The View Matters. The Art of Seing Dresden

The Taschenbergpalais was in ruins for almost half a century before reconstruction began in 1992. Horst Leifer shows it once again in its previous state: only the outer walls are still standing, the roof and ceilings are missing. However, the artist's expressive painting style downplays these aspects, lifting the building beyond mere documentation and transforming the subject into a timeless motif.

Hubertus Giebe presents a view of his then everyday living environment in the Äußere Neustadt, as the artist's studio was located nearby in the 1970s. The emptiness of the corner plot, which had been derelict since the war, was a characteristic sight in this part of the city, which have become increasingly rare since 1990, as new buildings filled in the vacant lots. In the 1970s, a new trend emerged in the artistic examination of Dresden's cityscape (see also no. 30). Increasingly, “forgotten places” came to the fore, unspectacular streets and romantically decaying old buildings. In hindsight, this appears to be a conscious turning away from the socialist achievements that were being celebrated at the same time, such as the newly built Prager Straße.

In his title, the artist gives no indication of the location within the city depicted in his painting. Plenkers did not live in Dresden at the time of the work's creation, so the description of his everyday surroundings can be ruled out as a possibility. In summary, the depiction stands for the quiet, non-urban tranquillity of a winter's day in one of the districts with open buildings outside the city center.

The painter Peter Herrmann had belonged to the circle around Jürgen Böttcher (Strawalde) since 1954. There, autodidacts like him were able to pursue their artistic interests freely and with an open eye for classical modernism, especially Picasso's art, regardless of the narrowly defined official art of the GDR. The artist depicted the Dresden district of Mickten, which had survived the Second World War largely undamaged, in a cubistically alienated manner and without any claim to documentary accuracy. The gray tones that dominate the picture convey the impression of a gloomy industrial landscape. Only the striking three-aisled building of the streetcar station with the clock on the gable facade is clearly identifiable.

Ice floes dominate Siegfried Mackowsky's paintings. Views of Dresden play an important role in the artist's work, so he must have been constantly on the lookout for original perspectives of the famous city skyline. At the time of its creation, the painting was to a certain extent already a nostalgic tribute, as it shows a last perspective of the old, medieval Augustus Bridge with its 16 arches and 17 pillars. The bridge was demolished in the same year and replaced by a new building by 1910.

Paul Wilhelm presents Dresden's city center seen from a distance from below the Marienbrücke bridge. Similar to the painter Bernhard Kretzschmar with his winter picture painted in the same year (in our permanent exhibition on the 1st floor), he has chosen a prospect for his painting that only makes the war destruction of the city visible from the periphery. This retreat from the turmoil of the times and embrace of art as a sanctuary of beauty was especially common among the older generation of Dresden artists in the first years after the end of the Second World War.

Richard Mauff shows the banks of the Elbe between Carola Bridge and Augustus Bridge with a view of Brühl's Terrace and the historic old town, as it appears to the observer today. The only difference is the bathing establishments on the Neustädter Ufer below the Ministry of Finance, which disappeared when the Königsufer was redesigned in the 1930s.

In July 1949, the Augustus Bridge, which had been destroyed at the end of the war, was rebuilt, reopened and named after the Bulgarian communist Georgij Dimitroff, who had died shortly before. Previously, the most important inner-city Elbe crossing had been secured with a temporary bridge since the end of 1945. Paul Wilhelm's painting celebrates the early success of the reconstruction efforts with a view from Brühl's Terrace that almost makes us forget the city's war wounds, which were still omnipresent at the time.

Like Paul Wilhelm (no. 8), Bernhard Kretzschmar also shows a view of the recently rebuilt Augustus Bridge and along it to the banks of the Neustadt Elbe. The “Blockhaus”, the former Neustadt guardhouse dating back to the 18th century, lies almost at the center of the composition. Kretzschmar's loose style of painting makes the fact that this building was also only preserved as an empty shell after the war recede into the background. Reconstruction did not begin until 1978. The houses to the left were demolished and the Hotel Bellevue was built on this site in the early 1980s.

