Charity Commissioner (UK) 211 Charlottenburg Palace 236 Chechnya 216 Chemnitz 61–2 Cherwell, Lord (aka Frederick Lindemann) 51–2, 56 Church of England 191–2 Church of the Epiphany (Dreikönigskirche) (Dresden) 112 Church of the Holy Cross (Dresden) see Kreuzkirche Churchill, Winston 32–3, 55, 62, 118, 290n.54, 342n.116; blamed for Dresden raid 75, 80, 168–9, 258; and Dardenelles catastrophe 194; oscillating support for Bomber Command 48, 50, 51–2, 69–71, 69, 70, 183–4; reaction to Dresden raid 39, 69; and Thunderclap Plan 61; and Yalta Conference 60–1 City of Lincoln (Lancaster bomber) 195 Clarence House (London) 189, 320n.38

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index CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) 191–2 Cold War 8–9, 10, 150, 158, 238, 299n.87; impact on Dresden raid historiography 71–80; impact on German memory culture 3, 8, 10–11, 20–1, 23, 25–9, 38, 40, 126–30, 165, 208; shaping of Dresden commemorative politics 82, 84–95, 97–105, 99, 100, 107–15, 117–26, 130–43, 158, 170–1, 179, 229, 252, 258, 262, 269 ‘collective guilt’ 5, 16–17, 235 Cologne 34, 83, 258; bombing of 51–2, 55–6, 58, 59, 188, 258, 289n.19, 289n.23; and opposition to Harris statue 186, 188–90, 192, 196–7, 230, 319n.19 Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery (Stahnsdorf) 237–8 Community of the Cross of Nails see Coventry Cathedral Condor Legion 47 Confino, Alon 26, 44 Connolly, Kate 248–9 Cooper, Alan Target Dresden 8–9 Corwin, Elizabeth 10, 74 Coventry 227; as British counterpart to Dresden (incl. as sister city) 98, 104, 116, 118, 192, 196, 205, 216, 218, 220, 223, 228, 256, 258, 304n.27, 317n.99; bombing of 47–8, 51, 118, 216, 327n.159; see also Coventry Cathedral; name inscribed at Dresden cemetery’s Rondell 101 Coventry Cathedral 104, 191; and its Community of the Cross of Nails 199, 205, 228, 255; and its International Centre for Reconciliation 104; and relationship with Dresden 104, 192, 196, 205, 210, 213, 215–16, 219, 223, 228, 255 Cox, Sebastian 46, 64 Cuban Missile Crisis 78 Cullen, Michael 118, 306n.50 Czechoslovakia 5, 22 Dachau (Nazi concentration camp) 101 Dahrendorf, Lord 213 Daily Express (UK) 203 Daily Telegraph (UK) 196 Dambuster raids 53 Darmstadt 56–7, 83 Das Drama von Dresden (documentary) 34–5 Davidson, Eddie 187 Dawson, Graham 12–14, 16, 44, 180, 266 D-Day (Operation Overlord) 55–6; Germany snubbed in celebrations of 219 DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik/ German Democratic Republic) 9, 21–5, 84, 89–92, 98, 104, 108–17, 127–35, 179, 219; collapse of 28–9, 41–2, 119, 144–53 159, 165–9, 197–9, 206–8, 222, 259; Dresden historiography in 39, 46–7, 72–4, 76–81, 103, 168–9, 258; Dresden located in 20–1, 82, 95, 97

Deckert, Günter 217 DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) 86 Denkmalpflege (conservation of historic monuments) 105–6, 127–32, 131, 156, 159–60, 300n.97 Der Angriff (Nazi Germany) 67 Der Brand (Jörg Friedrich) 30–4 Der Freischütz 132–3, 140–1 Der Knabe im Feuer (Daniel Hoffmann) 8 Der Spiegel (Germany) 1, 30–1, 33, 121, 130–1, 133, 241, 244, 245, 249, 251, 263, 332 n.32 Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin) 36, 262, 344n.135 Deutsche Bahn 200 Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz (German Foundation for the Protection of Historic Monuments) 161 Deutsche Welle (Germany) 35–6, 249–50, 262 Diakonissenanstalt (Dresden) 199, 322n.77 Die Welt (Germany) 168–9, 203, 206–7, 229, 244, 262, 329n.192 Die Zeit (Germany) 36, 90, 103, 117–18, 201, 245 Dieckmann, Christoph, 220 Dieckmann, Johannes 92 Dobberstein, Elfriede 259 Dortmund 52–3, 56, 58, 306n.50 Dowding, Sir Hugh: statue of 183, 185, 185, 187, 319n.17; wartime commander 183–4, 187 Dresden: destruction of 4, 7, 49, 52, 56, 64–70, 158, 166, 327n.159; see also Dresden raid; as Kulturstadt (Elbflorenz) 6, 7, 45, 59–60, 68, 78, 91, 107, 128–9, 132, 139, 154, 268; located in DDR 9, 11, 20, 29, 82, 87–9, 97, 135, 145–9; as Opferstadt 4, 7, 12, 21, 29, 36, 39–41, 46, 60, 75, 78, 85, 92, 96–7, 108, 110–11, 117–19, 138–40, 144, 151, 153–4, 156–8, 174, 176, 178, 222, 232, 234–5, 258, 261, 264, 266–70; and opposition to Harris statue 186, 189–91, 196–7; overlooked as bombing target 51, 54, 58, 59, 62–3; as paradigm of German victimisation 8, 15, 17, 20, 82, 91, 95–7 99, 100, 101–4, 138–9, 158–9, 180–1, 190– 5, 209, 214–15, 229, 240–7, 249, 256, 258– 60, 266, 277n.23; postwar reconstruction of 11, 73–4, 84–5, 90–1, 93, 107, 120–32, 131, 135–6, 139, 143, 153, 156–8, 162–3, 171–3, 171, 221, 228, 237, 269, 299n.92, 306n.50, 308 n.96, 313n.52, 328n.188; sister-city relationships 98, 108, 169–70, 218, 220, 302n.2; symbol of German unity/reunification 147–53, 214 Dresden (miniseries) 35–6 Dresden 1945: The Devil’s Tinderbox (Alexander McKee) 79–80 Dresden-Klotzsche airport 145, 200, 202 Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra 220 Dresden Prize 273

