Dresden

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Dresden

Germany

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Last Updated: May 25, 2025 • Article History

Dresden, city, capital of Saxony Land (state), eastern Germany. Dresden is the traditional capital of Saxony and the third largest city in eastern Germany after Berlin and Leipzig. It lies in the broad basin of the Elbe River between Meissen and Pirna, 19 miles (30 km) north of the Czech border and 100 miles (160 km) south of Berlin. Sheltering hills north and south of the Elbe valley contribute to the mild climate enjoyed by Dresden. Numerous parks and cultural monuments exist along the Elbe’s course, particularly a steel bridge (1891–93), a cable railway (1898–1901), and a funicular (1894–95). The Elbe valley around the city was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004, but the construction of a four-lane bridge across the river caused UNESCO to revoke the designation in 2009. Pop. (2021 est.) 555,351.

History

Dresden originated as the Slav village of Drezdzany, meaning “Forest Dwellers on the Plain,” on the Elbe’s north bank. First mentioned in 1216, the town on the south bank was founded at a ford by Margrave Dietrich of Meissen as a German colony. The Slav settlement on the north bank, although older, was known as New Town and the later German town on the south bank as Old Town.

In 1270 Dresden became the capital of Margrave Henry the Illustrious, and after his death it belonged to the king of Bohemia and the margrave of Brandenburg until it was restored about 1319 to the margraves of Meissen, who chartered it in 1403. Upon the division of Saxony in 1485 it became the residence and capital of the Albertine line of Wettin rulers, later electors and kings of Saxony. Dresden accepted the Protestant Reformation in 1539. After a disastrous fire in 1491, the city was rebuilt and fortified. The electors Augustus I and Augustus II modernized the city in the Baroque and Rococo styles in the late 17th and 18th centuries, rebuilding New Town (burned in 1685) and founding Friedrichstadt, northwest of Old Town. The Treaty of Dresden (1745), between Prussia, Saxony, and Austria, ended the second Silesian War and confirmed Silesia as Prussian. Two-thirds destroyed in the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), Dresden’s fortifications were later dismantled. In 1813 Napoleon I made the town a centre of military operations and there won his last great battle on August 26 and 27 (see Battle of Dresden). Dresden’s prosperity grew rapidly during the 19th century, accelerated by the completion of railways connecting the city to Berlin and Leipzig. Industrial suburbs began to grow up, mostly on the south bank.

Tower Bridge over the Thames River in London, England. Opened in 1894. Remains an Important Traffic Route with 40,000 Crossings Every Day.

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Before World War II, Dresden was called “the Florence on the Elbe” and was considered one of the world’s most beautiful cities owing to its architecture and art treasures. During the war, however, it was almost completely destroyed by massive bombing raids that took place on the night of February 13–14, 1945, by an Anglo-American force. The raids obliterated much of Dresden and killed thousands of civilians; various postwar estimates placed the death toll between 35,000 and 135,000 people, but in the early 21st century an official German commission concluded that up to 25,000 had perished. The city continued to be bombarded in raids lasting until April 17, 1945, but little was achieved militarily.

The city was so badly damaged that it was suggested that the best approach might be to level the site. After the war a compromise was reached by rebuilding the Zwinger, the Saxon royal palace, and the Baroque buildings around the palace and creating a new city in the area outside. Much of the city was subsequently reconstructed with modern (though rather plain) buildings, broad streets and squares, and green open spaces, with the aim of preserving as far as possible the character of the old city.

The contemporary city

Manufacturing in Dresden expanded greatly after World War II. Owing to the paucity of raw materials in the vicinity, the city traditionally eschewed heavy industry in favour of high value-added manufacturing. Its industries currently produce precision and optical instruments, electrical equipment, specialized chemicals and pharmaceutical products, motor vehicles and airplanes, and food products. Microelectronics has also grown in significance. Market gardening is extensive, and flowers and shrubs are grown for export. The European porcelain industry originated in Dresden but was moved to Meissen, 15 miles (24 km) northwest, in 1710. Dresden lies at the centre of an extensive railway system, has an airport, and is connected by the Elbe River with the inland waterway system as far as Hamburg and into the Czech Republic.

