The gallows, of course. There is no memory of the Chancellor's reign in Dresden without this unspeakable excess during a Pegida demonstration. Shame does not create a solemn mood. Kurt Biedenkopf recently gave rise to this. The 90th birthday celebrated in the Frauenkirche was a secular high mass; the Chancellor, who is known to mean little to the display of symbolic splendor, appeared relaxed as she had not for a long time on the Elbe. In September of this year the much smaller mourning community, again in the Frauenkirche, but this time without the Chancellor. The death of the former prime minister particularly shocked the older people of Dresden. Many visited the grave of the national father on the day of national mourning.
This closed a circle that began in December 1989 with an enthusiasm for cabbage that was completely unthinkable in the old FRG and the euphoria of “We are one people”.
A dynamic towards reunification emanated from Dresden's Neumarkt, which suddenly made all ideas of a “Third Way” appear like fantasies.
The reconstruction of the Frauenkirche, which received worldwide attention and was consecrated as a monument to European reconciliation on October 30, 2005 in the presence of Chancellor-elect Merkel, ensured that the national exuberance did not degenerate into nationalism.
But not even 10 years later came Pegida - and the gallows.
What had happened in the meantime?
Sometimes pink, sometimes black
In contrast to Biedenkopf and Kohl, who always flattered Dresden's vanities, symbolism was not Merkel's strength. In the long term, this offers Dresden the chance to overcome a narcissism that can only perceive the world in extremes: sometimes pink, sometimes pitch black. Paradoxically, the rifts in Dresden broke open during Merkel's chancellorship at a time when the city was experiencing steady prosperity. However, the increased prosperity is shown above all in the increase in consumption; on the other hand, the upswing at the eternal competitor Leipzig was always much trendier, more colorful, more emancipated - and thus also: more relaxed with a view to an increasingly uncertain future. BMW and the creative industries came to Leipzig, civil servants, engineers and IT specialists came to Dresden.
Another event was significant for the media perception of the city. Uwe Tellkamp's novel “The Tower” won the 2008 German Book Prize. In the very year in which the Chancellor rose to become the most powerful woman in the West as a crisis manager, “the sweet illness of yesterday” seemed to get to the heart of the Dresden mentality. The problem was not so much the novel itself, but its euphoric reception in the feature pages and in parts of the West German bourgeoisie. When Barack Obama paid a visit to Angela Merkel's Elbflorenz at the side in 2009, the grandiose overestimation of oneself that one is of course the center of the world seemed confirmed for the Dresden residents - an overestimation of oneself that always turns into its opposite when the collective trauma is touched : the bombing of February 13, 1945,the end of a world.
In the wake of Pegida & Co., Dresden's image sank to absolute zero, while the Chancellor, at least in the published opinion, established a kind of morally solid taboo zone in the sense of immunization against any criticism. But there were also squadrons with the title of professor who wanted to recognize a volcanic crater in Dresden from which the pent-up magma - popular anger - pours out in an exemplary manner. It has always been overlooked that the demographic development and the influx of external specialists in Dresden have long since led to the establishment of a new bourgeoisie that is more sympathetic to the Chancellor. It is still too early to take stock of Dresden's view of the Merkel era, but a prognosis is daring:In view of the tendency towards the transfiguration of the past, the zenith of the Chancellor's reputation is likely to be imminent in the residence of Augustus the Strong.
The author is a literary scholar and journalist and lives again in his native Dresden. You can find the previous episodes on the Internet at www.faz.net/menschmerkel.