Reading Dresden

LIKE NO OTHER GERMAN CITY, Dresden has become a symbolically laden placeholder for German collective and cultural memory since the end of the Second World War. Dresden’s status as a national and global memory space was underlined by the consecration of the rebuilt Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) in October 2005, a symbolic act of reconciliation that recognized the memory of the past while gesturing to a new beginning. Originally designed by George Bähr and built in the mid-eighteenth century, the church collapsed on 15 February 1945, when its supportive structure succumbed to extensive heat damage after the firestorm of the previous day. Contemporary eyewitnesses perceived its collapse as the traumatic signature of a completely wanton attack on one of Europe’s greatest cultural treasure troves. Sixty years after the war, the re-consecration of the Frauenkirche became the stage par excellence for the performance of a dramaturgy of remembrance that aims to reconcile the memory of a traumatic past with the exaltation of a new beginning.

The following chapter argues that Dresden’s iconicity as a city with a traumatic legacy that has managed to rebuild itself with a newly gained sense of pride is the product of a Dresden discourse that originated in the immediate postwar period. Although this narrative has subsequently been remolded and adapted through a range of genres and media, it never lost a hot narrative kernel that, as I argue, encapsulates the experience of historical excess. To understand the transmission and function of this impact narrative, the chapter discusses three responses to the bombing of Dresden: first, Gerhart Hauptmann’s famous lament at the end of his life (1945); second, Richard Peter’s photo book Eine Kamera klagt an (A Camera Accuses, 1949); and third, Dürs Grünbein’s poetic cycle Porzellan: Poem vom Untergang meiner Stadt (Porcelain: Poem about the Demise of My City, 2005). However, before analyzing the representation of excess in these texts, it is necessary to reflect on the notion of cultural impact and its theoretical precursor, reception theory.

From Reception toward Impact

From a theoretical perspective, the idea of impact can be seen as a development of the notion of reception as it was debated by the Constance School from the 1970s onwards.