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the dresden firebombing Dresden raid 3, 45–81, 286n.150; as ‘conventional’ attack 45–6, 58, 78, 194, 267; criticism of 9, 11, 34, 67–71, 84–92, 94, 189–91, 203, 209–10, 223, 229, 243–51, 258–60, 272; historiography of 46–7, 71– 80, 168; identified as sui generis raid 3, 6–7, 15, 17, 34, 39, 58–9, 68, 72–3, 76–80, 95–6, 102–3, 118–19, 180, 190–5, 209, 214–15, 223, 243–7, 249, 258–60, 268, 277n.23, 278n.24; ‘numbers game’ of victims 54, 67–8, 72–3, 75–7, 80, 168–70, 229, 247–9, 252, 329n.192; planning of 7, 45–6, 60–2, 64, 75, 118; result of initial Nazi aggression 2–4, 23–4, 85, 122, 137, 174, 196, 256–7, 269; strafing during 9–10, 79; Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945 (Frederick Taylor) 11 Dresden Trust 42, 180–1, 208–14, 215, 220, 223–7, 231, 238, 240, 253, 255, 271, 325n.134. 328n.180 Dresdner Bank 164, 213, 315n.71 Dresdner Hof (Dresden Hilton) 175 Dresdner Kleinwort 213 Dresdner Requiem 94–5, 102, 116, 173, 223 Dresdner Zeitung 67–8 Duisburg 53, 56, 58, 289n.19 Duke of Edinburgh, HRH Prince Philip 180, 200, 202–3, 205–7, 236–40 Duke of Kent, HRH Prince Edward 214, 218, 220–7, 232, 255 Düsseldorf 235, 306n.50; bombing of 53, 56, 289n.19 Eaker, Ira 63 East Berlin (DDR seat of government) 11, 21–3, 38, 74, 82, 89, 91–2, 94, 97–8, 101, 103, 108–11, 114–15, 116–17, 121, 124–5, 127, 130, 133–5, 138–9, 141–3, 147, 153, 165, 168, 175, 178–9, 213, 221, 262, 269–70 see also SED East Germany see DDR East Prussia 23, 342n.122 Eastern Front 60–1, 71, 285n.130 Ebischbach, Anette see Johanna Kalex Ebischbach Group see Wolfspelz Edathy, Sebastian 245 Edelman, Marek 16–17 Edinburgh 9, 34, 227 Egypt 166–7 Ehrenhain für die Opfer des Faschismus (Dresden) 91, 99, 102, 177 Eichmann, Adolf 194; trial of 25 Eigler, Friederike 16 Einsatzgruppen 32 EKD (Evangelical Church in Germany, Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland) 104–5, 140, 155–7, 159, 164, 166, 299n.87 Elbe River (Dresden/Germany) 22, 120, 173, 260 Elector Frederick Augustus I see Augustus II the Strong