Siegfried Klotz created numerous paintings depicting the center of Dresden. With this and his animated painterly approach, which focuses on color and texture, he is the last great portraitist of Dresden in the tradition of Gotthardt Kuehl and Bernhard Kretzschmar (see no. 42 and no. 9). Klotz had been working as an assistant and lecturer at the art academy since the 1970s and was appointed professor in the year the painting was created. Hardly any other painter in his time was as at home in the city center as he was. He often painted the prospect of the Elbe from his university studio or directly from Brühl's Terrace at all times of the year.

Ice floes float on the Elbe in the darkness of night. The snow-covered roofs of the houses on the Neustadt side of the river lie huddled behind the mighty arches of the bridge. Unlike most views of the Augustus Bridge, this one is likely painted not from the height of Brühl’s Terrace, but from its steps or the riverbank below. To the right of the bridge is the Narrenhäusel, which was completely rebuilt just two years later. The tower of the Neustadt town hall rises behind the Blockhaus (see no. 9) on the left-hand side of the bridge. Both buildings, which date back to the 18th century, were destroyed in 1945 and never rebuilt.

Dominating the picture, the artist staged one of the two remaining river pillars of the old Carola Bridge, which was blown up in 1945. Crowned by markings for shipping, this relic remained standing in the Elbe until it had to make way for the construction of a new bridge at the end of the 1960s. Bergander's picture is more an attempt at artistic alienation than a documentary depiction. Snow and darkness create color contrasts, while the summary painting style allows the Augustus Bridge and the roof of the Japanese Palace to be seen downstream. The artist had been a professor at the Dresden Art Academy since 1951 and had the remains of the Carola Bridge before his eyes every day.

Heinz Drache's picture shows the remains of the war-destroyed Carola Bridge and the Albert Bridge upstream in the background. The Carola Bridge, inaugurated in 1895, was blown up in four places by soldiers of the Waffen SS in the last days of the war in 1945. Due to the considerable damage, it was decided not to rebuild it. In the spring of 1952, the arch still visible in this picture was also blown up. Only the two piers remained standing until a new bridge was built. Drache's almost impressionistic painting style omits all details and gives an impression of the situation on a gloomy winter's day, bathing the memories of the city's destruction in a mild light. Drache's most famous work is probably his contribution to the frieze “Our Socialist Life”, which can still be seen today in the upper floor foyer of the Kulturpalast.

The new bridge, named “Dr. Rudolf Friedrichs Bridge” after the first Saxon Prime Minister of the post-war period, was built between 1969 and 1971 and replaced the old Carola Bridge, which was blown up in 1945 and then demolished in several stages. In the first two decades after the end of the war, the painter Hermann Kohlmann was one of the most diligent artists documenting the reconstruction of Dresden. Many of his paintings were acquired by official bodies and museum collections, but he rarely worked on commission. Trained as a painter at the Dresden Art Academy in the early 1930s as a student of the late impressionist Max Feldbauer, he was adept at depicting landscapes and brought back memories of the high quality of pre-war Dresden painting right up to the 1970s. He evidently also met the requirements of the doctrine of socialist realism.

Paul Michaelis presents us with the view from his studio in the Academy of Fine Arts building on Brühl's Terrace, where he worked as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. Upstream, the remains of the destroyed Carola Bridge can be seen on the right and the Albert Bridge behind it. The mobile landing stages for the steamboats have been dismantled for the winter. Snow covers the banks of the river, the buildings on the Neustädter Ufer and the passers-by appear only as shadowy silhouettes. The color palette of cool greens and blues makes the night-time chill palpable.

The painter's point of view was approximately at Wettiner Platz near the power station there, possibly on the roof of the damaged and later demolished Jacobi Church. We see a view from the west towards the city center. Schweriner Straße on the left of the picture has already been cleared, but the ruins of war-damaged houses dominate the picture. Except for a few people, the city appears frozen in the harsh sunlight under a gray sky. The depiction of several chimneys in the foreground, reminiscent of pillar stumps, appears strangely prominent. They suggest a comparison of the entire depiction with ancient ruins and, from the artist's perspective, elevate the destruction of the city, which occurred barely two years ago, to a larger historical dimension. Kröner received his training at the Dresden Academy of Art under Gotthardt Kuehl, among others, and subsequently specialized in landscape painting. He is one of the artists who passed on the tradition of color-sensitive, beautiful painting of the early 20th century to the GDR era.

