Grave relief of the Indian children Juri and Miranha

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Grave relief of the Indian children Juri and Miranha (Johann Baptist Stiglmaier)
Grave relief of the Indian children Juri and Miranha
Johann Baptist Stiglmaier , around 1824
Bronze casting
40 × 48 cm
Munich City Museum, Munich

The grave relief of the Indian children Juri and Miranha is part of the former grave memorial for two children who were abducted from their homeland . The relief was created by Johann Baptist Stiglmaier around 1824 . It is now in the Munich City Museum and bears the inventory number K-67/509.

description

Johann Baptist Stiglmaier depicted the two young people who died in Munich on a 48 cm wide and 40 cm high bronze plate . The scene is framed by a narrow, raised border: the personified north wind, a bearded male figure wrapped in cloth, bends from the top right , about the adolescents lying next to each other. Shoulders and arms of this figure are bare; with her right hand she seems to be gripping her beard, the left forearm is splayed from the body, the left hand is holding aside the cloak or wrap that the north wind wears over her head in the upper right corner of the picture, like this that the partially bare upper body is not covered by it. The head of the north wind is shown in profile. The air flow that is directed from his mouth onto the heads of his victims is shaped like a kind of bundle of rods, but which is smoothly capped at its front end: between the end of this air flow representation and the foreheads of the two young people there is a smooth bronze section. While the shape of the wind can only be seen up to about the hips, Juri and Miranha can be seen full-body. The two youngsters lie on their backs side by side; however, on an apparently sloping surface, so that their upper bodies are positioned at an angle of about 45 ° and the result is a diagonal composition. The heads of Juris and Miranha are on the left edge about halfway up the table, their toes almost reach the lower right corner of the picture. The subsurface appears to be a kind of cushion made of grass or hay or the like.

The child in the foreground has her right leg drawn up slightly; his right arm rests on the floor, slightly bent and with the palm turned up. The left arm is stretched up and bent so that the head tilted back rests on the hand. The face is shown in profile, the gaze directed upwards. The child is naked except for a narrow belt, the open, slightly more than shoulder-length and slightly curled hair hanging down and leaving the ear free. The second child can be seen behind this figure. While the head of the figure in front has sunk far back, the figure behind holds its head upright and shows more body tension in general: Her hands are lying, the right above the left, on the lower abdomen, the legs are stretched out parallel, the view seems to be of the north wind figure to be directed. The figure wears a tiara-like ornament on the head, apparently a low feather headdress, a kind of ribbon or chain runs high above the chest, and a kind of pleated apron can be seen around the hips. Four round holes show the places where the plaque was attached to the tombstone Juris and Miranhas.

The relief was a technical novelty: if such works of art had previously been cast using the wax method, clay was now used. Johann Michael von Soeltl described the method as follows: “You make a form of sand over the model, take down the individual pieces and then, instead of using wax, lay them out with clay in the thickness that the metal should have. These pieces are then put back together to pour the core in. If this has the proper strength, then | if you remove the shaped pieces once more, detach the clay [...] panels and burn the core individually on its outer side and each individual piece of the form on its inner side. These shaped pieces fired in this way are then reassembled, fastened, walled up and buried over the fired core in order to let the flowing metal into the empty space [...] The first work that Stiglmaier cast in this new way was a grave monument , which Queen Caroline [...] Juri and Isabella [...] had erected. ”He also described its content:“ The artist made the model for it, a simple, highly appealing allegory himself: like the two children, faithful Portraits of the cold breath of the climate, like flowers, droop. The boy, already different, lies on the floor; at his side sits the girl, huddled with bowed head and broken lips; The serious figure of Boreas protrudes over the corner , whose strong breath hits the girl's forehead fatally. ”While von Soeltl understood the representation of children as portraits, at the exhibition Decolonize Munich in 2013 it was described as idealized.

