The mourning Jews in exile

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The mourning Jews in exile (Eduard Bendemann)
The mourning Jews in exile
Eduard Bendemann , 1832
Oil on canvas
183 × 280 cm
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud

The Mourning Jews in Exile , also Captive Jews in Babylon , is the title of a religious history picture by Eduard Bendemann . The group picture shows Jews in exile in Babylon , against the background of a fictional cityscape of Babylon . The painting, created in Düsseldorf in 1832 , aestheticizes the feeling of mourning in front of the contemporary theme of Jewish emancipation and is one of the key works of the early Düsseldorf school of painting and of German painting in the 19th century. Through the painting and its reproductions, the subject of grieving Jews in Babylonian captivity experienced an upswing in the 19th century that continued into the 20th century. At the turn of the century, an anti-Semitic critic of the picture saw it as an emollient, Jewish influence on Düsseldorf painting. Zionists also used the picture to construct a concept of Jewish art and identity.

Description and meaning

The Schadow circle (The Bendemann family and their friends) , Rome and Düsseldorf, 1831/1832 - Eduard Bendemann , standing, second from left, the others from left to right: Karl Ferdinand Sohn , Anton Heinrich Bendemann (1775–1866), Theodor Hildebrandt , Fanny Eleonore Bendemann (1778–1856), Emma Hübner (1830–1844), Pauline Hübner , Emil Bendemann (1807–1882), Julius Hübner and Wilhelm Schadow

Under a verdant pasture that of wine is entwined, sits on the banks of the Euphrates and in the oriental city backdrop of Babylon, a group of five people who compositionally three pyramidal attributable built units: In the center a crouching Harper in chains with a lyre in his limp hand, on whose lap a young woman surrenders to her tears. He looks next to him at a woman with a half-naked toddler, covered with a white veil, staring into the void. On his left, a young woman rests in thought, holding a zither in her right . The gilded picture frame points in the marking of his crotch by playing the first set of Psalm 137 on the biblical and historical context of the image content: "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we at Zion imaginary." This in fracture combined Old Testament Biblical lines refer to the mourning of the Jews who were deported from the kingdom of Judah into Babylonian captivity after the conquest of Jerusalem (587/586 BC) by Nebuchadnezzar II .

The harper personifies the prophet Jeremiah , the author of the lamentations about the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple , and shows the facial features of Wilhelm Schadow , Bendemann's teacher, with whom the budding painter moved from Berlin to the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1826 . The woman with child depicted on the left, the wife of the prophet, refers to the iconological Mother of God motif, the Christian image of Mary with the baby Jesus . The Italian Francesca Primavera is said to have sat as a model for this figure. The figure shown on the right, a daughter of the Prophet, is considered a portrait of the Italian model Vittoria Caldoni . With the willow tree overgrown with wine, a symbol of the Eucharist , Bendemann is said to have intended to represent the victory of Christianity over Judaism.

Origin and provenance

The subject of the picture of the Jews in Babylonian captivity goes back a long way in art history and can already be found as literary material in the Dittochaeon of the late antique poet Prudentius . It found its way into the visual arts through occidental and Byzantine illumination . On spandrels of his paintings in the Sistine Chapel , Michelangelo took up the theme as part of the depiction of the ancestors of Jesus . In the 18th century the motif appeared in Polish synagogue painting. The subject was also repeatedly taken up at the beginning of the 19th century, for example by William Blake (1806), by Giuseppe Bossi (between 1810 and 1815), by Ferdinand Olivier (between 1825 and 1830) and by Adam Eberle (1832). The painter Joseph Führich claimed to have worked on the subject as early as 1828.

Bendemann, the evangelically baptized son of Jewish parents who converted to Christianity, is likely to have been particularly interested in the biblical subject against the background of his Christian upbringing and his Jewish origins. Accordingly, he supplemented the Old Testament image program with motifs from Christian iconography. He borrowed the coloring and characteristics of the portrayal of the personnel from the Sistine Chapel and other works of the Italian High Renaissance and combined them with a portrait physiognomy of the 19th century.

Group of figures of women in Jacques-Louis David's The Oath of the Horatians , 1784
Carl Friedrich Lessing : The mourning royal couple , 1830, Hermitage Saint Petersburg

As a model for the compositional assembly of the figures sitting under a tree in front of a landscape, Bendemann may have used the picture Faith, Hope and Love by Heinrich Maria Hess from 1819, which was disseminated through lithographs and engravings . The mourning women in the painting The Oath of the Horatier by Jacques-Louis David from 1784 and the painting The Mourning Royal Couple from 1830 by Carl Friedrich Lessing are groundbreaking for the expression of grief in Bendemann's figures . The latter represents a romantic staging of mourning, an image creation based on the poem Das Schloß am Meere by Ludwig Uhland (1805).

