Echoes of Heaven, Echoes of Schütz, and Echoes of the Thirty Years War? Kreuzkantor Rudolf Mauersberger and his Dresdner Requiem

This article details how pre-existing narratives concerning Heinrich Schütz and the Thirty Years War could serve as inspiration and be drawn upon following the Allied destruction of Dresden in 1945. The city's Kreuzkantor, Rudolf Mauersberger, was the prime mover behind many of the new memorials and festivals that were organized during the post-war years. Mauersberger's own Dresdner Requiem (1947–48, regularly revised until the mid-1960s), commemorating Dresden's destruction, not only draws upon the polychoral structure of Schütz's Musikalische Exequien, part 3, but also includes the hymn Jerusalem, du hochgebaute Stadt (1626), written in response to the Thirty Years War.