Interactive Learning
in the Heart of Dresden
The Path from Commemoration to Education.
The Commemorative Path was founded and organised in 2009 by The Society for Dresden’s Church of Our Lady, and has been taking visitors through the once completely destroyed, now almost entirely rebuilt, centre of the city annually since 2010.
At these especially impactful, poignant and authentic locations, you can hear real stories about the causes and consequences of the misuse of political power, of war and destruction. Unfortunately, we are all too forgetful of the landscape and destruction in 1945 and the experiences of suffering that followed. Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.
This year, the Commemorative Path is entering a new chapter. The Society for Dresden’s Church of Our Lady and the British Dresden Trust want to allow the history of Dresden to be experienced by school pupils through our interactive Learning Path.
Dresden Learning Path – Our Idea
The idea behind the Dresden Learning Path began in Spring 2022. With this idea, we intend to make the history of Dresden in the 20th Century accessible for school pupils in a brand-new way.
With the Dresden Learning Path, instead of being led by teachers as usual, we empower students to take the lead and teach each other.
At each of the 8 stations on the Commemorative Path, students will discover facts about the 800-year history of the City of Dresden, as well as events in our twinned towns. The focus lies on the Night of Broken Glass in 1938, the destruction of Coventry, the destruction of Dresden, the peaceful revolution in the GDR, and the role of Dresden in the international culture of remembrance.
The programme can be completed within a half-day excursion and includes visits to the commemorative Sophien Church and the Church of Our Lady. This new opportunity for learning will be available for schools in Dresden for free on March 2023.
Our Partners
The Frauenkirche Fördergesellschaft, or The Society for Dresden’s Church of Our Lady has more than 1,500 members in Dresden, Germany and all over the world. Their office is located in Dresden, near the Frauenkirche. Many members are involved in one of our ten regional friend groups, including the British «Dresden Trust«. Together we form a network to support our work in Dresden and also provide the platform for local activities and events such as the annual Women’s Church Day.
The Dresden Trust is a British foundation whose aim is to heal the wounds of war and promote harmonious relations between the British and the Saxon capital Dresden, one of the most important centres of European culture.
The trust was founded in 1993 in response to the "call from Dresden" by Dr. Alan Russel to help restore the original cityscape, especially the Frauenkirche, which was destroyed by British and American bombing in February 1945.
School Concept
One of the aims of school education and training is to provide holistic learning by examining authentic and sometimes complex topics in the students' living environment. Schools cannot adequately meet this goal due to spatial boundaries and separate subjects. Therefore, extracurricular and interdisciplinary teaching and learning are promising additions to everyday school instruction. The integration of extracurricular learning spaces into everyday school life can be challenging when it comes to finding and developing them in a targeted manner and to integrating subject-specific and interdisciplinary topics and their connections.
The location of Dresden and especially "the learning path to commemorate February 13th, 1945 in Dresden" (working title) identify learning locations outside of the classroom that can be viewed by teachers and students and accessed in a suitable and appropriate manner. Important considerations should be which forms of remembrance and commemoration of the Nazi dictatorship and WW2, as well as the related concrete regional and supra-regional historical events, are effective for learning, especially for a generation that has almost no personal experience of the times and events.