Laying out of those who died in March

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Laying out of those who fell in March (Adolph Menzel)
Laying out of those who died in March
Adolph Menzel , 1848
Oil on canvas
45 × 63 cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle

The oil painting Laying Out of the March Fallen is an unfinished event picture from the hand of Adolph von Menzel . It shows the setting up of the coffins of civilians who died during the Berlin March Revolution , known as those who died in March . The Gendarmenmarkt is the morning scene of the scene, although the actual mourning ceremony has not yet started. The picture, created in 1848, has been in the possession of the Hamburger Kunsthalle since 1902 .

It is considered Menzel's only contribution to the revolution of 1848 and is one of the most important works of realism painting in Germany. The laying out of those who died in March is characterized by its political and motivic ambiguity.  

History of origin

The historical event

Barricade on Kronenstrasse and Friedrichstrasse , FG Nordmann, 1848

→ see the history of the March revolution in Berlin in 1848

In the course of the Europe-wide revolution of 1848 it came on 18./19. March also in Berlin to a violent confrontation between civilians and royal soldiers. Adolph Menzel was still in Kassel at this time, so he was not an eyewitness to the fighting. Only on the evening of March 21, 1848 did he return to the Prussian capital after an absence of several months. On the morning of March 22, 1848, he probably took part in the funeral of those who died in March. The ceremony began on the Gendarmenmarkt: The coffins decorated with wreaths and bows were laid out on the steps of the German Cathedral . Menzel most likely observed this scene from the steps of the French Cathedral . It was precisely this perspective that would later reappear in the painting. Those gathered at the Gendarmenmarkt expressed their solidarity with those who died in March. They belonged to all walks of life, including merchants, members of the Berlin Craftsmen's Association, the factory workers of the locomotive manufacturer August Borsig and delegations from other cities. There are different contemporary statements about how many thousands of people took part in the funeral service. According to current estimates, however, there were around 20,000 participants. Protestant, Catholic and Jewish sermons were held in the German Cathedral at noon. After the short church services, the funeral procession set out in the direction of the specially laid out cemetery for those who died in March at the gates of the city. The coffins were buried there.

Menzel described his impressions to his friend and sponsor, the wallpaper manufacturer Carl Heinrich Arnold, as follows:

“It was a sad, solemn day to experience something like that in Berlin that you wouldn't have thought. (...) You can check the Berlin newspapers about the course of the great funeral. "

Classification in Menzel's work

March 22, 1848 initially seemed to symbolize the victory of the revolution in Berlin. Encouraged by this, Menzel began to make the painting Laying Out of the March Fallen . The picture should show the morning Gendarmenmarkt shortly before the actual start of the funeral service. In autumn 1848 at the latest, however, the political situation finally began to develop again in favor of the monarchy. The chances of being able to present the painting to the public decreased. Menzel also stopped working on the picture because he was disappointed that the revolution was about to fail. The painting must have been given up in 1848, because Menzel signed the lower left margin with “Ad. Menzel 1848 ". This signature indicates that he declared the image complete and made no further changes to it.

Adolph Menzel's Flute Concerto of Frederick the Great in Sanssouci , 1852

Instead, his painting turned to Frederick the Great and the first preparatory work for the painting Round Table in Sanssouci and Frederick the Great's Flute Concerto in Sanssouci . The exact reasons for this shift in interests from the revolution to King Friedrich II are controversial in research. According to the art historian Gisold Lammel, Menzel wanted to see the long-dead Prussian ruler as a monarch who had complied with the wishes of the people. A reform of the state order initiated by the people, however, became more unrealistic. The art historian Hubertus Coal comes to a similar conclusion. Menzel valued King Friedrich Wilhelm IV , who as monarch was responsible for the escalation of violence in March 1848, as a weak ruler and consequently opposed the ideal of the heroic king of the Enlightenment. According to Christopher B. With, Menzel showed an ambivalent attitude towards the revolution, especially since in the course of 1848 his attitude became significantly more conservative.

Claude Keisch sees the picture as a “step into contemporary history painting ”. In addition to the laying out of those who fell in March , Menzel's Berlin-Potsdamer Eisenbahn from 1847, Wilhelm I's departure from Berlin in July 1870 and the iron rolling mill from 1875 can also be assigned to contemporary themes.

