Dresden in the first half of the 19th century

Following the years of Napoleonic rule, it was no longer the royal court alone which determined urban development in Dresden. Industrial enterprises were founded (in 1836 the Maschinenfabrik Übigau), a Technical School was opened in 1825 and the first long-distance railway in Germany was opened between Dresden and Leipzig in 1839.

Complete new city districts were established outside the now dismantled city fortifications. Around the middle of the 19th century, the population in Dresden already exceeded 100,000. Outstanding cultural and scientific achievements characterised the intellectual life of the city. Ludwig Tieck, Carl Maria von Weber, Carl Gustav Carus and Richard Wagner were all at home in Dresden.

The struggles for political reforms and for a modern, bourgeois state culminated in the failed May Uprising of 1849, in which Wagner and Gottfried Semper, among others, were also involved.