Dresden: the making of a baroque city

Dresden:
the making of a baroque city

Ralph Harrington
BA (Lond.), MSt (Oxon.), DPhil (Oxon.)

copyright notice | citation information | illustrations | plagiarism | notes

THE TRUE ‘BAROQUE CITY’ is more than just a city which contains baroque buildings and monuments; it is a city that reflects, in its planning and organisation, distinctively baroque ideas about the nature of the urban environment and the way in which it can be shaped and re-made. These ideas reflected contemporary preoccupations with the expression of power, order and legitimacy through urban planning and architectural form.

In particular, individual structures and edifices which were perceived as centres of power – palaces, churches, statues and monuments – were used as formal organizational nodes for the surrounding cityscape, ‘constructed and placed with a careful eye to the creation of a vast unity to which [such structures] alone gave meaning’.[1] The desire for the extension of organizing power across the urban fabric which this practice expressed, however, existed in tension with another element of the baroque conception of city; a reluctance to engage in the wholesale reconstruction of existing urban centres. During the baroque period, the city was seen as a phenomenon essentially beyond complete human control, as ‘an irreducible fact of nature – something which might be artificially limited or extended and into which new elements might be inserted but not as a totality capable of reorganisation and improvement as such’.[2]

It is this emphasis on the parts of the city rather than the whole which distinguishes baroque city planning from the schemes of the preceding renaissance and the later neoclassical periods. The renaissance vision of a harmonious, formalised and unified ‘ideal city’ was assimilated into the baroque concept of urban planning, but was related to parts of the city rather than to its entirety. Town and city development during this period tended to be characterised by the improvement of particular quarters, involving the laying out of carefully planned avenues and intersections, the use of significant buildings and monuments as focal points, and the organisation of the scheme’s component parts to create vistas and emphasise points-de-vue, with axial elements in already existing street patterns frequently being stressed in new urban development.

Map 1: Central Dresden, showing significant buildings and monuments. [Image copyright: greycat.org]

Thus ‘the embellishment of existing towns [and] ... expansion rather than unfettered creation’ [3] were the characteristics of town and city planning during the baroque era. Dresden is firmly in this pattern; as a city of independent parts, connected by gardens, streets and squares and coordinated into a scheme of vistas and visual effects, developed within an already extant urban matrix. It can be argued that Dresden is consequently more representatively a ‘baroque city’ than, for example, the entirely new creation of Karlsruhe, or the artistically unified scheme of Versailles.[4]

The single most important factor in the architectural development of Dresden during the late seventeenth and early- to mid-eighteenth centuries was its role as capital of the Electorate of Saxony, and the location there of the Saxon court. From 1694 to 1733, the ruler of Saxony was Frederick Augustus I, known as ‘Augustus the Strong’, whose ambitions for himself and his state determined the development of his capital; in particular, his acquisition of the crown of Poland in 1696 was the spur to a large-scale programme of architectural improvements in Dresden which were intended to express the power prestige and glory of Saxony and her ruler. As Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius has observed, when Augustus the Strong and his successor Frederick Augustus II ‘turned Dresden into a truly royal capital … much of their brilliance and power was due to the fact that they were also kings of Poland’.[5] In order to become King of Poland, Augustus I converted to Catholicism, and the presence in the capital of Protestant Saxony of a Catholic court provides an important context for the prolonged flourishing in Dresden of the baroque style.

The first large-scale piece of urban planning undertaken by Augustus was the development of an existing royal park into extensive public gardens known as the Grosser Garten or ‘Great Garden’. The park lay to the south-east of the city centre, outside the city walls, and was connected to the centre of the old city by a tree-lined boulevard, the Johann Georgen Allee. The extended and replanned gardens were developed into a large, unified rectangular space, formally laid out with ponds, avenues, hedges, flower borders and pavilions, and opened to the public to become a new urban social space. The symmetrical layout was dominated by the centrally-located palace, designed by Johann Georg Starcke, which dated from 1678-83. The garden, the palace, and the arrangement of avenues and other features were related to each other and to the overall unified composition: ‘Order and symmetry were made to predominate in the close linkage of house, gardens and early baroque statuary and sculpture’.[6]

Map 2: The location of the Grosser Garten and its relationship to central Dresden. [Image copyright: greycat.org]

In the city centre itself (the area known as the Altstadt or ‘old town’) the focal point of Augustus’s plans for redevelopment was his own Royal Palace. The Palace was a largely sixteenth-century structure which had acquired a number of alterations and irregular additions over the years in a range of architectural styles. At the outset of his reign, Augustus I set about making plans for the extensive enlargement and improvement of the Palace, but envisaging a minimum of alteration to the old building itself.