Provenance

Those who fell in March were laid out in the artist's studio, where only a few guests, such as the painter Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg , saw it. On the occasion of Menzel's 80th birthday, the Berlin Academy of the Arts exhibited the picture for the first time in 1895. In 1896 the painting was presented in the Menzel exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle . In 1902 the director of the Kunsthalle, Alfred Lichtwark , succeeded in incorporating the picture into the Hamburg collection. The director also had the opportunity to ask the painter about the picture. This answered him, he

“Would have gone to work with a palpitations and great enthusiasm for the ideas in whose service the victims [have] fallen, but before it was finished he would have seen that everything would have been lies or stupid things. Thereupon he would have put the picture with his face against the wall and in his disgust he would not have liked to lay a hand on it ...

Menzel's justification for the task of the picture is critically questioned by art historians such as Helmut Börsch-Supan : The interview took place 54 years after the painting was made. At this point in time, Kaiser Wilhelm II had already named the artist a Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle. In the upper classes of Berlin during the imperial era, he enjoyed a reputation which he would have endangered with an overly obvious commitment to the revolution of 1848. Another photograph speaks against Menzel's aversion to his picture: it shows the artist in the writing room of his apartment on Sigismundstrasse; lined up on the wall is the laying out of those who died in March .

description

Laying out of those who died in March

The view goes slightly higher over a crowd that has gathered in front of the northern portico of the German Cathedral. Most of the coffins have already been placed on the steps of the church. Located slightly to the left of the center of the painting, they form a black, hazy-looking mass. The crowd, which takes up most of the picture, is shown divided in the middle, as a light brown coffin is being carried to the German Cathedral. The dome of the church is left out of the picture. On the right edge of the picture you can see the staircase walls of the theater on which several figures have sat. The figures in the crowd look at the coffins, but also at their conversation partners. Your postures appear "excited" and "lively". Menzel also records the social heterogeneity of the crowd; Citizens , craftsmen, students and members of the vigilante group. Some women, children and a worker are also shown.

The Berlin vigilante group is to the left of the light brown coffin. It denies viewers access to the immediate vicinity of the coffins. A group of three figures attempting to circumvent the barrier from the stairs of the theater is turned back by a member of the vigilante group. Of the three figures in the group, two are at the bottom of the stairs and directly opposite the vigilante. You are already about to turn back and turn around. The third figure, who has stopped further up the stairs, looks at the coffins. To the right below the light brown coffin, in the foreground of the picture, a little girl listlessly carries "a black-red-gold flag upside down in her hand". She is talking to a taller girl. A few clouds cover the blue-gray sky. The picture, which Jost Hermand called an “oil sketch”, is clearly unfinished; so the lower left corner is not painted, but still in the drafting stage.

interpretation

The art historian Susanne von Falkenhausen blames Menzel's disappointment with the outcome of the revolution of 1848/1849 as well as the composition of the picture for the incomplete state of the picture . In Menzel's time it was common to place the main actors in the compositional center of the picture. In the painting, however, a deserted floor surface appears at this point. A little outside the center of the picture, only the light brown coffin stands out, which is carried to the steps of the German Cathedral. In this way, according to Falkenhausen, Menzel did not make a living figure the “hero of the revolution”, but one of those who fell in March. The crowd itself, or the people they represent, reacts with no apparent anger. Wolfgang Kemp evaluates the image of the revolution as "indicative of German conditions". The crowd is, according to Kemp, tamed by the mourning ritual and does not appear as an actor.

According to Detlef Hoffmann, Menzel's laying out of those who fell in March wanted to illustrate, with his seemingly photographic representation of many, even unimportant details - that distract from the main event, "how even great historical moments dissolve into coincidences". This was entirely in the spirit of realism painting to which Menzel belonged. Françoise Forster-Hahn considers Menzel's decision to record the morning hours shortly before the official ceremony to be an indication of the artist's political indecision. The illustration of a time in the morning made it possible for him to depict a crowd less concentrated on the coffins or the revolution. In comparison, according to Françoise Forster-Hahn, a drawing of the funeral procession in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung on April 15, 1848 evokes a united unity among those gathered. In Menzel's painting, on the other hand, the crowd diverges: some viewers, according to Detlef Hoffmann, seem to have “only happened upon this meeting and thus into the picture”. Many figures “see and point in the opposite direction” of the coffins. According to Hoffmann, the lack of a symbolic center makes any interpretation of the picture more difficult. The art historian Werner Busch considers the upper figure, which has remained standing on the stairs of the theater, to be central. The vigilante blocks her access to the coffins. So you - like Menzel as a historical witness of the event - only have the option of observing. The figure remains excluded from the actual picture.

