Volkswagen’s new glass factory is a shining symbol of the former East German city’s regeneration. Andrew Eames explores the city that has rebuilt itself
At first it isn’t exactly clear that they’re making anything at all in the Glaserne Manufaktur. From the outside it looks like an art gallery. There are no tell tale smokestacks or lorries with raw materials backing into the loading bay.
On closer inspection from the foyer, it appears to be some kind of science museum decked out in glass and steel. But from the viewing platform it looks more like a state-of-the-art hospital for sick automobiles, all whitecoated, reverential and quiet (the smell of hot leather and engine oil is a bit of a giveaway). On the shop floor, something is taking place that looks like a car maker’s mime, being played out deliberately slowly. There is a hum of concentration as workers clad in white, some of them women, pad around their subjects, performing delicate internal operations with white-gloved hands. There’s no banging, no shouting, no background music or tannoy announcements, just the occasional whizz of an air-pressure hose powering some tool or other. There’s not even any obvious production-line progress –until you fix on a point on the wall and realise that the whole thing is moving forward, and that includes the floor. Germany is universally acknowledged as being nifty at making motors, but here at Volkswagen’s glass-walled factory where the top-of-the-range Phaeton is put together, production science has turned it into a spectator event, a spiritual experience. The idea, says Volkswagen, is to draw the customer into the whole process of a car’s creation, giving you the opportunity to witness the birth of your own vehicle. The customer is invited to be present at the “marriage” of the body to the power unit, and can even tighten a few screws personally, before driving off into the sunset with the perfect bride. The result is an intimate bond between man and machine, a loyalty to the brand that has been forged right in the maternity unit.
Clearly the Glaserne Manufaktur is groundbreaking stuff, but it is still too early to judge whether this kind of inspirational heavy industry actually sells more units (current slack in the production line is partly taken up by work on the Bentley overspill from the UK). The plant is, however, a major tourist attraction and a shining symbol of regeneration in Dresden, a city that has badly needed inward investment.
German cities are no strangers to manufacturing, but to have a car factory where you’d normally have a shopping centre is something new. In Dresden’s case, it was only made possible thanks to that building clearance organisation formerly known as RAF Bomber Command.Whole swathes of the city were destroyed over two days and nights back in February 1945, and the resulting firestorm killed between 35,000 and 100,000 people. While most of the 18th century Altstadt (old town) – with celebrated cultural buildings like the Zwinger, the Semper Opera House, the Albertinum, and Residenzschloss – have been immaculately restored to the jewel boxes of architecture that they once were, there are still large areas of open grassland in the heart of downtown. One of which is now occupied by VW. Whether or not it sells a lot of cars, the glass-walled factory stands as a symbol of how Dresden is rising like a phoenix from the ashes, and is doing so just in time for its 800th birthday this year.
It nearly didn’t get there. Back in the days when this was the seat of the Wettin dynasty and home to the Electors of Saxony (Augustus the Strong, the main architect of Dresden, was also King of Poland), the city was known for its quality of life. The industrialists of nearby Chemnitz and Liepzig built their homes in its leafy villa district on the banks of the Elbe, because “Chemnitz is the city to work, Leipzig the city to trade, and Dresden the city to live”. The city was artistic, cultured and sophisticated, and had the advantage of a fabulous riverside setting. But then came the war, with its two nights of undivided attention from the Bomber Command. That was followed by gruelling decades of Communist city planning, which swept away most of the remaining domestic architecture, and finally by a hugely destructive flood in 2002 when the Elbe broke its banks.
The net result of those 60 difficult years is a city of two faces.Approach it across the river from the airport and you instantly go back 300 years, to a historic centre so grand and immaculate that you’d think it was painted on canvas, if it wasn’t for the eternal cobbles nagging at your heels. Restoration work in the Altstadt has been so well done that it is virtually impossible to see the joins. But approach it from the central railway station (Hauptbahnhof) – currently being given a makeover by Norman Foster – and you get a completely different impression. This is the socialist city, with wide boulevards made for the whistling winter wind, and apartment blocks on a brutal, dehumanising scale. In these streets there’s something out of kilter between the size of a human being and the size of that which he has created. The shops, too, seem to lose any innate sense of creative display, choosing instead to pile it high and sell it cheap. In the post-Communist era there has been talk of knocking all this down and starting again, but the local mood has gone against it: residents appreciate that socialism is part of their personal biography, and that these buildings represent a period of their history that they cannot ignore.
