Germania on the watch on the Rhine

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Germania on Watch on the Rhine (Lorenz Clasen)
Germania on the watch on the Rhine
Lorenz Clasen , 1860
Oil on canvas
200 × 159 cm
Kaiser Wilhelm Museum , Krefeld

Germania auf der Wacht am Rhein is the title of a political program and history picture by the painter Lorenz Clasen from 1860. It shows the personification of Germania as the national allegory of Germany in the subject of German national and Rhine romanticism .

Description and meaning

Germania, the symbol of the German nation , stands on a high rock on the right bank of the Rhine and looks out across the Rhine to the west. There is France , which Napoleon III. had transferred to the Second Empire . In 1859 Napoleon III. the Empire of Austria in Sardinia, the war is preparing a crushing defeat. Through a bold foreign and war policy, the Second Empire was able to expand its national territory in the southwest in the course of the Risorgimento in 1860 to include the county of Nice and parts of Savoy . In Germany, especially in the Rhineland , this evoked memories of the annexation of the Left Bank of the Rhine during the French era and of the Rhine crisis . The Rhine crisis was triggered in 1840 by statements by the French Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers . Thiers had made the demand that France should again expand to the left bank of the Rhine. The patriotic poet Max Schneckenburger wrote the poem Die Wacht am Rhein against these expansionist efforts . In 1854 the lyrics of the song were set to music by the Krefeld choir director Carl Wilhelm , which soon made the song very popular. The title of the picture also ties in with this: Germania on watch on the Rhine .

Germania's blond hair is crowned by a corona made of oak leaves , a symbol for Germany. Over a golden dress she wears a purple cloak as an overhang, which is framed by a border set with precious stones. In her left hand she holds an iron shield with a gold mount. The double-headed eagle of the German Confederation and an inscription in golden Fraktur letters are emblazoned on this shield : The German sword protects the German Rhine . To confirm this statement, Germania takes a lunge and places the sword she is holding in her right hand on the Rhine rocks in front of her. She stands protectively in front of imperial regalia lying on the rock behind her: imperial crown , imperial orb and imperial scepter . Not only Germania's clothing, which suggests the Roman-German coronation regalia, also the imperial insignia indicate that the painter was a supporter of the Greater German imperial idea , which he historically imagined in his painting as the Holy Roman Empire . The realm , conceived in historical-romantic recollection , for whose protection Germania appears programmatically in the picture, is symbolized by a medieval city ​​on the banks of the Rhine. To express the idea of ​​defense, the city is fortified with strong walls and towers . However, part of the city wall has collapsed, which indicates a poor state of Germany's defensive capabilities. The majestically meandering river course, the loops of which are lost in the depths of an evening landscape, takes up a well-known motif of landscape painting of the Rhine Romanticism and can be understood as a symbol of history and the philosophical formula panta rhei . The Rhine appears as the “historical landscape” and “fateful river” of Germany, as the “ German Rhine ”, which is to be protected from the attack of the “ hereditary enemy ” through the determination and unity of the nation .

Origin and reception

Lorenz Clasen , presented as the “painter of 'Germania on the watch on the Rhine'”, illustration by Hermann Scherenberg , 1871

Clasen, a scion of the Düsseldorf School of Painting , cousin of the revolutionary Lorenz Cantador and under his command as an officer of the Düsseldorf vigilante in the German Revolution of 1848/1849 , was a politically interested painter, writer and publicist who, during his time in Düsseldorf, wrote the Düsseldorf monthly , an early German satirical magazine. From the beginning of the 1850s Clasen lived in Leipzig , where he also worked as a journalist. The painting he created there in 1860 was given in 1864 by the Leipzig wholesale merchant and translator Eduard Prell-Erckens (1814–1898) to his “father city Crefeld”, who exhibited it in their town hall and later in their Kaiser Wilhelm Museum . Since the Germania auf der Wacht am Rhein bears a striking resemblance to the Awakening Germania , which the painter Christian Köhler created in 1848/1849, it is assumed that it served as a model for Clasen. In relation to Köhler's Germania, Clasen's national allegory takes a more aggressive stance, which makes the type of Valkyrie, already laid out by Köhler, more prominent.

