Travelogue: Dresden

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.” -- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

Of all the places I've visited, Dresden, Germany was the place that really wowed me. I knew nothing about Dresden until I visited the city on a business trip about seven years ago. How did I get to be a grown-up and not yet know about Dresden? Hmmm. Well, for one thing, I had not read Slaughterhouse Five, or anything else by Vonnegut for that matter, prior to that trip. I remember steering clear of his books in the library because I had heard, and accepted as true, that the books and Vonnegut were "depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian." What I accidentally learned by visiting Dresden was that this appraisal of Vonnegut and his books was patently wrong -- because Dresden stoked my curiosity to actually pick up Slaughterhouse Five and try reading it myself. The moral? Don't judge things based on the assessment of others -- Think for yourself. Such began my love affair with Kurt Vonnegut, and my flirtation with questioning everything. That, perhaps, will be the subject of another blog. We were talking about Dresden.

Dresden, and the idea that there are more than two sides to every story. Dresden, stoic example of patience, determination, and the human ability to recover and to rebuild.

The British and American air forces exploded 3900 tons of bombs on Dresden from February 13-15, 1945. Destroyed were 12,000 homes; 24 banks; 26 insurance buildings; 31 stores; 6470 shops; 640 warehouses; 256 market halls; 31 large hotels; 26 public houses; 63 administrative buildings; 3 theatres; 18 cinemas; 11 churches; 60 chapels; 50 cultural-historical buildings; 19 hospitals; 39 schools; 5 consulates; 1 zoo; 1 waterworks, 1 railway facility; 19 postal facilities; 4 tram facilities; 19 ships and barges; and 19 military hospitals. And people, of course -- killed, maimed, emotionally wrecked.

Total devastation.

That happened seventeen years before I was born. And now here I sat, dining al fresco of an evening while the sun set on a delicious potato and sausage soup, hearty brown bread heavy with nuts and apple chunks, and a soft and light Dresden red wine, in the midst of what had been a wasteland of sorrow and destruction sixty years before. With our enemies, my German colleagues. We didn't talk about the war, or about how people have more in common with one another than they do with their governments. We talked about the rebuilding. Our table was on the plaza near this impressive baroque church, Frauenkirche ("Church of Our Lady" see postcard above from 1930's, before the war), and so I heard from my friends about how after the war ,when the Soviets had control of Dresden in East Germany there was no money and no expertise to rebuild the great church, the government wanted to clear away the rubble and put up a parking lot.

The people said no. The pile of rocks and debris stood in place there for forty years.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery:  "A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."

After the reunification of Germany the preservationists of Dresden put out a call to the world to help rebuild the church as a symbol of peace. They started in 1994 with an eighteen-month archaeological clearance and cataloging of the stones. Skilled masons were able to use original pieces for about forty percent of the building, which they built to the same specifications as the original. It took eleven years, until 2005, to complete. I sat in 2007 looking in awe at a brand-new, old cathedral with a patchwork appearance, a mixture of the burned with the new. It was one of the more truly memorable and meaningful moments in my life.



If this were the only fantastic thing in Dresden, it would be enough. But the city is totally rebuilt and absolutely lovely. Here is a picture I took of another patchwork church, which looked just awesome against the darkening sky.

And I leave you here below with a postcard view of modern Dresden, vibrant and rebuilt. War is an ugly, destructive beast. But the capacity for people to come together in peace, to build things of beauty, and to share a meal and a story -- that is Dresden to me.

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” -- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five