They did, however, change their mind about the newest and most ambitious of all
the reconstruction projects of the last 60 years: the Frauenkirche. This US$175 million birthday present sits right at the heart of the Altstadt and restores the heart to the city.And it is back thanks to the will of the people; over two-thirds of the money was raised from private individuals, not from state funds, which culminated last October in a major outpouring of emotion at the church’s consecration.
“I’ve had people crying as I’ve taken them round,” said volunteer guide Benjamin Krohn, as he led me up the steepening flights of stairs to the Frauenkirche’s dome.“It’s partly the history, of course, but also its beauty.”And the church, a giant sandstone dome with a belfry on top, is an incredibly harmonious design. Its interior is like a theatre in the round,with rings of hand-planed pews on five levels, all of it under cascades of light from the dome. The balconies are marked by whorls of blue railings, the walls peach and powder blue, a touch more Laura Ashley than most churches I’ve seen. The view from the top of the church is the best in Dresden,with the ancient city at its feet, the Elbe in the middle ground and the hills, villas and vineyards in the distance. The streets around its base are thronged with tourists, and even the massed ranks of ancient stone blokes on top of baroque buildings – of which there are many –seem to be trying to twist their heads in the newcomer’s direction.
The whole reconstruction idea came about in the rush of optimism following the fall of the Wall.Until then the church had been a symbolic ruin in the heart of the city and its two stubs of masonry and rubble skirt had been a gathering place during times of celebration or civic demonstration.But then came a change of heart, and what started as a murmur grew to a cause célèbre, both domestically and overseas, with substantial contributions from Dresden funds in the UK and US.
Once the money had been sourced the latest technology was put to work and, thanks to computer modelling, a remarkable 44% of the masonry is from the original pile of rubble, which explains the church’s mottled effect. The orb and cross at the very top was the donation of the British Dresden Trust, created by the son of one of the pilots in the original RAF raid who happened to be a goldsmith.
Not everyone wanted to see the old ruin go. “I thought it was not honest to rebuild,” admits art historian Dr Claus Kemmer.“There would be no way you could pretend it was the old building restored.And the ruin was very impressive, very sentimental. It was a pity to destroy it. But now that it is there I am glad. It is so important to have the Frauenkirche back. It has restored the heart to the city.” The Frauenkirche has an added significance, because it represents the final full stop in a difficult chapter. It is the last major reconstruction in the city’s rehabilitation; no further such projects are planned.
There’s still plenty of smaller stuff to do, particularly in filling in the gaps in the Neumarkt around it, and there’s some debate as to whether all these new buildings should be reconstructions themselves, or a judicious mix of old and new.
When I went to see Herbert Fessenmayr, the deputy mayor responsible for city development, he was preoccupied with sourcing private investors for Neumarkt buildings, particularly for the British Hotel, once an 18th century palace with a heavily decorated facade.He had the original detailed plans and photographs, but as yet no takers. “We want to build around the Frauenkirche according to the pattern of the old town,” said Fessenmayr. “One hundred and eighty buildings in all, of which current thinking is that 60 need to be reconstructed in the old way. But the problem is finding the investors, which we have to get from the private sector; there is very little money available from the state.”
A map on Herr Fessenmayr’s wall interprets the inner city in its present state. One colour for the original town layout, one for the Communist overlay, one for the reconstructed buildings, and one for those sites where planning permission has been granted for further work. It’s hard to make sense of, so I ask how much is still to be done, and the deputy mayor runs his eye across the colours.“Most of the infrastructure, schools,museums and so on is in place,” he said.“But I’d guess 25% of the city is still missing.And will probably remain so.” This incompleteness doesn’t appear to be holding Dresden back. In addition to the revolutionary VW factory, the city has become the focus of what has been dubbed “Silicon Saxony”,with semiconductor and biotechnology industries on the increase. The result is something of a local economic resurgence, a rare story in former East Germany. Since 1999, the population has increased each year, bucking the trend of all former East German cities, although a staggering 28,000 city dwellings still stand empty.Unemployment at 14% is the best in the former East, where the average is 20%, and overseas tourists are increasing fast. In fact, Berlin aside, this is the only German city witnessing a tourism growth.Hotels (see box) are springing up all over the city.