Augustus’s overall conception of the Palace precinct was to fill the space bounded by the Palace and the old city wall to the west and the river to the north with a complex of courts, apartments, halls and galleries, linked to the Palace by a great staircase, and united in visual and planning terms with the surrounding city. The original scheme was drawn up for Augustus by the sculptor and architect Marcus Conrad Dietze; progress on the design was interrupted by Saxon participation in the Great Northern War between 1700 and 1709, but subsequently continued under Mathaes Daniel Pöppelman, who had succeeded Dietze as Landbaumeister (chief builder to the Saxon court) in 1705.

In 1710 Pöppelman visited Rome, Prague and Vienna to study palaces and gardens, and on his return drew up a revised version of the ambitious palace project for Augustus, combining palace, museum, art gallery, library, assembly hall, game hall, chapel and theatre in colonnaded galleries around large open courts which communicated with each other through imposing gateways. Problems of cost intervened, however, and ultimately the building known as the Zwinger, originally designed as an entrance to the Palace complex and a link between the new development and the town (the term ‘Zwinger’ means outer enclosure) was all that survived a progressive scaling down of the plans. Nonetheless, in the Zwinger can be seen the application of the ideas for the integration of architecture, sculpture, gardens and water which had been planted in Pöppelman’s imagination by his trip to Italy.

The Zwinger develops fully the original intention of the new palace schemes, in which architecture was to act as ‘a richly dynamic frame for the large, beautifully decorated courts’. [7] It takes the form of a large rectangular open court with the north-western end built into a bastion of the old city walls. Pöppelman, with conscious antiquarianism, called it a ‘römische Schauburg’ or ‘Roman arena’,[8] and it was indeed intended to form an arena, a setting for displays, processions and pageants, with the surrounding ‘orangeries’ and pavilions providing places for which the activities could be viewed. The north-western half was built between 1709 and 1717; the south-east was built as a mirror image of the north-west in order to be ready for the various celebrations attending the marriage of Augustus’s son to the emperor’s daughter, Maria Josepha, in 1719. Having rapidly been put into temporary order for that event, the Zwinger remained incomplete for decades. Bernardo Bellotto’s painting of 1752 shows the structure looking unkempt, with building works still going on and the arena apparently in use as a public thoroughfare. The Zwinger cannot be said to have been finally completed until 1847-9, with the construction of Gottfried Semper’s Gemäldegalerie (now known as the Sempergalerie) on the north-eastern side.

The courtyard of the Zwinger as depicted in Bernardo Bellotto’s painting of c.1752. The ornamented cupola of the Kronentor is visible on the right.

The courtyard of the Zwinger as depicted in Bernardo Bellotto’s painting of c.1752. The ornamented cupola of the Kronentor with its onion dome is visible on the right. [Public domain image: source]

The decoration of the Zwinger is lavish, but balanced and controlled. The sculpture, by Balthasar Permoser, is vigorous and fluid while respecting the underlying discipline of the architecture. Permoser’s compositions advance and recede within the ordered lines of Pöppelman’s building, and significant groupings of figures are concentrated in particular areas of the structure, blending freely into the architectural framework at points of transition. As well as containing dancing figures and musicians reflecting the building’s original purpose, and a symbolic abundance of carved fruit, flowers, leaves and garlands, the decorative schemes are intended to express Augustus’s pedigree and authority. The great gilded crown upon the Kronentor, the gateway on the south-western side of the enclosure, is that of Poland, and below it the Polish Eagle is repeatedly carved, along with the initials ‘ARP’ for Augustus Rex Poloniae. The decoration also incorporates the double headed eagle of the Empire, and Augustus’s Imperial connections and responsibilities are powerfully symbolized at the highest point, both structurally and thematically, of the sculptural scheme, the figure of Hercules bearing the globe of the Earth on top of the north-western Wallpavillon. This figure represents ‘Hercules Saxonicus’, expressing both Augustus’s heroic stature as a monarch and the great burden which he carried as effective deputy ruler of the Empire. It also carries echoes of an early theme of Augustus’s ideas for his palace, the ‘garden of the Hesperides’. There is an abundant display of heraldry on the Wallpavillon and elsewhere; Augustus bore not only the arms of Saxony, but crossed swords of the Imperial Marshalcy, the mounted knight of Lithuania, and the Polish Eagle, and all these devices are incorporated into the sculptural decoration.

