"Gesamtkunstwerk" Dresden: Official Urban Discourse and Durs Grünbein's Poetic Critique

• Published in: The German quarterly Vol. 80; no. 4; pp. 492 - 510
• Main Author: Goebel, Rolf J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Association of Teachers of German 22.09.2007; John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Subjects: Architecture; Art objects; Brochures; Churches; Cities; Composers; Criticism and interpretation; Grünbein, Durs; Influence; Literary criticism; Nostalgia; Poetry; Poets; Rubble; Wagner, Richard; Works; World wars; Germany
• ISSN: 0016-8831; 1756-1183
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-1183.2007.tb00087.x

Dresden's significance after Germany's reunification is established in this article by juxtaposing the city's self-representation with the poetry of Durs Grünbein. Officially, the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche serves as the metonymic sign of Dresden's vision of restored aesthetic totality. This self-image employs the Wagnerian concept of the "Gesamtkunstwerk" to legitimize its desire for a redemptive recovery from traumatic historical legacies. By contrast, Grünbein's post-reunification texts conceptualize Dresden as an unreal spectacle and irreparably ruined work of art, where unredeemable traces of the ruined past preclude nostalgic desires while forcing the remembering poet to reflect upon his own historical belatedness. Together, collective city discourse and individual poetic voice provide a conceptualization of Dresden that cannot be integrated into a seamless narrative. Instead, these heterogeneous voices alert the reader to the problem of functionalizing the traumatic past for Dresden's aspirations as a cultural metropolis in Eastern Germany and the New Europe.