Dave’s reflection on the Dresden visit

Below we are pleased to publish Dave Hirons recollection of the visit to Dresden.

Our visit to Dresden was made up of a number of exceptional experiences.

It was 1800 miles of driving, there and back, but, having the car, gave us the freedom to stop as Linda required and we were able to get a good sense of the changing landscape from the flatness of Belgium and Holland, through the urbanisation of the Ruhr around Duisburg, Essen and Dortmund, out beyond Kassel to the hilly and forested region of Thuringia and, finally, to the picturesque Ezegebirge (Ore Mountains) and Saxon Switzerland adjacent to which Dresden nestles on the banks of the Elbe.

We’d had a few interesting experiences with hotels along the route, notably all the electricity going off as Linda entered the reception area at the hotel in Ashford leaving us without light or heat until the early hours of the following morning. Following on from a couple of other mishaps on the way down from Coventry, it wasn’t a great start to the journey. On the other hand, at our hotel stop in Venlo – right on the border between the Netherlands and Germany – we found a quite comfortable hotel in the form of the “Van Der Valk” where we enjoyed the local Swinckels Bier and savoured our schnitzels. By contrast, the hotel in Kassel was nothing to write home about and we realised that we needed to take advantage of the opportunity to cancel our return booking and make other arrangements elsewhere on the route back from Dresden, namely in Eisenach.

We knew that some members of the “Coventry” group would be visiting Chemnitz on Wednesday and, as we had some time on our hands – not wanting to arrive in Dresden before 16:00 – we made a diversion to see what the bestowing of the title of “European Capital of Culture 2025” on the former Karl-Marx Stadt and the surrounding Central Saxony might amount to. Unfortunately, in spite of driving around for half an hour or so, it didn’t amount to much – in our experience – with very little hoo-hah proclaiming the fact or advertising what was going on. The motto for Chemnitz 2025 – “C the Unseen” – was very apt as we failed to uncover the “previously unseen” or cast our eyes upon the “undiscovered visible”.

So, on to Dresden, zooming down into it from the hills above the city (see, Rainer’s blog “Dresden my Dresden: A view from the far side” on the CAIF website).

The Maritim Hotel was something that we couldn’t have expected to find. Chosen for its reasonably close proximity to Theaterplatz and with its availability of car parking, this conversion of the former Erlweinspeicher warehouse, built in 1913, has an interior that is a spectacular conversion in a somewhat Art Deco style. Although we had the feeling, as we were elevated up to the ninth floor, that we were in a kind of luxurious Cell Block-H, the room at the top which we had been allocated was comfortable enough and had a view out on to the Elbe with the Neustadt behind it and, as I later discovered, a statue of Felix Dostoevsky stoically contemplating autocracy, as he must have done when he spent the years 1862 to 1871 in Dresden drafting his novel “The Demons”.

On the first day after our arrival we were able to visit the Altes Meisters (Old Masters) collection (Raphael, Rembrandt and Vermeer) in the Zwinger, and the Neue Meisters in the Albertinum, with its collection from Romanticism through to the present day, including an impressive collection of Casper David Friedrich paintings.

Thursday 13 February was the most important day of our visit as, with three other members of our party, three of the “Coventry” group – Clive, Lisa and myself, plus Rainer – attended the Lord Mayor’s reception in the Rathaus, at which the ageing Duke of Kent made the introductory remarks – he is the President of the Dresden Trust who have done much to support the redevelopment of the Frauenkirche and who are now actively supporting educational links between Germany and the UK. 

The Lord Mayor’s theme for this year’s commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the bombings is “Zukunft durch Erinnerung”, the future through remembering, and he had placed the emphasis on engaging with young people as evidenced by the presence of two students from Warwick University, in Dresden to represent Coventry, one of whom turned out to be a former pupil of Lisa’s at Lyng Hall School in Coventry. Some of the other young people in attendance were representing one or other of Dresden’s twin cities, but we were pleased to make our presence felt as representatives of Coventry and of international friendship, meeting the Mayor, Dirk Hilbert, and sharing a table with a survivor of the bombings in February 1945, Manfred Rüffer. On our way out from the Reception we met and spoke with Ernst Hirsch, a renowned 80 year-old film maker from Dresden who was carrying with him a copy of the book, “Memento Dresden 1945: Gedenkbuch der Namen”, a compilation of 21,500 names of the victims from the bombing of Dresden on February 13-15, 1945, a tribute to the known and unknown dead from that night of terror, including eyewitness accounts.