Excerpt from the catalog for the art exhibition of the academy in autumn 1826

Von Soeltl dated the casting of the grave relief in 1824, as did Vincenz Müller, according to whose information Stiglmaier is said to have cast the relief after his stay in Berlin in 1824. Ferdinand von Miller started the creation of the relief a little earlier: “In the autumn of 1823 Stiglmayr returned to Munich with the rehearsals of his efforts [from Italy] and burned with desire to apply his artistic achievements in the fatherland, also poured because the ore foundry was not yet was built in the royal. Coin is a relief modeled by him, which adorns the grave of the Brazilian children brought here by Spix and Martius on the local churchyard and is to be regarded as the first product of the Munich ore foundry [...] “The biographical outline in the NDB seems to be the same contradict, according to Stiglmaier, who was in Italy until 1822, only succeeded in September 1825 "the flawless casting of a relief". Johann Nepomuk Sepp started the casting even later : "His first work in 1826 was the grave relief for the Brazilian children [...] but soon he took his task higher."

The relief was shown, together with two other works by Stiglmaier, from October 12, 1826 at the exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In the catalog it is listed as a "Bas-relief in bronçe, to a tomb for the young Brazilians who died in Munich"; A critical appraisal from 1827 reads: “The grave relief cast in ore for the young Brazilians who died in Munich seemed to us to be true and simple. The boy and the girl are depicted differently, killed by the breath of Boreas that floats towards them; but the allegory, which is good in itself, suffers from a lack of clarity because the corrupting force of nature does not appear hostile enough, and therefore it does not become clear that it is only because of it that children succumb. "

The assumption that the relief was cast in bronze relatively shortly before the exhibition is supported by the fact that in April 1825 the art sheet of the Morgenblatt for educated classes said: “Also with Mr. Stichlmayer is the model for the Monuments completed, which our noble queen has placed on the touching memory of the two poor children of Brazilian savages, who our two academic travelers brought with them from their homeland, and whom they had to see the pain of the harshness of our climate. The boy, already dead, is lying on the floor; on his side, the girl, with her broken life, sits bent in her head with bowed head, a group that is as simple as it is effective; over the corner protrudes the serious figure of Boreas, whose strong breath is blown against the forehead of the dying child in a milder zone . ”However, it cannot be ruled out that the“ model ”meant a template for the relief that has not yet been cast. According to Peter Volk , who, however, differs from the other sources and also from the traditional inscription on the tomb, claims that it was commissioned by "Queen Therese" and that the number and date of the art sheet are incorrect, the tomb relief was for Miranha and Juri the "first piece, a bass relief", the casting of which in the new ore foundry Klenze announced to the impatiently inquiring king on September 27, 1825 in a letter as being imminent in the current week, and Stiglmaier said in a letter about its purely unusual casting of December 15 of the same year to Rauch . The statement that the grave relief for the children from Brazil was still cast in the coin is incorrect. However, there are almost three months between these two letters and the relief is apparently not specified in more detail in Klenze's announcement. The “bass relief” could also have been another work of art.

history

Lithograph with the portraits of Miranhas and Juris
Miranha's death register entry, a "general chronic inflammation of the bowels of the abdomen" is given as the cause of death.
Portrait of Miranha, possibly by Peter Lutz

The tomb donated by Queen Caroline was once located in Munich's southern cemetery at the place where Ludwig August von Müller and his relatives were later buried. It was apparently only built a few years after the death of the two children. Although Rudolph and Hermann Marggraff state that Queen Karoline had the monument erected as early as 1823, and according to Friedrich Faber's Conversations Lexicon for Fine Arts , it was erected in 1824, but newspaper reports from the fall of 1829 indicate that the monument was only in this year was set up. The Munich Conversations Journal reported on October 20, 1829: “Her Majesty Queen Caroline had a beautiful tomb erected in the churchyard for the two Brazilian children who died there, which is in the middle aisle near the basin. Made of ore, one sees the boy and the girl lying dead on the floor, in simple costume | their tribe; opposite them rushes Boreas, whose raw breath kills their tender southern life. - The inscription reads as follows:

Isabella of
the tribe of the Miranhas, and
Johannes
of that of the Juris *
died in Munich MDCCCXXII Away from
home they found care
and love in the distant part of the world; however,
the North's relentless harsh winters.
Erected by Caroline,
Queen of Bavaria.
 *) A rare tribe! "

Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius and Johann Baptist von Spix had brought the two children, whose real names have not been passed down, with them from an almost four-year expedition to Brazil . Originally they had taken more children with them from their home in South America, but only the two depicted on the grave relief had reached Munich alive. They were of different origins and, since they both belonged to the indigenous population of Brazil but to different language groups, could not speak to one another. In 1993 Berta and Walter Huber, unmoved by this fate, wrote about the children: "Although she surrounded Queen Caroline with great concern, they remained cold and indifferent to those around them."