Elektra 128 Elkins, Ruth 246–7 Equalisation of Burdens Law (Lastenausgleichgesetz) 24 Erdmann, Karl Dietrich 96–7, 103, 298n.67 Erfurt 109 Essen 235; bombing of 49–50, 56, 58, 59, 289n.19, 289n.23, 290n.45 European Commission (Brussels) 210, 213 European Recovery Plan (ERP, Marshall Plan) 62 European Union (EU) 234; justice ministers of 241 Europe’s 1992 Currency Crisis 197–8, 210, 234 Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD) 104–5, 140, 155–7, 159, 164, 166, 299n.87 Evans, Richard J. 28, 76 Everard, Timothy 213 Ewart, Don 192 Expellees (Vertriebene) 19, 22, 24–6, 89, 96, 108, 151, 259, 311n.27 Ezard, John 190, 195 FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) 1–2, 38, 118, 129, 154, 163, 201, 203, 204, 214, 224, 228–9 FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend, Free German Youth) 90, 119–20, 137, 142 Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassun gsgericht) 242, 245 Fighter Command 183–5, 185 Fighter Command Association (FCA) 183–5, 185, 187 Finger, Evelyn 36 Firestorm 9 First World War 25, 47, 56, 238 Fischer, Fritz 25 Fisher, Marc 148 Fleet Street (London) 203, 271 Flight and Expulsion (Flucht und Vertreibung) 5, 19, 22, 26, 31, 89, 96, 108, 150–2 Florence 116; inspiration behind Dresden’s nickname Elbflorenz 45, 59 The Flying Dutchman (Der fliegende Hollander) 128 Foerster, Uly 121, 123–4, 130–1, 133, 136, 140 Forum Romanum (Rome) 160 Frankfurt-am-Main 25, 38, 96, 129, 164; bombing of 56, 289n.20 Frankland, Noble 70–1 Frederick the Great 127, 149, 173, 199, 207–8, 239 Free German Workers’ Party (Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, FAP) 197 Free State of Saxony 202, 217, 241 Frei, Norbert 19 Freital (Saxony) 63 Friedenskirche (church within Sanssouci grounds, Potsdam) 207

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index Friedrich, Jörg 30–5, 39, 67, 233, 250–1, 258, 285n.130, 286n.146 Friedrich III 199 Friedrich Wilhelm III 208 Friedrichstadt marshalling yards (Dresden) 63, 65 Friends of Dresden Germany (Friends of Dresden Deutschland e.V.) 273 Friends of Dresden Inc. 215, 326n.138 Fritz, Stephan 246 Fritz-Vannahme, Joachim 201 Fritzsche, Peter 26, 44 Fromelles 15 Führer-Sofortprogramm (national emergency programme) 66 Fulbrook, Mary 19

Groehler, Olaf 67, 168 Großer Garten (Dresden) 67 Grossman, Atina 19 Grotewohl, Otto 92, 94 Grozny (Chechen Republic) 216 Guardian (UK) 45, 68, 188, 190, 259 Guernica 15, 47, 118, 256 Gunby, Emma 255 Guratzsch, Dankwart 162, 163–4, 167, 170, 174, 176–7 Güttler, Ludwig 155–7, 163, 165–6, 312n.43

Gallipoli 15, 80, 194, 276n.14 Gansel, Jürgen 244 Gateshead (UK) 239 GEE (radar device) 49 Geneva 124–5, 135, 137, 269, 304n.31 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich 147 German Committee of Fighters for Peace (Deutsche Komitee der Kämpfer für den Frieden) 90 German Historical Institute (London) 33 German Imperial Party (Deutsche Reichspartei, DRP) 241 Germany: national day of mourning (Volkstrauertag) 236; position within Europe 2, 147–51, 170–1; pre-Nazi historical periods 5, 25, 28, 45, 47, 65, 127–9, 138–9, 149, 199, 207–8, 236, 239; see also reconciliation; see also reunification; unmasterable past 1–3, 17, 24; war crimes and crimes against humanity 2–3, 15–18, 23–4, 26–7, 29–30, 32–3, 36, 76, 82, 84, 96–7, 101, 108, 152, 169, 190, 196, 216, 219, 222–3, 233, 243– 4, 246, 249, 261, 263–4 Gesellschaft zur Förderung des Wiederaufbaus der Frauenkirche e.V. 164, 211–12 Gilbert, Sir Martin 60 Gilliat, Sir Martin 189 Goebbels, Joseph 39, 68, 91 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 129 Goethe-Institut 251, 339n.94 Golan Heights 15 Goldhagen, Daniel 30 Goldhagen debate 18, 30, 33 Gorbachev, Mikhail 147, 273 Göring, Hermann 47, 77 Goring Hotel (Dresden) 211 Gothas (WWI aircraft) 47 Grant MacDonald (London) 227–8 Grass, Günter 30–1, 233 Graves, Peter 21 Gray, Peter 267, 276n.14 Gretzschel, Matthias 114

