Commemoration of February 13, 1945 in Dresden

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The commemoration of February 13, 1945 commemorates the air raids on Dresden in February 1945, which killed up to 25,000 people. After the end of the war, these traumatic events for many Dresdeners led to a special form of remembrance culture with annual commemorative events on that February date or in the vicinity of it. Immediately after these attacks, the destruction of Dresden was still politically captured in the National Socialist state, in particular by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels , which also took place in different stages after 1945.

One of the commemorative events on February 13, 2014: As in previous years, many candles in the form of large candles will be placed in front of the Frauenkirche, while a glowing candle will be illuminated on the rebuilt church.

State commemoration from 1946 to 1989

In Dresden, beginning in 1946 - earlier than in other German cities - there were regular political commemorative events, the focus of which was changed several times. First of all, they emphasized a "... deliberate destruction of Dresden provoked by the fascist criminals ...", for which "... the political weakness of the German people" is complicit. At that time, on the instructions of the Soviet military administration , the memorial should not have the character of mourning.

The ruins of the Frauenkirche in February 1985

While this commemoration was largely taken over by the churches - traditionally the bells of all Dresden churches have been ringing on February 13th at 9:50 p.m. - from the 1960s onwards the blame was increasingly placed on the Western Allies, whose bombings were not aimed at military targets and had no strategic significance for the end of the war. The former Saxon Prime Minister Max Seydewitz made the fictitious claim in his Dresden book The Undefeated City that the German-US-American owners of the Villa San Remo in Dresden, Charles and John H. Noble , had guided the Allied air fleets to Dresden with a transmitter (Noble legend). They did not sufficiently take into account the German war guilt, German terrorist attacks and the Holocaust as causes of the attack, as well as their possible military necessity. It was only after the political change in the GDR in 1989 that city representatives began to grapple more intensively with their past, especially during the anniversaries of the air raids.

Resistance from 1982

An independent sovereign interests commemoration began youths of religious peace movement in the GDR. They spread the appeal for February 13, 1982 on illegal leaflets . In front of the ruins of the Frauenkirche , a symbolic candle campaign was to take place against the increasing militarization of society. Ultimately, the impulse of the appeal of the young people with their consent was channeled into the Kreuzkirche . The Peace Forum on February 13th in 1982 became a high point of the peace movement “Swords to Plowshares” , which the memorial “Stones of Contention” in front of the south portal of the Kreuzkirche has been remembering since 2010.

Conquest and resistance after 1990

On February 13, 1990, the British Holocaust denier David Irving found around 500 consenting participants at a lecture in Dresden; his description of the air strikes as an Allied genocide gave a boost to neo-Nazis in the GDR , which officially never existed . After that, and especially from 1992, more and more right-wing extremists used the annual commemoration for their propaganda. In 2000, the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland (JLO) organized its own nightly “funeral march” for the first time . From 2001 to 2004 the number of participants at this event rose from 750 to around 2100, on February 13, 2005 around 6,500 right-wing extremists demonstrated, on February 13, 2007 around 1,500 people took part in the “funeral march”. On February 13, 2010, around 6,500 people took part; however, the march was blocked by around 5,000 counter-demonstrators. Video recordings show that the future AfD politician Björn Höcke participated.

In contrast, there were various initiatives, which, however, met with little response and were also ignored or even hindered by the political dominance of the CDU in Dresden and Saxony at the time. This increase in this right-wing extremist symbolism, which was at least tolerated by the ruling party in the public appearance, only found a state counterpart in Dresden from 2001: For example, the then mayor Ingolf Roßberg invited clubs and associations to take coordinated action against right-wing extremist public events for the following year for the first time in 2001, and he did initiated or supported the White Rose campaign . In addition, he set up the historian's commission to determine the actual number of victims of the air raids on Dresden, and he encouraged civic engagement through official action.

However, this was torpedoed by the Dresden and especially the Saxon CDU. According to a government statement by Kurt Biedenkopf before the Saxon state parliament, the Saxons are immune to right-wing extremism . Here, as in the following years, this turned out to be one of the worst misjudgments by this politician, gave a boost to right-wing extremist tendencies and continues to apply mentally, with considerable after-effects, well into the 2010s and thus largely blocked meaningful civic engagement these existing appearances.

After various intermediate stages and setbacks, the “Nazifree! - Dresden stands up against “ anti-fascist groups for more initiatives against what was then Europe's largest Nazi rally; The non-partisan cooperation was achieved by city councilor Christa Müller (CDU), who died in 2018, against all opposition within her party, but especially against its extra-regional and higher-level officials within the CDU regional association.

In 2010, around 10,000 Dresden residents formed a human chain around the inner old town for the first time in order to symbolically shield it from neo-Nazis. An alliance of the city with churches, trade unions, parties, business associations and other groups had called for this. This has taken place annually since then.

Also in 2010, the Dresden Prize, an international peace prize that is awarded annually on February 13th, was established. As a result, this brought about the collapse of right-wing extremist activities, which will not take place on February 13, but on days before and after and currently only comprise a few hundred people.

The political blockade nevertheless culminated in commemoration in 2011 - the right-wing extremists formed a police-manageable block - in the clashes between the police and those demonstrating against these right-wing extremists and the arrest of a Protestant pastor from Jena as well as the spying of tens of thousands of cell phone data from the peaceful demonstrators against this march. Various kinds of citizens' initiatives in Dresden offer their own commemorative events to mark the anniversaries of the attacks. Supported by a majority of the citizens, they, together with social groups and the twin city Coventry, contribute across national borders to ensuring that the German war guilt cannot be weighed against the war crimes of others, and cannot be questioned or relativized in any way.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ john-noble.de: The Noble Legend
  2. ↑ Winfried Sträter: How to survive hell: John Noble - an American in Soviet camps. Deutschlandradio Kultur , May 10, 2006, accessed on February 12, 2014 .
  3. ^ Called for February 13, 1982 in Dresden , written by Annett Ebischbach, Torsten Schenk and Oliver Kloss in print by Elke Schanz and Heike Kerstan.
  4. ↑ Oliver Kloss : The Dresden Call for February 13, 1982. In: Forum Political Education. Issue 1 (2013). Edited by the German Association for Political Education - State Association of Bavaria, ISSN  0941-5874 , p. 41 f.
  5. ↑ The event was reported with images in the evening news of western television stations, in newspapers and magazines - e.g. B. Spiegel, Issue 8 (1982) from February 22, 1982: GDR: Diligent signatures. The SED worries about a new protest movement in the GDR: Young people demonstrate by the thousands against armaments and militarism . P. 28–31 - as well as promptly documented in book form: Klaus Ehring , Martin Dallwitz : Schwerter zu Pflugscharen. Peace Movement in the GDR , Reinbek near Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1982, ISBN 3-499-15019-0 ; Wolfgang Büscher, Peter Wensierski , Klaus Wolschner, Reinhard Henkys (eds.): Peace movement in the GDR. Texts 1978–1982 , Hattingen, Scandica, 1982, ISBN 3-88473-019-3 , pp. 265-281.
  6. ↑ Right-wing extremist "Action Week". In: look to the right . February 8, 2007, accessed February 12, 2014 .
  7. ^ Thomas Baumann-Hartwig: February 13th in Dresden: a chronicle. In: Dresdner Latest news online. Retrieved February 19, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Comprehensive archive documentation online of the alliance “Nazifrei! - Dresden stands across ". Retrieved November 27, 2017.
  9. ↑ Der Spiegel, February 13, 2010: Ten thousand in the anti-neo-Nazi chain: Dresden braces itself against the historians.