In her new book, Icon Dresden, Susanne Vees-Gulani connects historical memory with contemporary politics to examine how Dresden’s image as a beautiful, innocent cultural icon—cemented long before World War II—shaped how the 1945 allied bombing was remembered.
Vees-Gulani, associate professor of German and comparative literature at Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, also argues how the narrative of victimhood downplayed the city’s Nazi past and continues to influence memory politics and far-right movements today.
Through a study of urban planning, tourism, visual culture and postwar reconstruction, Icon Dresden shows how the city’s “innocence” was constructed, politically deployed and mythologized. The book also addresses enduring antisemitism and the rebuilding of the city’s synagogue, framed through the lens of bombing narratives.