Haaretz (Israel) 244 Hage, Volker 30–1 Hager, Kurt 121, 133 Hallstein Doctrine 109 Hamburg 21, 22, 128, 141, 168, 169, 217; bombing of 9, 51, 53–4, 56, 58, 61, 67, 73, 83, 250, 289n.20; and opposition to Harris statue 186, 189, 192, 196 Hamilton, Alan 201, 204, 206 Hanover 152, 207, 289n.20, 322n.68 Harding, Luke 259 Harris, Sir Arthur 47, 50–2, 55, 57, 61–2, 71, 75, 80, 118, 168, 261, 316n.82, 319n.15, 320n.35; statue of 42, 179–97, 188, 193, 198–206, 208–211, 230–1, 234, 239, 253, 255, 271, 319n.17, 319n.19 Hassemer, Winfried 242 Hastings, Max 48, 53, 69, 71, 290n.48, 291n.62 Hauptmann, Gerhart 66, 135–6 Heathcote, Belinda 209–10, 325n.132 Heckmann, Hermann 117 Heidefriedhof (Dresden cemetery) 11, 14, 87–8, 88, 91, 95, 97, 99, 99, 100, 101–2, 107–11, 116, 119, 122, 136–7, 169–70, 177, 182, 217–18, 225, 252, 257, 265, 339n.97 Heimrich, Bernard 204, 224, 322n.71 Heisenberg, Werner 77 Helsinki Accords 134 Hempel, Johannes 113, 121, 140, 205, 301 n.117 Herbell, Hajo 135–6 Herder, Johann Gottfried 45 Herf, Jeffrey 19, 26, 276n.10 Hertel, Christiane 10–11 Herzog, Roman 212, 214–15, 220–4, 227, 237, 256–7, 262, 271 Heuss, Theodor 1 High Wycombe (Bomber Command headquarters) 49–50, 53, 56, 62, 69 Highgrove House (UK) 226, 239 Hildesheim: bombing of 59; and opposition to Harris statue 186, 319n.13 Hinze, Albrecht 123, 141, 153, 304n.27 Hiroshima 15, 96, 123, 304n.27; bombing of 9, 73–4; juxtaposed with Dresden 73–4, 75, 78–9, 95, 103, 118, 120, 258, 278n.24 Historikerstreit (Historians’ Dispute) 17, 27, 97, 139, 266

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the dresden firebombing Hitler, Adolf 3, 4, 5, 8, 23–4, 47, 55, 61, 74–5, 85, 94, 98, 132–3, 137, 183, 196, 221, 242, 246, 257, 260, 263, 320n.35 Hobsbawn, Eric Invention of Tradition 12 Hoch, Karl-Ludwig 155–6 Hoever, Ulrich 200 Hoffmann, Daniel Der Knabe im Feuer 8 Hoffmann, Hans-Joachim 119, 137 Hofkirche (Dresden) 102, 120, 136, 171, 172, 174, 215–17, 220, 247, 258 Hofmann, Margaret 103 Hohlfeld, Erika 131 Holocaust 2, 15–17, 18, 24–7, 29–30, 32, 76, 82, 96, 97, 108, 152, 169, 219, 243–4, 246, 249, 261, 264 Honecker, Erich 40, 119–26, 129–30, 133–8, 141–3, 153, 163, 256, 303n.22, 306n.63, 307n.73 Honecker, Margot 133 Hope, David 192 Hotel Coventry (Dresden) 212 House of Commons (UK) 184, 192 House of Lords (UK) 213 Huber, Wolfgang 238 Ihlau, Olaf 119 Iltgen, Erich 217 Imagined Communities (Benedict Anderson) 12 India 238, 331n.17 Inge, Sir Peter 218 International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (Venice Charter) 160–2 International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights (UN) 150 Invention of Tradition 12 Iraq 244 Iron Curtain 11, 98, 158 Irvine, John 255 Irving, David 75; and Dresden 8, 75–6, 78–80, 102–3, 119, 168–9, 177, 219, 229; and Holocaust denial 169, 316n.82 Israel 15, 24, 152, 166–7, 261 Italo–Turkish conflict (1911–12) 52 Italy 52, 160, 312n.43 Jäger, Hans-Joachim 212 Jalowiecki, Bartosz 16–17 James, Kyle 246–7, 249–50 Japan 52, 75, 78, 123 JLO (Junge Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen) 259, 352n.122 Johnson, Daniel 190–1 Jüdische Allgemeine (Germany) 245 June 1948 currency reforms (West Germany) 24 Junge Freiheit (Germany) 242 Junge Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen (JLO) 259, 352n.122