The heart of Dresden is still a cluster of Baroque churches and the Rococo-style Zwinger on the south bank of the Elbe, in the old city. These churches suffered severely during World War II: the Frauenkirche (“Church of Our Lady”; 1726–43), Germany’s largest Protestant church, was destroyed; the Hofkirche (“Court Church”; 1738–55) and the Kreuzkirche (“Church of the Holy Cross”; restored 1491, 1764–92, and 1900) were restored shortly after the war. The ruins of the Frauenkirche were kept as a memorial until the 1990s, when reconstruction began; in 2004 it was topped with a cross built by a British silversmith who was a son of one of the pilots who had dropped bombs on the city. Work was completed in 2005, and the Frauenkirche subsequently opened to the public. The Georgenschloss, the former royal palace (1530–35, restored 1889–1901), was also heavily damaged by bombing. Other historic buildings have also either been restored or reconstructed, including the Taschenbergpalais, which has been rebuilt as a hotel, and the Wettinerpalais.

Dresden has several major museums and art galleries. The famous Zwinger (1711–32), which was originally planned as the forecourt for a castle, has been restored and its numerous collections (including pewter and porcelain) and museums (zoology, mineralogy, mathematical and scientific instruments) reopened. In the open space north of the Zwinger, the Semper Gallery (1846) was destroyed in 1945 but was reopened in 1960, with renovations continuing into the 1990s. The gallery houses important Renaissance and Baroque paintings by Italian, Dutch, and Flemish masters, including Raphael’s Sistine Madonna (1513). The Japanese Palace, formerly housing a manuscript and map library, has been rebuilt and is now a museum of anthropology and ethnography.

Dresden is also a city of music with a great operatic tradition, where Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner conducted and where operas by Richard Strauss and others premiered. The Opera House (1878), destroyed in the war, was reconstructed. The city is the home of the Dresden State Theatre and the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra (founded 1870). There is a music college and colleges of medicine, plastic arts, transport, and teachers’ training, as well as a celebrated Academy of Art. Dresden is also a major centre for scientific education and research, particularly in the atomic field. The city is the site of a Technical University (1828), with a library containing more than one million volumes; the Central Institute for Nuclear Physics; and the German Museum of Hygiene, internationally known for its manufacture of transparent plastic anatomical models. There are several historic parks, notably the Grosse Garten (1676), which lies southeast of the old city and has botanical and zoological gardens.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Michael Ray.

Saxony

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Saxony

state, Germany

Also known as: Sachsen

Written by William H. Berentsen

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German:: Sachsen

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Saxony, Land (state), eastern Germany. Poland lies to the east of Saxony, and the Czech Republic lies to the south. Saxony also borders the German states of Saxony-Anhalt to the northwest, Brandenburg to the north, Bavaria to the southwest, and Thuringia to the west. The capital is Dresden. Area 7,109 square miles (18,413 square km). Pop. (2011) 4,056,799.

Geography

Present-day Saxony is composed largely of hill and mountain country, with only its northernmost portions and the area around Leipzig descending into the great North European Plain. The chief mountain range is the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge), which stretch for about 100 miles (160 km) along the state’s southern border and reach elevations of more than 4,000 feet (1,200 metres). In the west and southwest are subsidiary groups of this range, while the northeastern angle of the state features the mountains of Upper Lusatia (Lausitz). South of this group, and along both banks of the Elbe River, extends a picturesque region of hills and deep gorges known as the Saxon Switzerland, the site of a national park. The upper course of the Elbe River flows from southeast to northwest through the state. The Mulde, a tributary of the Elbe, is the second largest river in Saxony. More than half of Saxony’s land area is used for agriculture, and about one-fourth is forested. The region’s climate is generally temperate, though the mountain country has a harsher one.

Saxony is one of the most densely populated and populous states in eastern Germany, although since the mid-20th century its population has declined. Between 1960 and the turn of the 21st century, the number of inhabitants declined by one-fifth. More than nine-tenths of the population is ethnically German; there is a small indigenous ethnic minority, the Sorbs, and there is also a relatively small foreign population.

Northern Saxony occupies one of the most fertile parts of eastern Germany and is highly developed agriculturally, though fertility diminishes toward the Ore Mountains of the south. Wheat, barley, rape, sugar beets, fodder crops, peas, apples, butter, and cheese are the principal agricultural products, while cattle raising is important on the extensive pastures of the Ore Mountains. Forestry is also of some importance.

