Talk:Dresden/Archive 1

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I wrote it in deep night within two minutes and I am not a native speaker. Sorry, I forgot that I wrote the text, I will do some re-wording, and others are welcome to join.

Contents

Mention of Slaughterhouse Five Needed

No encyclopedia entry about Dresden could possibly be complete without a mention of Kurt Vonnegut's classic novel Slaughterhouse Five. Set in Dresden during the infamous bombing attack in World War II, Slaughterhouse Five is how most American readers first hear of this German city. Wikipedia has a fairly good article on Slaughterhouse Five already; perhaps it should link to this page as well? --Dr. E. A. Prescott 22:09, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

You'll find it already in the Further Reading list. I'll add a link to the book article. If you feel that the book deserves further mention here, be bold! You're the editor. Saint|swithin 14:21, August 16, 2005 (UTC)


Neo-Nazis

Is it just me, or does this article seem to over-emphasize neo-Nazism? Obvioulsy there have been neo-Nazi demosntrations in Dresden, and the WW2 bombing is exploited as a poliical tool by holocaust deniers. however, this article just seems to focus a bit too much on that.

Richer and Deeper

A check though "What links here" will give many hints as to how this entry could be richer and deeper. Wetman 03:04, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Article needs a little bit of re-wording--Comrade Nick 02:23, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I wrote it in deep night within two minutes and I am not a native speaker. Sorry, I forgot that I wrote the text, I will do some re-wording, and others are welcome to join.

I'd be happy to. In fact, I intend to help with its editing, because I'm that in its present state it lacks the proper qualities of an encyclopædia.--Ingoolemo 01:34, 2004 Jun 9 (UTC)

Okay, my rewrite is done. I'm afraid I couldn't put anything in the edit summary, because I forgot to. But hopefully it's much improved.

Concerning this sentence (that also has some grammatical problems...)

The population is said to frequently discuss topics such as architecture and æsthetics regularly.

Is this true? Who says this? In fact, as a citizen of Dresden, I have not witnessed any unusual amount of discussion ;-) --Markus Krötzsch 03:36, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Overall, I think the article is a bit too dramatic in its wording. Dresden is certainly a beautiful city, but some of the statements of this article exaggerate quite a bit:

  • The city has become a world leader in many sections of culture, ... -- World leader in culture? Come on! Okay, I come on. But there are rather many world records. Anyway, you could be right that my language is too much in favour. ;-)
  • Houses ..., built by famous king and artists from all over the world... -- rather "all over Europe"; I agree again.
  • many prestigious research centers in Dresden still have their primary headquarters in the west -- "still"? Would we expect them to move? (One could rather say: "Many research centers have already established facilities near Dresden") why not ? I wanted to point out that even despite Dresden is known as success story there is still a very long way to be competitive with Munich etc. And yes, in earlier times very many of the today´s western headquartes were in Dresden.
  • East Germany had been the richest Communist country -- I do not know. Are you sure? (What means "rich": life standard, economy, state treasury?) yes, I am sure, it was the richest in all meanings, so that doesn´t matter.

Finally, the structure could include a section Economy, where the related information -- especially concerning the re-unification process -- is collected. Sorry for only giving these "hints" instead of doing it myself... maybe later. --Markus Krötzsch 04:06, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC) thanks, I like hints. Most of that was done meanwhile by native speakers, some of them living in Dresden.

I agree with all of what you wrote. Get-back-world-respect 14:33, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Devastators?

Dear authors you should use "devastated by US World War II bombing" instead of "devastated by World War II bombing"!!! --Gutsul

"... by Allied bombing during World War II" would perhaps be better still. Sharkford 18:25, 2004 Sep 16 (UTC)

It was bombed by the Bristish Royal Air force mainly, only slightly supported by US forces. NetguruDD


Article wording and language improved!