Following the example of Berlin's Stalinallee, the destroyed city centers in the GDR were to be rebuilt with representative residential buildings. Until the mid-1950s, a partly historicizing architectural style was favoured, which was also intended to reflect regional characteristics. No attention was paid to historically evolved street structures. Kurt Schuster's view from the town hall tower documents the state of affairs at the time in a sober manner and in muted colors: the buildings on the enlarged Altmarkt and on Wilsdruffer Straße (then: Thälmannstraße), which had been widened into a main thoroughfare, are almost complete. Only Kreuzstraße is still under construction and the Palace of Culture is still missing.

Hermann Kohlmann's painting was created in the immediate shock of the bombing of Dresden on February 13, 1945. Few artists reacted so quickly and directly to the chaos in the destroyed city. Wilhelm Rudolph, who had already begun to draw in the ruins before the end of the war, was probably the artist who dealt with it most intensively. Kohlmann's painting closely resembles the iconic view from the so-called Malerwinkel on Brühl’s Terrace overlooking Münzgasse. However, he went down into the alley at eye level with the rubble blocking the street. The ruins of the Frauenkirche are only hinted at behind the ruins of the houses in the foreground. (see also nos. 14. and 51).

Hans Mroczinski was one of the first generation of students at the Dresden art academy, which reopened in 1947. Before starting his studies, he had spent almost a year helping to repair the academy building. As a soldier who had survived Stalingrad, he was familiar with the sight of destroyed cities. In the first two post-war decades, he created numerous paintings and studies with motifs from Dresden's city center, of destruction and reconstruction. Fourteen of these works are part of our painting collection.

The reconstruction of the Dresden Zwinger began in 1945 and was not completed until 1963. Karl Kröner's painting already shows the first signs of success. In view of the fact that living space was urgently needed in the destroyed city, the early commitment to the restoration of a cultural building is remarkable. The Zwinger was a symbol and was treated as such. Other buildings of cultural history, such as the medieval Sophienkirche, whose towers can be seen here in the background, had to make way for the redesign of the city. Despite protests, the church was demolished in 1962/63.

Alfred Hesse illustrates the first phase of reconstruction: The clearing of the rubble. Many Dresdeners took part in this laborious work on a voluntary basis. At the end of the 1940s, piles of stones to be reused and the tracks of rubble trains dominated the image of the city center. However, the painter does not depict the dynamics of reconstruction but integrates the building activities into the composition of a classical city view. The Hofkirche and the damaged Johanneum form the main motifs of his depiction. The area on the left of the picture remained undeveloped until the beginning of the 21st century after the ruins had been cleared (see no. 17).

The painter Eva Schulze-Knabe, a former student of Otto Dix and others, was known above all as a creator of images of people; there are fewer pictures of Dresden's reconstruction in her oeuvre. Her picturesque perspective along today's Wilsdruffer Straße to the west shows the east-west thoroughfare, which was drastically widened in the 1950s and only gradually built up until the end of the 1960s. Scaffolding on buildings, building pits and grassy areas show all stages of the construction work, which, however, remains in the background, parallel to everyday life with streetcars, passers-by and cars. The ruins of the Sophienkirche, which was still being fought over at the time, stand darkly in the center of the picture. It was demolished in 1962/63 despite numerous protests. Since 2020, a memorial on the site has commemorated the loss of this monument to Dresden's cultural history.

Siegfried Donndorf shows the beginning of reconstruction in Dresden. In front of an imaginary commanders hill (possibly seen from the town hall), the artist spreads out the emptied south-eastern part of the city center and as far as the southern slope of the Elbe in front of us. The ruins have largely been removed, stacks of bricks and construction shacks dominate the picture. The large wasteland, which is covered in greenery, is still mainly divided by footpaths. Newly planted flowerbeds, young trees and people sitting on park benches in the foreground testify to the peacefulness of the scene. The signs point to a new beginning.

