Germany’s Preferred Fremdenstadt: Cosmopolitan Dresden before World War I

A 1910 travel brochure proclaimed the German city of Dresden to be "literally a cosmopolitan hub" and stated that "the foreigner, to be sure, is very much a privileged person in Dresden." One major—yet largely forgotten—aspect of Dresden's urban identity before the outbreak of World War I was the city as a Fremdenstadt, a beautiful, welcoming, and cosmopolitan "foreigners' city."

 Although scholarship emphasizes growing nationalist attitudes within the German Empire in general and Dresden in particular, I argue that a cosmopolitan dimension was an important thread in the fabric of Dresden's urban identity right until 1914. This paper explores the genesis and meaning of the Fremdenstadt label by contrasting it with other available municipal identities and illustrates how Dresdeners deployed it to compete with fellow German and European urban centers. Dresdeners' understanding of cosmopolitanism was restricted, yet the omissions allow for the careful historicization of the concept at a time when nationalist ideas gained traction. This paper reveals the circumscribed nature—rather than the complete absence—of cosmopolitanism in German urban life around 1900.

 Concretely, German observers only referenced cosmopolitan life in Dresden with regard to elite migrants, especially the city's Anglo-American community, which counted 2,000 permanent members. At a time when Dresden had lost political power to Berlin after German unification in 1871, Dresdeners marshaled cultural symbols to retain and maintain the city's domestic and international importance, and municipal, social, and cultural leaders seized on cosmopolitan encounters with elite migrants as a sign of Dresden's continued significance as a major urban center. Therefore, Dresdeners' cosmopolitan attitudes presented one local, very successful strategy to retain and enhance the city's status within Germany and Europe in the wake of German unification.