In five years of war, only a handful of bombs fell on Dresden, a city celebrated by the Poet-Philosopher Herder as Germany's "Florence on the Elbe." Devoted to art and architecture and free of all but a few light industries, the city came to be known as "the safest air-raid shelter in the Reich." On Feb. 13, 1945, Dresden's virtual immunity ended in one of the worst holocausts of World War II.*
Before the last note of Der Rosenkavalier could be sung at Architect Gottfried Semper's century-old opera house that night, the first wave...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