Map 3: Plan of the Zwinger. [Image copyright: greycat.org]

The Italo-German style of baroque architecture and decoration represented by the Zwinger was not the only significant architectural style important in Dresden during this period. There was a well-established French classical influence, characterized by a more structured application of the rhythmic energies of the baroque style, and represented during the first half of the eighteenth century by the work of Zacharias Longuelune and Jean de Bodt. The latter worked with Pöppelman on the rebuilding of the Japanisches Palais (originally the Höllandisches Palais) on the north bank of the Elbe, which was rebuilt in the mid-1720s as a showcase for porcelain, which had been manufactured since c.1708 in the royal porcelain works in Meissen, north of Dresden. The interior was to be filled with Augustus’s own collection of over 20,000 pieces of European and oriental porcelain (although his death in 1733 prevented the full realization of this scheme). The architectural decoration of this building included sculpted Chinese and Saxon figures handing pieces of porcelain to an enthroned figure representing Saxony, and a frieze around the exterior incorporating the slogan, ‘the porcelain producers of the world bring their treasures to Saxony’.[9]

The rebuilding of the Japanisches Palais was connected with the continuing development of the area of the city to the north of the Elbe, the Neue Königstadt or, in shortened form, the Neustadt (as distinct from the Altstadt, or old town, south of the Elbe). Following a disastrous fire in 1685 which destroyed this part of the town, Augustus commissioned his official architect, Wolf Caspar von Klengel , to draw up a plan for its reconstruction. Klengel’s scheme expressed typically baroque ideas of town planning, containing both ‘the two elements, the focal points and the expanding sectors of the fan-like design, [which] were well-fitted to express the ideology of the baroque and the desire for political centralisation’.[10] The street plan echoed Roman models, with three broad avenues fanning out from an open platz, the Neustädter Markt, located at the northern end of the Augustus Bridge. This transition point between the bridge and the New Town was marked from 1736 by an equestrian statue of Augustus the Strong. The statue stands at the southern end of the main central avenue, the Hauptstrasse. This thoroughfare forms the heart of the rebuilt town, descending to cross the Elbe by means of the Augustus Bridge, linking the Neue Königstadt both literally and symbolically to the political centre of the city and the state.

Detail from a map of Dresden in 1750, showing the Augustus Bridge and the New Town north of the Elbe

Detail from a map of Dresden in 1750, showing the Augustus Bridge and the New Town north of the Elbe

Detail from a map of Dresden published in 1750, showing the Augustus Bridge and the New Town north of the Elbe. The Hauptstrasse can be seen in the centre, with its two lines of trees; the open area at its southern end is the Neustädter Markt. [Public domain image: source]

The Augustus Bridge itself, built in 1728, was based on the Charles Bridge in Prague; it was designed to rise in a steep incline towards the centre, where a crucifix stood, while on the breakwaters to either side stood statues of the Albertine and Ernestine Saxon rulers, making the bridge both a religious and a dynastic symbol. The positioning of the Augustus Bridge, at an angle to the Hauptstrasse and the south bank of the Elbe, contributes greatly to the composition of the south bank of the city; in terms of baroque town planning, the indirect alignment of bridge and streets was an advantage, since it enabled the sophisticated use of points-de-vue at each end of the bridge where it joined the city’s main roads.

The dominating building of the south riverfront from the mid-eighteenth century was the Frauenkirche, the main Lutheran church of the city, built in 1726-43 by George Bähr. This church, the climax of Protestant German church architecture, represented a new Lutheran ecclesiology in its splendour and its reflection of communal worship and expressed ‘the liturgical and congregational unity of the Lutheran main Sunday parish service’.[11] Its outward form was intended to make a strong statement of the Lutheran faith, with its component parts being subservient to the overall effect and the concentrated mass and upthrust of the vast dome, its massive simplicity contrasting with the light and elaborate spirelets surrounding it, symbolizing the all-embracing grace of God on which human salvation depended.

The plan of the church is a Greek cross, with octagonal galleries resting on eight equal arches; the vast and lofty stone dome was designed to rest, daringly, on a concave stone base, contributing to the mighty upsurge created by the dome’s unusual height and pitch, but putting great strains on the structure itself. The interior, largely of carved and gilded wood, was also daringly constructed; the intention was to keep it open and unencumbered, resulting in the supporting piers being pared down to be as slender as possible. This left a legacy of structural problems to later ages; drastic measures had to be taken during the restoration of the late 1930s to stabilize and support the dome and roof. The interior layout was strongly centralized around the pulpit-altar, with richly decorated seating, balconies and galleries, giving physical expression to the idea of the community of believers.

