Kalender

Today, Johannstadt is a mix of Gründerzeit neighbourhoods, large housing estates from the 1960s to the 1980s, vacant plots and traces of war damage. Following difficult years of transition, the district has seen noticeable further development since 2014 thanks to the ‘Nördliche Johannstadt’ regeneration area. Through dialogue with residents, visions were developed and have largely been realised. The walking tour with Anke Ostermeyer and Nilsson Samuelsson from the Department of Urban Planning and Mobility takes participants through the post-war residential neighbourhoods and their historic surroundings. The focus is on the development of public spaces and the active involvement of residents in shaping the neighbourhood.

With Anke Ostermeyer and Nilsson Samuelsson, Office for Urban Planning and Mobility

• Duration: 2 hours
• Meeting point: Thomas-Müntzer-Platz
• Book online or via the visitor service of the Museums of the City of Dresden on +49 351 488 7272 (Mon–Fri)

A workshop organised by the Youth Art School in collaboration with the City Museum

Through dance theatre improvisation and the artworks, the children will work together to create a dance theatre piece and perform it at the end of the workshop.

On the first day of the workshop, the children will visit the City Museum, take a guided tour and gather initial ideas and impressions from the »Platte Ost / West« exhibition.

• Age: Children aged 10 and over
• Dates:
  Tue 13 Oct 2026 | 10 am – 12 noon
  Wed 14 Oct 2026 – Fri 16 Oct 2026 | 10 am – 3 pm
• Cost: €120
• Venue:
  Youth Art School at Palitzschhof
  Gamigstraße 24
  01239 Dresden
• Register at www.jks-dresden.de

There’s been a break-in at the museum! Go on a treasure hunt and try to track down the jewellery that’s been stolen. But you’ll need to act quickly and cleverly to find the stolen goods!

• Age: 8 to 12 years
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Cost: €5 per child
• Book online or via the visitor services department of Dresden’s museums on +49 351 488 7272 (Mon–Fri)

Once sought-after as modern housing, life in these housing estates was shaped by the bureaucratic economy of scarcity in the GDR and, later, by the profound upheavals of the post-reunification era.

This event examines the drastic change in the image of East German housing estates. We look at the GDR’s official ‘culture of petitioning’ – citizens’ attempts to rectify the shortcomings of everyday life through written complaints – and the period after 1990. At that time, frustration over dashed hopes and a lack of prospects often gave rise to a new dynamic, a radicalisation, particularly among young people. Why was this the case?

PD Dr Johannes Schütz works as a contemporary historian at TU Dresden and at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam. His research focuses on everyday culture in the late GDR and the emergence of racist structures of violence during the period of transformation in East Germany. Most recent publication: Heimat als soziale Praxis. Alltagshandeln in Sachsen zwischen Staatssozialismus und Umbruchserfahrungen, 1969–2000, Bielefeld 2026.

Nils Werner works as a freelance director and screenwriter. In documentary film projects for ARD and MDR, such as the award-winning production»Generation Crash – Wir Ost-Millennials’ or the historical reconstruction ‘Hoyerswerda ’91’, he documents the life experiences of young people in East Germany following the social upheaval.

Fig.: Still from the documentary “Generation Crash” – A cinematic search for traces with the rapper and author (“Nullerjahre”) Hendrik Bolz in his former neighbourhood of Knieper West in Stralsund

Become a builder and design your very own piece of the city! Create your own mini concrete slab using liquid plaster. Before the plaster sets, it’s time to add some colour! Decorate your slab with colourful stones, glittering sand and mosaic tiles. Whether it’s a colourful block of flats or a stylish pattern – you decide what the »Platte« of the future will look like.

• Age: 6 to 13 years
• Duration: 2 hours
• Cost: €5 per child
• Book online or via the visitor services department at the Museums of the City of Dresden on +49 351 488 7272 (Mon–Fri)

Dorothea Grünzweig's new volume "Erfasst von dieser Nachtverwandlung" (Captured by this night transformation) is an impressive continuation of her poetic exploration of Finnish landscapes and seasons. The starting point is Kaamos, the sunless winter time of the north - a state between darkness, silence and inner expansion. Grünzweig's poems circle around this mystery, searching and groping, without ever exhausting themselves. Her language becomes more diverse and at the same time more exemplary.

