Icon Dresden
Baroque City, Air War Symbol, Political Token
Book •
Susanne Vees-Gulani's Icon Dresden traces Dresden's identity from its baroque marketing through wartime destruction to contemporary politics, showing how visual culture, urban planning, and memory practices produced an enduring narrative of victimhood.
The book examines Nazi-era propaganda, GDR commemorative strategies, and post-reunification rebuilding decisions, arguing these layers enabled both peace symbolism and far-right appropriation.
Drawing on urban, heritage, visual, and memory studies, it analyzes monuments, tourism, and cultural institutions to reveal how the city's image was manufactured and contested.
Vees-Gulani highlights the conflation of bombing and Holocaust memory in Dresden and shows how ambiguous responsibility in remembrance facilitated politicized uses of suffering.
The work is published by the University of Michigan Press and made available Open Access.
The book examines Nazi-era propaganda, GDR commemorative strategies, and post-reunification rebuilding decisions, arguing these layers enabled both peace symbolism and far-right appropriation.
Drawing on urban, heritage, visual, and memory studies, it analyzes monuments, tourism, and cultural institutions to reveal how the city's image was manufactured and contested.
Vees-Gulani highlights the conflation of bombing and Holocaust memory in Dresden and shows how ambiguous responsibility in remembrance facilitated politicized uses of suffering.
The work is published by the University of Michigan Press and made available Open Access.
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Miranda Melcher
Susanne Vees-Gulani, 'Icon Dresden: Baroque City, Air War Symbol, Political Token" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
