GERMANY: DRESDEN

 Sunday, May 18, 2025

We were up at 7:00 AM, ate breakfast in our hotel at 8:00, and left at 8:45 to catch a 9:00 church service.

Except . . . I failed as navigator and took us to the wrong church. Somehow we ended up at Christ Church, a Lutheran church whose claim to fame is that it is Dresden's only remaining church with two steeples and was the first Art Nouveau church in Germany. It was built in 1903-1905 and was badly damaged by bombs during the bombing in February 1945 that destroyed much of the city. (More on the bombing in a minute.) It was repaired enough to make it usuable in 1950-1951 and thoroughly restored in 1973-1980.

We walked all around the church searching for an unlocked door, but we didn't find one. We did discover this beautiful sculpture of Christ with a lovely green patina. It made it worth the stop.

We finally found the church we had been looking for, the Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady. 

The church was destroyed during the infamous February 1945 firebombing of Dresden, a joint RAF and USAF operation that included four attacks over three days, destroying more than 1,600 acres of the city's center and killing approximately 25,000 people. This bombing preceded the bombing of my mother's hometown of Pforzheim by ten days, and she would often weep on the anniversary of this event as well as on the anniversary of the bombing of Pforzheim.

Dresden after the bombing. From Wikipedia.

A bronze plaque in the square shares this memory from Church Inspector Weinert (translated here from the German): "On Thursday, February 15th, around 11 a.m., as I was entering the dead city, searching for the cathedral dome in the milky fog, I was shocked to see nothing. An hour earlier, my wife, searching for me, had witnessed this tragedy: after an initial, quiet crackling, the dome slowly collapsed, and then, with a tremendous bang, the outer walls of the church burst, and a pitch-black cloud of dust filled the entire area."

View from City Hall after the bombing. 

The earliest church built on this site was an 11th century Romanesque Catholic church that was converted to a Protestant church during the Reformaion. THAT church was replaced in the 18th century by a Baroque Lutheran church that featured one of the largest domes to date in Europe. After the church was destroyed in 1945, it lay in ruins as a war memorial until 1994, when efforts began to rebuild it, along with the buildings in Neumarkt (New Market) Square.

On the left is what it looked like when it was a new church in the 18th century (Painting by Bernardo Bellotto, 1749-1751). The reconstruction is impressively accurate. But what is that statue in front of the church? I'll give you one guess.

It's none other than our old friend the Great Reformer, Martin Luther himself. I'll bet you aren't surprised.

But what IS surprising is that he survived the bombing that reduced his church to rubble. This statue was erected in 1885 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Luther's birth. Incredible.

From Wikipedia

As we had done at the previous church, we circumnavigated the building, checking all the doors, but finding all of them locked. We heard that there would be some kind of service later in the morning, so we decided to explore the rest of the square and wait for the chance to go inside. We stopped to say hello to Frederick Augustus II, King of Saxony from 1836-1854.

We paid our respects to the Friedensbrunnen, or Peace Fountain

We sat for a bit in the (free) courtyard of the Dresden Castle, one of the oldest buildings in Dresden and now a museum. Admission into the castle itself cost quite a few euros, and we decided the courtyard was sufficient.

The glass roof gave us a good view of the sky, and Stan and Bob appeared to enjoy having a chance to rest.

Sitting made us hungry, so we headed over to the Emil Reimann Cafe for a nutritious breakfast.

But finally, FINALLY, we found what we had been anxiously searching for all morning! This shop is "Typical Saxon Ice Cream."

They are a little edgy about people touching their stuff, but who can blame them?

The Frauenkirche finally unlocked their doors and we were able to get a seat off to one side near the front. Such a beautiful church, and very unlike the more stripped-down Lutheran churches we'd seen so far--although they too are beautiful. Hooray for the Baroque period of architecture!

Rather than a traditional church service, the program was a cantata with a string orchestra and full choir. The pastor delivered a brief sermon (in German, of course), but the majority of the program was music.

The layered balconeys remind me of an opera house, and it seemed a fitting setting for the soaring voices.

Back outside, we wandered around a little bit longer, soaking up the atmosphere. Who came to church in this buggy?

I wonder how many "Cannons with cannon" pictures we've taken over the years.

This raised-bed herb garden outside a restaurant made me want a similar one at home.

On our way back to our car we passed this interesting sculpture, "Great Mourning Man" by Wieland Förster. Wikipedia says that a "recurring theme of [Förster's] work is victimhood, reflecting his own youthful experiences during the incineration of Dresden in February 1945 and the Soviet justice system between 1946 and 1950." This sculpture is dedicated to the victims of 13 February 1945.

The building behind it is part of the Kunstakademie, or Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. It had to be partially reconstructed after the bombing during World War II.

Good-bye, Dresden. I'm so glad I finally got to see you after hearing about you so many times from my mother. You are still beautiful.

Off to Nuremberg.