I just did about an hour of editing and tinkering on the main article page,mostly because of the poor language. I guees it was written to a large extent by a non-native speaker of English, not a problem but very obvious. Well it was my first major edit but as a native English speaker and someone born in Saxony (there are not many of us, I suppose) I used my knowledge of the city to clear up the wording of the article. I also edited a few details out and moved some things around. All in all I think it makes the article a lot easier to understand. Kris Sept. 26

Numbers regarding dead people and destroyed houses, flats.

25.000 dead people were found and burried. It is nearly absolutely sure that in fact it were many more, for example many burnt. The total nummber is estimated most often to be sommething around 35.000, other serious sources say 125.000 or even more, neonazi propaganda says 300.000-450.000 refering to the American Red Cross 1945. During the last weeks of the war the administration spoke about only 16.000. The truth is that everything between 25.000-140.000 can be true and official statistics after the 1950s used all numbers between 25.000-160.000, in both parts of Germany. I as Dresden maniac and citizen guess something around 45.000, but it is very hard to estimate and 140.000 sounds reasonable if you imagine all those comepletey destroyed living quarters with 6 floors in each big building. On the other hand many people survided even out of completely destroyed houses. The city was populated with 570.000 out of former 630.000 citizens and the same number of refugees from the east front. Somebody changed a picture description to: 75% of the -center- was destroyed, this is wrong because the center was destroyed complety. The city is rather big in area, much bigger than usually a city with that amount of population. So the damage was rather different in each quarter, but 79% of all flats, not necesarrily houses, had "some" damage (total and meaningless counted together). There were 222.000 flats in total. 75.000 of them totally destroyed, 11.000 strongly hit, 7.000 hit, 81.000 slightly damaged. The innercity in those times were closer built than today. The villa districts suffered much less destruction than other quarters. The militaric facilities in the north of the city were not hit, but they had not much meaning in the last weeks of the war anyway. Most material was on the east front, the city was not meaningful defended against air strikes and it also was not a militarically important center. It is not sure that the optical industry was used for militaric weapons, this is only pure guessing. Please don´t get me wrong. I don´t want blame anybody for anything, I like the US and Britain, just help to stick to the facts. Some recent changes went out of control. NetguruDD 07:00, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi Netguru, I changed "total and meaningless" to "total, meaningless" in the article picture caption, but I'm not sure what you meant by "meaningless", now I read your comment here. Do you mean "total and slight" damage? Meaningless means "sinnlos". Oh, and what are "marshalling yards" in German? Saintswithin 12:49, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi Saintswithin, yes I mean total and slight, thanks a lot for your attention and helpful remarks, this is not the first time you helped. About marshalling yards, I also wondered. This expression was not edited by me, I thought it was done by a native English speaker because he was refering to a book written in English. I also had no idea what it could mean in this abstract. NetguruDD 04:12, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)



I believe Churchill is recorded as hoping to kill 600,000 - did he miss by that much? British bombing and intelligence must have been better than 1/30th - of course maybe not. I believe the US aided largely in the second raid designed to get the rescuers, strafing the river bank escape routes.

News

This evening, the FIDE declared that Dresden will hold the "Olympic Games" of Chess in 2008. The "Olympic Games" in chess could not been established as part of the Olympic Summer games despite the FIDE tried so. Already 2004 the European women´s championship took place in Dresden. I don´t know if the first thing is worth to be published here on the Dresden wikipedia site. I only saw that CNN was reporting rather much about the European ladies´ championship. NetguruDD 18:01, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Poor Caption

This caption needs serious rewording:

79% of all flats suffered total, particularly those in bigger inner-city buildings, or negligible destruction; the center became a sea of ruins.
fixed: hopefully I have understood the meaning...? Saintswithin 19:24, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

yes, that´s right now. NetguruDD

Photos

Does anyone have any good photos of Dresden taken during the day? These are all night-time ones! Saintswithin 19:24, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC) The German version of the Dresden thread offers picures of the day. You can use them all, some are from me, others from guys which I know via wikipedia. They are glad if you use the picues. It´s the same with http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwinger_%28Dresden%29 It´s all GNU license.NetguruDD