Indelible Marks (#6)
February 13th 2013, NOS I – II, Lithograph over monoprint, Unique, 2013
On 13 February each year, Dresden commemorates the bombing of the city. It is a tense day, involving official events and unofficial demonstrations. I attended in 2013 and again in 2015.
In 2013, the main official event took place at the Heidefriedhof cemetery where many of the 25,000 victims of the destruction are buried. Roses were laid at the memorial and at the Rondel, where 14 pillars commemorate sites of atrocity from Coventry to Auschwitz.
By 5pm on that freezing 13 February evening, with freshly fallen snow, Dresden was teeming. 3,500 police from across Germany were on duty on the streets. After a speech from the Mayor, the crowds dispersed to form the Menschen Kette, the symbolic human chain against extremism. At 6pm, for 10 minutes, the entire city fell silent and still, blockaded by a human chain of over 10,000 men, women, and children with linked arms.
At 9.45pm on the New Market square, the image of a giant candle was projected on the baroque façade of the rebuilt Frauenkirche. Then every church bell in the city tolled for 15 minutes. This was the time on a warm spring-like night in 1945 when the first of the Allied bombers appeared in the clear skies over the city.
Later in the evening, nothing was as calm or dignified. Up to 10,000 left wing and anti-fascist protestors set up massive cordons to stop a thousand far right extremists getting beyond the main train station and approaching the Old Town. There were running battles with riot police. 2013 was, however, far less combative than other years, with the police taking an organised ‘softly softly’ approach, and refraining from using the water cannon, tear gas and helicopter surveillance of recent years.
In 2015 the 70th anniversary of the bombing, attended by the President of Germany and the Archbishop of Canterbury passed without noticeable demonstrations. The Neo Nazi’s in the form of the mass movement ‘Pegida’ had recently imploded over a leadership issue and its customary Monday evening ‘strolls’ were suspended.
However, in June 2015, following the resignation on health grounds of CDU incumbent mayor Helma Orosz, Pegida candidate Tatjana Festerling ran to be mayor of Dresden with support of the NPD, polling 9.6% in the first round. The NPD the hard-core political right, often regarded as Neo Nazis, retain a significant presence in Dresden and the former East Germany including holding 8 seats in the Saxony government.
