Casper David Friedrich

 During our recent trip to Berlin, we got tickets to a special exhibit on the artist Casper David Friedrich, who was an important romantic painter in Germany. The exhibit was in the Altes Nationalgalerie on museum island in Berlin, which is a beautiful place simply to hang out. But our tickets were for 9 a.m., so our sightseeing had to wait.

Casper David Friedrich was born on September 5, 1774, and died on May 7, 1840. Although he is best known for his allegorical landscapes, you will not find the landscapes anywhere in nature. Friedrich used landscapes but changed them to create a mood, which often created an emotional connection with the viewer rather than a more literal interaction with the scene. This differentiated him from British and French Romanticists, who tended to emphasize more nostalgic or bucolic landscapes, and man's desire to conquer nature, respectively. The German approach depicts man's attempt to understand nature and, by extension, the divine. 

The first paintings in the exhibit were two "pendent" paintings. The one of the left was The Monk on the Shore, and the one on the right was Monastery Cemetery in Snow.

 

The Monk on the Shore

 

Monastery Cemetery in Snow

The paintings really need to be seen in person. It is hard to see the various scales in one photo. In the Monastery Cemetery in Snow, the large scale of the trees and the monastery ruin both draw the eye upward from the small-scale monks walking into the ruin. An abbey ruin exists in Friedrich's home town in Greifswald, but Friedrich painted his ruin stretched upward, with the window in the apse much narrower than the window in the real ruin.

Eldena Abbey ruin in Greifswald

You have get close to see the detail in the monks. And when you do, you see that the line of monks is led by a small group carrying a casket to a cross. And it is very easy to miss the date on the headstone on the right side of the painting. The year says 1812, the year Dresden (Friedrich's home at the time) was occupied by Napoleon's dreaded troops.

 

Detail of the monks

Detail of tomb stones

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Now return to the left-hand painting. The Monk on the Shore is an empty expanse of sea and clouds, with a single monk, his back to us, viewing it as we do. Friedrich drew on his painting first with chalk or lead pencil, and this can be seen with an infrared reflectogram (also shown at the exhibit). An infrared reflectogram of The Monk on the Shore shows that Friedrich originally intended to have ships in the painting. But Friedrich painted over the ships, leaving the painting simple and empty with horizontal lines. And so the monk faces into the abyss. 

 

Infrared reflectogram of Monk on the Sea

This integration of spiritual significance with landscape painting made him a popular success.

Friedrich often put people in his painting. Sometimes it was a solitary figure turned away from the viewer, towards and in communion with the landscape. This kind of figure is known as "ruckenfigur," is another way German Romanticism differentiates itself from British and French Romanticism. In Woman at a Window, the woman is looking out the window, presumably at ships. But her view is different than our view, and we can only see the masts of the ships.

Woman at the Window

The Benin Bronzes

 We were in Berlin last week. The Benin bronzes consist of thousands of sculptures and plaques that British forces looted from Benin City, in what is now southern Nigeria, during a raid in 1897. Many wound up in museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; the British Museum, in London; and several major German institutions.

 "To you here in Nigeria, this loss has been your reality for your whole life," Baerbock said at Tuesday's official handover ceremony. "Today we are here to return the Benin Bronzes to where they belong — to the people of Nigeria. We are here to right a wrong."

 

Germany's Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock (second from left), and Nigeria's Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed (fourth from left), are pictured during the ceremony

Nigeria has been calling for the objects’ return for several decades, and its deal with Germany is the largest yet. It is also notable because the effort was spearheaded not by individual museums, but by a national government.

A pavilion to store and display the treasures is being built in Benin City and will most likely be completed in 2023. The building will be next to the planned Edo Museum of West African Art, an ambitious institution designed by the acclaimed Ghanaian British architect David Adjaye.

The about-face was driven — as interviews with eight German and Nigerian officials showed — by a changing social consensus about the ethics of holding on to such items, and further strengthened by a backlash against Germany’s flagship cultural project: the Humboldt Forum, an $825 million institution in Berlin, conceived as Germany’s equivalent to the Louvre or the British Museum.