Kalex, Johanna (aka Anette Ebischbach) 112, 301n.117 Karl-Marx-Platz (Dresden) 90, 92, 95, 120, 146, 297n.32 Karlsruhe 166, 242, 245 Karutz, Hans-Rüdiger 138, 140, 142 Kashmir 15 Kassel 109; bombing of 95, 289n.20 Kasseler Post 95 Kempowski, Walter 10 Kent, Bruce 191 Kettenacker, Lothar 33 Khrushchev, Nikita 123, 298n.72 ‘Khrushchev Thaw’ 89 Kiel (Germany) 97; bombing of 56, 289n.20 King George I 199 Klemperer, Victor 55, 63 The Knight of the Rose (Der Rosenkavalier) 128 Knopp, Guido 34, 286n.148 Kohl, Helmut 18, 27, 108, 144, 236, 309n.2; and Dresden 41, 144–53, 164–5, 168, 176, 178, 215, 256, 270, 311n.35 Köhler, Eva Luise 236–7 Köhler, Horst 156, 236–8, 255–6 Kollwitz, Käthe 236 Königin Victoriaberg 239 Königsberg 56 Korea 258 Korean War 92, 105, 258 Kranz, Egon 121, 133 Krefeld (Germany) 53 Kreß, Volker 216, 224, 227, 255 Kreuzkirche (Church of the Holy Cross) (Dresden) 14, 42, 94–5, 102, 112–13, 116, 136, 140, 156–7, 162, 173–4, 180, 199– 200, 202–3, 205–6, 208, 215–16, 218, 223, 225, 231, 255, 323n.92, 339n.95 Kristallnacht 172, 173, 305n.41 Kröncke, Gerd 201 Krupp manufacturers (Essen) 49–50, 134 Kuebart, Jörg 205, 218 Kügelgen, Bernt von 103–4 Kuhbier, Ingrid 205 Kulturpalast (Dresden) 169, 177, 219–20, 223– 4, 247, 257, 271 Kunckel, Karl-Heinz 217–18 Kuper, Leo 9 Lancashire 239 Langenbacher, Eric 16 Lehmann-Grube, Hinrich 207 Leipzig 198–200, 204, 206–7, 312 n.43; bombing of 55, 59, 60–2; and 1989 protests 176, 207 Leningrad 15, 98, 116; bombing of 47; name inscribed at Dresden cemetery’s Rondell 101 Lesch, Markus 206, 219 Leverkusen 56 Levy, Daniel 15, 29, 43, 267

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index Lidice 98; name inscribed at Dresden cemetery’s Rondell 101 Lincoln Cathedral (UK) 183 Lisbon (Portugal) 77 Liverpool 227; bombing of 47 Łódź (Poland) 2 Löffler, Fritz 159 London 33, 62, 67, 76, 119, 147, 210–13, 227, 236, 319n.14; bombing of 47; location of Harris statue 42, 179–80, 183, 189, 192, 203–5, 230, 270–1 London School of Economics (LSE) 213 Loschwitz (Saxony) 66 Lübeck 50–1, 289n.20 Lucas, Brian 192, 194–5 Luftwaffe 47, 52, 184, 208, 216 Lunghi, Hugh 60 Luther, Martin 127; statue in Dresden 94 Lutheran Deaconess Hospital (Diakonissenkrankenhaus) (Dresden) 104, 215, 255 Lutzner, Anni 259 Maastricht Treaty 196, 198, 210, 234 MacKenzie, Kelvin 203 Mackie, Alastair 191 MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) 125 Maetzke, Ernst-Otto 118–19 Magdeburg 64 Mahler, Horst 259 Maier, Charles 17, 266 Majdanek (Nazi multi-purpose camp) 217 Majman, Slawomir 16 Mallaby, Sir Christopher 196–7 Manchester Guardian (UK) see Guardian Mandela, Nelson 167 Manhattan Project 77 Mann, Golo 117–18 Mann, Thomas 50–1 Mannheim 48, 56, 288n.13, 289n.20 Marcuse, Harold 152 Margalit, Gilad 10, 82, 83–4, 86, 91, 95, 103, 268 Marienbrücke (Dresden) 260 Marshall, George C. 62 Marshall Plan 62 Mauersberger, Rudolph 94–5, 102, 116, 173, 223 May 8th Action Group (Initiative 8. Mai) 1–3, 222 McElvoy, Anne 191, 198, 200 McKee, Alexander 9, 79–80, 119 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas) 18, 246 Menuhin, Yehudi 220 Mertens, Ellen 247 MG Rover 238 Miech, Heinz 155–6 Mittag, Günter 133 Mittelbayerische Zeitung (Regensburg) 263, 344n.135

Modrow, Hans 41, 119, 137, 145–9 Moeller, Robert G. 19, 36, 38, 267 ‘Mother with Dead Son’ (‘Mutter mit totem Sohn’) 236 Mozart’s Requiem 220 Mülheim (Ruhr) 53 Müller, Jan-Werner 44 Müller, Rolf-Dieter 33 Museum Island (Museuminsel) (Berlin) 237 Mutschmann, Martin 66 My Lai (Vietnam) 15 Nachtwey, James 273 Nadler, Hans 105, 160 Nagasaki 9, 73–4, 103, 123, 304n.27 Naimark, Norman 19 Nanking (China) 15 Napoleonic Wars 236 National Front (DDR) 90, 94, 102, 121, 137 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 25, 94, 98, 147, 234 Naumann, Klaus 218 Nelles, Roland 244–5 Neuer, Walter 147 Neues Deutschland (DDR/Germany) 38, 89–90, 95, 120, 122, 125, 133, 135, 139–40, 168, 203, 204, 317n.99, 318n.5 Neumann, Klaus 28, 319n.13 Neunkirchen (Germany) 129 Neutzner, Matthias 10, 76, 83–6, 101, 110, 268 New Guardhouse (Neue Wache) (Berlin) 18, 236 New York Times 92, 244 New Zealand 187, 238, 244, 331n.17 New Zealand Herald 244 Nikolaikirche (St Nicholas Church) (Leipzig) 176, 206 Niven, Bill 11, 19, 32 Nolan, Nick 218, 220 Nora, Pierre 13 North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) 243 Northern Ireland 226 Northern Sinfonia (UK) 239 NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany, Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands) 43, 217, 234, 241–7, 249– 50, 255, 257–65, 271–2 Nuremberg 55, 291n.59 Nuremberg trials 26, 86, 190 NVA (National People’s Army, Nationale Volksarmee) 114, 119–20, 137 Oder-Neisse line (German-Polish border) 150– 1, 311n.27 Oestreicher, Paul 191–2, 210, 212, 253, 320 n.38 Ohlsdorfer Friedhof (Hamburg cemetery) 196 Oliver, Kendrick 6, 15, 267 Operation Gomorrah see Hamburg, bombing of Operation Millennium see Cologne, bombing of

