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lasting changes on the Elbe landscape. There was no building development on the flat
Elbe meadows, which were natural floodplains helping to absorb the river’s recurrent
flooding.
Such new building development as did take place from the mid-19th century onwards,
to the east of the Altstadt and the Neustadt, remained at a “respectful“ distance
from the river, and harmonised with the surrounding landscape. The lines of the Elbe
hillsides were brought into play as the backdrop for the keynote buildings such as the
Elbe palaces. “Additionally, to preserve the sightlines and the characteristic settlement
pattern, development of industrial premises with steam boiler installations and tall
chimneys along the Elbe was prohibited.” (Application for UNESCO World Heritage
status for the “Dresden Elbe Valley” cultural landscape, page 15)
In the 1920s, city building officer Paul Wolf (1879 - 1957) introduced the concept of the
Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art. In his “Buch der Stadt Dresden 1927/28” (Book
of the City of Dresden 1927/28), city building officer Wolf declared that he saw it as his
“undoubted duty to protect the precious testimony from the past, the features around
us that bear witness to the life and work of the vigorous epochs that preceded us, with
the aim of handing these things on intact, as far as that is possible, to the generations to
come”. He insisted that special care should be taken to safeguard “the landscape values
and the green areas with which Dresden and its environs are abundantly provided.”
Development planning policy in Dresden, he felt, “must deliver the guarantee that the
future city will come across as a total work of art.” (Dresden – Europäische Stadt, page
30)
Many earlier planners had in fact already given tangible expression to this aspiration,
for instance through the 19th-century development plans and building regulations
that preserved the historic cityscape. A building ban imposed by royal decree in 1826,
affecting the eastern suburbs Pirnaische Vorstadt and Äußere Pirnäische Vorstadt
(the later Johannstadt), was still being implemented in the late 1850s. The authorities
of the time were all agreed that Dresden’s reputation as one of “the most beautiful
of all cities” could only be maintained if the “friendly aspect” of the city, “with the
promenade to the Grosser Garten (Great Garden) and the beautiful view towards the
Loschwitz Hills” were kept open. (Laudel, Heidrun, page 2)
In the year 1900, a “building ban effective in the past” – in fact since 1787 – was
extended “with respect to any development of the Waldschlösschen meadow or any
part of it, in perpetuity.” (Laudel, Heidrun, page 3). Further details of the background to
this detail are provided in Chapter 3, section 3.3., p. 35.
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