Karner (Hartberg)
The Hartberger Karner is an important late Romanesque building. The Karner or the charnel house is located on the south side of the parish church in Hartberg in Styria .
architecture
The Hartberger Karner comes from the second half of the 12th century. It is a two-storey double circular building with conical roofs and tile roofing. The ashlar masonry consists of local shell limestone . The chapel room with a 3/4 apse with frescoes is located on the upper floor . The diameter of the main room is 6.6 meters, that of the apse 4 meters. The main room, a St. Michael's Chapel, has a height of 7 m, the conical roof is 8 m high. The ossuary is located in the basement. According to an inscription above the portal, the Karner was built in 1167.
Between 1889 and 1894 the Karner was extensively renovated; the outside staircase was added and the frescoes inside (from around 1200) exposed and supplemented. The original color character was largely destroyed, and elements that did not exist in the original were added (e.g. Hellmouth). The "new creations" of the restorer Theophil Melicher include: The vault, for the most part the king on horseback, the king on the dragon, the king on the whale, the dove with the branch in its beak, Christ and the apostle John the devil driving a naked man and Judas into the jaws of hell.
Whether the frescoes are an allegorical representation of the seven deadly sins or a vision of the four kingdoms of Daniel is unclear.
State of teaching on the dispute over the interpretation of the frescoes
In 1914, Johannes Simmler quotes the following in his comprehensive work on the history of the Hartberg district: “In view of the great contribution painting has made in Romanesque church building, it is more than likely that traces of wall paintings can be found under the limestone layer. On the north outer side the remains of a fresco painting are noticeable which, according to Johann Weigl, depicted the birth of Christ (Tagespost 1880, No. 267) ”. This quote comes from the year 1880 and thus from a time before Theophil Melicher began restoring the frescoes. The area of the stairs (the king with the whale, the dove with the olive branch, the devil with the hell's throat) represents a new composition by Melicher, as, according to a statement by Melicher, “there was nothing to be seen of the paintings on the staircase”. Melicher was motivated to do this in the sense of the text of the Apocalypse of John, because there is talk of an animal with ten horns and seven kings. Simmler further presents the view of the restorers who thought of the 17th chapter of the Revelation of John, where reference is made to an animal with ten horns and seven heads, which mean the seven hills of the great whore Babylon and her seven kings and those who like ten horns, ten kings will follow.
Johann Graus explains about the Hartberg frescoes that the medieval painter only had five large (2.35 m wide and 4.5 m high) partial areas available. The areas were divided by a horizontal decorative band so that the fields were divided into an upper and a lower area. According to Graus, this gives the impression that the painter wanted to use the resulting partial areas in order to make a division between the higher and the lower, the earlier and the later, the old and the new Testament. Graus was also in contact with the restorer Melicher, who had informed him that he had carried out the additions or new compositions in accordance with the Revelation of John. Graus rejects this interpretation because it does not correspond to the context of the original from the 13th century. The upper theme of the main room (or rotunda) does not present any difficulties of interpretation. Christ seated on a throne surrounded by his apostles holding books and scrolls in their hands, representing the New Testament. Next to Christ there is more likely to be a Paul than the portrayed John. Difficulty is the fact that none of the scriptures in the Bible fits perfectly. Graus rejects an interpretation as the commission assumed after the revelation, since in the Middle Ages the revelation of John was extremely rarely implemented, rather the sanctuary of the New Testament was brought into connection with the old covenant. Therefore, the lower row of the frescoes by Karner is only to be interpreted in such a way that it comes from the Old Testament. Despite individual points that do not fit, Graus finds that there is a correspondence with Daniel's prophecy. The addition of the kings reinforces the sense, three animals correspond entirely to the text (leopard, lion and the animal with the ten horns). After Graus, the bear was replaced by the horse and a bull was added to it. The order of the mounts according to gray is therefore horse - leopard (pardel) - lion - boar - bull.