Left: the Frauenkirche, from a photograph of 1880. Right: the Hofkirche, from a photograph of c.1900. [Public domain images: source]

The Hofkirche, the main Catholic Church in Dresden, provided a great contrast in its delicacy to the massiveness of the Frauenkirche at the other end of the Neumarkt. It was begun in 1738, the relatively late date indicating the longevity of the baroque style in Dresden, and was designed to serve as the Court church; it is connected to the Palace by an exquisite bridge. The design of the Hofkirche is clearly influenced by a strong consciousness of its position in the city as a whole. It is visually related to the Augustus Bridge, the Palace and the bend in the river, as well as to what was at the time of construction still intended to be the alignment of the new Palace along the riverfront. Its single tower acts as a point-de-vue, linking the heart of the city on the Southbank to the Neue Königstadt on the north, and interacting with the various buildings along the riverfront to provide an alternative focus to the Dome of the Frauenkirche; for this reason, the tower is as open and delicate as possible. The exterior of the body of the church is strongly articulated, and gives the delicate play of light and shade, while the many statues along the parapet – like the many altars inside the church – give visual expression to the idea of the communion of saints.

The width of the Hofkirche’s interior and the relative compactness of the church’s layout reveal the important influence of the Driekönigskirche in the Neue Königstadt, which had been rebuilt from 1733 following the demolition of the original mediaeval church during the construction of the Hauptstrasse. The plan was almost oval in shape with a broad nave and no separate chancel – a conception that was to prove influential again in the design of the Kreuzkirche in the south of the city, which was rebuilt following its destruction by Prussian troops in 1760. The use of the composite order and curving buttresses and cornices in the Kreuzkirche were much criticised by classical architects and connoisseurs at the time, but provide an indication of continuing baroque influence in Dresden, and also perhaps of the importance of the French classical legacy, as also shown in buildings such as the Japanischer Palais and the houses along the Hauptstrasse.

Baroque cities have been described as representing ‘the cosmic-dynastic grand illusion’ with the great palace acting as the focus, ‘sending its surveillance and benevolence into the far corners of the geometrically disciplined urban universe’.[12] This vision is perhaps most dramatically expressed in completely new cities such as Karlsruhe and St Petersburg; but it is fully present, on a smaller scale, but nonetheless in the grand manner, in the development of Dresden during the baroque period. The binding together of the significant elements of palaces, churches and monuments by an ordered urban environment of bridges, streets, open spaces and planned vistas, woven into the fabric of the city, represents both the transforming energies of the princely baroque and its complex relationship to the existing urban environment.

In memoriam: Dr L. O. J. Boynton, 1934-1995.

© Ralph Harrington 2005. This work is protected by copyright and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Licence. This means that you can copy, distribute and transmit this work freely as long as it is attributed to the original author; you may not alter, transform or build upon this work; and you may not use this work for commercial purposes.

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Notes

1. John G. Galgiardo, Germany under the Old Regime, 1600-1790 (London: Longman, 1991), p. 208.

2. John Summerson, The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969), p. 151.

3. Helen Rosenau, The Ideal City: Its Architectural Eevolution (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1959), p. 71.

4. John Summerson, The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969), pp. 152-3.

5. Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, ‘Art under the Polish-Saxon Union’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 139, no. 1136 (Nov. 1997), p. 813.

6. Anthony Clayton, ‘Dresden, 1206-1918’, in Anthony Clayton & Alan Russell (eds.), Dresden: A City Reborn (Oxford: Berg, 1999), p. 15.

7. Eberhard Hempel, Baroque Art and Architecture in Central Europe (London: Penguin, 1965), p. 192.

8. Hempel, Baroque Art and Architecture in Central Europe, p. 192.

9. Clare Ford-Wille, ‘The art collections of Dresden’, in Clayton & Russell (eds.), Dresden: A City Reborn, pp. 151-2, 166; John Man & Nicolas Sapieha, Zwinger Palace Dresden (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990), p. 46.

10. Rosenau, Ideal City, p. 73.

11. Nicholas Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism, 1700-1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 177.

12. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Matrix of Man: An Illustrated History of the Urban Environment (New York: Praeger, 1968), p. 72.