13. February

What is the first thing you think of when you hear “Dresden”?

Probably not August the Strong, or steamboats on the Elbe River, or art in the Zwinger. Perhaps the Semperoper? (Gram!) Or maybe the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), the enormous (Protestant) church that the East German government left in ruins while rebuilding the rest of the city? Just a few years ago the church’s reconstruction was completed and it was opened to the public; you can see its dome in the photo above. For decades it symbolized the destructiveness of the Second World War, destruction unleashed by the Nazis and brought to this capital city near the border with the Czechoslovakia and Poland by Allied bombers following the orders of military and political commanders heedless of the historical treasures and the thousands of westward-fleeing refugees alike. Probably when you hear “Dresden,” you think of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s, semi-autobiograhical Slaughterhouse-Five and the fire-bombing that took place the night of 13-14 February, 1945.

The anniversary of the destruction of the “Florence of the Elbe” is a major event every year, even 66 years later managing to overshadow the commercial hype of the saint’s feast celebrated the next day. This is because what happened that Shrove Tuesday night is a matter not just of historical debate but of active, contested, collective memory. For decades the Communists maintained that the air raid by more than 1000 planes of the Royal and United States Air Forces killed 100,000 people, mostly innocent refugees, a number inflated by Cold War politics. Most historians today postulate at least 25,000, although due to the confused movements of masses of people in what turned out to be the last months of the war, it will never be possible to deduce the actual number of lives snuffed out. 4,500+ tons of explosives and incendiary devices destroyed 13 square miles of a city that most were sure would never be bombed—a city that was reduced to ashes by the dawning of Ash Wednesday, 1945. It is precisely the suffering of Dresdners on 13 February that has made it a rallying cry for Neo-Nazis, who for some years now have staged a rally in the city on the anniversary.

One of the longest words new students of German learn is Vergangenheitsbewältigung. It translates as “the process of coming to terms with the past,” and it means the memory work Germans (first East and West, and since 1989 togther) have done to try to fathom how it is that their parents or their grandparents could have lived through the Third Reich, possibly done nothing to hinder the Holocaust, maybe even participated. It is also the process whereby Germans who have no personal connection with that time and its crimes—such as the children and grandchildren of the Gastarbeiter (guest workers) who came after the war and revived the economy—attempt to assimilate this knowledge into their understanding of what it means to be German.

For many years after the war, Germans nursed a particularly bitter form of victimhood, one that remembered the Allied bombings, the shame of a second war defeat inside of two decades, the frustration of the occupation and division of their country, large parts of which were now Poland. The Germans were sorry for what had happened to the Jews, because of what had happened to the Germans in response. Whatever their ambivalence about the Jews, most Germans have and had rejected fascism. In fact, it was the public disavowal of Nazism that allowed post-war West Germany to put itself back together as a (more or less) functioning country, in that many many former Party-members and –sympathizers were allowed to maintain their public lives and offices. The National Sozialistische Demokratische Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP, or National Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party) and its paraphanelia like flags with the swastika are illegal in Germany. It is illegal to print Mein Kampf (although not to own a copy, as all the libraries do).

 

But what to do about the Neo-Nazis who still exist? The young skinheads who spout hate against “non-Aryans,” and who have committed violence against foreigners? I discovered this fall that they often signal their presence with the old imperial flag of the Second Empire (Kaiserriech) or the Confederate flag (hanging in a window in the building across the street from my old apartment—bigots of the world, unite?). Other cities in Germany have refused to let them meet publicly. But for several years they have (legally) held a march in Dresden on 13 February. Not wanting to encourage this sort of thing, many left-leaning Dresdners began turning out to counter-protest, last year even putting up such a physical (and nearly violent) resistance to the fascist funeral parade that it was canceled. This year there was much discussion in public, in the mayor’s office, and in the Saxon courts about whether the Neo-Nazis should be allowed to meet, whether there should be a counter-protest, and what contact if any should be allowed between the two.

Such discussions in the United States would undoubtedly revolve around the First Amendment: the KKK fascists have the right to what is often referred to as "hate speech" (as long as it doesn’t lead to violence) and should be allowed to freely assemble. But likewise, defenders of democracy have the right to disagree and to disapprove. It was finally decided that the right extremists could meet later behind the Neustadt Bahnhof and the peaceful counter-demonstrators earlier in the Altstadt across the river. After a speech in memory of the bombing victims and in favor of peace and democracy, the assembled crowd fanned out to form a Menschenkette (a human chain) from the Rathouse across the Altmarkt (where many of the bodies were piled up and burned because they couldn’t be buried quickly enough), past the synagogue, and over the Carola and Albert Bridges to the very edge of the Neustadt, symbolically protecting the Altstadt from both bombs and Neo-Nazis. Nie wieder Krieg. "Never again war."

I stood on the steps from the Albertbrücke to the Elbe path on the Neustadt side. When the bells of the churches in the Altstadt began to toll at 2pm, I held hands with Susan and Julie. Many of us were wearing white silk or real roses on our labels. There were so many people (17,000 according to the radio the next morning—we stood 3- and 4- deep before we joined hands), that the line zig-zagged back and forth. Some participants who had come with friends or familiy chatted for the 5 or 10 minutes that we kept watch, which I found rather crass. When the bells finally stopped, I introduced myself to my partners and thanked them. And then we dispersed.

Nazis? No thanks!

Police had come in from around the country to ensure there would be no violence this year, which there wasn’t. I don’t know what happened with the Neo-Nazi march. I didn’t see it, and so to me it is as if didn’t happen. It’s one of those uncertain situations where you don’t want to give the group and its message any attention, but to act as if they didn’t exist at all would be irresponsible—criminal, even. Unfortunately, there is an even larger Neo-Nazi rally planned for next weekend that will be hard to ignore. What attention Dresdners have given them is universally unwelcoming, as this small collection of signs from around the city suggests:

Our Dresden: No place for Nazis!

Sunday night, at 9:51pm, the church bells went off again, just as they did that night, 66 years ago, to warn the city of the approaching enemy airplanes. The Nazi commissioner of the city, Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann, had insisted the city was prepared enough for an air raid that wasn't going to happen anyway, so there weren’t enough shelters—even without the influx of refugees. But he had underground concrete bunkers built at both his office and his residence. He survived—only to be captured by the Soviets after the war, tried in Moscow, and hung on 14. February 1947. In his enormous tome, Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945 (2004), noted Nazi historian Frederick Taylor argues that Dresden was as legitimate a target as any other in Germany, being not only a beautiful cultural capital but also an active contributor to the Nazi war effort. Whether the inevitable civilian casualties were justifiable in a time of "total war" he leaves up to the reader.

"Dresden" is many things to me: a center for my research, the place where I learned to live and speak comfortably in German/y, home for 7 months. And one of the many places in the world marked by both violence and dialog. Thankfully the good people far outnumbered the bad this weekend, by at least 20:1.