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the dresden firebombing Operation Overlord see D-Day Opfer des Faschismus (victims of fascism) 21–3, 85, 91–2, 98–9, 102, 171, 173, 177, 252 Opferkultur (German victim culture) 8, 16–20, 30, 34, 239 Oradour-sur-Glane 15 Osterloh, Lerke 242 Ostpolitik 26, 108–9, 150, 300n.102 Ostrava (then in Czechoslovakia) 116 Otte, Gerolf 121–2, 124, 126 Papstmann, G.M. 239 Paterson, Tony 251, 339n.95 Paul, Jürgen 212 Paul, Wolfgang 8, 74–5, 78, 102 Peace Pledge Union 191, 195–6, 210, 253 peaceful coexistence 89, 95 Pearl Harbor 15 People’s Chamber (Volkskammer) 127, 133, 309n.8 Petty, John 196 Pforzheim: bombing of 56–7, 59, 83; and opposition to Harris statue 186, 319n.13 Physikalische Blätter 77 Pilgram, Bill 187 Poland 2, 5, 16, 22, 109, 112, 150–1 Pompeii (Italy) 160 Portal, Sir Charles 61–2, 71 Potsdam 198–9, 206–8, 235, 239; bombing of 59, 302n.2 Potsdam Conference 5; Agreement 150 Prayers for Peace and Reconciliation (Kreuzkirche) 199 Prince Albert 239 Prince Charles 226, 239 Prince Harry 240–1, 332n.31 Probert, Henry 52, 57 Prussia 149, 173, 199, 207–8, 236, 239 Qatar 251 Queen Elizabeth II 42–3, 157–9, 180, 191, 197–211, 213, 215–17, 219, 224–6, 230–2, 233–41, 253, 264, 271, 319n.14, 322n.68, 324n.112, 339n.95 Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother 42, 179, 183, 188–9, 191–2, 193, 195, 198, 200, 230–2, 255 Queen Victoria 199, 207, 239 Radcliffe, Douglas 180, 182, 184–7, 189–90, 319n.15, 319n.16, 320n.24, 321n.59 Radice, Lord 213 RAF see Royal Air Force RAF Benevolent Fund 187 Ranger, Terence Invention of Tradition 12 Ravensbrück (site of former Nazi camp) 28; name inscribed at Dresden cemetery’s Rondell 101 reconciliation 34, 42–3, 104, 158, 164, 179–232, 233, 237, 239–40, 246–7, 250, 253–6, 262, 264, 271

Red Army 4–5, 10, 22–3, 31, 60–2, 77, 84, 90, 123, 229 Redman, Charles 218, 220 refugees (wartime) 24, 31, 53–4, 61–2; in Dresden 61–2, 67–8, 72, 78, 80, 97, 102, 206, 229, 248, 256 Reichstag (Berlin) 237, 246, 341n.107 Reinelt, Joachim 205, 216 Reinhold, Walter 92, 131 reunification (of Germany) 3–4, 7–8, 10–11, 18, 20, 28–31, 36–8, 41–3, 96, 104, 117, 138–9, 144–53, 164–5, 168, 179, 180–1, 198, 204, 207–8, 210, 214, 226–8, 231, 233, 236, 239, 242–3, 248, 250, 253, 262, 266–70, 284 n.121, 299 n.87, 311 n.24, 315 n.71 Richter, Horst 140–1 Rienzi 128 Ries, Fritz 205 Roberts, Andrew 190 Rodenberger, Axel 8, 67, 72–6, 78–80, 95, 103, 119, 169, 203, 229 Rolls-Royce 235 Rondell (in Dresden’s Heidefriedhof cemetery) 99, 99, 100, 101–2, 107, 122–3, 252, 304n.27 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 50, 61 Roper, Michael 12–14, 16, 44, 180, 266 Roßberg, Ingolf 246 Rotterdam 258, 302n.2; bombing of 47, 208; name inscribed at Dresden cemetery’s Rondell 101 , 304n.27 Royal Air Force (RAF) 48–9, 51–2, 55, 57, 62, 71, 183–5, 189, 192, 200, 205; see also Bomber Command; see also St Clement Danes church Royal Bank of Scotland 238 Royal Navy 48, 79 Ruf aus Dresden (Call from Dresden) 41–2, 144, 153–66, 178, 181, 208–12, 231, 238, 270 Rühe, Volker 165 Ruhr (Germany) 235; bombing of 48–50, 53, 55–6, 83, 288n.16, 289n.19, 306n.50 see also Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Düsseldorf Rüsen, Jörn 14–15 Russell, Alan 209–14, 219–20, 223–8, 231, 271, 326n.136, 328n.180 Russelsheim 56 Sachsenhausen 101 Sächsische Volkszeitung (Dresden) 86 Sächsische Zeitung (Dresden) 91, 105, 110, 112 St Clement Danes (RAF church, London) 179, 183–5, 185, 186, 187, 190–2, 208, 210 St Anthony’s College (Oxford) 213 St Maria im Kapitol (Cologne) 189 St Paul’s Cathedral (London) 227 St Petersburger Strasse (Dresden) 206 Salome 128