The children were baptized with the names Johannes and Isabella, but were then named after their tribes Juri and Miranha .

Miranha had probably come into the possession of the Europeans from the hands of a slave trader named Joâo Manoel in a (today no longer localizable) place called "Porto dos Miranhas" on the Rio Japurá : Martius allegedly received it, together with other children, as a bonus, when he wanted to buy Manoel's headdress, weapons, etc. However, Martius had apparently also given the order to catch children. Miranha was the oldest of the five children in this group. Martius left two of these children in South America, and two more died on the trip to Europe. In addition to the tradition that Miranha got into Martius' hands through Joâo Manoel, there is a second statement about Miranha's origin. Martius noted under a drawing of the girl that he had it from Man. Joaq. do Pacu, the governor of Rio Negro. Klaus Schönitzer , who compiled the sources on the origins of the children, cannot explain how Martius came to this claim. In addition, the date of death given in this caption is incorrect.

According to Martius, Juri came into the possession of the researchers in a place called Manacapurú. There, Martius was supposedly allowed to choose one from a number of male Indians and decided on Juri.

The voyage towards Europe began on June 14, 1820 and ended on August 23 of the same year in Lisbon . From there, the group traveled overland to Munich and arrived in Munich on December 8, 1820, where Spix and Martius initially took up accommodation with the children in the Zum golden Hahn inn. After that, eleven rooms were made available to them in the so-called Maxburg . The widow Martini, who Spix had run the house before the trip to Brazil, ran the house, supported by two girls and a servant. The two children lived in Munich as objects for exhibition and research.

Johann Andreas Schmeller , who in 1815 had the idea of ​​going to Brazil too, met the children on December 27, 1820. Juri, whom Schmeller described as a boy “with quite engaging features”, was ill at this point and hardly reacted to his surroundings, Miranha, on the other hand, “smiled very warmly” when Schmeller spoke to her and gave an answer, which Schmeller did couldn't understand. He suspected she was just trying to repeat his words. Anne Dreesbach erroneously dates Schmeller's first meeting with the children on October 27th. It is evidently a misinterpretation of Schmeller's date "Am 27. Xber". Another meeting of Schmeller's children took place on May 1, 1821. In his diary, he described the ritual of saying goodnight with evening blessings that Spix performed with the children, and reported that Spix had taken them to Maria Eich's church that day . After Spix's death he commented: "Spix buried, but not where he should have been, between the young Juri and the Butucudinn , whom he brought from their Brazilian forests to Munich's churchyard."

On the one hand, the royal family who sponsored the Brazil expedition seem very interested in the children. Schad quotes from a letter from Queen Caroline to her mother, according to which Juri was a king's son who was captured and then sold for the price of two axes. According to this letter, when he arrived in Munich he was ten years old, tall, strong and slim and "of a race that does not eat human flesh." According to Karoline's description, the girl was eight years old on arrival, "enormous and quite square" and "from the espèce of the ogre".

On the other hand, Martius' mother apparently had the impression that the financial support that Spix and Martius received after their return from Brazil was not enough to support the children. In February 1821 she wrote to her son: “Just make sure that you get the Indians off your neck [...] If you are not compensated for the food given to these two grimaces in some other way; so I would calculate such neatly and that would also reveal that your diet is not on Königl. Invoice received [...] "

The children did not survive long in Munich. Juri fell ill in December 1820 and died after about six months on June 11, 1821. The cause of death was probably chronic pneumonia, which, according to a newspaper report, "was primarily caused by the stimuli of the local climate that were strange to his organism."

The corpse was autopsied and the "lung completely festered" was found. A plaster cast was made of Juri's face. About Miranha's condition in June 1821, the newspaper that noted Juri's death also reported: "The girl, Isabella, is doing very well, and is making progress in the language and European education."