Clasen's picture became accessible to a wide audience through reproductions and adaptations. As early as the 1860s, Clasens Germania was circulating on the covers of magazines and anthologies of songs as a symbol of the defensive nation. On New Year 1868, the French ambassador was given to the Holy See in Rome, Eugène de Sartiges (1809-1892), by supporters of Giuseppe Garibaldi , as a result of French support of the Papal States on 3 November 1867 at Mentana had suffered a military defeat, a photograph of the painting with the prophetic saying "Exoriate aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor", ascribed to the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg in the Peace of Saint Germain ! (German: avenger, you will rise from my bones!), whereupon the ambassador arranged for the papal police had all pictures of the painting on display in Rome's bookstores and art shops confiscated. The painting served for national mobilization at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 , when it was distributed to soldiers in small two-sheet notebooks together with the song Die Wacht am Rhein . In the middle of the 1860s, Clasen created another Germania, the Germania auf dem Meere , as a "Seitenbild" , an oil painting after which the magazine Die Gartenlaube published an engraving as an illustration.

Clasens Germania on the watch on the Rhine was the model for a subsequent depiction of Germania of the same name, which Hermann Wislicenus , professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , painted in 1872. Since this work was destroyed in the fire of the Düsseldorf Palace , Wislicenus created a new version in 1873. This Germania shows the German national allegory after the victorious outcome of the Franco-Prussian War with plate armor and pickled hood in extremely warlike equipment and in an almost masculine-looking figure, who seems to feel the victory over France with relaxation and saturation . Clasens Germania is also attributed a style-forming influence, for example on the design of the Niederwald monument (1874–1883).

literature

  • Bettina Baumgärtel : Germania on the watch on the Rhine, 1860 . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918 . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , Volume 2, p. 289.
  • Lorenz Clasen's “The Watch on the Rhine” . In: The Gazebo . Issue 15, 1872, pp. 252 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bettina Brandt: Germania in Armor: The Female Representation of an Endangered German Nation . In: Sarah Colvin, Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly (Eds.): Women and Death . Volume 2: Warlike Women in the German Literary and Cultural Imagination Since 1500 . Camden House, Rochester / New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-57113-400-4 , p. 99 ( Google Books ).
  2. ↑ Prell-Erckens, Eduard , entry in the portal leipziger-biographie.de , accessed on May 25, 2017
  3. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel, p. 289 (provenance)
  4. ↑ Petra Diederichs: Germania is the most popular museum lady . Article from January 5, 2017 in the portal rp-online.de , accessed on May 25, 2017
  5. ^ Isabel Skokan: Germania and Italia. National myths and heroes in 19th century paintings . Dissertation University of Freiburg 2007, Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86732-036-8 , p. 51 ( Google Books ).
  6. ^ Friedrich Noack : The Germanness in Rome since the end of the Middle Ages . 2 volumes. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1927. Volume 1, p. 538; bodleian.ox.ac.uk (PDF)
  7. ↑ Bettina Brandt: Germania and her sons. Representations of Nation, Gender and Politics in the Modern Age . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-36710-0 , p. 323 ( Google Books ).
  8. ↑ Isabel Skokan, p. 56
  9. ^ Lothar Gall : Germania as a symbol of national identity in the 19th and 20th centuries . In: Dieter Hein, Andreas Schulz, Eckhardt Treichel (eds.): Citizenship, liberal movement and nation. Selected essays . R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-56247-9 , p. 322 ( Google Books ).
  10. ^ Joseph Jurt: Symbolic Representations of National Identity in France and Germany after 1789 . In: Ruth Florack (Ed.): Nation as a stereotype. Foreign perception and identity in German and French literature. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-484-35076-8 , p. 135 ( Google Books ).