Literature (selection)

  • Werner Busch : Adolph Menzel, Leben und Werk , Beck, Munich 2004, pp. 85–91.
  • Susanne von Falkenhausen : “Contemporary witness of the void. On the failure of national pictorial formulas with Menzel ”, in: Claude Keisch / Marie Ursula RiemannReyher (eds.), Exhib.cat. Adolph Menzel. 1815-1905, the labyrinth of reality , Berlin 1996, pp. 494–502.
  • Françoise Forster-Hahn: “The laying out of those who fell in March”. Menzel's Unfinished Painting as a Parable of the Aborted Revolution of 1848. In: Christian Beutler , Peter-Klaus Schuster , Martin Warnke (eds.): Art around 1800 and the consequences. Prestel, Munich 1988, pp. 221-232 (English).
  • Karin Gludovatz : Not to be overlooked. The artist as a figure from the periphery in Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen in Berlin” (1848). In: Edith Futscher et al. (Ed.): What pleases from the picture. Figures of detail in art and literature. Munich et al. 2007, pp. 237-263.
  • Françoise Forster-Hahn: The unfinished picture and its missing audience. Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen” as a visual condensation of political change. In: Uwe Fleckner (Hrsg.): Pictures make history: Historical events in the memory of art. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 267–279.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrike Ruttmann: The tradition of the March revolution. In: Lothar Gall (Ed.) Departure to Freedom. An exhibition by the German Historical Museum and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Nicolai, Berlin 1998, pp. 159-182, here p. 164.
  2. ↑ Ulrike Ruttmann: The tradition of the March revolution. In: Lothar Gall (Ed.) Departure to Freedom. An exhibition by the German Historical Museum and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Nicolai, Berlin 1998, pp. 159-182, here p. 164.
  3. ^ Rüdiger Hachtmann: Berlin 1848: a political and social history of the revolution, Dietz, Bonn 1997, p. 216.
  4. ^ Günter Richter: Between Revolution and Forging an Empire. In: Wolfgang Ribbe (Ed.): History of Berlin. Volume 2: From the March Revolution to the Present. Beck, Munich 1987, p. 620.
  5. ^ Rüdiger Hachtmann: Berlin 1848: a political and social history of the revolution, Dietz, Bonn 1997, p. 216.
  6. ↑ Gisold Lammel, Adolph Menzel: imagery and video control, Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1993 S. 60th
  7. ^ Françoise Forster-Hahn: The unfinished picture and its missing audience. Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen” as a visual condensation of political change. In: Uwe Fleckner (Hrsg.): Pictures make history: Historical events in the memory of art. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 267–279, here p. 267.
  8. ^ Françoise Forster-Hahn: The unfinished picture and its missing audience. Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen” as a visual condensation of political change. In: Uwe Fleckner (Hrsg.): Pictures make history: Historical events in the memory of art. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 267–279, here p. 268.
  9. ↑ Detlef Hofmann, From the pictures on the canvas to the pictures in the head. Notes on Jochen Gerz historical images , in: From the artistic production of history. Edited by Bernhard Jussen, Wallstein, Göttingen 1997, pp. 81–132, here p. 94.
  10. ^ Françoise Forster-Hahn: The unfinished picture and its missing audience. Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen” as a visual condensation of political change . In: Uwe Fleckner (Hrsg.): Pictures make history: Historical events in the memory of art . De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 267–279, here p. 276.
  11. ↑ Gisold Lammel: Adolph Menzel. Frideriziana and Wilhelmiana . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1988. pp. 32–33.
  12. ↑ Rainer Berthold Schossig: Adolph Menzel: The lonely observer. In: Deutschlandfunk , December 8, 2015.
  13. ^ Christopher B. With: Adolph von Menzel and the German Revolution of 1848. In: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte . Volume 42, 1979, pp. 195-214.
  14. ^ Claude Keisch, Landscape, Revolution, History. Adolph Menzel Die Bittschrift , Menzel's Die Bittschrift, in: Museumsjournal 16, 2002, no. 5, pp. 84–85, here p. 84.
  15. ↑ Hartwin Spenkuch, Prussia - a special history, state, economy, society and culture, 1648-1947 , Vandenhoeck, Göttingen 2019, p. 284.