Schäferstraße is an arterial road leading west from the old town through the Friedrichstadt district. Not far from here, on Berliner Straße, the artists' group “Brücke” came together in 1905 and Dyrck Bondzin's workspace is located directly in the neighborhood of the former “Brücke” studios. The artist shows “his neighborhood”, which is not one of the most beautiful areas of Dresden due to its proximity to industry and large railroad systems, at night. Although there is a certain dreariness, it is also in a kind of merciful, benevolent light - with only a few illuminated windows and shadowy passers-by, lonely and free of cars, so that a stray cat on the streetcar tracks shows no sign of hurrying.

Rainer Zille's painterly imagination was often set in motion by elements of public space. For him, a construction site drainage pipe becomes a kind of snake with legs running through the picture with its head raised. The city - here the industrial buildings on the site of today's Kulturkraftwerk - is only a background for the artist.  Zille's paintings are representative of the increasingly individual artistic positions of the 1980s. Few painters were interested in the motifs of classical vedute and the officially desired depictions of progress in construction and social development. Instead, the urban environment became a pictorial motif in a wide variety of poetic alienations.

Michael Freudenberg's glimpse of the Elbe shows a maneuver that is actually frequently observed: when one of the larger Elbe steamers starts to turn, it often looks as if the Elbe is not wide enough, especially when the water level in the river is low. The artist only hints at the details of the ship as well as the inland forms of the bridge and the buildings on the banks. The sky and water appear leaden, the entire scene is painted in partly greenish beige and brown tones. The painter had just begun his freelance artistic career as a self-taught artist in the year the painting was created. Shortly afterwards, he became a member of A. R. Penck's Dresden circle. The subject of the painting is presumably less a description of Freudenberg's hometown than a metaphor of “crossing oneself”, which can also be understood more or less politically.

Similar to Karl Kröner (see no. 16), Ernst Hassebrauk also portrayed the ruins of destroyed Dresden in a symbolically interpretative manner, elegantly sidestepping the official demands of the time for optimism about the future and an artistic statement. Behind the monumental ruins of the blown-up Carola Bridge, he shows the silhouette of the historic buildings of the old town - so far away that the war damage is not recognizable. A White Fleet tourist steamer with a smoking chimney underlines the impression of everyday urban life. The monumental picture format and the title also point the way: it is about the assertion of a resurrection of the city's splendor. For the artist, who often portrayed Baroque masterpieces, this splendor was rooted above all in the cultural achievements of the past.

With bold momentum and a bright storm of color, the artist detaches a striking building from its urban context. Although the memorable shape of the Annenkirche tower, which was not rebuilt after the war, is recognizable, the surroundings, which are stripped of details and pushed back in colour - in fact, insignificant residential buildings from the 1960s - make it clear that this is not a topographically accurate view of the city, but a spirited artistic statement in which the subject of the picture must be subordinated to the expressive will to express itself.

Hans Körnig's painting of the main street in the Innere Neustadt is brimming with irreverence. The artist set a surreal night scene against the official optimistic construction images of his time. The houses look out of black hollow windows onto the dead and deserted street. The historical monuments preserved after the war - The Golden Horseman and one of the two Nymph Fountains - border the empty foreground on the left and right, but cannot avert the impression of forlornness. The state flag flies oversized from a 19th century flagpole - but without the GDR emblem of the hammer and sickle in the spike wreath, which was an unimaginable provocation at the time. In an aquatint etching by Körnig with an almost identical motif, the hammer and sickle came under the hooves of the Golden Horseman, which led to the artist's expulsion from the Association of Visual Artists. Due to a lack of other opportunities, Körnig organized private exhibitions in his studio and the adjoining attic not far from the street depicted here. He thus became an icon of early non-conformist art in the GDR.

The painter does not reveal exactly where he found his motif. But perhaps this is deliberately unintentional, as it shows a development that could be observed in the 1970s and 1980s, not only in Dresden but in many places in the GDR: it was no longer war ruins that had to make way for industrial housing construction, but increasingly old, neglected houses in and around the city centers, such as in Dresden's Innere Neustadt district during the construction of the Straße der Befreiung (now Hauptstraße).