Germany’s approach also contrasts with those of the United States and British governments, which have left decisions up to individual institutions. Some organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution, have acted alone. Last month, the Horniman Museum, in London, held a ceremony to transfer ownership of 72 objects, including bronzes, to Nigeria’s government

According to Andreas Görgen, the secretary general of Germany’s Federal Culture Ministry and one of the architects of the restitution agreement, the deal was also a testament to a careful, incremental strategy, which he contrasted with a flashier approach from France.
“Macron took the very French route: a great speech by a great president, then it takes years for reality to match those words,” Görgen said. “We are operating in a German way,” he said. “It isn’t especially sexy, but it can be efficient.” The French effort has floundered, in part, because museum objects are property of the French state, meaning Parliament must sign off on transfers of ownership.

Germany’s federal and state culture ministers convened in March of 2019 to approve guidelines for handling museum items from “colonial contexts.” The agreement stipulated that all objects that had been obtained “unethically” would be liable for return and directed institutions to facilitate claims by producing publicly available inventories.

Görgen, the culture ministry official, said the announcement of the museum plans in late 2020 helped eradicate any remaining doubts in Germany. After several rounds of negotiations in the spring of 2021, Germany and Nigeria signed a “memorandum of understanding,” and then the official agreement in July 2022. The agreement was finalized weeks ahead of the opening of the Humboldt Forum’s ethnological exhibits.

Visitors to the Humboldt Forum can still view several dozen Benin Bronzes, accompanied by signage clarifying that the objects belong to Nigeria. According to Parzinger, the agreement allows for 168 pieces chosen by Nigeria’s museum commission to remain in Germany “so that Benin’s art can be shown to the world.” The approximately 350 other bronzes that were part of the Berlin museum collections will be transported to Nigeria once the pavilion is completed.

9 years already

 In a previous post, I wrote about the strong affinity that Germans have to forests and woods. Recently a proposal was made by the German railway company, the Deutsche Bahn. The company wanted to 

photo of protesters from the newspaper

 

Protests over trees are a common occurrence.  The protest in Stuttgart in October 1, 2010 that I wrote about over the felling of some nearby trees in the park adjacent to the train station resulted in more than one hundred injuries. Most protests, however, are peaceful. When Tesla started clearing a forest in order to build its Gigafactory outside of Berlin in January of 2020, about 200 protesters showed up.

Walpurgis night, the pagan celebration of May 1

 It's May 1st, 2022, and an old tradition can take place again after two years of cancellation due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In several locations throughout Germany, on April 30 people go up to the highest point in the area to light bonfires and drink and celebrate. It's a way of scaring away the last evil spirits of winter and welcome the brightness and promise of spring. Even in southern Germany, where the climate is warmer than equivalent latitudes in North America, night frosts can still happen into mid May.  

Witches and devils on Walpurgisnacht (photo from nordbayern.de)

In the Harz Mountains, just about every place is eerily decorated. In the town of Schierke, medieval bands and jugglers perform on various stages set up for the event, and stalls are set up for selling arts and crafts. Other attractions include a chance to try archery, a medieval campsite, a Viking camp, taverns, fireworks and an after-party show. According to pagan myths, a "devil" named Wotan married his love Freya on the night of April 30th at the highest peak in the Harz mountains, called the Brocken, which is near Schierke. The Brocken is mist-shrouded and cloud-wrapped 300 days of the year, so it is easily associated with eerie things.

In the town of Wernigerode, Walpurgis night is celebrated in the central square and at the castle, and witches storm the town hall.

Castle Wernigerode

The ancient (Celtic) tradition of Beltane began on the night of April 30, lasting until the morning hours of May 1. It involved building bonfires and jumping over or walking between them. As a spring fertility festival, it used to involve lovers coupling in the fields to encourage a plentiful harvest. 

The name Walpurgis is taken from St. Walburga, because her canonization occurred on the first of May. She is credited with converting the local Saxon pagans to Christianity and was invoked for protection against witchcraft. According to local folklore, she permitted witches their own festival one day of the year in exchange for their conversion to Christianity. The festival is associated with the end of winter and the beginning of spring. When this occurs, the separation between this world and the netherworld is thinnest, and the nearness allows the devils and witches to pass between the worlds. The legend of flying witches can be traced back to a herbal ointment that had an intoxicating effect on the women who used it. When they rubbed it in, they had the feeling of flying. In the middle ages, the preparation of the ointment was associated with witchcraft, which led to the legend of witches and devils.

The poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Germany's Shakespeare) made the myths famous by incorporating them into his play "Faust", the story of the man who sold his soul to the devil.

from Praetorius' Blockes-Berges Verrichtung

Goethe was not the only one who was inspired by Walpurgis night. Johannes Praetorius, a writer who lived from 1630 to 1680 and compiled literary works, including fairy tales and legends, wrote Blockes Berges Verrichtung (Blockula Performance), in 1668. He covered all the facets that he could gather on the belief in witches of the 17th century. He brought together skepticism and even contempt for various forms of witchcraft, but not against the belief in witchcraft.

Falero's Walpurgisnacht: Witches on their Sabbath

Luis Ricardo Falero, a Spanish painter who lived from 1851 until 1896 and specialized in mythological, orientalist and fantasy settings, painted "Walpurgisnacht: Witches on their Sabbath".

Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestra piece, Night on Bald Mountain, published in 1886,  gained wide exposure through the Walt Disney animated film Fantasia in 1940. The theme is the Witches' Sabbath on Walpurgis night. 

The rising popularity of such festivals with ancient roots is another example of the increasing attraction and relevance of the pagan traditions in Germany. Such occasions are used as an excuse for a festival and to bring business to remote, economically disadvantaged regions. In spite of the peripheral commercial aspects, they become a primal communal experience as a spell settles over the audience during the performances. We described this in our blog entry about the Perchtentreiben performance we saw during Advent 2013. The communal response to the representation of natural forces is proving more attractive than the experiences organized religion offers.  In Germany, "solidarity", or social cohesion, is still strongly encouraged  through the centuries-old common traditions, among which are the beer gardens and the schools that teach the ability to function politely in a densely populated society. The number of Germans officially enrolled as members of the Roman Catholic,  Lutheran or orthodox churches has dropped below 50% of the total population. It is significant that these old pagan traditions that in past centuries served the same purpose of reinforcing community are enjoying more interest than the ritual offerings of church institutions, whose antiquated moral restrictions and theology of suffering are perceived as increasingly irrelevant. 

Twelve Days of Christmas

Germany is fairly quiet during the twelve days of Christmas. That is probably true in most places. In Germany, during the dark days between the years, it is better to stay home. An article on the Bavarian Radio website says that this is good advice not only because of the Corona virus, but also because some people fear the Rauhnächte (hairy nights) between the years from the 25th of December until the 6th of January. What follows is my translation of the article at

https://www.br.de/nachrichten/kultur/mythos-rauhnaechte-duestere-zeit-zwischen-den-jahren,Sst9rlI

According to old folk tales, after Christmas begins the time when it seems advisable to stay home and let certain kinds of work wait. That includes washing clothes. The reason is that clothes left on the line to dry could snare evil spirits who carry out their evil deeds in the night-time. 

The Germanic god Wotan was demonized

People wearing Perchten costumes

In the upper-Bavarian town of Kirchseeon, people wear Perchten costumes. The Perchten are sometimes good and sometimes evil creatures that the members of the Perchten Society traditionally turn themselves into.  They dress up in hairy pelts that represent the name Rauhnächte literally. The word "Rauh" comes from the middle-high German word for "hairy" and the word "nächte" means "nights".  The ghostly beginnings of the Rauhnächte reach back to pre-Christian times, long before Christmas and the Three Kings were thought of. In those times, the Germanic god Wotan presumably  traveled through the skies with a wild army during the last nights of December. During Christian times this belief acquired a demonic mystique.

Christianity competed with heathen customs

 At the same time, the Celts also noticed that the lunar year had 354 days but the solar year had 365. They inserted eleven leap days (twelve leap nights) during which the doors to another world stood open, according to their beliefs. The myths of these twelve nights were easily overtaken by Christianity, because the Church had already moved its high feast from the end of December to the beginning of January in reaction to the pagan cult festivals. First, the Roman emperor moved the beginning of the year from the first of March to the first of January, and then the pope decided that Christmas would be celebrated on December 25th in answer to the Roman sun-god cult.

The myth is continued creatively in Nuremberg

When the Church set the epiphany of the three kings on January 6th, the heathen Rauhnächte suddenly had two Christian festivals to bound the time, that is, the twelve days of Christmas, with the beginning of the year in the middle. The Synod of Tours in the year 567 designated the twelve days between Christmas and the epiphany the time "between the years". They have been called the Twelve Days of Christmas ever since.

