Dresden is a very interesting city. It was the capital city for King August II, and thus has his palace, Cathedral, and other interesting buildings in it. We toured the palace grounds, listened to the clock strike 12 noon, and then walked past the Opera House and Old Museum. We had just a few minutes at the end of our time in town to stop in to the Old Museum and see the “original” Cranach paintings of Luther and Melanchthon. There was also a Titian exhibit in the next room where we saw “The White Lady.” It was BADLY damaged in the War and they are working to restore it. There were no photos allowed, of course, but I can tell you that the copy they have posted is in very bad shape. I hope they can restore it.
The highlight for me was being in The Church of Our Lady, or Die Frauenkirche. It was leveled in February 1945. It looks like it was a direct hit, as the bomb not only leveled the church but also knocked a 15 ft. statue of Martin Luther to the ground. Rebuilding did not begin on the church until 1996 and took nearly 10 years to complete. The people saved as much brick as they could and rebuilt the building with the rubble. Today, it is truly a magnificent place of worship.
Luther was in Dresden somewhere around 1521 to debate Johann Eck on the infallibility of the Pope. Luther, of course, contended that the Pope was not above Scripture, and once word of this reached the Pope’s ears, he (the Pope) issued the Papal Bull which threatened excommunication from the church. Luther did not recant, and was thus kicked out of The Church.
From there we drove to Leipzig, where Luther also spent some time, but so also did Johann Sebastian Bach and Fredrich Mendelssohn. Bach auditioned in the St. Nicholas Church and was then employed as “the church musician” at St. Thomas Church. He wrote new music for worship every Sunday because the people did not want to sing the same thing twice in a row. Apparently Bach fathered several children. When his first wife died, he remarried fairly quickly and then had several more children, somewhere around 20 in all.
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