Saxony long had important mineral production in the Ore Mountains, including the production of uranium, but the latter has ceased, and expensive clean-up projects were undertaken across the region to reduce the contamination of mining and waste sites, especially around Aue and Zwickau. Currently lignite is the only major industrial resource still mined in significant quantities, and both production and employment in this once important sector were dramatically reduced after German unification. Lignite is mined both in northeastern Saxony in the Lusatia field near Hoyerswerda and around Leipzig in the Central German field. One clear advantage of the decreased mining and use of lignite in Saxony and the wider region has been a dramatic improvement in air quality.

Although the Saxon economy, especially manufacturing, suffered severe cutbacks after unification, it remains one of the largest economies in eastern Germany and one of the few in which ‘‘new economy’’ sectors such as microelectronics have experienced considerable growth. Nevertheless, unemployment in the state has been significant since the mid-1990s. Major manufacturing sectors in Saxony include electronics, machinery, pharmaceuticals, auto and auto parts production, food processing, publishing, and textiles. The chief manufacturing industry was once textile production, focused on Chemnitz and Zwickau, as well as many smaller urban centres. While some production in this sector continues, employment has declined drastically. Dresden, the state’s largest city in terms of area, is the production site of many types of precision optical and electrical equipment. There are also silicon-chip-production facilities in Dresden. Leipzig, the most populous city in the state, is a centre of printing and publishing, heavy engineering, and auto manufacturing. Automaking has also been important in Mosel, near Zwickau. Meissen is an important and historic centre for the production of porcelain and other ceramics, and some production of traditional wooden toys and Christmas decorations continues in towns in the Ore Mountains, most notably Seiffen.

The principal urban centres are Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz, Plauen, Zwickau, and Meissen, and each has important regional service sectors. In addition, Leipzig and Dresden have important airports. Leipzig in particular is an important national transport centre, owing to a key location in the national rail and highway networks. For centuries it has been home to important trade fairs. Following unification many retailers took advantage of Leipzig’s centrality within the German transport network, its access to a large regional population, and a brief period of looser land-use controls to construct a number of large suburban shopping centres. Leipzig’s huge downtown rail station has also been renovated to serve as both a station and an attractive shopping plaza.

ZwingerZwinger, designed by Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, in Dresden, Germany.

Saxony has a moderately important tourist industry focused in particular on the scenic Ore Mountains, Leipzig, the scenic Elbe River valley and Saxon Switzerland, and Dresden. Though the city was bombed into ruins by an Anglo-American bombing raid in 1945, some of Dresden’s former architectural glory has been restored. Reconstruction of the Saxon royal palace, the Zwinger, and other sites began after the war; unification opened up more resources and has allowed relatively rapid reconstruction, for example, on the city’s famed Frauenkirche. Along with taking Elbe River cruises, sightseers to Dresden often visit nearby Pillnitz (palace and gardens) and Radebeul (museum focused on the popular author Karl May). The Dresden Elbe Valley, including the Pillnitz Palace and the centre of Dresden, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004. There are a host of architectural and cultural attractions in other parts of Saxony, notably in Görlitz, Bautzen, Freiberg, and Meissen. Also designated a World Heritage site in 2004 was Muskauer Park, a European country park laid out in the early 19th century; located on the border between Germany and Poland, it is jointly maintained by both countries.

The state of Saxony is governed by a Landtag (state parliament) and a minister-president, who is generally a leading member of the Landtag’s strongest party. The election of extreme right-wing politicians from the National Democratic Party (NDP) to the state parliament in 2004 generated controversy and concern among some within Saxony and Germany as a whole. Leipzig is a university town, as is Zwickau. There are technical universities in Dresden, Chemnitz, and Freiberg. Saxony’s primary cultural centres are Dresden and Leipzig. Dresden has important concentrations of historic buildings, museums, and musical groups, as well as major art collections and the renowned Semper Opera House. Leipzig is the site of one of Germany’s major national libraries (the Deutsche Bücherei), a nationally acclaimed orchestra (Gewandhaus Orchestra), and sections of the national Academy of Sciences.