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index SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) 109 SALT II 304n.32 Sanssouci Palace (Potsdam) 207–8, 217, 239 Saundby, Sir Robert 75–7 Saxony state parliament (Landtag) 241, 243, 257–8, 264 Schaefer, Hansjürgen 133 Schalk-Golodowski, Alexander 134 Schill, Gerhard 121 Schily, Otto 245, 264 Schleswig-Holstein (Germany) 243 Schmidt, Helmut 134–5, 138, 141, 146, 256, 306n.63, 307n.73 Schnatz, Helmut 9–10 Schneider, Jens 228 Schneider, Wolf 103 Scholl, Hans and Sophie 246 Schönfelder, Gerd 122, 124, 131 Schröder, Gerhard 174, 227, 235–6, 241–2, 245, 255–7, 259, 262, 264 Schuch, Ernst von 132 Schuch, Liesel von 132 Schütze, Christian 110, 166 Scotsman 255 SDI (Strategic Defence Initiative, ‘Star Wars’) 124–5 Sebald, W.G. 30–3 Second World War 1, 11, 16, 19, 25, 35–6, 47, 60, 71, 85, 97–101, 121–2, 150–1, 160, 163, 171, 186, 189, 192–3, 204, 208, 216, 219, 236–7, 250, 256–8 SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) 21, 40, 82, 89–91, 94, 98, 101, 104, 108–10, 116, 119, 125–6, 130–2, 134, 137, 146–7, 166, 177 Segev, Tom 249 Semper, Gottfried 128–9, 132, 171–3 Semper, Manfred 128 Semperoper (Semper Opera House) 14, 23, 40, 116, 118–22, 124–36, 131, 140–1, 143, 146, 153, 156, 165, 170, 177, 246, 261, 269, 273, 305n.38, 306n.48, 308n.96 Seven Years War 173 Seydewitz, Max 8, 73–9, 87–8, 169, 258 SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) 55, 62 Shaffran, Gerhard 121 Shalikashvili, John 218 Shell 235 Sinclair, Sir Archibald 62, 342n.116 Sindermann, Horst 121, 133 Sivan, Emmanuel 15 Skopje (Macedonia) 116 Slaughterhouse–Five 8 Smith, Alan 228 Smith, Frank 228 Sobtschak, Anatolij 218 Solidarity (Polish movement) 112 Sommer, Theo 118, 129–30

Sonntag (Germany) 103 Sophie-Dorothea of Hanover 207 South Africa 167, 238, 331n.17 Soviet Union 90, 109, 123, 167, 304n.31, 304n.32, 310 n.24, 311n.27 Soviet Zone of Occupation (Sowjetische Besatzungszone, SBZ) 22, 28, 73–5, 77, 84, 90, 122, 139, 165, 171 Spaatz, Carl ‘Toohey’ 63 Spanish Civil War 47 Spengler, Oswald 125 Stalingrad, 47, 123, 258, 261 Stasi 112–13, 167, 317n.108 Steel, Lord 213 Steingart, Gabor 244–5 Steinmayr, Jochen 132 Stettin (Germany) 53, 56 Stolpe, Manfred 207, 217 Stoph, Willi 108–9, 121, 133 Strauss, Richard 128–9, 132, 308n.96 Straw, Jack 236 Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich) 38, 103, 110, 118– 19, 123, 134–5, 153, 166, 201, 203, 228 Südwestkirchhof (Stahnsdorf cemetery) 238 Sun (UK) 195, 203, 241, 332n.31 Sunday Telegraph (UK) 201 Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) 68 Svenska Morgonbladet (Sweden) 68 Swastika 241 Swords into Ploughshares (Schwerter zu Pflugscharen) 112 Sydney Morning Herald 244 Sznaider, Natan 15, 29, 43, 267 Tagesschau (Germany) 260 Tagesspiegel (Berlin) 36, 262, 344n.135 Tannhäuser 128 Target Dresden 8 Taylor, Frederick 9, 11, 34, 84, 250–1, 279n.37, 339n.94 Tehran (Iran) 258 Ten Dyke, Elizabeth 148, 317n.108 Thälmann, Ernst 21–2, 85 Thatcher, Sir Denis 192 Thatcher, Lady Margaret 192, 196 Theaterplatz (Dresden) 116, 120–1, 130, 146, 169, 246, 261, 265, 308n.85 Theresienstadt (Nazi camp) 123; name inscribed at Dresden cemetery’s Rondell 101 Thunderclap Plan 61–2, 65 Tichvin, Simon von 216 The Times (London) 76, 190–1, 200–1, 203–4, 208–9, 219, 224–5, 227, 252, 344n.135 Tokyo 9 Torry, Sir Peter 234–5, 240, 330n.2 Transport Plan 55, 63, 71 Treblinka (Nazi extermination camp) 97, 217 Trizone (occupied western Germany) 83 Two-Plus-Four Agreement 150, 310n.24 Tygodnik Powszechny (Kraków) 16–17

