The floating one

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The floating man in Güstrow Cathedral , face with the image of Käthe Kollwitz

The floating angel , also known as the floating angel or Güstrower Ehrenmal , is a bronze sculpture created by Ernst Barlach in 1927 , the first cast of which has been lost and of which three bronze replicas and one plaster cast exist today.

history

First casting

Ernst Barlach created the sculpture for the Güstrow Cathedral for the 700th anniversary of the building, sponsored by the then cathedral preacher Johannes Schwartzkopff . The sculpture should as a memorial for the First World War are dead.

The original was removed from Güstrow Cathedral on August 23, 1937 as so-called " Degenerate Art ", brought to Schwerin and melted down in 1941 as part of the metal donation made by the German people .

Refill

Second casting in Cologne

The floating in the Antoniterkirche in Cologne

In January 1939, Bernhard A. Böhmer commissioned the Berlin foundry Hermann Noack to make a bronze replica. This backup casting was carried out according to the original factory model for the first casting that was still preserved at that time. During the war, Hugo Körtzinger hid this casting in his studio in Schnega / Wendland. It has been in Cologne's Antoniterkirche since May 15, 1952 .

By attaching the Cologne second cast over a stone slab on which the dates of both world wars were engraved, its meaning was expanded and freed from direct reference only to the First World War. This was intensified when the years of the Second World War (1939–1945) were replaced by the years of National Socialist rule in Germany (1933–1945), so that the floating figure was increasingly reinterpreted as a comprehensive Friedensmal.

Third casting in Güstrow

Since the factory model was destroyed in a bombing raid in Berlin in 1943 or 1944, the second casting served as a template for a new casting mold before it was transported to Cologne. In 1952, again at Noack, this enabled a bronze third cast of Barlach's angel, which came to Güstrow on June 4, 1952 and, after numerous test hangings, was hung on March 8, 1953 in the western yoke of the south aisle in Güstrow Cathedral. In 1985 it was moved to the originally intended place in the eastern yoke of the north aisle, facing west. The third casting, the production of which was financed by the Cologne church district , came to the cathedral as a loan from the Barlach estate committee. In 1994 ownership passed to the Ernst Barlach Foundation , which is still its owner today.

The Güstrower Float was exhibited in Moscow and Leningrad in 1970 and in the East Berlin (Old) National Gallery in 1981 . For the exhibition “Germany. Memories of a Nation ”/“ Germany - Recollections of a Nation ”was the work of art from October 16, 2014 to January 25, 2015 in the British Museum in London . The floating figure as one of the most impressive sculptures of the 20th century was one of the highlights of the show.

Refill in Schleswig

The floating in the Gottorf Castle Museum , Schleswig

The casting mold made in 1952 came into the possession of Hans Barlach . A bronze replica was made of this in 1987, which hangs in the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum for Art and Cultural History at Gottorf Castle in Schleswig .

Plaster cast

At the same time as the third casting, Noack made a bronze plaster cast in 1952 , which came into the possession of the Ernst Barlach Society in Hamburg and is normally on display in the Ernst Barlach Museum Wedel .

The plaster specimen has already been shown several times at external exhibitions, for example in Münster in 2012, previously in Tehran, Antwerp, Rome and Istanbul, in Göttingen in 2010 and in Hanover in 2013. In 2017 this copy was on display in the context of the exhibition Ernst Barlach and Käthe Kollwitz: Beyond the Limits of Existence in the Wittenberg Castle Church . The mayor of Wittenberg, Torsten Zugehre, and the honorary citizen of Wittenberg, Friedrich Schorlemmer, have spoken out in favor of the sculpture being permanently in Wittenberg.

  • 2013 in the Marktkirche Hannover

  • 2017 in the castle church Wittenberg

Quotes

“For me, time stood still during the war. It could not be inserted into anything else earthly. She floated. I wanted to reproduce something of this feeling in this figure of fate floating in the void. "

“The face of Käthe Kollwitz entered the angel without my having planned to. Had I wanted something like that, I would probably have failed. "

reception

Wolf Biermann refers to Barlach's Der Schwebende in the Barlach song .

literature

  • Ernst Barlach - The Güstrow memorial. Edited by Volker Probst. (Exhibition catalog). Seemann, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-363-00695-0 .
  • Barlach's angel. Voices to the Cologne floating. Edited by Antje Löhr-Sieberg and Annette Scholl with the assistance of Anselm Weyer. Greven Verlag, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-77430481-9 .
  • Gunnar Decker : Ernst Barlach - The Floating One. A biography. Siedler, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-8275-0106-6 .

music

Web links

Commons : The Floating One  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barlach called his larger-than-life bronze the "floating angel", which shows Kollwitz's facial features. Göttinger Tageblatt , September 16, 2010, accessed on January 10, 2014.
  2. ↑ Since Der Schwebende was not removed from a museum or a public collection, it is not included in the inventory of the art removed in the course of the Degenerate Art campaign made by Rolf Hetsch in 1941 , see 'Degenerate Art' , accessed on August 18, 2017
  3. ↑ See on the circumstances studies on the city history of the Barlachstadt Güstrow - 1941. Retrieved on February 11, 2019.
  4. ↑ See the notes on provenance in the British Museum document , accessed on October 14, 2014.
  5. ↑ www.dom-guestrow.de ( Memento of the original from October 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dom-guestrow.de
  6. ↑ See also Barlach sculpture: An angel too much. In: Die Zeit from September 30, 1988, accessed on August 10, 2017
  7. ↑ Barlach's angel floats a “Güstrow memorial” hangs in St. John's Chapel until November. In: Westfälische Nachrichten of August 31, 2012, accessed on August 10, 2017
  8. ↑ Barlach and Kollwitz in Göttingen churches Barlach's "Floating Angel" has arrived. In: Göttinger Tageblatt of September 16, 2010, accessed on August 10, 2017
  9. ↑ Christian Art Kollwitz-Barlach-Show opens. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of May 16, 2017, accessed on August 10, 2017.
  10. ↑ Boundaries between the spirit of art and the Reformation: "We are beggars, that is true". In: Wittenberger Sonntag on May 13, 2017, accessed on August 10, 2017.
  11. ↑ Ernst Barlach, The Güstrow Memorial. Edited by Volker Probst. Güstrow 1998, p. 86.
  12. ↑ erloeserkirchengemeinde-muenster.de
  13. ↑ Barlach-Lied Biermanns
  14. ↑ New Germany: Biermann is November 80, 2016