Rauhnächte got a double meaning through a play on words where "Rauh" is interpreted as "Rauch", which means "smoke", and "Weihrauch" is the incense smoke that according to tradition was spread throughout the house to keep the evil spirits at bay during the Christmas season. Nuremberg has started its own Rauhnächte festival, similar to the one in Kirchseeon, in order to conjure up the good spirits of the new year with light-art displays in the old town.

 Nürnberg bietet dafür heuer ein eigenes Rauhnächte-Festival

 

 

 

 

Those German pagans...

This entry provides more historic context to the blog entry It's just below the surface.

Scratch the surface of a German and you find a pagan who loves trees, being in the woods and mountains and who loves processions that take place in the dark by torchlight. Hunting has its own rituals associated with honoring the game. When a house is built, the first roof support erected is decorated with a branch from an evergreen tree. A German is very close to his pagan roots.

More stories about the pagan Germans:

One conversion story of the Germanic tribes goes roughly as follows: the English missionary Boniface was trying to convince some Germanic tribesmen of the power of his Christian god. He chopped down a venerable old oak that was known locally as Thor’s tree and as old Boniface was chopping, a wind came and blew the tree down. Boniface was not struck by Thor’s lightning, so the tribesmen were impressed and accepted the new faith. Here we see the symbolic importance of trees to the early Germans. Germanic or Scandinavian mythology includes the existence of a tree at the center of the world, Yggdrasil.

Today, in many small villages, there are linden trees hundreds of years old, lovingly protected and propped up as their branches grow to shelter a surface area many times the size of the trunk. Throughout the centuries into recent times, some of these trees have been used as village meeting points, and it is said that it was forbidden to tell a falsehood when meeting under the tree. The branches supported platforms built around the trunk for dances.

The list of ancient rites that have been revived goes on: Walpurgisnacht, where people go to a local rocky hill, the Walberla (which, 2000 years ago, was inhabited by Celtic people), and build bonfires on the eve of May 1 (compare Lughnasa in the Celtic tradition). The official story is that Saint Walburga, after converting the local witches and pagans, graciously allowed them to celebrate one of their pagan festivals per year, and they picked the bonfire festival on the eve of May 1. May 1st just happens to be Walburga's feast day. The Wikipedia article is at this link: Walpurgis Night

The Fosaleggn-Jagd (Jagd means hunt), a local name for the ritual of driving out the winter, is held around Ash Wednesday, where men dressed in straw (Strohbären, straw bears) parade through town followed by men who follow them, cracking whips. They are followed by other townspeople dressed in traditional costume, to a central place where a huge bonfire is lit and the straw costumes are thrown into the fire. It’s a way of making way for spring, simultaneously driving out winter, cleaning out the old flooring and ending the winter stagnation. Pictures in this German newspaper article: Now spring can come.

The Johannisfeuer or Midsummer festival involves building a giant bonfire around June 24, the feast of St. John (Johannis) and burning the effigy of a witch placed atop the huge pile of wood. The Church participates in this one, with priests leading the procession to the hill where the fire will be set, carrying the "witch" in tow. These sinister overtones seem to have originated in the days of the witch persecutions in the 16th and 17th centuries. I like to think that burning a witch was not part of the pagan midsummer solstice celebration. A brief description is found on Wikipedia: Midsummer in Germany

The custom of the Maibaum is also an obvious holdover, but it is so commonly practiced it is accepted as a natural part of the summer festival in every town. See the blog entry on Maypole customs.

The list goes on. It's good to live in an area that cherishes its centuries-old traditions, whatever their origins. 

The Land of Poets and Thinkers

I noted in my blog about our trip to Solnhofen that we were told about the difference between civilization and culture from a German's point of view. I'm reading a book now about recent German history (since the 18th century), and I came upon the same distinction. In the introduction to The German Genius by Peter Watson, the British historian explains that in German usage "Zivilisation means something which is indeed useful, but ... comprising only the outer appearance of human beings, the surface of human existence. The word through which Gemans interpret themselves, which more than any other expresses their pride in their own achievement and their own being, is Kultur."


Poets and Thinkers