Later, members of our party took part in the “Human Chain”, the anti-fascist bonding around the Neumarkt to stop the Far Right from taking over the marketplace to make their claims on the remembrance process. Unfortunately, because of the snow, Linda wasn’t able to take part in this, but she had a very good view down on to the proceedings as Monika had rented an apartment looking right down onto the Frauenkirche.

After this, we went to the Kulturpalast to attend a performance of Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem”, first performed in Coventry Cathedral at its inauguration in 1962. It was a magnificent rendition by the Dresden Philharmonie under the direction of British Conductor Donald Runnicles. Unfortunately, again, getting to the Kulturpalast was very difficult for Linda as she wasn’t able to walk through the Neumarkt and Altmarkt to get to the Kulturpalast and I had to drive her by car to the rear of the Kreuzkirche as the roads leading to the Kulturpalast had been closed off by a heavy police presence intended to corral the Far Right demonstrators in and around the Altmarkt. Eventually, after an arduous walk through snow and slush, we made it to the venue.

The long day’s journey into night was completed by a visit to the Frauenkirche for the “Nacht der Stimmen” (Night of the Voices) in which the famous Dresden poet Durs Grünbein gave readings and Coventry’s own the Reverend Dean John Witcombe, made an address to the congregation. The Dean was rather surprised to be greeted by a number of people from Coventry at the end of the proceedings.

On Friday we met with a legendary photographer of Dresden’s Neustadt, Günter Starke, and his partner Christine, who has also been a documentary photographer of Dresden since the early 1980’s. We were welcomed very kindly by them at an office of Die Linke (The Left Party), which is located in Martin-Luther Platz in the Neustadt. Günter spoke about the development of his work after he had relocated to the area in the late 1970’s and about his provocative work during the period of “Die Wende” when all the social and political norms of the GDR were breaking down. The Neustadt had been a place to which people could retreat to escape from the immediate attention of the Stasi and from the oppressive propaganda of the regime and, since reunification, had been a bohemian redoubt against the insurgent ‘Wessi’ commerciality. Sadly, as Christine told us, gentrification was now driving the artists and studios out of the Neustadt. They both have fascinating personal and professional histories, and we are hoping that they will be able to come to Coventry in September this year to exhibit their work.

In the evening we had a fruitful social meeting with our counterparts in the Deutsch-Britische-Gesellschaft DBG) where we shared our thoughts on international friendship and on how we can continue to sustain and develop the links between our two cities.

On Saturday, a quite unique visit had been arranged for us by the chair of the DBG, Michael Hebeis, to make a visit to a Jewish Centre which is housed in buildings of the Leipziger Bahnhof, the old railway station from which many people considered to be “Untermenschen” by the Nazis were sent to the concentration and extermination camps. The “Jüdische Kultusgemeinde Dresden” has been established by Rabbi Akiva Weingarten as a liberal Jewish community. Rabbi Akiva is a young, charismatic Rabbi who wears Hasidic clothing on the Shabbat and supports Jewish people who have left the Haredi communities to make a transition to a non-Orthodox life. With about 200 members and a community synagogue in the Neustadt, Rabbi Weingarten gives sermons often using Hasidic stories and explanations of the Torah, but with a liberal and contemporary interpretation. They kindly provided us with food and we had a very interesting exchange about their lives in Dresden and how they saw the current political situation in Germany.

After such impressionable experiences, the following day, Sunday, was probably the most memorable one of the visit on my part.

Firstly, with Lisa and Sylvia, we attended the award of the Dresden Peace Prize 2025 which took place in the Semperoper, the Opera House, at which Marko Bosnjak, President of the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR), was given the prize. It was an impressive ceremony with several speeches by Saxon politicians – in German – with a big emphasis on “Freheit” (Freedom) and “Demokratie” (Democracy). There was a series of musical interludes with a range of music from classical to jazz and folk.

After this Linda went off with one of our Dresden friends, Ildiko, for a meal at her house out in the country, while I was taken by car, with Lisa and Michael, by our friend Rainer, out to the town of Pirna. Here we visited the Sonnenstein Euthanasia Clinic, a killing centre located in the former fortress of Sonnenstein Castle, where a hospital had been established in 1811 but which the Nazis turned into one of their notorious killing centres. Here, between June 1940 and September 1941 a total of 13,720 people had their lives terminated in the gas chamber in the basement for no reason other than that they were considered to be worthless human beings. Whilst I was able to take part in the guided tour given by a Dresden Technical University friend of Nikolai’s, I felt unable to go down into the basement with the others.

