Dresden, the capital of Germany’s eastern state of Saxony, has been associated with the surge of neo-Nazi, anti-Muslim sentiment as of late. The city is the birthplace of the PEGIDA movement, founded in October 2014 to protest what its self-proclaimed “Patriotic European” supporters describe as the “Islamisation of the West.”
In the September 2017 elections, the far-right, anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) almost dethroned Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling conservatives in the region. In Dresden, the party came in a close second to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and it won three districts in the east of Saxony.
But amid the rising Islamophobia in the city, a 109-year-old building — inspired by Dresden’s one-time love affair with the Muslim world — stands as a monument to its once-booming tobacco industry.
Distinct from the Baroque architecture that runs along the banks of the Elbe river, the so-called “Tobacco Mosque” towers 62 metres (203 ft) over the Friedrichstadt neighbourhood by the city’s main railway line.
The building incorporates both oriental and occidental influences, as seen in its iconic emerald green and ruby-coloured stained-glass dome complete with Art Nouveau designs. Yet, despite appearances, the building is not actually a mosque. On the contrary, it is a former tobacco and cigarette factory.
Built by Jewish entrepreneur Hugo Zietz in 1909, the factory was named “Yenidze” after the Ottoman town in Western Thrace — nowadays Genisea in Greece — from which the tobacco was imported. The word Yenidze, originating from the word for “new” in Turkish, is still visible on the dome.
Zietz first set up Oriental Tobacco and Cigarette Factory Yenidze in 1886, but due to architectural restrictions on building factories in Dresden’s town centre at the time, he faced difficulties acquiring a suitable premises for production.
So, in 1907 he hired 29-year-old architect Martin Hammitzsch to help him bend the rules. Hammitzsch designed the factory after the Mamluk tombs in the Cairo Necropolis, using red and grey granite blocks to recreate the stripes of ablaq masonry commonly used in traditional Islamic architecture.
The colourful mosaics and Moorish geometric patterns also brought a taste of the east to the west. He even disguised the chimneys as minarets.
