Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Visual Mediations: Dresden in Postwar Photography and Fine Art

  • Chapter
After the Dresden Bombing

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

  • 244 Accesses

Abstract

Reflecting early in 1945 on Europe’s ruination during the war, the lead writer of The Irish Times paints the bleak picture of a postwar tourist, travelling through a landscape of destruction. The violence of total war has reduced much of Europe’s rich cultural heritage to a desolate pile of rubble:

Dresden itself, one of the loveliest cities in Europe, is said to have been shattered. The Zwinger, probably the finest example of Baroque architecture in Europe, is in ruins according to the German report; the famous Opera House, the Royal Palace, and the Art Gallery — though, fortunately, not Raphael’s Sistine Madonna — have been destroyed. Europe after the war will be a desolate place. The people probably will have little desire to receive visitors, since the work of rehabilitation will occupy them to the full; the ‘show-places’ will be blasted, as the very fields have been scorched. Tourists can look for few attractions, unless they find appeal in ‘tours of the battlefields’.1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Gerhard Paul, Bilder des Krieges–Krieg der Bilder. Die Visualisierung des modernen Krieges (Paderborn, Munich: Schöningh/Fink, 2004), 14.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Vicky Goldberg, The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed our World (New York: Abbeville Press, 1991), 135.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Ernst Volland, ‘Die Flagge des Sieges’, in E. Volland and Heinz Krimmer (eds), Jewgeni Chaldej: Der bedeutende Augenblick. Eine Retrospektive (Leipzig: Neuer Europa Verlag, 2008), 112–23. On Joe Rosenthal see chapter 4 in Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 93–136.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003), 74.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera’s Eye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 108.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Ibid., 118–27, Jörn Glasenapp, Die deutsche Nachkriegsfotografie: Eine Mentalitätsgeschichte in Bildern (Munich: Fink, 2008), 75.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Cornelia Brink, ‘Secular Icons’, History and Memory: Studies in Representations of the Past 12 (2000): 135–50 (here 144);

    Google Scholar 

  8. Cornelia Brink, Ikonen der Vernichtung: Öffentlicher Gebrauch von Fotografien aus nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern nach 1945 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  9. See also Dagmar Barnouw, Germany 1945: Views of War and Violence (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  10. An early analysis of the effectiveness of the re-education campaign was published in 1946. See Morris Janowitz, ‘German Reactions to Nazi Atrocities’, American Journal of Sociology 52 (1946): 141–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Bernd Hüppauf, ‘Experiences of Modern Warfare and the Crisis of Representation’, New German Critique 59 (1993): 41–76 (here 55).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. On the perception of nature as landscape see Georg Simmel, ‘Philosophie der Landschaft’, in Das Individuum und die Freiheit. Essais (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1984), 130–38.

    Google Scholar 

  13. William Vandivert, ‘The German People’, Life, 7 May 1945.

    Google Scholar 

  14. On this photograph see Martin Caiger-Smith, ‘Bilder vom Feind’, in M. Caiger-Smith (ed.), Bilder vom Feind: Englische Pressefotografen im Nachkriegsdeutschland (Berlin: D. Nishen, 1990), 5–26 (here 16).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Richard Peter, Eine Kamera klagt an (Dresden: Dresdener Verlagsgesellschaft, 1949).

    Google Scholar 

  16. See Katrin Peters-Klaphake, ‘Die fotojournalistischen Jahre von Henry Ries, 1946–1951’, in K. Peters-Klaphake and Dieter Vorsteher (eds), Brennpunkt Berlin–die Blockade 1948/49: der Fotojournalist Henry Ries (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 2008), 93.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kurt Schaarschuch, Bilddokument Dresden 1933–1945, ed. Dresden City Council (Dresden: Druckerei der Sächsischen Volkszeitung, 1946).

    Google Scholar 

  18. See Jörn Glasenapp, Die deutsche Nachkriegsfotografie, 100–32;Christine Mielke, ‘Geisterstädte. Literarische Texte und Bilddokumentationen zur Städtebombardierung des Zweiten Weltkrieges und die Personifizierung des Urbanen’, in Andreas Böhn, Christine Mielke (eds), Die zerstörte Stadt: Mediale Repräsentationen urbaner Räume von Troja bis SimCity (Berlin: Transcript, 2007), 125–80 (here 140–44). Both Glasenapp and Mielke read Peter’s photo book from the perspective of the polemical poem that precedes the photos, a reading that short-circuits the semantic of Peter’s photography considerably. Throughout her discussion, Mielke refers to Richard Peter as Rolf Peter.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Georg Simmel, ‘Die Ruine’, in Philosophische Kultur: Über das Abenteuer, die Geschlechter und die Krise der Moderne. Gesammelte Essais (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1998), 118–24 (here 120).