Miranha died almost a year after Juri on May 20, 1822. The words on the tomb attribute the early death of the children to the climatic conditions. The grave, which was decorated with a wreath for decades after the death of the children on All Saints' Day , was closed towards the end of the 19th century; the relief as one of Stiglmaier's early works has been preserved. It has been in the Munich City Museum since 1892. Apparently, the location of the former grave of the two children was also known later. In 1983 Simon Aiblinger wrote in Die Zeit : “In honor of the municipal cemetery administration [...] it must be said that they do not allow the graves of such remarkable <sic!> Dead to go to ruin, which no one has looked after for a long time would. For example the grave of the two Brazilian children, who were abducted by the naturalists Martius and Spix in a brutality that is difficult to imagine today, together with basket weaving and Indian feather headdress, as spoils of a South America expedition to Munich [...] "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ grave relief of the Indian children Yuri and Miranha on www.muenchner-stadtmuseum.de
  2. ^ Johann Michael von Soeltl: The fine arts in Munich. Munich 1842, p. 484 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  3. ↑ Johann Michael von Soltl: Visual art in Munich. Munich 1842, p. 485. ( limited preview in Google book search)
  4. ↑ See Decolonize Munich. P. 5 (online at www.muenchner-stadtmuseum.de )
  5. ↑ Vincenz Müller: Universal manual from Munich. 1845. München o. J. (1845), p. 190. ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  6. ^ Ferdinand von Miller: From the history of the Munich ore foundry. Lecture given at the Kunstgewerbeverein. In: Journal of the art-trade association. Volume 24, No. 1 and 2, Munich 1875, pp. 1–4, here p. 3. ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  7. ↑ Peter Volk: Stiglmaier, Johann Baptist. In: New German Biography. Volume 25, 2013, pp. 342–343 (online at www.deutsche-biographie.de ).
  8. ^ Johann Nepomuk Sepp: Ludwig Augustus, King of Bavaria and the age of the rebirth of the arts. Schaffhausen 1869, p. 243. ( limited preview in Google book search).
  9. ^ Catalog of the art exhibition of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts on October 12th, 1826. EA Fleischmann, Munich undated (1826), p. 40.
  10. ^ Art sheet. 5, January 15, 1827, p. 18. (digitized version) . Ludwig Schorn had divided the quite extensive discussion of the art exhibition into several parts, cf. about art sheet. 7, 102, December 21, 1826 (digitized version) . Stiglmaier's work was discussed in the fifth part.
  11. ^ Art sheet. No. 34, Thursday, April 28, 1825, p. 134. (digitized version)
  12. ↑ Peter Volk: Johann Baptist Stiglmaier, Ferdinand von Miller and the royal ore foundry in Munich. In: Angelika Mundorff, Eva von Seckendorff (Ed.): The Millers. Departure of a family. Munich 2006, ISBN 3-86520-187-3 , pp. 20–56, here p. 28.
  13. ^ A b Peter Volk: Johann Baptist Stiglmaier, Ferdinand von Miller and the royal ore foundry in Munich. In: Angelika Mundorff, Eva von Seckendorff (Ed.): The Millers. Departure of a family. Munich 2006, ISBN 3-86520-187-3 , pp. 20–56, here p. 31.
  14. ↑ Zara Pfeiffer: The exploration of the other. In: Hinterland. 2016, p. 36–40, here p. 39 (online at www.hinterland-magazin.de )
  15. ^ Rudolph and Hermann Marggraff: Munich with its art treasures and curiosities. Munich 1846, ISBN 1-390-89422-3 , p. 267. ( limited preview in Google book search)
  16. ↑ Friedrich Faber: Conversations Lexicon for fine arts. 5th volume, Leipzig, 1850, p. 71. ( limited preview in the Google book search). The description of the relief in this lexicon corresponds almost literally to that of Soeltls.
  17. ↑ Munich Conversations Sheet. , October 20, 1829, p. 744 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  18. ↑ Moritz Gottlieb Saphir called the children brother and sister. Cf. Moritz Gottlieb Saphir: The festival of the graves on All Saints Day. In: The bazaar for Munich and Bavaria. 277 of November 3, 1830, pp. 541-543, here p. 543 ( limited preview in the Google book search). In this version of his text, he apparently quotes the text of the gravestone in the same wording as the Munich Conversations-Blatt, in the one from 1832 the accusative "rough winter" becomes a nominative. See Latest Writings. P. 86 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  19. ↑ Berta and Walter Huber: Dr. Johann Baptist Ritter von Spix - A "famous Munich personality" -. In: Spixiana. 16, 2, 1993, ISSN  0341-8391 , pp. 97-104, here p. 97 (digitized version )
