Herostratism

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Under Herostratentum refers to the crime of, craving for cultural assets to damage or destroy; The (reputational) murder of celebrities can also be included. Herostratism generally describes all negative craving for validity, which can even be pathological under certain circumstances. The fame thus enforced is called Herostratian fame .

background

The Ionian shepherd Herostratus laid down in 356 BC It is said that the night before the birth of Alexander the Great , a fire in the temple of Artemis in Ephesus started . He later confessed under torture that he had acted out of glory . The Ephesians then gave him a damnatio memoriae by making the mention of his name a punishable offense, which ultimately failed. The name Herostrat eventually became a synonym for a person who destroys cultural assets out of a desire for recognition .

Herostratism in the 20th century

  • Mark David Chapman (* 1955), who shot the musician John Lennon on December 8, 1980 . As a motive for his act, Chapman stated in the later trial that he was a "nobody" and had to murder one of the most famous people of the present time in order to become a "someone", of whom humanity will then speak forever.
  • László Toth (* July 1, 1938; † September 11, 2012), who struck Michelangelo's Pietà with a hammer in St. Peter's Basilica on May 21, 1972 and shouted: "I am Jesus Christ, Christ has risen from the dead." The damage concerned u. a. the left arm and face of the virgin. The group of experts, led by Deoclecio Redig de Campos , ultimately succeeded in restoring the statue true to the original. Since the attack, the Pietà has been behind a pane of bulletproof glass.
  • Hans-Joachim Bohlmann (born September 20, 1937 - January 19, 2009), who became known as the Dürer assassin in the 1980s. Overall, Bohlmann damaged over 50 works of art between 1977 and 1988. The damage it caused is estimated at around 130 million euros.
  • The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn was in the 20th century even three times the subject of Herostratentum.
    • On January 13, 1911, a marine cook who had become unemployed stabbed the picture with a knife. He wanted to retaliate against the state for his situation.
    • On September 14, 1975, an unemployed teacher attacked Rembrandt's painting with a kitchen knife and cut the canvas with it. Although the painting was shown again after extensive restoration work, slight traces of this most momentous assassination remained.
    • On April 6, 1990, a mentally ill man sprayed sulfuric acid from a bottle on the picture. The fact that the acid from the pump bottle could only attack the varnish layer was due, on the one hand, to the fact that the guards, with presence of mind, splashed water on the painting; on the other hand, a layer of varnish applied as a precaution shortly after the assassination attempt in 1975 , which could be completely restored.

Web links

Wiktionary: Herostrat  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. chroniknet.de - February 26, 1959 , accessed April 20, 2011.
  2. ^ Art in the sights of assassins ( Memento from December 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). In: PM-Magazin.de. Retrieved January 18, 2020.
  3. Hijmans, Willem, Luitsen Kuiper, Annemarie Vels Heijn: Rembrandt's Night Watch. The history of a painting. Alphen aan den Rijn, AW Sijthoff, 1978
  4. All styles should burn Berliner Zeitung, September 6, 2000
  5. ^ Vandalized Rembrandt To Go Back on Display The New York Times, April 28, 1990