    Google Scholar 

  20. See Peter Fritzsche, Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2004), 56.

    Google Scholar 

  21. See Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (Munich: Piper, 1967).

    Google Scholar 

  22. On this issue see Anne Fuchs, ‘A Heimat in Ruins and the Ruins as Heimat: W. G. Sebald’s Luftkrieg und Literatur’, in Anne Fuchs, Mary Cosgrove and Georg Grote (eds), German Memory Contests; The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film and Discourse since 1990 (Rochester: Camden House, 2006), 287–302;

    Google Scholar 

  23. Carolin Duttlinger, ‘A Lineage of Destruction? Rethinking Photography in Luftkrieg und Literatur’, in Anne Fuchs and J. J. Long (eds), W. G. Sebald and the Writing of History (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2007), 163–78.

    Google Scholar 

  24. For a detailed analysis of these and other artistic representations see Manuela Uhlmann, ‘Bilder des Untergangs. Das zerstörte Dresden in Graphik und Malerei’, in Walter Schmitz (ed.), Die Zerstörung Dresdens: Antworten der Künste (Dresden: Thelem, 2005), 141–59.

    Google Scholar 

  25. See Ulrich Bischoff and Andreas Henning (eds), Georg Baselitz–Dresdner Frauen, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Cologne: DuMont, 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  26. For a detailed biography and a reproduction of these and other works see Martin Schmidt’s comprehensive monograph Wilhelm Rudolph in Licht und Dunkelheit (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  27. Wilhelm Rudolph, ‘Das zerstörte Dresden’, in Wilhelm Rudolph: Gemälde–Zeichnungen–Holzschnitte, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National-Galerie), 23/02–17/04/1977 (Berlin: Ost, 1977), 99.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Wilhelm Rudolph, Dresden 1945. Holzschnitte und Federzeichnungen, with an essay by Horst Drescher (Leipzig: Reclam, 1983), 28.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Martin Damus, Kunst in der BRD 1945–1990: Funktionen der Kunst in einer demokratisch verfassten Gesellschaft (Rowohlt: Reinbek, 1995), 65.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory. The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997), 106–200. Herf focuses on the case of Paul Merker, a prominent Communist victim of the Stalinist purges.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Richard Grusin and Jay David Bolter, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT,1999).

    Google Scholar 

  32. See also Astrid Erll, Prämediation–Remediation: Repräsentationen des indischen Aufstands in imperialen und post-kolonialen Medienkulturen (von 1857 bis zur Gegenwart) (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2007), 31.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory (New York: Vintage, 1999), 688.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Johan Hofer, ‘Dissertatio medica de Nostalgia vulgo Heimwehe’, Basel, 1678.

    Google Scholar 

  35. On the history of the concept see Jean Starobinski, ‘The Idea of Nostalgia’, Diogenes 54 (1966): 81–103;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Simon Bunke, Heimweh. Studien zur Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte einer tödlichen Krankheit (Freiburg i. Br.: Rombach Litterae, 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  37. Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, CA: California UP, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  38. Elizabeth Boa, ‘Global Intimations: Cultural Geography in Buddenbrooks, Tonio Kröger, and Der Tod in Venedig’, Oxford German Studies 35 (2006): 21–33 (here 22).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001).

    Google Scholar 

  40. Fritz Löffler, Das alte Dresden: Geschichte seiner Bauten (Dresden: Sachsenverlag, 1956).

    Google Scholar 

  41. On the Baroque notion of vanitas see Ferdinand van Ingen, Vanitas und Memento mori in der deutschen Barocklyrik (Groningen: Wolters, 1966);

    Google Scholar 

  42. Christian Kiening, Das andere Selbst: Figuren des Todes an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit (Munich: Fink; 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  43. Harald Kimpel (ed.), Die vertikale Gefahr: Luftkrieg in der Kunst. Eine Publikation zum 50. Jahrestag der Zerstörung Kassels (Marburg: Jonas, 1993), 25.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of St Andrews, UK

    Anne Fuchs

Authors
  1. Anne Fuchs
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2012 Anne Fuchs

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Fuchs, A. (2012). Visual Mediations: Dresden in Postwar Photography and Fine Art. In: After the Dresden Bombing. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230359529_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation