Dresden, often called”Florence at the river Elbe,” is a beautiful city, and one of contrasts. Having suffered through one of the worst allied bombing attacks of WW II which cost 25.000 lives and burnt much of its famous architecture, the old part of town is now restored and glorious. The new part of town, on the other side of the river, is vibrant and artsy.  Dresden is, however, also home to the far-right PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West) movement and a stronghold of the populist party AfD (Alternative for Germany) that scored mightily in recent state elections despite (or because of) its anti-immigrant, nationalistic, and authoritarian leanings.

The upcoming exhibition in the Lipsiusbau (its dome nicknamed the lemon squeezer) is thus a timely look into some of the horrid ideas associated with neo-nazi and other right-wing movements. Surveying the non-human – On the aesthetics of racism explores how racists often tried to justify their notions with scientific arguments. http://www.skd.museum/en/special-exhibitions/surveying-the-non-human/index.html (link in english). Among other things, the project displays an as yet unexamined obsessive collection of pictures by the Dresden ethnologist and anthropologist Bernhard Struck (1888—1971) as well as pieces by Fabio Mauri and Arnold Franck. I am reminded of the fabulous Carri Mae Weems show at the Portland Art Museum some years back. Her work tackled the same issues through photography.

Since today is Yom HaShoa and anti-Semitism is alive and well in some parts of those populist movements, I am adding one of my favorite photos of the New Synagogue in Dresden. Completed in 2001, it was built on the same location as the Semper Synagogue (1839–1840) which was destroyed in 1938, during Kristallnacht. The building stands at the edge of Dresden’s old town, the latter carefully restored in all its baroque  detail, the former refusing to be a replica of what was lost (although some parts of the destroyed synagogue are incorporated into the walls.) It is a dramatically modernist building, built slightly off plumb, to remind of the traditional isolation of the Jewish community from the city.