  16. ^ Françoise Forster-Hahn: The unfinished picture and its missing audience. Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen” as a visual condensation of political change. In: Uwe Fleckner (Hrsg.): Pictures make history: Historical events in the memory of art. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 267–279, here p. 268 and p. 499 (end footnote 7).
  17. ^ Gisela Hopp: Hamburger Kunsthalle. Masterpieces. Edited by Uwe Schneede, HR Leppien. Edition Braus, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-89466-105-4 , p. 251.
  18. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Menzel and the contemporary event image in Berlin , In: Images of power, power of images: Contemporary representations of the 19th century , ed. Stefan Germer u. Michael F. Zimmermann, Munich, Berlin 1997, pp. 499-511, here p. 508.
  19. ^ Françoise Forster-Hahn: "The laying out of the March fallen". Menzel's Unfinished Painting as a Parable of the Aborted Revolution of 1848. In: Christian Beutler, Peter-Klaus Schuster, Martin Warnke (eds.): Art around 1800 and the consequences. Prestel, Munich 1988, pp. 221–232, here p. 223.
  20. ^ Françoise Forster-Hahn: The unfinished picture and its missing audience. Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen” as a visual condensation of political change. In: Uwe Fleckner (Hrsg.): Pictures make history: Historical events in the memory of art. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 267–279, here p. 269.
  21. ↑ Ulrike Ruttmann: The tradition of the March revolution. In: Lothar Gall (Ed.) Departure to Freedom. An exhibition by the German Historical Museum and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Nicolai, Berlin 1998, p. 164.
  22. ^ Françoise Forster-Hahn: The unfinished picture and its missing audience. Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen” as a visual condensation of political change. In: Uwe Fleckner (Hrsg.): Pictures make history: Historical events in the memory of art. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 267–279, here p. 269.
  23. ↑ Werner Busch: Adolph Menzel, Leben und Werk, Beck, Munich 2004, p. 89.
  24. ↑ Detlef Hoffmann: The living dead. On the genesis of revolutionary images of the dead and martyrs in Germany 1848/49 , in: Ulrich Großmann (Ed.), 1848. Das Europa der Bilder (exhibition catalogs of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg), Nuremberg 1998, pp. 69–87, here p. 78 .
  25. ^ Françoise Forster-Hahn: The unfinished picture and its missing audience. Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen” as a visual condensation of political change. In: Uwe Fleckner (Hrsg.): Pictures make history: Historical events in the memory of art. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 267–279, here p. 270.
  26. ↑ Jost Hermand: Political Thoughts. From Caspar David Friedrich to Neo Rauch. Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20703-8 , p. 56.
  27. ↑ Susanne von Falkenhausen, The Image of the People - From Centralism to Totality in Italy and Germany , in: Centralism and Federalism in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Germany and Italy in Comparison , Berlin 2000, pp. 137–162, here p. 143.
  28. ↑ Wolfgang Kemp, Volkssum , in: Uwe Fleckner / Martin Warnke / Hendrik Ziegler (eds.), Handbook of Political Iconography, Imperator to Dwarf , (Historical Library of the Gerda Henkel Foundation 2), Munich 2011, pp. 521-529, here P. 527.
  29. ↑ Detlef Hoffmann: The living dead. On the genesis of revolutionary images of the dead and martyrs in Germany 1848/49 , in: Ulrich Großmann (Ed.), 1848. Das Europa der Bilder (exhibition catalogs of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg), Nuremberg 1998, pp. 69–87, here p. 78 .
  30. ^ Françoise Forster-Hahn: The unfinished picture and its missing audience. Adolph Menzel's “Laying Out of the March Fallen” as a visual condensation of political change. In: Uwe Fleckner (Hrsg.): Pictures make history: Historical events in the memory of art. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 267–279, here pp. 272–273.
  31. ↑ Detlef Hofmann, From the pictures on the canvas to the pictures in the head. Notes on Jochen Gerz historical images , in: From the artistic production of history . Edited by Bernhard Jussen, Wallstein, Göttingen 1997, pp. 81–132, here p. 94.
  32. ↑ Werner Busch: Adolph Menzel, Leben und Werk, Beck, Munich 2004, p. 89.