Inner Gallery

THE GERMAN SEARCH FOR IDENTITY

The nineteenth century is considered the last successful era of academic history painting. However, this assessment frequently fails to distinguish clearly enough between the portrayal of historical incidents and the painting of current events. Except for isolated depictions having to do primarily with the Revolution of 1848, the period between the Wars of Liberation in 1813-1814 and the wars of 1864 and 1866 is devoid of representative paintings that illustrate contemporary political events. The shift to topical history painting came only with the founding of the second empire in 1871, the most famous example being Anton Werner's The Kaiser's Proclamation in Versailles (1877,1882,1885). Up to that point, the "myth of German unity" had given rise to its own "iconography of the idea of the Reich."

As late as 1842, the cultural philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer stated in the Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst (German Yearbooks for Science and Art) that the present had absolutely nothing worth illustrating because it had no substance and because consciousness was without a home.

For the artist this is indeed small consolation. He cannot paint future deeds, and there are no present ones.... But what is left if all this still offers no adequate content? There remains that from which time itself draws its great lessons for the future; there remains the infinite material from which optimistic time creates the power for new life: the past, history. We want history again, and that is why the history that was there is our sustenance.

By reflecting back upon the "great" moments of German history, artists hoped to mask the vacuum of contemporary values and evoked the future of a united German nation. The most suitable material for this purpose seemed to be German sagas and the German imperium of medieval times. Simultaneously, medieval architecture, particularly the Gothic, became the center of historical interest.

The discovery of the Gothic as the "German national style" began with accounts of the Strasbourg Cathedral, the Marienburg Castle (the former fortress of the Teutonic Knights), and the Cologne Cathedral at the end of the eighteenth century. Shortly afterward, efforts to preserve medieval structures were launched. In 1804 the Prussian administration classihed the Marienburg Castle as worthy of preservation. The restoration work in the initial decades was directed by the regional president (Oberpräsident) of West and East Prussia, Theodor von Schön, who wanted to turn the castle into a national monument commemorating the Wars of Liberation and the Prussian reforms of that period. Looking back on his work in 1854, he wrote: "May the deeds of the edict of 9 October 1807, may the country's call to arms in 1813, . . . may the four hundred new schools in West Prussia, . . . above all, may the Marienburg Castle speak."

One of the "discoverers" of the Cologne Cathedral as a German national monument was Sulpiz Boisseree, whose Geschichte und Beschreibung des Doms von Köln (History and Description of the Cologne Cathedral) was published between 1823 and 1832. Another discoverer was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who made his first visit to the "ruin" in 1774 and thoroughly inspected it with Baron vom Stein in 1815. In 1772 Goethe dedicated an anonymous pamphlet entitled "Von deutscher Baukunst" (Of German Architecture) to the builders of the Strasbourg Cathedral. In 1842 Frederick for the completion of the Cologne Cathedral ect led to the founding of innumerable benefit associations. Heinrich Heine, for example, was vice president of the Paris benefit association for the construction of the Cologne Cathedral. By 1844, however, he had already questioned the intrinsic motives behind the project:

lt was not completed - and that is good.
For precisely its noncompletion
makes it a monument of Germany's power
and Protestant mission.

Ferdinand Freiligrath expressed his criticism much more pointedly in 1842, stating that the construction project was "a baby rattle to be put into the hands of the nation so as to make it forget about more important things (a free press and a constitution)." The discussion of the project's sense and lack thereof still persisted even as the cathedral was being completed in 1880.

Wealthy patrons - the sovereigns of the individual states and primarily the middle-class associations for the promotion of the fine arts - expected the visual arts, too, to illustrate the great events of German history as part of the general reflection on the national past. The interest in medieval motifs, especially those pertaining to Hohenstaufen history had been sparked by the surfacing of related literary works. In the mid-eighteenth century Johann Jakob Bodmer (1742) and Johann Gottfried Herder (1767) rediscovered the Hohenstaufens for literature. The painter Wilhelm Tischbein pointed out Bodmer's significance, stating that the author's narrative verses promoted the idea that

the deeds of noble and great German men should be enshrined for thc nation in the works of poets and painters; this builds the character of the people, inspires and nurtures love of the fatherland, and quickens the spirit and the power to noble emulation.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Frederick Barbarossa (red beard, Rotbart) was the most brilliant and attractive figure among the German emperors. Links to the present were established in part through the Wars of Liberation, which Theodor Körner described in Leyer und Schwert (Lyre and Sword) asa "crusade" and "Holy war." In 1817 Friedrich Rückert wrote his poem "Frederick Barbarossa in Kyffhäuser," which added to the German emperor's popularity and made him into a symbolic figure of the endeavors to unite Germany. From 1823 to 1825 Friedrich von Raumer's six-volume Geschichte der Hohenstaufen (History of the Hohenstaufens) came out, after which Ernst Raupach, Christian Dietrich Grabbe, and others dramatized the historical subject matter. The most important history painters - including Peter von Cornelius, Carl Friedrich Lessing, Alfred Rethel, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and Moritz von Schwind - were commissioned to decorate private castles (Stolzenfels Castle, the Palace of Cappenberg, and the Palace of Heltorf) and public buildings (Frankfurt Römer and the town hall in Aachen) with frescoes based on motifs of Hohenstaufen history. Gasparo Spontini composed the opera Agnes von Hohenstaufen, which was performed in Berlin in 1829 to celebrate the wedding of Prince William of Prussia (the later emperor) and Augusta von Sachsen-Weimar. In the following period Barbarossa was the subject of additional poems by Ferdinand Freiligrath, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Emanuel Geibel, Gustav Freytag, and other writers. Criticism of this Hohenstaufen cult grew as well. Georg Herwegh, for example, carried on a campaign against a starry-eyed image of emperors, which to the democrat thinking along national lines only propped up an outdated, feudal power system.

A great many literary works offered artists subject matter for portrayals of the Cheruscan prince Arminius (Hermann) and his heroic deeds. These included Hermann, by Johann Elias Schlegel (1737) and Christoph Martin Wieland (1751), the Hermann Trilogie, by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1769/1787); Heinrich von Kleist's Hermannsschlacht (Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, 1808), and Die Hermannsschlacht, by Grabbe (1838).

The Nibelungenlied (Lay of the Nibelungs), a thirteenth-century epic poem based on Germanic sagas and rediscovered by Bodmer in 1757, gained increasing popularity after 1807. Friedrich Schlegel thus believed it to be a work appropriate "for holding up to the nation a picture of its glory, ancient dignity, and freedom in the mirror of its distant past." The sub ject matter was gratefully taken up by poets and painters, ultimately by Richard Wagner as well, who published the Ring des Nibelungen (Ring of the Nibelung) in 1863. After 1871, when Wagner had developed his plans for the Bayreuth Festival Opera House and was setting the "Ring" to music, national enthusiasm overflowed:

The Nibelung cycle truly deserves to have the utmost summoned up and done for it, the more so now when all Germany, loyally rallying united around the German banner, is enjoying the fruits of the most glorious victory. Let us also enjoy the fruits in the field of musical drama, and let us celebrate the renaissance of the German national drama! (Franz Merloff, 1873)

Of the many hgures serving as a focus of national identity in the nineteenth century- Hermann, Siegfried, Frederick Barbarossa, Martin Luther, Friedrich Schiller, just to name a few - the one that ultimately prevailed after 1871 was Germania as the personifcation of the newly founded German Empire. Neighboring countries, too, had created symbolic female hgures, examples being "Italia," Marianne as "La France," "Mother Denmark," and "Polonia." Engravings as early as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries picture Germania, adorned with a mural crown and a map of the Roman Empire (Imperium Romanum). The attributes changed in the first half of the nineteenth century, when the shield with the double-headed imperial eagle and the burst chains symbolized the desire for unity and freedom. The German colors of black, red, and gold were added in 1848. A picture of Germania received a place of honor in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt (see room 3b).

Heinrich Heine envisioned Germania as a lovely maiden with golden curls closely resembling Lorelei, the legendary German siren whose singing on a rock in the Rhine River lured sailors to shipwreck on the reefs. In the second half of the century, however, she changed in appearance, replacing Lorelei as the "watch on the Rhine." Pictures from the period after 1860 depict Germania with a sword and coat of mail, striking an aggressive pose and facing westwards. On the monument in Niederwald, built by Friedrich Schilling from 1877 to 1883, she is proudly holding the imperial crown in her raised hand. Around 1900 her image also adorned postage stamps and paper money. The heroization of this figure reached a new climax in 1914, when a painting by Friedrich August von Kaulbach had her returning to war against France. In the final analysis, all national symbolic figures of the nineteenth century were characterized primarily by their warlike abilities and valor in confronting external menace. The image of Germania as the champion of unity and internal freedom in 1848 remained only an episode.

Leonore Koschnick