On our return to Dresden, I did something that most people in Dresden that I met were somewhat bemused by as I went to see Dynamo Dresden play – a match against 1860 Munich which they won 5-2. The football team in Dresden is a fairly proletarian devotion for the locals the reputation of which is quite frequently tainted by the behaviour of their ‘Ultras’, the extreme supporters who pack out the ‘K’ Block behind the goal.

It was a somewhat prosaic ending to what had been a day of marked contrasts.

The “Coventry” group consisted of some 20 people all of whom will have had their own experiences in Dresden and I am aware that Linda and I were not able to take part in some of the other visits and events which took place, so, I look forward to having the gaps filled in the “Coventry Chronology in Dresden”.

I cannot express with any greater satisfaction the fact that “Coventry” was so well represented in Dresden at this important time, with so much thanks necessarily being given to Monika and Nikolai for having done so much of the liaison – with Rainer, with Mathilde in the International Office of Dresden City Council and with Ulrich Hartenstein, our historical guide at Pirna. It was an especial pleasure to see Magda again and she inspired me – as ever – to question myself on the subjects of “Truth” and “Beauty”, inspired on her part by the poetry of Emily Dickinson and, for myself, by encountering the residue of Winckelmann’s theories on beauty in the restored but living environment of Dresden-on-the-Elbe.

At a time when the British Council – set up to promote understanding of Britain through cultural and educational co-operation with countries all over the world and having acted as a powerful ambassador for liberal and democratic values – is coming under pressure with the prospect of having to implement swingeing budget cuts which may result in the ending of the Council’s presence in up to 40 countries, it would seem that our visit to Dresden and our participation in a number of important events and exchanges was more than ever necessary as we played our part in helping to forge partnerships, deepen relationships, and maintain the strengths and purposes of the twinning movement that was begun in Coventry after World War Two.

At a time of growing global insecurity and mistrust, the links that each of us is able to create can produce an invaluable resource of goodwill, esteem and mutuality with the potential for a number of resultant cultural and educational spin-offs. On the occasion of this important anniversary in Dresden this was an opportunity for us as a group and as individuals to make an important contribution to the promotion of the never-ending pursuit of peace, reconciliation and international friendship and I hope that everyone had a fruitful experience.

So, last Monday, Linda and I set off on the long trek back but we took the opportunity to stay the night in Eisenach, a pretty old Thuringian town noted for its associations with Martin Luther (who began his translation of the Bible here), the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (born in Eisenach in 1685), the dominating Wartburg Castle on a hill overlooking the town, and the AWE (Automobile Welt Eisenach), a car museum located in the old Automobilwerk Eisenach factory site, one of the world’s oldest, which opened as a museum in 2005 utilising a building from 1935. This museum chronicles the history of car manufacturing in Eisenach from 1899, through the Dixi and BMW pre-war years, and the development of the German Democratic Republic car industry with EMW, IFA and Wartburg, and the post-unification Opel models. Our hotel was next to the ‘Lutherhaus’ – where Martin Luther stayed as a schoolboy – and the ‘Bachhaus’ Museum, and we could see that it was an area that attracted hikers from all over this part of Germany and afar who come to enjoy the delights of the Thuringian Forest and the River Werra Valley.

It was here that the liberation of Thuringia was completed over a period of two weeks when, in April 1945, American troops advanced towards Werra. Despite the rapid advance and military superiority, regional Nazi officials continued to call for resistance. With the liberation of Buchenwald, the US soldiers were confronted for the first time with the human suffering in the concentration camps. The 16 days in April 1945 marked the end of the Nazi “Mustergau (Model District)” of Thuringia and sealed the looming end of the Third Reich. On the way in to Eisenach we visited the German War Cemetery at Dürrerhof where the remains of 375 German soldiers are interred.

After returning through the Ruhr to stay the night in a hotel in Venlo on the Holland-German border, we went on to visit Ypres as we will be attending a Symposium in Ypres and Dunkirk in May this year and wanted to check out the venue and facilities.

The drive back from Ashford to Coventry took 4 hours, as long as it had taken most of our stages getting to and from Dresden on smooth and open roads, and I have to say that driving in the UK is not an activity that fills me with any great pleasure!