Leseprobe

35 A Project to Build a Villa wealthy inhabitants of the city and members of the Saxon nobility and government had lived since the middle of the 19th century, in appropri- ately opulent houses and villas. For the Salzburg family, the move from their city apartment, which they rented in a mixed residential and commercial building, into their own villa with around 2,000 square metres of gardens would certainly not just have represented a withdrawal from the hustle and bustle of city life and a focus on familial pri- vacy, but was also a clear statement of their social ascent, especially given the grandeur of the con- struction plans. At the time, the planned villa would have enjoyed additional exclusivity by its position on the edge of the Grosser Garten, which was protected land, meaning the house would command the view of the park and occupy a loca- tion that was much coveted. Equally ambitious was the choice of architect for Salzburg and Markwald’s villa project. The con- tract went to Karl Eberhard, who had already de- signed four major villas in the ‘English Quarter’ bordering the Bürgerwiese, all in the architectural tradition of Gottfried Semper, who had designed one of Dresden’s most iconic landmarks, the opera house, a generation before. The villas Eberhard designed were destroyed in the Allied bombing campaigns of 1945. It is possible that Salzburg and Markwald first met in Berlin, where Adolph Salzburg had completed his business training around 1860. Adolphe Mark- wald was a ‘global player’ in international com- merce, with the concomitant political connections to his name. Given his profession—which required embarking upon ocean voyages that were not just Map of Dresden, 1873, showing where the Salz- burgs lived in the Altstadt (1) until 1875 and the proposed site (1871) of the unrealized villa (2), whose situation would have almost exactly matched that of Villa Salzburg (adjoining plot), completed 1874, at the southwest end of the Grosser Garten. 1 2