Bendemann's picture idea and composition originated in Rome , where he stayed with his teacher Schadow, his sister Pauline and their husband Julius Hübner as well as the painters Karl Ferdinand Sohn and Theodor Hildebrandt from November 1829 to the end of April 1831 and experienced the late period of Nazarism among the German Romans . In July 1832, the 21-year-old Bendemann made his debut with the painting, which at that time was still in an unfinished condition, at an exhibition of the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf. The Kunstverein, which acquired it at the same time, immediately commissioned a re-engraving of the picture, which the engraver Ferdinand Ruscheweyh carried out that same year. After completion, the picture went on an exhibition tour in Germany. From autumn 1832 to summer 1833 it was shown at the academy exhibition in Berlin as well as in Königsberg, Hanover, Braunschweig and Magdeburg.

The Archbishop of Cologne, Ferdinand August von Spiegel, is said to have immediately campaigned for the image to be placed in the Church of St. Maria in the Capitol . For a symbolic price, the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen sold the painting to the City of Cologne in 1834 for their museum, today's Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud , in whose possession it remained. The Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm had also shown interest in acquiring the picture. Bendemann defused the threatening conflict by suggesting that the Crown Prince paint a second version. He also suggested creating the thematically related picture of Jeremiah on the ruins of Jerusalem , for which he was finally commissioned.

Around 1832 Bendemann created two other, albeit smaller, versions of the picture, each with the inscription of the gusset through the first sentence of Psalm 137. The larger of the two (95 × 132.5 cm) is in a private collection in Los Angeles, the smaller of the two (62.5 × 93.7 cm) is on permanent loan from a private collection in the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. The Kupferstichkabinett Berlin preserves a blue wash pencil drawing by Bendemann, which was created in 1832 in preparation for Ruscheweyh's re-engraving. It contains Julius Huebner's own designations and comments.

Reception and aftermath

Title page of the songs for male voices op. 17 by Otto Nicolai

On its exhibition tour, the painting achieved an overwhelming success. With its passively mourning group of figures, it hit the keynote of the Biedermeier mood of the time. It established Bendemann's reputation as a leading history painter and shaped the style of numerous artists, such as Hermann Stilke ( pilgrims in the desert , 1834), Adolf Teichs ( captured Greeks guarded by Mamelukes , 1836), Julius Hübner ( Job and his sons , 1836–1838 ), Alexander Heubel ( Moses, Aaron and Hur , 1837), Johann Georg Meyer ( The Fall of Sodom , 1838), Philip Hermogenes Calderon ( By the Waters of Babylon , 1852) and Joaquín Ramírez ( La Cautividad de los Hebreos en Babilonia , 1858 ). Adolph Schroedter created an ironic modification and reflection of the painting in Die mrauernden Lohgerber (1832).

On October 30, 1832, the Association of Younger Artists celebrated its foundation festival in Berlin , at which living pictures were depicted - among others, also based on Bendemann's painting The Mourning Jews in Exile . The composer Otto Nicolai contributed a setting of Psalm 137 in the words of Wolfgang Dachstein ( An Wasserflüssen Babylon ). In May 1833, Karl Immermann , later director of the Düsseldorf City Theater , repeated this performance at the Dürer celebration of the Malkasten Artists' Association . The printed edition of Nicolai's composition, published at the end of 1832, shows an etched sketch of Bendemann's painting on the cover.

The mourning Jews in exile , 1832, engraving by Ferdinand Ruscheweyh after Bendemann

After Bendemann's picture had been disseminated through a large number of other graphic reproductions, the writer and journalist Karl Gutzkow noted in 1837 "that (...) the Babylonian Jews can already be seen on knitting patterns, tobacco boxes and picture sheets for painting by Nuremberg inkbox artists."

In his book on Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule , published in 1839, the writer and journalist Hermann Püttmann judged that Bendemann's “images of the Jews” - by which he meant the mourning Jews in exile and Jeremiah on the ruins of Jerusalem - “was a deeply serious word in the daily debates about the emancipation of the unfortunate People "speak," and if it is true that art can have an influence on cultural advances, as it is to be hoped and also to be believed, "continued Püttmann," then these pictures could serve instead of the best plaidoyer.

In the mood of the pre- March period around 1840, the sentimental way of portraying a fateful suffering and feeling, as it had been established in Düsseldorf painting primarily through Schadow, Lessing and Bendemann, increasingly met with reservations. The writer Arnold Ruge wrote:

“The Lessing royal couple is certainly the worst of all of his pictures, it is still entirely in Schadow's inaction, in the brooding sentiment, and deserves the reproach that it is the father of all the unhappy mourning figures, veiled and squatting scenes which later came from secondary Düsseldorf spirits, and next to Bendemann's mourning Jews and Jeremias, their second unimproved edition, (...) form a standing, degenerating canal of the school. "

And Immermann noted:

“Now the tide is starting to turn. A change in opinion is clearly approaching. Admittedly, fans still order and buy a lot, but for several years now, the verdict of the section leaders has often spoken of Düsseldorf pain, softness, brooding that has become stereotypical. "

In 1902, a good sixty years later, Friedrich Schaarschmidt judged with a racist and anti-Semitic undertone:

“Bendemann is actually the father of that soft sentimentality, which hardly any of the painters of the time eluded, but which corresponded to Bendemann's soft nature and thus allowed him to create the most striking works of this direction. The mixture of melancholy and sweetness, which, as with Schadow, may find its physiological explanation in the Jewish origin of both of them, which in Schadow was somewhat pushed into the background by the Berlin spirit inherited from his father, came to the fore with Bendemann. In this respect his painting has much in common with the work of artists of his kin, with Heine's poetry and Meyerbeer's music . The inability to portray real tragedy, but a great skill instead, to use all kinds of surrogates in their place, is common to all of them. Instead of active passions, we find indulging in passive suffering, instead of artistic mastery and the use of strong emotions, we find play with weak emotions and, as the never-failing means of affecting the interest of the listener or viewer, an eminent technical skill that superficially supports Those who enjoy it must cover up the lack of inner truth and strength. Precisely at that cowardly time, which was prohibited by the police from any self-reflection, any powerful expression in social and political matters, Heine's sensual but unfounded lyric, Meyerbeer's noisy but hollow music and Bendemann's brilliant but sentimental painting had to be the highest attainable of strength and Can appear. So Heine almost overshadowed the great Olympian , Meyerbeer almost ousted Beethoven, and the amiable, fine, but all in all weak, sweet and outwardly Bendemann was even in all seriousness considered Michel Angelo of Düsseldorf art. One of the first works by Bendemann in Düsseldorf was 'Die mrauernden Juden' (...). In this picture the totem was created for the whole tearful mood, to which all of Düsseldorf art prayed for years (...). "

Vignette by Wilhelm Kaulbach on Goethe's Reineke Fuchs , 1846 - parody of Bendemann's "grieving Jews"

In 1846, the painter Wilhelm Kaulbach created an alternative to Bendemann's paintings with his painting The Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus . In the same year he delivered a biting parody of the “grieving Jews” with a vignette on Goethe's Reineke Fuchs , which depicts the captured and mourning animals dealt with in the sixth song of the fable .

The writer Fanny Lewald took up the practice of performing Bendemann's “mourning Jews” in her women's novel Jenny , published in 1843 , in a work that explicitly deals with Jewish problems of the 19th century, including the socially acceptable anti-Semitism of their time. In the storyline of this novel, Bendemann's “grieving Jews” are listed in a living picture among other works in a New Year's Eve party in the house of a Meier banking family, who are identified as Jewish through conversations and comments from the guests. Tropical plants in a greenhouse form the background. Those present discuss the effect of the performance and agree that the tableau vivant was more lively than Bendemann's picture. Erlau, a painter, criticizes Bendemann for painting his figures as “grieving Düsseldorfers in strange clothes”, which leads to a discussion of the question of realism: “Wouldn't everybody laugh, find it absurd to see gypsies with the same physiognomy phlegmatic Dutch painted? - or Parias with golden-blonde curls and a lily skin? ”Furthermore, an anti-Semitic discussion among those present develops about alleged characteristics of Jews. A reviewer of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums published in Leipzig found that Lewald's novel, which in any case gives the "attentive Jewish reader (...) a lot to think about", offers "a greater interest" precisely at this point.

In April 1868, Sophie Todesco had amateurs from Vienna's upper class perform Bendemann's “grieving Jews” as the first living picture in a series of tableaux vivants in a carefully prepared setting in her Viennese salon in Palais Todesco . The event was designed as a charity event for the benefit of the Israelite Orphan Fund. It remains unclear whether this event was also intended to create a new Jewish identity or merely to express Jewish historical awareness.

In his work Die Traumdeutung , published in 1899/1900, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud confessed that he identified with the “grieving Jews” in the painting Bendemanns.

At an art exhibition for the Fifth Zionist Congress , which took place in Basel from December 26th to 30th, 1901 under the direction of Theodor Herzl , Bendemann's pictures, including the “mourning Jews”, were exhibited as lithographs alongside other works by “Jewish artists”. This exhibition was organized by Ephraim Moses Lilien , Martin Buber , Chaim Weizmann , Berthold Feiwel and others as a representation of “Jewish art”.