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the dresden firebombing Ulbricht, Walter 92, 312n.43 Ullrich, Michael 170–1 Ulrich, Bernd 245 Union Jack 194–5 United Nations 109, 150 United States of America 77, 78–9, 98, 125, 137, 158, 218, 221, 258, 310n.24, 330n.2 United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) 58 University Church (Oxford) 226 Unter den Linden (Berlin) 236 USAAF see US Eighth Air Force US Eighth Air Force 45, 55, 58, 61–5, 74, 87 VE Day (8 May 1945) 1, 57, 117, 183, 243 Venice Charter 160–2 Vergangenheitsbewältigung 26–7, 96, 198 victims of fascism (Opfer des Faschismus) 21–3, 85, 91–2, 98–9, 102, 171, 173, 177, 252 Victoria (Great Aunt ‘Vicky’) 199, 207, 239 Vienna 61, 298n.72, 307n.73 Vietnam 104 Vietnam War 78, 98, 104–5, 194, 258 Virtuosi Saxoniae 165 Vodafone 235, 238 Vogel, Hans-Jochen 134, 218 Voigt, Udo 242–4, 257–9, 333n.37, 341n.112 Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) 5, 22, 311n.27 Volksgemeinschaft (Nazis’ ‘national community’) 25 Vonnegut, Kurt 8, 65 Voscherau, Henning 169, 217 Wagner, Herbert 189–90, 197, 206, 211–12, 217, 220 Wagner, Richard 128–9, 132, 260 Walker, Lord 213 Walser-Bubis debate 18 War of Annihilation: Crimes of the German Army (Vernichtungskreig: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht) (travelling exhibition) 18 Warsaw 16, 26, 98, 201, 304n.27; bombing of 47; name inscribed at Dresden cemetery’s Rondell 101 Warsaw Ghetto monument 26, 201 Washington Post 148, 281n.74 Watson of Richmond, Lord 213 Weber, Carl Maria von 132–3 Webster, Sir Charles 70–1 Wehrmacht 4, 18–19, 60–1, 91–2, 166, 241

Weidauer, Walter 8, 76–8, 85–6, 94, 103, 120–1, 169, 258 Weimar (Germany) 28, 45, 129 Weimar Republic 21, 236, 242 Weizsäcker, Richard von 138–9, 202, 205, 269 Wende 30, 144–5, 149–50, 154–6, 164, 166–7, 169, 174–6, 178, 197, 267 Werbellinsee (Germany) 134 Wettin dynasty (royal family of Saxony) 59, 126–8, 132, 153 White Rose (anti-Nazi resistance group) 246 white roses, as antifascist symbol 246, 261, 265, 343n.133 Wierling, Dorothee 22 Wilhelm Gustloff (ship) 31 Williams, Bill 104 Williams, Philip 249–50, 253, 259, 337n.71 Vaughan, Ralph Williams 239 Wilson, Sir Andrew 205, 218 Wilson, Harold 110–11 Windsor Castle (UK) 226–7, 237 Winter, Jay 12, 15 Winters, Peter Jochen 124, 130 Wirtschaftszeitung (Germany) 90 Wolfspelz (aka Gruppe Ebischbach) 112–13, 301n.117 Wrocław (formally Breslau) 98, 116; German retreat from 62, 342n.116 Wulffen, Christian 90 Wuppertal 53 Würzburg 302n.2, 342n.122; bombing of 56–7, 59 Wyatt, Woodrow 192 Yalta Conference 60–2 Yugoslavia 28, 61 Young, James E. 28, 275n.6 Zagreb (then in Yugoslavia) 61 ZDF (Germany) 34–6 Zeppelin airships 47 Zertal, Idith 15 Zeughaus (Berlin) 237–8 Ziemer, Christoph 111, 166–7, 169–70, 174–5 Zimmering, Max 87, 217 Zimmermann, Jochen 129, 140–1 Zimmermann, Monika 154, 163, 176 …zum Beispiel Dresden: Schicksal einer Stadt (Wolfgang Paul) 74 Zwinger (Dresden) 120, 136

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