  20. ↑ Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, Johann Baptist von Spix: Travel in Brazil on the orders of Sr. Majesty Maximilian Joseph I. King of Bavaria: made in the years 1817 to 1820 by former Dr. Joh. Bapt. von Spix, knight of the k. bair. Civil. Order of Merit [...] and Dr. Carl Friedr. Phil. Von Martius, knight of the k. baier. Civil Order of Merit […] Second part . Lentner, Munich 1828, OCLC 257437653 , p. XII ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  21. ^ A b c Klaus Schönitzer: From the New to the Old World. In: Journal five continents. Volume 1, 2014/15, pp. 78-105, here pp. 86 f. (Digitized version)
  22. ↑ a b Reinhard Bauer, Ursula Münchhoff (ed.): "Lauter mown meadows for the reaction". The first half of the 19th century in the diaries of Johann Andreas Schmeller. Munich 1990, ISBN 3-492-10884-9 , p. 139 f. Schmeller recapitulates his acquaintance with Spix in the diary entry of May 13, 1826 and commented on the burial on May 15, 1826.
  23. ^ Klaus Schönitzer: From the New to the Old World. In: Journal five continents. Volume 1, 2014/15, pp. 78-105, here p. 92. (digitized version )
  24. ↑ Reinhard Bauer, Ursula Münchhoff (ed.): "Lauter mowed meadows for the reaction". The first half of the 19th century in the diaries of Johann Andreas Schmeller. Munich 1990, ISBN 3-492-10884-9 , p. 91.
  25. ↑ a b c Reinhard Bauer, Ursula Münchhoff (ed.): "Lauter mown meadows for the reaction". The first half of the 19th century in the diaries of Johann Andreas Schmeller. Munich 1990, ISBN 3-492-10884-9 , p. 112.
  26. ^ Anne Dreesbach: Tamed savages. ISBN 3-593-37113-8 , p. 28 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  27. ↑ Reinhard Bauer, Ursula Münchhoff (ed.): "Lauter mowed meadows for the reaction". The first half of the 19th century in the diaries of Johann Andreas Schmeller. Munich 1990, ISBN 3-492-10884-9 , p. 112 f.
  28. ↑ Martha Schad: Bavaria's queens. ISBN 3-492-25298-2 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  29. ↑ Quoted from: Maria Leônia Chaves de Resende, Klaus Schönitzer: Do Novo ao Velho Mundo: indígenas da Amazônia na Alemanha dos natu-ralistas Spix e Martius. In: anais de história de além-mar. XIX, 2018, pp. 189–220, here p. 208, note 41
  30. ↑ Death book of the parish of Our Lady . In: Archives of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising . quoted from Pfister 2008: Münchner Kindl. Unusual résumés from old Munich as reflected in the parish registers p. 20. Matriculation Munich 59, 1821, p. 184-185 .
  31. ↑ Anonymous: Miscellings . In: EOS . No. 48 , June 14, 1821, p. 194 .
  32. ↑ a b c Allgemeine Zeitung Munich. P. 691 ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  33. ^ Klaus Schönitzer: From the New to the Old World. In: Journal five continents. Volume 1, 2014/15, pp. 78-105, here p. 93 (digitized version )
  34. ↑ 24-01-01 / 02 (Müller & Juri / Johannes & Miranha / Isabella). In: www.suedfriedhof-muenchen.de , accessed on September 12, 2019.
  35. ↑ Juri and Miranha - exposed to eager glances, measured and forgotten. In: Ecumenical Office Munich, information sheet 81 (online at www.oeku-buero.de ). The grave inscription is probably cited incorrectly there, cf. z. B. also the rendering in: Deutsche Blätter für Litteratur und Leben. P. 241. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  36. ↑ Süddeutsche Presse and Münchener Nachrichten. November 3, 1877, p. 5. ( limited preview in Google book search)
  37. ↑ State capital of Munich: Themed History Path. Volume 6, Munich n.d., p. 172 f. (Digitized version)
  38. ↑ Berta and Walter Huber: Dr. Johann Baptist Ritter von Spix - A "famous Munich personality" -. In: Spixiana. Volume 16, No. 2, 1993, ISSN  0341-8391 , pp. 97-104, here p. 98 (digitized version )
  39. ↑ Simon Aiblinger: Where Bavaria rests in peace. A visit to Munich's old southern cemetery. In: The time. 47, 1983. (online at www.zeit.de )