In his dissertation, Edgar Marsch examined in detail the prophecy of Daniel's vision in the visual arts. According to Daniel's prophecy, the lion symbolizes the Babylonian empire of King Nabuchodonosor, the leopard (leopard, mixed with a camel in the illustration) stands for the Greek empire, for Alexander the great; the bull stands for Ptolemy , the Egyptian Empire and ultimately the boar with the horns for the Roman Empire. After march the boar with the ten horns is in last place and explains that above the boar there is the enthroned Christ, which makes it clear that after the fourth kingdom, rulership will be taken over by Christ. The order of the world empires is given in the chronicle of Paulus Orosius, this is: Babylon - Macedonia - Egypt - Rome. The associated rulers are: Ninus (not Babuchodonosor) - Alexander, the Great - Ptolemaios (on an Apis bull, sacred to the Egyptians) - Emperor Augustus. As an example, Marsch u. a. the wall paintings of the lower church of Schwarzrheindorf, which also contain a royal cycle, but without mounts.
In her essay published in 1977, Elfriede Grabner devotes herself to the iconographic classification and interpretation of the frescoes. She rejects a previously only oral interpretation of this as a representation of the seven deadly sins. On the one hand, it is unusual for the main sins to be portrayed as masculine, because the main sins were almost always implemented in feminine terms, and the Latin names are feminine; on the other hand, as already shown, three figures are ingredients by the painter Melicher and therefore did not originally exist . She suspects the difficulty of the interpretation at the time of the restoration in the fact that no scripture fits properly. Since the revelation of John did not seem to apply to the Hartberger case, the vision of the four world empires of the book of Daniel VII, 1-27, was soon used. However, the representations according to Grabner do not match either the animal symbolism or the order of Daniel's vision according to the Jerome commentary. The ceiling paintings at Sankt Emmeran in Regensburg from the first half of the 12th century, which were painted over in the Baroque period, also contained a vision of Daniel. Grabner also refers to the paintings in the lower church in Schwarzrheindorf, which come from the second half of the 12th century and also depict four kings, which are interpreted as four world empires according to the Book of Daniel, with animal attributes being omitted. According to Grabner, a different, unknown model than the painter's book by Athos or the Hieronymus Commentary must have been used for the creation of the Hartberg frescoes. She shares the view of Marsch, who sees the “source of origin” in the Chronicle of Paulus Orosius. The first animal is thus the lion for the Babylonian Empire, followed by the leopard (Pardel), representing Alexander, the great for the Greco-Macedonian monarchy, the horse must be left out, the third animal is the bull, which stands for the Egyptian monarchy and the fourth beast is the boar with the ten horns. Ultimately, Grabner explains that the Hartberger frescoes are based on the chronicle of Paulus Orosius with the exposition of the four world empires, all other attempts at interpretation, such as those of the seven deadly sins, come to nothing.
Sepp Walter, who is of the opinion that the representation of the frescoes is about the seven deadly sins, also represented this orally, essentially addresses the following aspects in his reply to Elfriede Grabner's essay and provides the following attempts at justification. His counter-arguments against Daniel's vision are: The “bull” is not a bull, but an ox, Ninus does not have an Assyrian beard, Alexander and Augustus have a flowing beard. Hartberg was never the residence of an emperor or king, so Daniel could not have dreamed his dream for any ruler. In Styria, no medieval library had a chronicle of Paulus Orosius, but there were books on the seven main sins. The horns are a diadem made of peacock feathers. Walter accepts Pastor Ulrich, who worked in Hartberg from 1163 to 1201, as the builder of the Karner, and he dates the creation of the frescoes to this time. Walter comes to the conclusion that the Hartberg frescoes are the oldest depiction of the seven main sins in the iconography of the Christian Middle Ages, although he does not speak of the greatest probability, but rather probability bordering on certainty. The seven main (death) sins are pride, avarice, unchastity, envy, intemperance, anger and indolence. This ranking, a weighting of sins, was made binding by Thomas Aquinas. According to Walter, the lion stands for arrogance, the pig for unchastity, the ox for intemperance, the camel for anger, the donkey for indolence, the dragon for envy. What remains is the avarice, the whale is not suitable for this, the dragon for envy is also not suitable, since neither in the Bible nor in theological writings there is a quote about an association.
Westerhoff accepted Walter's view without justification; according to his statements, the frescoes are the oldest surviving depiction of the seven main sins.
Mayerhofer explains to the king who rides the bull that in the course of the restoration it was established that neither the bull's extremities nor the king's feet are Romanesque, and the remaining forms of the bull do not match the medieval drawing either. With regard to the king who rides on the horse, according to Mayerhofer, the same applies; according to investigations in 1993, only the muzzle, ears and a mane of a horse's head, which according to Melicher was recognizable, were left, so it can be assumed that Melicher either accepted the portrayal of a king, or simply supplemented it. The same goes for the king on the dragon. There were no more figures on the Karner stair tower (at least in the lower zone).