It was not until the mid-1980s that the reconstruction of the Dresden castle (Residenzschloss) began. Christoph Wetzel's painting, seen from the Zwinger gallery, still shows the ruins, which have remained almost unchanged since the late 1940s. The dove in the foreground and the title with the year make the painting a testimony to its time, not only in terms of its painterly accuracy, but also with the promise (or the question) of a restoration of the cultural monument. When the painting was purchased for the municipal art collection, it could be seen as both a representation of hope and a task, as GDR head of state Erich Honecker had promised the reconstruction of the palace on the occasion of the reopening of the Semper Opera House in 1985. From an artistic point of view, Wetzel went beyond the genre of reconstruction pictures, so prominent in Dresden, with their celebration of successes and their painted optimism about the future. Self-confidently and with an almost challengingly undercooled neutrality of precise realistic painting, he staged his individual glimpse.

From the Neustadt banks of the Elbe, the artist shows Dresden's architectural landmark - the Frauenkirche - in its historical surroundings: behind the busy landing stages on the Terrassenufer, the passageway in the former fortifications opens up to the densely built-up Münzgasse. Smoke rises from many chimneys. The church dome rises large and massive above, flanked by the town hall tower and the art academy. Until the 1940s, numerous such painted scenes of the city were created, which were displayed in magnificent frames in the homes of wealthy Dresdeners as a self-confident statement of their pride in their city. After the destruction of Dresden in 1945, depictions of the lost cityscape became all the more precious. Like this painting, quite a few works of art with historical city views were purchased from private owners for the museum collection in the 1950s and 1960s.

Salzgasse was located behind the Coselpalais and led directly to Neumarkt (New Market Square). The area with its picturesque houses was already described as “Old Dresden” on postcards from around 1900. It was a popular motif for students at the nearby art academy, including Richard Miller from Leipzig, who probably painted the picture while still a student. Nothing of the painted outlook remains today, only the alley itself was restored as a street in the course of the new development around New Market Square.

Siegfried Mackowsky was one of the most diligent painterly chroniclers of Dresden in the first third of the 20th century. While most painters, such as Gotthardt Kuehl or Fritz Beckert (see nos. 42 and 44), expressed a certain modernity with loose reminiscences of Impressionism, Mackowsky's depictions of the city are characterized by precision and sobriety. He created depictions of the view from several inner-city towers. Here we see the view from the dome of the Frauenkirche westwards along Töpferstaße to the Residenzschloss. It is not only the accuracy of the painting that is remarkable, but also the dense tangle of closely interwoven buildings. In this quarter, which is closest to the palace as the center of the city, some of them date back to the Middle Ages.

Albert Schumann's unusual view of the city is the oldest picture in our exhibition. The rows of trees on the riverside promenade are still young and remind us that the painter's point of view, the Albert Bridge, shown here only with its south-western staircase, was only 23 years old at the time. The magnificent residential buildings on the left bank of the terrace can be seen, while the actual riverbank testifies to the city’s ongoing expansion. Barges are being unloaded and building materials are being piled up. The Neustadt banks of the river are lined with bathing establishments, above which the building of the Vereinigte Eschebachsche Werke still rises - where the Königliches Gesamtministerium, today the seat of the Saxon State Chancellery, was built a little later until 1904 (see no. 42). Behind it, on the far right of the picture, you can see the building of the Dreikönig School, which also fell victim to the destruction of the war in 1945.

The “Großsiedlung Trachau” is the most important example of architectural modernity of the 1920s in Dresden. Several architects were involved in planning the GEWOBAG cooperative's project at the end of the 1920s. Georg Griebel shows a window view of the buildings planned by the architect Hans Waloschek, with some apartments featuring small garden plots in the inner courtyard.

Many of the houses in the Inner Neustadt (New Town) date back to the 18th century. During the GDR era, the building stock deteriorated rapidly. Some were demolished as early as the 1970s to make way for the new buildings on Straße der Befreiung (now Hauptstraße).

Georg Griebel's studio was located on the sixth floor of the corner building on Spenerstraße and Wormserstraße in Striesen, which was built by city planning officer Paul Wolf in 1930. From there, the artist had a sweeping view of the slopes of the Elbe and the city center, which he captured in several paintings. The courtyard side of houses on Merseburger Straße and Wormser Straße can be seen in the foreground.