literature

  • Helmut Börsch-Supan : On the history of the judgment of the Düsseldorf school of painting. Eduard Bendemann's painting “Mourning Jews”. In: Kurt Düwell , Wolfgang Köllmann (Hrsg.): Rhineland-Westphalia in the industrial age. Contributions to national history in the 19th and 20th centuries in four volumes . Volume 4: On the history of science, art and education on the Rhine and Ruhr . Hammer, Wuppertal 1985, pp. 219-226.
  • Hans Wille: "The mourning Jews in exile" by Eduard Bendemann. In: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch. Volume 56, 1995, pp. 307-316. (Digitized version)
  • Guido Krey: Feeling and History, Eduard Bendemann (1811–1889). A study of history painting by the Düsseldorf School of Painting . Dissertation, publishing house and database for the humanities, Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-89739-332-8 .
  • Nicole Brandmüller: “The mourning Jews in exile” - a theme of European painting in the 19th and 20th centuries . Dissertation at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Nürnberg 2007. (digitized version)
  • Bettina Baumgärtel : Captive Jews in Babylon - Eduard Bendemann and the consequences. In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918 . Volume 2, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , pp. 162-167.

Web links

Commons : Jews Mourning in Exile by Eduard Bendemann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Bendemann family and their friends. In: Wend von Kalnein : The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , pp. 442 f., No. 207.
  2. ↑ Hans Wille: "The mourning Jews in exile" by Eduard Bendemann. In: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch. Volume 56, 1995, p. 308 ff.
  3. ↑ Andreas Platthaus : The vine triumphs over the pasture, hope instead of resignation: "The mourning Jews" by Eduard Bendemann. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. August 7, 1996, No. 182, p. 5.
  4. ^ Friedrich Noack : The Germanness in Rome since the end of the Middle Ages . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1927, Volume 2, p. 82
  5. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel, p. 166 f.
  6. ↑ The grieving Jews in exile. In: Wend von Kalnein : The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 263.
  7. ^ Wolfgang Hütt : Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule 1819–1869 . VEB EA Seemann Buch- und Kunstverlag, Leipzig 1984, p. 23.
  8. ^ Klaus Rettinghaus: Studies on the spiritual work of Otto Nicolais . 2nd Edition. epubli, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-7375-1116-2 , pp. 33 ff ., urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2015061224795 .
  9. ^ In: Otto Nicolai: Gesänge für Männerstimmen op. 17, Berlin.
  10. ^ Karl Gutzkow : Collected works . Volume 2: Public Characters . Frankfurt am Main 1845, p. 314.
  11. ^ Hermann Püttmann : The Düsseldorf school of painting and its achievements since the establishment of the art association in 1829. A contribution to modern art history . Wigand, Leipzig 1839, p. 44 (digitized version)
  12. ^ Arnold Ruge : Review of: The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its achievements since the establishment of the art association in 1829. A contribution to modern art history . By H. Püttmann. Leipzig 1839. With Otto Wigand . In: Halle yearbooks for German science and art . 2, 1839, col. 1596.
  13. ^ Karl Immermann : Düsseldorf beginnings. Mask talks (1840). In: Karl Immermann: Works in five volumes. ed. by Benno von Wiese , Volume 4: Autobiographical Writings , Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 646.
  14. ^ Friedrich Schaarschmidt : On the history of Düsseldorf art, especially in the XIX. Century . Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia, Düsseldorf 1902, p. 75 ff. ( PDF )
  15. ↑ Christian Scholl: Later Orientalism: Eduard Bendemann's painting The way of the Jews into Babylonian captivity. In: Christian Scholl, Anne-Katrin Sors (ed.): Before the paintings: Eduard Bendemann draws. Inventory catalog of the drawings and sketchbooks of a main representative of the Düsseldorf School of Painting in the Göttingen University Art Collection . Göttingen 2012, p. 61.
  16. ^ Fanny Lewald : Jenny . Volume 1, Leipzig 1843, pp. 257 ff. (Digitized version)
  17. ^ Karlheinz Rossbacher: literature and bourgeoisie. Five Viennese Jewish families from the liberal era to the fin de siècle . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-205-99497-3 , p. 135 ( Google Books )
  18. ↑ Eva Lezzi: "Love is my religion!" Eros and marriage between Jews and Christians in 19th century literature . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1317-0 , p. 231 ( Google Books )
  19. ↑ Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums . VIII. Volume, No. 7, edition of February 12, 1844, p. 96 f. ( Google Books )
  20. ↑ "For the orphans". In: II. Supplement to the New Foreign Gazette. No. 92, April 2, 1868 ( Google Books )
  21. ↑ Elana Shapira: Jewish patronage. In: Claudia Theune, Tina Walzer (eds.): Jewish cemeteries. Place of worship, place of remembrance, memorial . Böhlau, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2007, ISBN 978-3-205-78477-7 , p. 179 ( Google Books )
  22. ^ Gilja Gerda Schmidt: The Art and Artists of the Fifth Zionist Congress, 1901. Heralds of a New Age . Syracuse University Press, Syracuse / New York 2003, ISBN 0-8156-3030-1 , pp. 25 ff. ( Google Books )