Interview on the "Forum 13 February transnational"

with Dr. Johannes Schütz (Research Associate at the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History, TU Dresden)

1) The interactive "Forum 13 February transnational" from February 10 to 12, 2025, deals with the transnational perspective on February 13, 1945. Why do you think it is important to look at February 13 from an international perspective?

The air raid on Dresden was an international topic from the very beginning. Dresden was already known for its architecture, music, art, etc. and attracted many international guests in the first half of the 20th century. For this very reason, National Socialist propaganda used its contacts with the foreign press to spread its interpretations and exaggerations, but also to ventilate accusations and recriminations. Numerous international stakeholders reacted to this, which is why there are numerous, very different international narratives about Dresden. These narratives, interpretations and positions can open up new perspectives for the city's culture of remembrance, because they break up the local isolation of remembrance and at the same time underline that the interpretation of February 13th functioned from the outset in an international exchange.

2) In view of the political situation in Saxony, especially the increasing shift to the right, 13 February is often politically instrumentalized. Can you explain how this instrumentalization takes place and how the Forum would like to contribute to creating a balance and counteracting extreme positions?

The political instrumentalization itself goes back to 1945 and served the National Socialists to gain moral superiority, assert a victim status and further mobilize their own population for their own war aims. Some of these narrative motifs were adopted in the GDR. However, they now served to portray the Western Allies as prototypes of the "warmongering imperialists" and to present themselves as a "force for peace". Instrumentalization can therefore not be separated from commemoration, until now. Since 1990, February 13 has been used by the extreme right in Germany in particular, but also throughout Europe, to thematize their own interpretations of history, to stage themselves in front of a stage overloaded with symbols and to create their own effectiveness in the process. The forum addresses these mechanisms of staging, the transnational interdependencies of the actors, and sheds light on them historically.

3. which topics or perspectives should the forum focus on in particular and why are they relevant right now?

The focus will be on the fact that memory in Dresden was never free from political interpretations, but that these always had an impact on the memory of the residents. Feedback from international stakeholders will also play an important role in the event. In particular, the memories of people who experienced the air raid as victims of persecution, prisoners of war or forced laborers will also be addressed, as they open up a further focus on the memory narratives. The focus will therefore be on memories in different national contexts and the connections between these forms of remembrance.

4 The forum brings together people from different fields such as art, science and civil society. What opportunities and challenges do you see in this interdisciplinary approach?

The opportunity clearly lies in the fact that blind spots in one discipline can be addressed and named through the approaches of the others. The main challenge is to communicate the different approaches in a way that everyone can understand and to find a common language - a shared interest in interdisciplinary exchange is the basis for this.

5. what long-term impetus do you hope the forum will provide for the culture of remembrance in Saxony and beyond?

A further step would be taken if future debates on this and other topics were to include a discussion of the fact that remembrance is not an isolated process that takes place locally, but can have international dimensions if expanded accordingly. By examining the international dimension and transnational exchange, it is certainly possible to make it more difficult to retreat into the national discourse space and thus also to find a common, European narrative of remembrance.

Dresden and February 13, 1945: Event - Myth - Reflection

by Prof. Dr. Mike Schmeitzner (Deputy Director of the Hannah Arendt Institute
for Totalitarianism Research e. V. at the TU Dresden)

Every now and then it still seems as if Dresden was the only German city to suffer the fate of severe destruction. Up to 25,000 people were killed in day and night raids by British and American bomber fleets between February 13 and 15, 1945, and the magnificent buildings of the historic city center were almost completely destroyed. The well-known Dresden-born writer Durs Grünbein recently described the inferno in his book "Der Komet" (The Comet). But Dresden's fate was similar to that of other German cities: Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Hamburg, Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart and Berlin were also badly hit and thousands of people were killed there too. So why is this event remembered differently in Dresden than in other cities? Why is it here, of all places, that right-wing extremist groups and civil society compete year after year for the interpretation of the event?

Dresden was certainly one of the last cities to be destroyed in the German Reich and the attacks certainly destroyed world-famous buildings such as the Zwinger, the Frauenkirche and the castle. The firestorm unleashed by the bombs had maximum impact in a confined space. Shortly after the devastating attacks, Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels himself initiated a media offensive against the British and Americans, who had wiped out an important cultural city - and therefore an "innocent city" - with their attacks. The number of victims was increased tenfold. This offensive was a complete success due to the reporting in neutral foreign countries. And the new rulers picked up on this narrative almost without further ado after May 8, 1945. In the "Cold War", the British and Americans were once again enemies and the Dresden narrative was an important legitimizing resource.

After the Peaceful Revolution of 1989/90, this narrative was increasingly called into question. The perpetuation of the victim narrative collided with the rapprochement and reconciliation of the former war opponents. And more and more people in Dresden were now reminded that the city was not just a unique city of culture that perished in a hail of bombs. Rather, Dresden's fate was also intertwined with March 8/9, 1933 and May 8, 1945. For Dresden was by no means the mythical "innocent" city, but the administrative center of the Nazi district of Saxony, the operational base of important repressive organs (which set the genocide of the Jews in Dresden in motion), a hub for the transport of Jews across Germany and Central Europe, the headquarters of armaments companies and military structures. At the beginning of 1945, Dresden was also a transportation hub for troop transports to the Eastern Front. And Dresden had ceased to be a stronghold and engine of cultural modernity at the latest with the "Gleichschaltung" of the mind in the spring of 1933. Two central book burnings in the city, on March 8 as the starting signal for the Nazi conquest of power in Dresden and a second academic one on May 10, 1933, made it clear that there was no longer any room for a modern, pluralistic culture - indeed for pluralism in general. And one should not forget that long before 1933, völkisch currents were thriving in Dresden; modernity was Janus-faced here in particular, just think of so-called racial hygiene; there was a chair for this misanthropic discipline at the TH Dresden as early as 1920. The seeds for what rose politically in Dresden on March 8/9, 1933 and ended on May 8, 1945 had also been sown in this city long before then.

However, this does not mean that a new narrative, namely that of the consequentiality of February 13/14 and 15, should be established; especially since the attacks indiscriminately affected civilians and military personnel, Nazi perpetrators and political opponents and prisoners, helpers and stakeholders of the "Third Reich" as well as forced laborers and Jews, not to mention children. What should be made clear is the connection between March 8/9, 1933 on the one hand and the caesuras of February 13/14/15 and May 8, 1945 on the other. The fact that Jews like Victor Klemperer managed to escape the threat of deportation because of the attack illustrates this context. His volume "LTI", written in 1946 and published in 1947, exposed the spirit and language of the "Third Reich" and has not lost its topicality to this day. This, in turn, has to do with the still virulent right-wing extremist myths and marches, which Dresden's civil society tries to fend off every year with human chains. Grünbein's documentary novel, which goes back to the 1930s, deconstructs the myth, especially in terms of everyday history. The volume "Die Zerstörung Dresdens 13. bis 15. Februar 1945. Gutachten und Ergebnisse der Dresdner Historikerkommission zur Ermittlung der Opferzahlen", which is finally available in digital form(https://hait.tu-dresden.de/ext/publikationen/publikation-14404/), does this even more comprehensively.