Ernst Günther Neumann studied under Wilhelm Lachnit at the Dresden Art Academy and worked as a freelancer from 1952. His view here is from Dresden's Neustadt district to the courthouse on Sachsenplatz. A streetcar travels along Hoyerswerdaer Straße in the direction of Albertbrücke. The red brick building on the left-hand side of the picture was built as the Royal Intendant's Office, later used as a tax office and now serves the customs administration.

In the 1960s, the painter Horst Weber was lucky enough to be given a newly built studio apartment on the top floor of the twelve-storey tower block on Josephinenstraße (then Kurt-Schlosser-Straße). From there, he had a spectacular panoramic view over the city, which he painted frequently, especially in the first years. The view here is to the north - the damaged tower of the Annenkirche can be seen on the left, the towers of the castle and Hofkirche on the right.

Ernst Fechter's picture shows the south side of a shopping street completed in 1958 in the Striesen district. Brick rubble from the ruins was used in the construction according to plans by architect Wolfgang Hänsch, but the prefabricated construction method was also tested for the first time. For the people of Dresden, this district center was not only a welcome place to shop, but also a forward-looking monument to modernity and progress. The fact that Fechter painted the scene in the year the Berlin Wall was built adds another aspect to the picture that goes beyond the purely documentary: Fechter is not only celebrating recent achievements, he is depicting a wishful image, an optimistic ideal world with happy people in the sunshine, as the authorities would have liked to see it.

Gotthardt Kuehl is considered the forefather of the Dresden School of Painting. Trained in Munich and Paris, he brought Impressionism to Dresden when he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. As an artist with an international reputation, he was often called upon for official commissions, such as the decoration of the New Dresden Town Hall (around 1910/11) or, as shown here, for the 1903 International City Exhibition in Dresden. On behalf of the city, the painter created two depictions of the cityscape above and below the Augustus Bridge. The painting not only documents Dresden's beautiful location with its historic buildings and a view as far as the Windberg to Freital. It also confidently shows the city's current development at the time: the right-hand edge of the picture is bordered by a large scaffolding on the building of the Royal General Ministry (today's State Chancellery - see no. 35), which is currently under construction. The large picture format favors the depiction of the colorful bustle of people and vehicles on the newest Elbe crossing at the time - the Carola Bridge, inaugurated in 1895.

Margarethe Macholz is not interested in documentary aspects: With expressive looseness, she shows a picture of summer street life as it might also take place elsewhere. Amalienplatz (today: Rathenauplatz, see no. 48) is depicted free of cars and streetcars, as if to lend the snapshot a sense of timelessness.

Fritz Beckert's picture is a curiosity against the backdrop of pictures of the successful reconstruction of the city that were created at the same time, but is nonetheless evidence of the ever-increasing importance of the memory of the “old Dresden” among the Dresden population after 1945. Beckert had been teaching architectural painting at the Dresden Technical University since 1908. For this motif, he was able to draw on his numerous depictions of the city, which he had been working on continuously and intensively since before the First World War.

The painter depicted an event here that was the subject of several picture postcards at the turn of the century. Around the Germania monument in the middle of the square, which was intended to commemorate the war of 1870/71, mobile stands of florists are set up. Well-dressed ladies stroll between them. The scene appears almost Biedermeier. If it weren't for the familiar Dresden buildings, such as the 18th century building of the former Old Town Hall on the left, you might think you were looking at a small town. Quite a few such depictions of outdated genre scenes and buildings that were soon to be demolished prove that the modernization of the city around 1900 and the building boom of the last years before the First World War were viewed with nostalgia and a certain wistfulness by many Dresdeners. Around the time the painting was created, the New Dresden Town Hall on Ringstrasse (see no. 44) was put into service and the old building on Altmarkt (Old Market Square) was rededicated as the headquarters of Dresden's tramway administration. The Löwenapotheke (Lion Pharmacy) building to the right was to make way for a new building shortly afterwards, in 1913/14.

