»Dresden wie es einmal war«

Today after class I headed over to the Transportation Museum to see the short film »Dresden wie es einmal war« – Die Kunststadt Dresden vor ihrer Zerstörung 1945 ("Dresden as it Once was – The Art-City before its Destruction, 1945"). It's a 1930s B&W German tourism film showing well-heeled visitors touring sunny, pristine pre-war Dresden. It had what appeared to be a tacked-on East German introduction that used cigarette smoke and newsreel footage to demonstrate how the Allies had fire-bombed the baroque jewel into a vast smoldering wasteland. I am not sure what year the film itself was made, but there were no visible signs of the pre-1933 economic chaos or post-1933 Nazi regalia. Just lilting music, smiling tourists and a lively, forever-lost city of heartbreaking beauty.

                

Afterwards I walked over to the Zwinger, the famous baroque museum complex, and visited the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Master Painting Gallery). I was stunned by the treasures inside, which include Raphael's Sistine Madonna, Giorgione's Sleeping Venus, Antonello da Messina's The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, Titian's Tribute Money, and Rubens' Neptune and St. Jerome. However, the painting that made the biggest impression on me was Rembrandt's Abduction of Ganymede, which has lost none of its power to transfix and disturb.