Dresden after the Seven Years War

In August 1756, Prussian troops occupied the capital of Saxony, whose rulers had fled to Warsaw.

Dresden suffered several sieges in the years which followed, whole suburbs were burned down and in summer 1760 Prussian artillery also destroyed extensive areas of the city centre.
Dresden recovered only very slowly from the after-effects of this period. It took 60 years before the population regained its pre-war numbers.

The former royal residence of European importance was now characterised by political provincialism, even though this period, too, brought forth individual cultural achievements of extraordinary quality.

Gottfried Körner and Anton Graff lived here, as did Winckelmann, Mengs and for a short time also Schiller. The arrival of Caspar David Friedrich in Dresden in 1798 established the city as a centre of Early German Romanticism. Novalis, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Kleist also stayed in Dresden over longer periods.