Dresden

DRESDEN

DRESDEN. Dresden's development was determined by its rulers. In 1485 what had been a small market town on the River Elbe became the permanent residence of the Albertine Dukes of Saxony. Under Duke George the Bearded (ruled 1500–1539), an opponent of the Reformation, the city began to expand. On his death in 1539 Dresden became Lutheran. In 1547, at the Battle of Mühlberg, Duke Maurice (ruled 1541–1553) wrested the title of elector of Saxony from the Ernestine branch of the family. Dresden was now the capital of a large and politically important Lutheran territory. Under Maurice it expanded to include the settlement on the northern bank of the Elbe, the socalled New Town. In 1549 forty-seven trade guilds were recorded with 707 master craftsmen. Maurice's brother Augustus (ruled 1553–1586) continued his efforts to create an Italianate Renaissance palace and to fortify the city according to the latest Netherlandish and Italian techniques. Augustus also built up important collections of books, scientific instruments, and curiosities. Between 1500 and 1600 the population trebled in size to fifteen thousand.

Dresden's importance as a musical center was confirmed when Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672) was appointed Kapellmeister to John George I (ruled 1611–1656) in 1615. During the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) Dresden was not occupied but suffered from famine, plague, and economic stagnation. John George II (ruled 1656–1680) led the city's economic recovery after the war by encouraging trade and manufacture. In 1676 he began to lay out the park known as the Grosser Garten (Great Garden), in which he built a baroque palace (1678–1683) designed by Johann Georg Starcke (1640–1695).

His grandson Frederick Augustus I (known as Augustus the Strong, ruled 1694–1733) succeeded unexpectedly to the electorship in 1694. He was elected king of Poland in 1697 as Augustus II, having converted to Catholicism. This estranged him from his wife and his Saxon subjects and meant that he spent years at a time in Poland. It also led to the Northern War (1700–1721), which had serious economic consequences. Augustus was a noted patron of the arts, particularly the exquisite goldsmith work by the Dinglinger brothers, Johann Melchior (1664–1731), Georg Friedrich (1666–1720), and Georg Christoph (1668–1746). He also collected Far Eastern porcelain, encouraged the rediscovery of porcelain manufacture by Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682–1719) and Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708) and reorganized the Dresden art collections. He built the Taschenberg Palace between 1707 and 1711 to designs by Johann Friedrich Karcher (1650–1726) and Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann (1662–1736); the Zwinger (1709–1732), by Pöppelmann and the sculptor Balthasar Permoser (1651–1732); the Dutch (later Japanese) Palace (1715), also by Pöppelmann; and the new Opera House inaugurated in 1719 (no longer extant).

Augustus II's only legitimate son, Frederick Augustus II (ruled 1733–1763), also converted to Catholicism. He was elected king of Poland as Augustus III on his father's death. In 1719 he had married the Catholic Habsburg princess Maria Josepha. As a restatement of their Lutheran allegiance, the people of Dresden funded the building of the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), which seated 3,500 worshippers. Begun in 1726 to a design by George Bähr (1666–1738), it was completed in 1743. As a counterblast to the Frauenkirche, between 1738 and 1754 Augustus III and Maria Josepha built the Catholic Court Church of the Holy Trinity (by the Italian architect Gaetano Chiaveri [1689–1770]) in a dominant position in front of the electoral palace. Augustus III greatly augmented the art collection by buying one hundred paintings from the duke of Modena in 1745/1746 and Raphael's Sistine Madonna in 1754. He also had a passion for music. Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783) was his Kapellmeister from 1731 to 1763.

In August 1756 Frederick II, king of Prussia, marched into Saxony and took up residence in Dresden. Augustus and his court fled to Warsaw, and the Seven Years' War began. In 1758 and 1759 whole suburbs were burned down by the Prussians. In September 1760 they bombarded Dresden, destroying five hundred buildings. When the war was over, Saxony had to pay heavy reparations to Prussia. It took sixty years for the city's population of 63,000 to return to what it had been before the war.

See also Augustus II the Strong (Saxony and Poland) ; Frederick II (Prussia) ; Northern Wars ; Prussia ; Saxony ; Schütz, Heinrich ; Seven Years' War (1756–1763) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Papke, Eva. Festung Dresden: Aus der Geschichte der Dresdener Stadtbefestigung. Dresden, 1997.

Stimmel, Folke, et al. Stadtlexikon Dresden. Dresden, 1998.

Watanabe-O'Kelly, Helen. Court Culture in Dresden from Renaissance to Baroque. Basingstoke, U.K., 2002.

Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly