Epitaph for Martin Luther
The epitaph for Martin Luther was supposed to cover Martin Luther's grave, but never arrived at its destination, the Wittenberg Castle Church .
history
After the reformer Martin Luther died on February 18, 1546, the Erfurt bronze caster Heinrich Ciegeler the Younger was commissioned by the Elector Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous to create a bronze epitaph for Luther.
In a press release on the state exhibition Fundsache Luther - Archaeologists on the Trail of the Reformer from 2008, reasons are also given: “When Martin Luther died on February 18, 1546, rumors had been circulating for a long time that he had committed suicide or had been taken by the devil be. It was all the more important for the Reformers' party to credibly testify to Martin Luther's death, which was in harmony with his God [...] “Not only were eyewitness accounts of his death printed and several portraits of Luther created on his deathbed, but even While his body was being transferred from Eisleben to Wittenberg, casts were made of his hands. Ruth Slenczka reports that just three days after Luther's death, the elector commissioned Melanchthon to write a memorial text that the reformer's grave monument was to bear.
The wooden model
First a wooden patrix was created by a carver not known by name . He probably used a woodcut by the Ernestine court painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä. as a rolemodel. Slenczka points out that the “Lucas Cranach d. Ä. decisively shaped innovative pictorial form of the almost life-size full-figure portrait in its pictorial language oriented towards representation (in the sense of substitution) and real presence (in the sense of bodily visualization) “had far-reaching consequences. Cranach's representation of Luther, standing with professors schaube and the Bible or Gospel , was not only adopted by the creator of the epitaph, but also by numerous other artists.
The right Luther head was that in which Epitaph model of lime wood, which has a length of 223 cm and a width of 111 cm Luther Rose attached at its head a zweieinhalbzeilige inscription, which gives information about the life and the death date Luther. According to Harald Meller , it probably goes back to the client; Melanchthon is not mentioned by Meller.
In 1548 the grave slab was cast in Erfurt and then sent to Wittenberg. The wooden model stayed in Erfurt. It was probably painted in color as early as the 16th century: the Luther rose, the Bible and Luther's mouth and his robe under the dark coat are red, the background is gray-blue, almost down to Luther's ankle, and the floor on which the reformer stands is brown. The writing on the text above his head as well as in the surrounding frame is gold-plated.
After this wooden model was still in the possession of the Erfurt family Hornung in 1726, it was bequeathed to St. Andrew's Church on Whitsun 1727 . Restorations in the years 1672, 1727, 1931 and 1981 to 1983 are documented; In the course of some refreshments, small changes were probably made to the grave slab model. It is still in Erfurt's Andreaskirche.
The bronze epitaph
For Luther's grave in Wittenberg, his sovereign had planned furnishings that would have been more like an elector than a professor: the roughly life-size bronze portrait of Luther was to be placed vertically.
The bronze epitaph was to be brought to the Wittenberg Castle Church. However, after the battle of Mühlberg on April 24, 1547, the elector was taken prisoner and at the behest of the emperor had to cede the electoral dignity and district to the Albertines . Although Wittenberg was now also subject to the new Elector Moritz , Johann Friedrich insisted in 1549 that Ciegeler receive 70 guilders payment and that the epitaph should be brought to Wittenberg. At that time, Luther's grave was covered with a temporary wooden structure.
The sons of the deposed elector, however, evidently did not obey the instructions given by their father from imprisonment, as their uncle Moritz was considered a traitor to the Lutherans. Among other things, he had tried to bribe the bronze caster and buy the monument that Johann Friedrich had ordered from him. The sons of Johann Friedrich therefore tried to remove the epitaph from Moritz's access and had it transported to Weimar , where they had their residence. According to Slenczka, the plate became “a symbol of the religious rulership program of the Ernestine Wettins in the struggle for the victory of the Gospel in the present, which was interpreted as the end times .” Luther's grave was covered in 1550 with a bronze writing plate instead of the originally planned work of art.
