Indelible Marks (#5)
Blasted; Two part Lithograph over Monoprint, 88 x 128 cms, Unique, 2013.
This image presents the destruction of the city of Dresden, and some of the machines and forces who inflicted it. It includes the remains of the Dresden skyline after the bombing, rubble and maps of areas destroyed. It also shows the cross section of an Avro Lancaster Heavy Bomber and the controls and dashboard of a Lancaster, the aircraft used by the Royal Air Force to carry out the majority of the bombing. On the right a section of the recently erected Bomber Command Memorial in London depicting airman in battle dresses.
An RAF memo issued to airmen of Bomber Command on the night of the attack said;
‘Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany, and not much smaller than Manchester, it is also the largest unbombed built-up area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance... The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front... and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do’.
Dresden artist Otto Greibel’s eyewitness account as he hurried to relative safety of the Elbe;
‘Everywhere we turned, the buildings were on fire. The spark filled air was suffocating, and stung out unprotected eyes. But we could not stay here. Entire chunks of red-hot matter were flying at us. The more we moved into the network of street, the stronger the storm became, hurling burning scraps and objects through the air’.
Klemperer wrote of the morning after the bombing;
We walked slowly, for now I was carrying both bags, and my limbs hurt, along the river bank…Above us, building after building was a burnt out ruin. Down here by the river, where many people were moving along or resting on the ground, masses of the empty, rectangular cases of stick incendiary bombs stuck out of the churned up earth. At times, small and no more than a bundle of clothes, the dead were scattered across our path. …Further from the centre some people had been able to save a few things; they pushed handcarts with bedding and the like or sat on boxes and bundles. Crowds streamed unceasingly between these islands, past the corpses and smashed vehicles, up and down the Elbe, a silent, agitated procession.
As Taylor wrote;
‘The destruction of Dresden has an epically tragic quality to it. It was a wonderfully beautiful city and a symbol of baroque humanism and all that was best in Germany. It also contained all of the worst from Germany during the Nazi period. In that sense it is an absolutely exemplary tragedy for the horrors of 20th century warfare and a symbol of destruction’.
Residual Edifices; Lithograph over Monoprint, 62 x 88 cms, Unique, 2013.
This image explores some of the largely untouched structures and locations that remain in Dresden; the intricate, almost lace-like Blaues Wunder bridge, and the quiet spaces of the old, overgrown Jewish cemetery in Pulsnitzer Strasse. The graves are depicted in the waters of the Elbe, suggesting that the waters resound as much as the city with its past.
In Dresden today, such is the level and skill of reconstruction that it can be difficult to tell apart the genuinely old and the reconstructed. However, of late, planners and architects have taken pains to differentiate and make apparent these differences, such as by leaving the old bricks uncleaned, and using plain cement next to remaining fragments.
The Blue Wonder (Blaues Wunder) is the name for the Loschwitz Bridge, a cantilever truss iron bridge which connects the districts of Blasewitz and Loschwitz. Situated two kms downriver from the Old Town, this masterpiece of 19th Century technology and much-loved symbol of the city was the only bridge left intact after the bombing.
The old Jewish cemetery, with over a thousand graves enclosed by crumbling walls and ornate locked gates, and now filled with lush vegetation, was created in 1751. Situated on Pulsnitzer Strasse it was at the time outside the city walls, as there was significant discrimination against Jews. It was closed to burial in 1869, after the dedication of the New Jewish Cemetery in Johannstadt. This was preceded by many decades of struggle for emancipation
Dresden is a city with a vast culture of commemoration and remembrance, with a focus on the iconic structures of the city, (particularly the reconstructed Frauenkirche) and the crucial dates in its history. These are not only the 13th and 14th February 1945, but also the 9th November 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful ‘liberation’ of East Germany. The citizens of Dresden continue a profound debate about their status and their role as oppressors or victims.