Streetcars, carriages, cars, passers-by and police officers - the artist presents Pirnaischer Platz as a metropolitan traffic junction, even if the square itself was much smaller back then than it is today. Even though one of the striking corner towers of the police headquarters can be seen, the view of the Landhaus is still blocked by a row of buildings in front of it. The historic König-Johann-Straße, where two streetcars meet at the beginning, is also much narrower than today's Wilsdruffer Straße, which was newly laid out after 1945.

This small oil sketch of the situation around the Golden Horseman is one of the last paintings to depict the Dresden cityscape before its destruction in 1945. Even though the artist placed more emphasis on depicting the atmosphere of the gloomy winter's day than on the details of the architecture, the painting nevertheless conveys a good impression of the dimensions of the Neustädter Markt New Town Market Square), which were not restored during its reconstruction.

Fritz Stotz was a student of Gotthardt Kuehl and Carl Bantzer at the art academy and followed his teachers in the sense of open-air painting with impressively loose brushstrokes. With a confident gesture, he captured the atmosphere of a metropolitan square with streetcars and numerous passers-by reflected on the probably rain-soaked pavement in a small format. It is not possible to determine exactly from which vantage point he was looking into the street. It is possibly a view from Amalienplatz (today: Rathenauplatz, see no. 43) looking out of the city.

The chronologically last painting with a street situation before the destruction in 1945 shows a view from Postplatz along Wilsdruffer Straße in the direction of Altmarkt. On the right is the Knoop department store, whose ruins were the only building on the street to be included in the reconstruction after 1945. Behind it, the arcades of the new Löwenapotheke building (see no. 45) leap forward in the street line before the street opens out onto the Altmarkt (Old Market Square). Two streetcars meet in the incoming sunlight. Kühl shows the empty flagpoles on the buildings, on which swastika flags hung in many photos of the time. His focus is on the bustling street life in which - as the only indication of the war period - the men are missing alongside the summery dressed women and children.

Alice Sommer does not name a specific Elbe bridge in the title of her oil sketch, but it is clear from the buildings behind it that it is a view from the Old Town bank of the Elbe to the Augustus Bridge and the Neustadt banks. The Blockhaus (see no. 9) can be seen on the far right, the railing in the foreground is the railing of Brühl's Terrace. At the time the work was created, the artist was studying at the art academy under the painter Max Feldbauer. His broad, form-dissolving brushstrokes also found a visible echo in Sommer's painting.

The surviving tall buildings were a vantage point for a number of artists who wanted to take stock of the extensive destruction caused by the war. Rubble as far as the eye can see - this is how one could summarize the impression of this type of cityscape, primarily from the first post-war decade (see also nos. 6, 9, 16, 23 and 39).

The Dresden Synagogue, built around 1840 by Gottfried Semper, was located on the Hasenberg, roughly on the same site as the New Synagogue, which opened in 2001. It was destroyed in the November pogrom of 1938. In his drawings, Albert Wigand dealt very precisely with numerous motifs from the Dresden cityscape. His paintings, on the other hand, were freer and more expressive.

Rudolf Reimer was a master watchmaker. Painting was a hobby for him, which he pursued very intensively. His overarching theme was everyday life, so that today his pictures are primarily important as subjective illustrations of life in the GDR. With the meticulousness essential to his profession, he depicts the square in front of the former youth club “Scheune” with a view towards Albertplatz. On the right-hand side of Katharinenstraße, a Soviet armed forces truck is parked - as Soviet military facilities were located north of Alaunpark at the time, this was a very familiar detail in the street scene.

The painter Yevgeny T. Subekhin arrived in Dresden with the Red Army in May 1945 and probably created the two paintings in the summer of that year directly in front of the views depicted. In both motifs, he must have been interested in the contrast between the ruins in the foreground and the largely undamaged-looking buildings behind them. In contrast to the many gloomy and despondent depictions by German artists from the period immediately after the end of the war, such as Wilhelm Rudolph, there is at least a small glimmer of hope that the destroyed city might be resurrected. Subechin died in 1986 and wanted the paintings to be returned to Germany. This legacy was fulfilled by his daughter-in-law after the death of his son in 1996.