Large garden open-air stage

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Open-air theater in 1955
Auditorium 1955
Clueso during a concert in the "Junge Garde" under the "shell roof" (2005)
Manu Chao concert on the new stage (2015)

The open-air stage Großer Garten is an event location in the southeast of the Großer Garten park in Dresden. It was created between 1953 and 1955 as an open-air theater "Junge Garde" on the site of a former gravel pit and opened on August 12, 1955. It seats 4,900 spectators.

Until 1989 the theater was mainly used for entertainment and family programs, and in the 1980s it was also used for rock concerts and film screenings . After the turn of the event focus has to concerts of rock and pop music moved.

Venue

A former gravel pit east of the Carola lake was used to create the oval outdoor area based on an idea sketch by Herbert Schneider . With an almost semicircular division and the gently rising rows of spectators, the facility is reminiscent of ancient theaters . The trusses are arranged in the form of a parabolic curve with a height difference of six meters. This means that there is a good view of the last of the 35 seat cross members.

The stage has an elongated, slightly curved shape. There is a one-story connecting passage with arched windows between the two-story wing projections . Its type and structure is reminiscent of a small Saxon summer palace. The building on the opposite edge of the facility also takes up this design. It is used for admission and breaks and houses offices and sanitary facilities. Krista Grunicke , the architect of the “ Sonnenhäusel ”, said in 1957 in the magazine Deutsche Architektur that “the formal language of the cavalier houses in the Great Garden [with its] cheerful [n] baroque [n] touch” the architects as “just for an open-air Theater particularly suitable ”.

A large number of regional, traditional architectural elements, such as balustrade walls , dormers and cornices , were incorporated into the buildings. Curved slate roofs adapt the style of the chinoiserie and are reminiscent of Pillnitz Castle . The color-accentuated mirror fields under the windows structured with muntins are well-known facade details in Dresden and the round windows in the entrance building were used by Heinrich Tessenow in the Saxon State School as early as 1925 . The roof was covered with slate , windows and doors were framed with profiled parts made of Cotta sandstone . With the two-tone facades in ocher and dusky pink , the decorative sandstone reliefs of the keystones above the door robes, designed by Vinzenz Wanitschke and Johannes Peschel , come into their own. They show children playing, but inside a laughing and a crying fool.

The city of Dresden wanted a spectator capacity of 10,000 visitors. But that was not possible on the available space. The area was added during the last major expansion of the Great Garden in 1875.

The project was carried out by the architects Kurt Röthig , Hans Konrad and Lothar Thiel . A badge at the entrance reminds of numerous non-profit and unpaid hours of work:

"At the suggestion and with the active support of the Free German Youth of our city, the Open-Air Theater Young Guard was built in 1955 in the National Reconstruction ."

The name Junge Garde was intended in particular to strengthen the collective feeling of a “young German post-war generation enthusiastically striving for a revolutionary new social order”. It goes back to the refrain of the workers song Dem Morgenrot ( We are the young guards of the proletariat ) by Heinrich Eildermann , who wrote this text in 1907. On the one hand, Eildermann lived in Dresden from 1945 until his death in 1955 and was a lecturer at the Technical University of Dresden ; on the other hand, this song was sung in the GDR on many occasions and was known to almost everyone until the fall of the Berlin Wall .

Events

After the war, the destroyed city lacked meeting and concert halls. The “open-air theater” should therefore contribute to the promotion of cultural work in order to give the “creative people” an opportunity to participate in cultural life. Therefore, not only the architecture was allowed to appear popular. The program was popular too, with entertainment and family programs being performed. In addition to events that were closely related to city activities, e.g. B. the May demonstrations , theater and concert performances took place here, in the 1980s also rock concerts and film performances, for which a 60 mm film system was installed.

After the reunification, the focus of the event shifted to concerts of rock and pop music under the care of the state enterprise State Palaces, Castles and Gardens of Saxony . Nevertheless, classical concerts and jazz concerts as part of the Dixieland Festival also take place.