Dresdeners themselves have moved a long way from self-pity. All those years of reconstruction produced a temporary form of employment, but now that they are coming to an end, the net result is that the city’s quality of life is back where it belongs. Its stretch of the Elbe, with castles on the banks and antique paddle steamers on the water, has recently been designated a world heritage site by Unesco. Its art collections rival those of Berlin or Munich and its outskirts host grand chateaux such as the pseudo-Chinese palace of Pillnitz, just upriver. So it is no surprise that the economy is moving in the right direction, too. And so, with the Frauenkirche back in its place, restoring the old order, and the likes of the Glaserne Manufaktur representing the new, Dresdeners have grounds for optimism. This is a city where, finally, it is no longer so important to remember the war.
WHERE TO STAY
It’s not just the car factories and churches that are springing up all over Dresden. New hotels are opening as you read this, and the rates are pretty competitive.
The most established and luxurious, the Taschenbergpalais Kempinski (tel 49 351 49 120; kwww.kempinski.com) occupies a reconstructed former royal palace built in the early 18th century by Augustus the Strong. Built around a courtyard which hosts an ice rink in winter and a leafy café in summer, its high-ceilinged rooms, with japanned wardrobes, are studiously grand. Room rates are from US$289 double, with bargain deals on the website. The Taschenberg has three choices of restaurants for fine dining, but if you want something less formal — roast pork and a mug of frothy beer along with homemade bread and cakes — then we’d recommend the Sophienkeller in its cellar.
A stone’s throw away, right across from the reconstructed Frauenkirche, is the Steigenberger (tel 49 351 43860; www.desaxe-dresden.steigenberger.de), a new building on the site of the former Hotel de Saxe.
Opening this month, the Steigenberger is a four-star property which lays particular emphasis on its fitness centre, spa and business facilities, and it also has the merit of charging the same starting rate for a single as for a double: from US$143, excluding breakfast. Just across the river, the Westin Bellevue (tel 49 351 8050; www.westin.com/dresden ) was the most prestigious address in Communist days, a giant hotel with enormous conference and banqueting facilities. The hotel is situated in attractive gardens on the banks of the Elbe. The standard rooms (from US$181 for a double) are a bit, well, standard, but the handsome new red and platinum suites have the best of German design, with butler and limousine service included. The suite price is a quarter of big city prices, from US$685. The Bellevue makes a specialty out of afternoon tea, served by a tea-master on the riverside terrace.
The Bellevue’s hold on conference and congress traffic will be heavily dented this spring by the opening of the new 328-room Maritim (www.maritim.de ), right next to the Congress Centre, back on the old city side of the river. The hotel is a conversion of a massive former riverside warehouse, and room rates start at US$193 for a double without breakfast. The hotel group’s investment suggests that it is not just the city’s marketing people who believe that Dresden’s conference trade is set for a significant increase.
Hilton Dresden (tel 49 351 86420; www.hilton.com) is also close to the Frauenkirche and has 333 guest rooms, a congress centre that can hold up to 700, health club and 12 restaurants, cafés and bars. There is also a Radisson SAS hotel (tel 49 351 49490; www.radisson.com) in Dresden, with rooms from US$151.
GETTING THERE
HONGKONG-DRESDEN. No direct flights.
Served by Lufthansa via Frankfurt or
Munich. Economy Class return is
HK$25,700 (US$3,311) plus HK$1,633
(US$210) tax. Business Class return is
HK$43,890 (US$5,655) plus HK$1,533
(US$210) tax.
SINGAPORE-DRESDEN. No direct
Flights. Served by LH via Frankfurt.
Economy Class return is US$4,812 plus
US$205 tax and Business Class return is
US$5,674 plus US$205 tax.