The sons of Johann Friedrich did not succeed in regaining their power. The eldest tried to regain his electoral status by military means, which he failed. He died in captivity. His younger brother Johann Wilhelm , for a time sole ruler in the Ernestine territory, gave the bronze tomb as a gift to the University of Jena in 1571 , where in his opinion - in contrast to Wittenberg - Luther's legacy would be preserved.
The handover to the State University of the Ernestines was staged as a foundation act. Hieronymus Osius was commissioned to write additional texts for the epitaph. Church accounts and a wood engraving from 1641 in the Weimar Elector 's Bible show that the tomb was presented in a significantly different setting in Johann Wilhelm's time and even later than it is today. At that time the grave slab was provided with a painted frame architecture on which there were additional inscriptions.
The architecture corresponded to the customs of Luther portraits that had been customary since Hans Baldung Grien and Hieronymus Hopfer : A portal with a columnar architrave and triangular gable, in whose tympanum a dove symbolizes the floating Holy Spirit, surrounded the figure of Luther. On the pedestals of the pillars there were false reliefs that depicted Christ as the triumphant over death and Samson with the club as the conqueror of the Philistines , which made the whole arrangement a triumphal arch and included Luther as the focus of this victory iconography. Immediately above the grave slab Luther's message to the Pope could be read: “Pestis eram vivus, moriens ero mors tua, papa” (“Living I was a plague to you, dying I will be your death, Pope”).
The work of art was to be given a location in the Kollegienkirche , but was initially and actually provisionally housed in the Michaeliskirche in Jena . It has not changed location since then, apart from a short-term loan in 2008. A cast was made in 1872 for the actually planned destination Wittenberg. The epitaph located in Jena has a length of 220 cm and a width of 116 cm. It is not made entirely of bronze, but the cast parts are screwed onto a wooden core. In this version of the epitaph, the Luther rose is not to the right, but to the left of the head of the reformer, as in the woodcut of the older Cranach and the unburned Luther in Eisleben, who was obviously influenced by him .
photos
Luther woodcut in the Cranach workshop (1546)
Luther portrait of Cranach the Elder J. in the museum in Schwerin, dated 1546
The unburned Luther in Eisleben
Luther's grave in the castle church in Wittenberg
literature
- Ruth Slenczka, Painted bronze behind glass? - Luther's grave slab in Jena in 1571 as a “Protestant relic” , in: Philipp Zitzlsperger (ed.), Tomb and Body - Between Representation and Real Presence in the Early Modern Age , kunsttexte.de No. 4, 2010, pp. 1-20 ( PDF ).
- Albrecht Liess: The inscriptions on the tombstones of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon in the castle church in Wittenberg. In: Archival Journal . Volume 95 (2017), pp. 391-396.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martin Luther's grave slab removed for the state exhibition [...] , press release from the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt - State Museum for Prehistory from October 14, 2008 ( digitized version )
- ↑ Ruth Slenczka, Painted bronze behind glass? - Luther's grave slab in Jena 1571 as a “Protestant relic” , in: Philipp Zitzlsperger (ed.) , Gravestone and Body - Between Representation and Real Presence in the Early Modern Age , kunsttexte.de No. 4, 2010, pp. 1-20, here P. 1 ( PDF ). In the following the work is cited as "Slenczka 2010".
- ↑ Slenczka 2010, p. 1
- ↑ a b c Harald Meller (ed.), Luther lost property. Archaeologists in the footsteps of the reformer (= companion volume to the state exhibition Fundsache Luther - Archaeologists in the footsteps of the reformer in the State Museum for Prehistory Halle (Saale) from October 31, 2008 to April 26, 2009), Stuttgart (Theiss) undated, ISBN 978-3-8062-2201-2 , pp. 306-309
- ↑ Slenczka 2010, p. 2
- ↑ Slenczka 2010, p. 3
- ↑ Complete reproduction and translation of the Latin inscriptions , Franz Otto Stichert 1845