ABSTRACT
The current transformation of the public spaces (i.e., the public squares and public streets that are owned by the public authorities and open to everyone day and night) in the city centre of Dresden cannot be understood without knowing its recent past. Almost completely destroyed on the February 13, 1945, by the Allied Forces bombing in the course of WWII, the city centre of Dresden was partially rebuilt by the new socialist regime according to socialist principles of urban planning. The West German government did not take advantage of the destruction caused by the war to control and reorganize private property; the former owners kept their plot of land and the reconstruction of most cities in West Germany followed the old city plan, which was just to modernize according to the needs of modern life. The socialist regime, however, rejected this approach. Contrary to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the German Democratic Republic (GDR) did not perceive itself as a regime succeeding the Nazi regime, but as a completely new one, and this rupture was therefore a central concept in city planning. The new principles of urban development aimed to build a new city for a new socialist society, one which should distinguish itself from the former city and from the Western capitalist one. Therefore, its city centre should be ‘neither a commercial centre with plenty of shops, nor a leisure centre with elegant restaurants and cafés-concert, nor a financial centre with banks and head offices of big concerns. … It gathers together the political functions, the administrative and the cultural ones which give its sense to the city’ (Ministerium für Aufbau der Deutschen Democratischen Republik, 1950, p. 6). It played the most important role in the city and the most important aspects of social life happened there: ‘it is the place of official events, of political marches and of people’s celebration’ (Ministerium für Aufbau der Deutschen Democratischen Republik, 1950, p. 10). The socialists were convinced that urban, architectural, and symbolical forms could help the people understand the idea of socialism and so support the regime. That is why the design of public spaces was so crucial: By holding huge political demonstrations but also by being meeting places for the new socialist people in the course of everyday life, central public spaces had to be wide open and, moreover, to bear symbolic and political charges. Urban and landscape design, as well as public art, have been the privileged instruments because they could incarnate the new values and the norms of the regime and show them to everyone (inhabitants and visitors) directly in the public space. Durth, Gutschow, and Düwel (1998, p. 48) explain that ‘the wealth of collective life and a bright future had to be shown to the new socialist people via new images’ that gave public spaces a representative character, but also a joyful, beautiful, and welcoming one. The aim was to offer a better, more liveable and beautiful space to inhabitants than under capitalism, to arouse inhabitants’ pride in ‘their Socialism’, and finally to promote their identification with the new regime (Betker, 2005; Durth et al., 1998).