Since the beginning of 2009, the organizer Bernd Aust KulturManagement GmbH has been taking on the stage. The aim was to make the "old guard" profitable again at ten to fifteen concerts a year. In addition, the Ostrock Night was moved from Theaterplatz to the Guard in the same year , including the MIA. -Concert like the festival The Rock was brought from the Königstein Fortress to the Guard. Many different popular styles are now served - from hard rock and metal over pop and Ostrock to Country - Punk . In 2009, in addition to the aforementioned Marilyn Manson , Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds , Subway to Sally , Tanzwut , Dieter Thomas Kuhn and The BossHoss, the microphone was in hand.

In this context, renovations that had become necessary in the meantime were carried out, and the stage was also converted in 2011. The “shell roof” gave way to a robust stage roof construction that can accommodate more technology and offers a better view.

Monument preservation

The Young Guard is available as part of an impersonal entity mainly because of its architectural and cultural historical significance as historical monuments. It is a testimony to a closed epoch. As one of the first venues in Dresden, the open-air theater was an important reference point for the revitalization of cultural creation in the first post-war years. In the architecture of the ensemble, the building style propagated in the early years of the GDR based on national building traditions is clearly recognizable. As part of the reconstruction work , its construction was not only of local but also of national importance. Herbert Schneider, who had already contributed drafts for the Altmarkt development , was one of the most important architects of the time involved in the planning.

literature

See also

  • Palais in the Great Garden : Baroque pleasure palace in the Great Garden, around which eight cavalier houses were originally grouped
  • State Operetta Dresden : Operetta theater in Dresden, whose location in a former inn until 2016 was also a result of the air raids on Dresden
  • Film nights on the banks of the Elbe : Germany's largest open-air cinema festival on the banks of the river Neustadt

Web links

Commons : Freilichtbühne Großer Garten  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Young Guard - History. In: Young Guard. Bernd Aust KulturManagement GmbH, accessed on February 8, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Architectural description of the open-air theater in the Great Garden. In: the new Dresden - awakening and memory. Thomas Kantschew, accessed October 26, 2009 .
  3. ↑ Ralf Hübner: Young Guard: From the gravel pit to the temple of culture . In: Saxon newspaper . August 8, 2020 ( paid online [accessed August 8, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Architectural description of the open-air theater in the Great Garden. In: the new Dresden - awakening and memory. Thomas Kantschew, accessed on October 26, 2009 ( collective feeling section ).
  5. ↑ Mandy Fischer, Matthias Hahndorf, Thomas Kantschew: Open-air theater "Young Guard". In: OSTMODERN - Dresden post-war architecture. Retrieved October 26, 2009 (section brief description ).
  6. ↑ Andreas Weihs: Ostrock Klassik: And they still dream of childhood love. In: Sächsischer Bote - The weekly newspaper. Sächsischer Bote Wochenblatt Verlag GmbH, August 24, 2009, archived from the original on September 10, 2012 ; Retrieved October 26, 2009 .
  7. ↑ Events. In: International Dixieland Festival Dresden. Sächsische Festival Vereinigung eV, archived from the original on September 21, 2009 ; accessed on October 26, 2009 (excerpt from the program booklet 40th Festival ): “Sunday, May 16, 2010: 10.30 am open-air stage Großer Garten Open Air - free entry !:“ PLATZJAZZ ”; from 11.00 a.m. open-air stage Großer Garten (Young Guard): OPEN-AIR-JAZZ "
  8. ↑ Andreas Weihs, Bernd Aust: "At some point there will always be clever people who want to save". In: Sächsischer Bote - The weekly newspaper. Sächsischer Bote Wochenblatt Verlag GmbH, April 21, 2009, archived from the original on April 26, 2009 ; Retrieved October 26, 2009 (transcript).
  9. ↑ Andreas Weihs: A new wind is blowing in the "Young Guard": From shock rock to hit. (No longer available online.) In: Sächsischer Bote - Die Wochenzeitung. Sächsischer Bote Wochenblatt Verlag GmbH, June 9, 2009, formerly in the original ; Retrieved October 26, 2009 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.saechsischer-bote.de
  10. ↑ Mandy Fischer, Matthias Hahndorf, Thomas Kantschew: Open-air theater "Young Guard". In: OSTMODERN - Dresden post-war architecture. Retrieved October 26, 2009 (Monument Preservation Section).

Coordinates: 51 ° 1 ′ 56 ″  N , 13 ° 46 ′ 15 ″  E