Langos via leipzig: A young Prince's dream: Dresden

A young royal princeling, Frederick Augustus, was encouraged to undertake a little architectural study following his grandfather’s advice. Augustus played at designing in wood, likely making models using matchsticks at first. He fast became smitten and was forever brimming with plans for clever pieces of construction. Chatting to his classmates in architecture and scupture he conceived of bigger ideas, grander designs, and when he became Prince Elector in 1694 he was able to begin commissioning his mates to realize the models he and they had dreamed.

Here a castle, there a pavilion. Here a church in the central square, there a massive stable complex for the royal horses. Here an elegant palace for his mistress, there a tower to incarcerate and torment her, for a full forty-nine years given that she’d displeased him. Marketplaces for the masses, pleasure gardens for the gentry, fountains for all. Augustus, the Strong, as he became known, was the instigator.

As construction on the buildings proceeded on as grand a scale as ever there was, Augustus set about acquiring collectibles from all corners of the earth to fill the beautiful spaces: Oriental art, gold figurines, objet d’art, a la Louis XIV.

Every building a masterpiece: some in ornate Baroque topped with many cloven hoofed satyrs, some with elaborate storytelling scenes laid out on exterior walls completely covered in expensive Meissen porcelain tiles, some compositions classical, elegant, pristine. Each building so beautifully conceived that the centre of Dresden itself became like a work of art.

Then over two days, on the 13th and 14th February, 1945, flight after flight of English and American pilots dropped bomb after bomb after destructive bomb on downtown Dresden. People rushed from building to beautiful building for cover. Nowhere was safe. One after another of Augustus’s masterpieces exploded under shellfire and crumbled to the ground.

And in the awful aftermath 35,000 bodies of Dresden men, women and children lay in the rubble. Their bodies were buried. The buildings were not. They stood, charred, stubborn, mute memorials for long decades after the bombings.

Then came the reunification of Germany in 1990. Dresden became the capital of the Free State of Saxony and she needed dressing to live up to the honour. Not new clothes, no need: her old ones, please. The city masters did not have far to search: the designs of Augustus had been stored and survived. They were dusted off and renewed, more than adequate for the job.

The Tashenberg Palace and the magnificent Catholic Church of Our Lady were rebuilt in as much recovered stone as could be used -- as beautiful as they originally were – in time for Dresden’s 800th anniversary in 2006.

Every square metre of the city today is alive and under construction. The designs, the colours, the stones, are being placed exactly in place or are being sympathetically rebuilt as it was in Augustus’s time. Works of art again: even under the tarps of construction.