Longing for Italy

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The Germans' longing for Italy has become a topos , indeed the epitome of education , at least since Goethe's Italian Journey . But it can be traced back to much older times and was of great importance until the 20th century.

middle Ages

The Holy Roman Empire , which emerged from the empire of Charlemagne , saw itself as the restoration and continuation of the Imperium Romanum (hence Roman ) under Christian auspices (hence holy ). The Renovatio imperii was in particular Otto III's program . and Friedrich Barbarossas and had its fixed point in Italy, first in Rome, where the dignity of the emperor was bestowed by the Pope , then in Barbarossa's time in the northern Italian cities because their tax revenue was far higher than that of the rest of the empire, later as a reminder of the old splendor of the Staufer Empire under Friedrich II. , which in the Kyffhauser legend of course merged with Friedrich Barbarossa.

18th and 19th centuries

Memory of Sorrento by Carl Gustav Carus , 1828
On the beach in Naples by Oswald Achenbach , second half of the 19th century

During the Renaissance , Italy became the center of cultural renewal and therefore remained the preferred place of study for visual artists until the 19th century.

The end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, an era that is also known as classicism in art history , is characterized by a longing for Italy and a longing for classical antiquity. This is noticeable in the fact that many poets, painters, sculptors and architects went to Italy and settled in Rome as German-Romans in order to get their own impression of the original landscape. In addition to its geographical proximity, Italy was also preferred because Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time and was therefore much more difficult to travel to. In order to see traces of Greek culture, the former Greek colonies in southern Italy and Sicily were therefore visited .

The writers and visual artists who traveled to Italy included Jacob Philipp Hackert , Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein , Johann Wolfgang Goethe , Christoph Heinrich Kniep , Johann Gottfried Seume , Carl Gustav Carus , Johann Wilhelm Schirmer , Oswald Achenbach , Arnold Böcklin , Albert Flamm and many other. A special group in the visual arts were the Nazarenes , who strove for a Christian renewal of art based on the example of old Italian masters. They all recorded their impressions there, in words and pictures. The Italian journey Goethe is probably the most famous of all these travel accounts. Mention should also be made of Johann Hermann Riedesel , who wrote a travel guide that was very much appreciated at the time. The trips to Italy by some German princes such as Anna Amalie von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach and Wilhelmine von Bayreuth also belong in this context . The collections of antiquities at royal courts as well as the creation of landscape gardens can also be seen as expressions of that longing for Italy. It had happened that important personalities were represented by painters in Italy. So painted z. B. Tischbein Goethe and Duchess Anna Amalia.

At that time, the ancient sites were also the subject of the archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann's studies . Even architects and building researchers as Leo von Klenze , Friedrich von Gärtner and Karl Friedrich Schinkel studied the architecture of Magna Graecia . After Carl von Prussia's trip to Italy (1822), Schinkel received the order to convert Glienicke Palace near Potsdam according to the scheme of an Italian villa in order to realize the prince's “dream of Italy”.

Musicians of the 19th century were also strongly influenced by stays in Italy. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy wrote his Italian Symphony after a trip to Italy , Richard Wagner was inspired in Italy for his Ring des Nibelungen , while his opera Rienzi only refers to Italy in terms of material.

German-speaking artists who were studying in Rome founded the German Artists' Association there in 1845 on the basis of the Ponte Molle Society established in 1813/1814 .

20th century

In the 20th century, the German longing for Italy was expressed in numerous romantic hits . In the late 1940s, the song Capri-Fischer in the recording by Rudi Schuricke became a worldwide success.

Footnotes

  1. The Italian musicians of the Baroque period, such as Heinrich Schütz and Georg Friedrich Händel , primarily served the study of Italian music and not so much the study of landscape and national character.

See also

literature

  • Wilhelm Waetzoldt : The classic country. Changes in the longing for Italy . Seemann, Leipzig 1927.
  • Christina Ujma: Fanny Lewald's urban arcadia, studies on the city, art and politics in her Italian travel reports from Vormärz, Nachmärz and Wilhelminian Period , Aisthesis Verlag Bielefeld 2007.
  • Harald Siebenmorgen (Ed.): "If the red sun at Capri ..". The Germans' longing for Italy in the 20th century . INFO-VG, Karlsruhe 1997, ISBN 3-88190-216-3 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name in the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe, May 31 - September 14, 1997).
  • In the land of longing. With pencil and camera through Italy 1820 to 1880 . Catalog of the Kunsthalle Bremen. Bremen 1998, ISBN 3-89165-113-9 .
  • Hildegard Wiegel (Ed.): Italiensehnsucht. Art-historical aspects of a topos . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-422-06447-8 .
  • Do you know the country Pictures of Italy from Goethe's time . Catalog Munich, Neue Pinakothek. Pinakothek-Dumont, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-8321-7519-9 .
  • Dieter Richter : The south. Story of a direction . Wagenbach, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-8031-3631-2 .
  • Longing for the south. Oldenburg painters see Italy . Catalog of the State Museum in Oldenburg Castle. Oldenburg 2000, ISBN 3-89598-676-3 .
  • Michael Rüppel: "Between national pride and longing for Italy - Wilhelm Christian Müller as a travel writer", in: Wilhelm Christian Müller. Contributions to the music and cultural history of Bremen around 1800 , ed. v. Christian Kämpf, Bremen 2016, pp. 153–168, ISBN 978-3-944552-88-0 .

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