Grünzweig's poetic power arises from a language that manages without fashionable neologisms and yet appears new. Her word creations - "dunkelheitswiege", "lauschschleier", "grasvergnügte kühe" - seem to come from an ancient cosmos of nature. Her metaphors are never constructed, but drawn from experience: The poems are in deep sympathy with nature without mystifying it. Grünzweig writes as a questioner, not as a knower; her search for a "sacred language" is an expression of closeness, not ritual.

The free rhythm of her poems is felt, not invented. Alliteration, internal rhymes and allusions - to the Bible, hymns, Rilke - fit in organically and open up the texts to larger contexts. The themes of the volume range from the preservation of creation to the existential mood during a pandemic and the real fear of war in Finland. Other poems are dedicated to animal welfare, for example in the "kuhloblieder", which explore the closeness between humans and animals in a new way.

Anyone who engages with Grünzweig's poems encounters a language that renews itself out of nature - broad, inward, clairaudient. Poetry that leads us back into the world.

• Admission €8, reduced €5

Literarische Arena e. V. in cooperation with the Evangelische Akademie Sachsen and the museums of the city of Dresden.

Dr Klausjürgen Schöler and Dr Wolfgang Steinbrück discuss the reconstruction of Dresden’s Hauptstraße during the GDR era whilst taking a walk from the Golden Rider to Albertplatz. The two architects, who were responsible for planning the northern section at the time, speak as eyewitnesses about their work. The focus is on their approach to combining the area’s historic urban planning with modern architecture and the design of open spaces. In doing so, they explain the urban planning and functional concepts, present the individual sections and discuss the construction conditions specific to Dresden’s industrial building methods at the time.

With Dr Klausjürgen Schöler and Dr Wolfgang Steinbrück

• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Meeting point at the Golden Rider
• Book online or via the visitor services department of the Museums of the City of Dresden on +49 351 488 7272 (Mon–Fri)

• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Meeting point at the ticket office
• Guided tour free of charge, plus museum admission
• No booking required

At the City Museum, we’ll discover prefabricated blocks of flats – buildings made up of lots of identical concrete slabs, which were built in many towns and cities. Afterwards, using LEGO® bricks and plenty of imagination, you’ll transform one of these blocks of flats and its surroundings into new, vibrant living spaces! All the ideas will then be displayed in a small exhibition.

• Age: 8 to 11 years
• Duration: 3 hours
• Cost: €6 per child
• Book online or via the visitor services department of Dresden’s municipal museums on +49 351 488 7272 (Mon–Fri)

Become a builder and design your very own piece of the city! Create your own mini concrete slab using liquid plaster. Before the plaster sets, it’s time to add some colour! Decorate your slab with colourful stones, glittering sand and mosaic tiles. Whether it’s a colourful block of flats or a stylish pattern – you decide what the »Platte« of the future will look like.

• Age: 6 to 13 years
• Duration: 2 hours
• Cost: €5 per child
• Book online or via the visitor services department at the Museums of the City of Dresden on +49 351 488 7272 (Mon–Fri)

A mysterious letter, a groundbreaking invention and lots of exciting puzzles: 100 years ago, a brilliant female inventor hid her latest invention in the City Museum to protect it from spies. Help the museum find the hiding place before the invention falls into the hands of the spies! Follow the clues and use your wits! Can you solve all the puzzles?

• Age: 8 to 12 years
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Cost: €5 per child
• Book online or via the visitor services department of Dresden’s municipal museums on +49 351 488 7272 (Mon–Fri)

Zsuzsanna Gahse is one of the most distinctive voices of the literary avant-garde. Her texts move between poetry and prose, are light, fragmentary, dialogue-based - and always have a special linguistic conciseness. She has been a regular presence in Dresden since her Chamisso Poetry Lectureship in 2008.

Her new book "Spielbeginn. Verrutschungen" unfolds like a theatre play: characters wait - as in Beckett - and talk about meaning, language and transformation. But Gahse shows the counter-movement to silencing: Syllables, words, sentences, contexts emerge from sounds. Language becomes a field for experimentation. "Narrative islands" and "disruptions" structure the text, short interjections that can trigger entire stories.

"The Greens", ten numbered characters who improvise and exchange thoughts, perform on stage. Anton's lost notebook forms the second part of the book and provides an insight into the planned dramaturgy: language as a mushroom web, conversations in silence, misunderstandings through "slips of the tongue".

Those who get involved with "Spielbeginn" will encounter the adventure of language itself: the possibility of inventing a new language from listening experiences.

Admission €8, reduced €5

Literarische Arena e. V. in cooperation with the Evangelische Akademie Sachsen and the museums of the city of Dresden.