The week I spent in Dresden was absolutely amazing. The city itself is very beautiful, and I can only imagine what it must've looked like before the fire bombing destroyed so much. The Frauenkirche, Dresden's largest protestant church, was turned into a pile of rubble during the bombing and they only finished restoring it a few years ago. For many years during the Soviet occupation of East Germany it staid as a pile of ash and rubble in the middle of the city--perhaps as a reminder of the price paid, perhaps because the soviets simply didn't have the money or motivation to rebuild it. It is now, again, absolutely breathtaking. I can't wait until I can post of some of the pictures, because the restoration job they did was really wonderful.
The other historic buildings in Dresden, especially the Palace and catholic cathedral along the Elbe River, were simply breathtaking. I'm a pretty big sucker for architecture but this absolutely blew me away. I had heard Dresden was beautiful but I really had no idea it would be so lovely.
Of course, much of the city is home now to big block apartments, graffiti, convenience stores, and skyscrapers. It was so thoroughly destroyed that they simply couldn't rebuild everything and so instead chose to try and make something new. The contrast between the beautiful old buildings and the chunky, utilitarian new ones is striking and sad. Many other cities in Germany, such as Frankfurt and Munich, who were heavily bombed, were able to navigate their reconstruction better, perhaps because they were larger or in American controlled territory. Frankfurt chose to become entirely new, and it is now a very nice modern-looking city. Munich on the other hand, chose to restore absolutely as much as possible, and allows no sky scrapers within the inner-city. Dresden, perhaps because of economic and political reasons, is sort of stuck in the middle. Although it wasn't as uniformly beautiful as some other places I've been such as Paris and Prague, something about its disjointedness made me love it more--perhaps for very human it seemed. We are none of us either as modern or beautiful as we would like to be. Always in the middle, a little awkward, like Dresden.
While there, however, we did get to see the incredible 17th and 18th century jewel collection, which includes the largest green diamond in the world. Again I was simply amazed by the artistry and craftmanship of the jewelers, however one thing in particular really stood out to me. One of the most famous court jewelers of the 18th century in Dresden was famous for making miniature statues out of precious stones and metals. He was praised for his realism and attention to detail. His favorite subjects were homeless people, war veterans, and dwarfs. The museum had this incredibly large collection of tiny statues, perhaps 2 inches high, of blind men made of pearls, veterans wearing jade and ruby clothing, propping themselves up on ivory crutches, and beggars holding out delicately gnarled gold hands. It was...shocking. Shocking that it was so detailed and yet so detached. That a man could look at people in such poverty and pain, take the time to note their facial expressions, the misery in their eyes, and create portraits of them made out of jewels with no thought to the contradiction. Art can dehumanize as easily as it reaches out and pulls at our souls. It can turn us into impartial observers who ooh and ahh over the artistry and detail while we turn our cheeks to the poverty it not only illustrates but exacerbates. Art can make us blind.
My brain needs to be defragmented. I have simply seen and done too much for one post--I can't decide what to write and not write. I imagine all the tiny blinking squares of data(the sun glinting off golden church spires, neo-nazi graffiti, chocolate torte, walking in a rainstorm on slippery cobblestone streets) being slowly put into its proper place, collated and coordinated. I'll try to write more soon, once my brain is a little clearer on exactly what it wants to say. I hate not being able to write for an extended period of time--it drives me up the wall! I can't think right without words.
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