Dresden as Opferstadt? : the politics of commemorating destruction, 1985-2005

Using public remembrance of the controversial WWII firebombing of Dresden as its case study, the thesis probes the politics of war memory and commemoration. It argues that before, during, and after Germany's reunification, Dresden was portrayed as a, if not the, leading paradigm of German wartime loss and suffering.

Reconstruction over ruins : rebuilding Dresden's Frauenkirche

The debate over the reconstruction of Dresden’s Frauenkirche, the city’s landmark Protestant cathedral destroyed by aerial bombing in 1945, exemplifies the conflicts inherent in the treatment of war-related cultural heritage. Although initially preserved only by virtue of some local citizens’ determination to rebuild the church, in time the Frauenkirche ruins emerged in their own right as an arresting antiwar symbol and one of the foremost sites of war memory and commemoration in the divided Germany. This development created a certain conundrum, for if the church ever were to be rebuilt such a project could only materialise by disturbing the ruins, which supporters claimed were deserving of preservation in their unaltered state. With the advent of reunification, the kind of heritage to be preserved at the site—and the way in which it was to be conserved—came under renewed and reintensified scrutiny and debate. By tracing the shifting dynamics during a half-century of debate over how the Frauenkirche site should be conserved, this chapter examines the impact that struggles over war memory and commemoration can have on cultural heritage. It surveys the arguments for and against rebuilding the Frauenkirche before, during, and after reunification, and considers what aspirations conflicting sides had for expressing personal, national, and international memories of war, loss, and the German national past. Finally, it explores how anastylosis rebuilding principles were used to find a compromise by incorporating, somewhat controversially, parts of the existing ruins into the new church after a local citizens’ initiative successfully appealed for worldwide support to reconstruct the Frauenkirche in the wake of Germany’s reunification.

The Dresden firebombing : memory and the politics of commemorating destruction

The firebombing of Dresden marks the terrible apex of the European bombing war. In just over two days in February 1945, over 1,300 heavy bombers from the RAF and the USAAF dropped nearly 4,000 tonnes of explosives on Dresden's civilian centre.Since the end of World War II, both the death toll and the motivation for the attack have become fierce historical battlegrounds, as German feelings of victimhood complete with those of guilt and loss. The Dresden bombing was used by East Germany as a propaganda tool, and has been re-appropriated by the neo-Nazi far right. Meanwhile the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche- the city's sumptuous eighteenth-century church destroyed in the raid-became central to German identity, while in London, a statue of the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, has attracted protests. In this book, Tony Joel focuses on the historical battle to re-appropriate Dresden, and on how World War II continues to shape British and German identity today.

Defect assessment procedures for high temperature applications : final report TW5-TTMS-005, D5

The objective of this task is to develop the high temperature part of a design code for fusion reactor components build from EUROFER. This development includes fracture mechanical rules for the assessment of detected defects under creep and creep–fatigue conditions. The assessment procedures R5, R6, JNC, A16, Partial Safety Factors were investigated and tested. As the most suitable procedure is chosen R5 and it is further verified by comparison with finite element simulations using the EUROFER material data. These simulations consist of evaluation of C(t) parameter for several geometries (CT specimen,cylinder with fully circumferential crack subjected to the internal pressure, cylinder with semi–elliptical circumferential crack subjected to the internal pressure and Mock-Up test blanket module (TBM) geometry). The R5 procedure provides very good accordance with FE simulations and it is suitable for lifetime assessment. Therefore the guide for R5 application is implemented in the report.

Motion Bank : Phase One

 Motion Bank Phase One (2010-2013) was a four-year international and interdisciplinary research project of The Forsythe Company providing a broad context for research into choreographic practice. The main focus was on the creation of on-line digital scores in collaboration with guest choreographers, to be made publicly available via this website. For Phase One, the guest choreographers were Deborah Hay, Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion, Bebe Miller and Thomas Hauert. Teams from the Motion Bank Score Partners worked with these artists to make their diverse choreographic approaches accessible in new ways through the digital medium with the results published here: http://scores.motionbank.org/. Alongside this core research, Motion Bank Education Partners and an International Education Workgroup researched ways to integrate the new on-line digital scores and related choreographic resources produced by other artists into their academic programs. Accompanying the Motion Bank education research was an interdisciplinary initiative titled Dance Engaging Science aiming to stimulate new forms of collaborative research involving dance practice. Motion Bank public events offered at The Frankfurt Lab included performances and talks with the guest choreographers as well as a series of Motion Bank Workshops with internationally recognized practitioners from different fields. An extensive series of reports and documentation on all Motion Bank activities and results are available on-line at http://motionbank.org.

Motion Bank Score Partners:
- Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design and Department of Dance at The Ohio State University
- Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD
- Hochschule Darmstadt - University of applied sciences
- Hochschule für Gestaltung (HFG) Offenbach.

Motion Bank Education Partners:
- Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts
- Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden<br />