17 M Many people on their first visit to the garden city of Dresden-Hellerau are stopped in their tracks by the sight of an unexpectedly fascinating place that offers vivid illustration of a significant stage of early 20th- century history. Here, on the outskirts of a city primarily renowned for baroque architecture, a specimen of early modernism waits to be discovered ... It was not until the 1950s that Hellerau – literally the Aue (flood meadow) on the banks of the brook named “Heller” – was incorporated into the Saxon state capital, along with the Lebensreform settlement that has existed here since 1908. For a long time, the special features that make Hellerau so unique remained ‘insider knowledge’ – shared, for the most part, by professionals, local enthusiasts and specialists. To remedy this situation and do justice to the true significance of the site, in 2011 a number of interested parties convened to form an association. Since October 2012, we have been working as the registered, non-profit association Förderverein Weltkulturerbe Hellerau e.V. to promote and support Hellerau’s application for World Heritage Site status. The association is a collaboration of Hellerau residents, the Festspielhaus HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts, the furniture manufacturing company Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau together with supporting and sponsoring members from Germany as well as interested parties and specialists from abroad. It is an exclusively private initiative with no financial participation on the part of the municipality, state or federal government. It enjoys the ideological support of the Free State of Saxony and its state capital Dresden. We began our mission by initiating and supporting the selection process of the Hellerau World Heritage Site application for the German Federal Tentative List 2012–2014. In its deferral at that time, the Advisory Committee of the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany recommended that we sharpen up the application and re-submit it for renewed evaluation. The further processing phase recommended by the committee has now been completed. By 2021, the results of a number of events had flowed into the application for consideration in the new Federal Tentative List. On 31 March 2017, for example, a conference took place under the title Einordnung der Hellerauer Weltkulturerbe-Bewerbung anhand einiger Aspekte der Reformbewegung (Classification of the Hellerau World Heritage Site Application Based on Some Aspects of the Lebensreform Movement). In 2018, a case scenario and matrix comparison – processed by Dr. Britta Rudolff and Eva M. Battis of the Institute for Heritage Management, Cottbus – were launched under the title WELTERBE HELLERAU, Hellerau und die Welt – ein industriekulturelles Vorzeigeprojekt im internationalen Vergleich (WORLD HERITAGE SITE HELLERAU, Hellerau and the World – an Industrial-Cultural Flagship Project in International Comparison). One fundamental objective of the association has been to promote further research of Hellerau as a centre of the Lebensreform movement in all its manifestations. The colloquium published here can also be viewed as part of this agenda. Under the title HELLERAU, Ort der Moderne: Kontinuitäten und kontroverse Wechselwirkungen (HELLERAU, Site of Modernity: Continuities and Controversial Interactions), dedicated researchers from Europe and the United States convened to discuss the topic. Due to the coronavirus, the colloquium – originally planned as a much larger event – had to be drastically scaled down, making this publication of the results all the more important. From 23 to 25 September 2020, 50 speakers and guests met in the old powerhouse of the historic Deutsche Werkstätten company building. In historical retrospect, Hellerau’s image shimmers and polarises depending on the particular perspective of the viewer. Most 2 u Wir treiben die Liebe auf die Weide, Carsten »Erobique« Meyer, Paul Pötsch und Lea Connert. u “We herd love out to pasture”: Carsten “Erobique” Meyer, Paul Pötsch and Lea Connert, Hellerau 2019.
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