According to Elga Lanc, only frescoes No. 1 - No. 4 belong to the original collection, frescoes No. 5 - No. 7a are paraphrases of the restoration. Accordingly, the sequence is based on the interpretation of Daniel VII by Paul Orosisus. Lanc thus agrees with Marsch's view. In addition to the Grabner-Walter dispute, she explains that the number seven is only due to the restorer's additions, and that there are no corresponding text or images. Only the pig (or boar) fits as a symbol for unchastity.
Three of the four animals shown correspond to Daniel's vision, these are the lion, the winged leopard and the animal with the ten horns. Walter, who in his essays criticizes the fact that the order of the animals does not exactly match Daniel's vision, can be countered with the fact that, even in his attempt at interpretation, neither the assigned animals correspond to the main sins nor do the order of the main sins themselves match. If one also follows the statements of the painter himself, which he made towards Graus, it can be assumed that not all seven equestrian paintings were present from the beginning, but were free additions. The number seven propagated by Walter therefore only results from this. Another mistake Walter made in his interpretation lies in the fact that he does not date the frescoes; he simply assumes that they were carried out at the same time as the construction of the Karner, which he assumes to be 1167. Another argument by Walter that no king reigned in Hartberg and therefore Daniel could not dream the dream for him leads nowhere in view of the fact that Walter did not date the frescoes. The frescoes are dated to the middle of the 13th century, from 1254 to 1259 Styria was administered by Bela IV, King of Hungary. Bela IV would therefore be a king Daniel could dream for. The interpretation of the frescoes as animals of the vision of Daniel can therefore be followed, since it is based on more conclusive arguments than the interpretation as seven major sins. But if you consider the purpose of a Karner, which is also understood as a place of residence and meeting of the poor souls, and if you make a reference to the frescoes and to belief in the resurrection, the waiting for the coming of the Lord, the frescoes can only be in that the sense set out above.
literature
- Château Gaillard: Actes du colloque international de Graz (Autriche), 22-29 août 1998. Publications du CRAHM, 2000, ISBN 9782902685097 , p. 8 ( online ).
- Alexandra Gerrer, Die Fresken im Karner von Hartberg, Proseminararbeit University of Vienna, summer semester 2007, [1] (PDF; 1.1 MB).
- Elfriede Grabner, The four equestrian images in the Karner zu Hartberg. On the iconographic classification and interpretation of the Romanesque wall paintings restored in the 19th century, in: Journal of the Historical Association for Styria 1977, pp. 221–244.
- Johann Graus, Der Hartberger Karner and his restoration, in: Blätter des Christian Kunstverein der Diöcese Seckau, 1, 1892, pp. 3–6.
- Johann Graus, Romanische Malereien zu Hartberg, in: Blätter des Christian Kunstverein der Diöcese Seckau, 1, 1897, pp. 1–7; 2, 1897, pp. 17-20.
- Edgar Marsch, Biblical prophecy and chronographic poetry, Berlin 1972.
- Anita Mayerhofer, Der Hartberger Karner - Architecture / Painting / Restoration, Diploma thesis, Graz 2002.
- Elga Lanc, Hartberg (Styria). Karner St. Michael, in: Hermann Fillitz (ed.), History of Fine Arts in Austria, Volume 1: Early and High Middle Ages, Munich / New York / Vienna 1998, pp. 457–458, cat. No. 191.
- Elga Lanc, The medieval wall paintings in Styria. Tafelband, Vienna 2002, pp. 152–157.
- Johannes Simmler, The history of the city, the parish and the district of Hartberg, Hartberg 1914.
- Sepp Walter, Die Fresken im Hartberger Karner, in: Zeitschrift des Historische Verein für Steiermark, 1978, pp. 185–238; 1979, pp. 143-150.
- Wolfgang Westerhoff, Karner in Austria and South Tyrol, St. Pölten / Vienna 1989.
Web links
- Parish church and Karner Hartberg. (PDF; 6.3 MB) Archived from the original on December 11, 2010 ; Retrieved December 11, 2010 .
Coordinates: 47 ° 16 ′ 49.7 ″ N , 15 ° 58 ′ 10.9 ″ E