Icon Dresden explores how memory and politics in Dresden after its 1945 bombing are deeply intertwined with the city’s urban history. It highlights the complex origins of Dresden’s reputation as an exclusively cultural center, focusing on urban planning, marketing, tourism, and the city’s visual archive since the 17th century. Based on this iconic status, a narrative of victimhood arose after its destruction that ignored responsibilities while highlighting the city’s innocence. Despite its origin in Nazi propaganda, this narrative influenced postwar political discourse in socialist and post-reunification Germany. Icon Dresden also provides insight into Dresden’s role under National Socialism and the GDR’s evasive response to this history. It reveals how the strong presence of far-right movements in the city today stems from multiple discourses formed over centuries and communicated from generation to generation. 

Drawing on urban, heritage, and tourism studies, visual and memory studies, and environmental psychology, Icon Dresden examines Dresden’s history, identity, visual representations, and rebuilding decisions. It exposes the narratives that define its place in German and international memory and how, paradoxically, they support both Dresden’s current image as a symbol of peace and reconciliation and its backing of nativist and far-right movements.

Susanne Vees-Gulani is Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Case Western Reserve University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1:    Framing the Dresden Bombing Narrative
Chapter 2:    Staging Dresden before 1945: Court City, Travel Destination, Visual Icon
Chapter 3:    Dresden after 1945: Past, Present, and Future in Image and Imagination
Chapter 4:    Constructing the Memory of the Nazi Past: Jewish Life, Persecution, and Postwar Commemoration
Chapter 5:    The Multiple Pasts in Dresden’s Post-Reunification Cityscape: From the Frauenkirche to the New Synagogue
Chapter 6:    Dresden Memory Culture and the Success of the Far Right
Chapter 7:    Conclusions: Performing Counter-Protest
Archives and Libraries
Bibliography