Luther in effigy
As Luther in effigy or Luther effigy [s] a life-size figure of Martin Luther called that until the 1930s in the Marienkirche in Halle an der Saale was shown.
description
The figure was originally dressed in a gown and beret and was sitting, apparently writing, at a table on which a Luther Bible with a dedication lay. The head and hands were made of wax. Eyebrows, eyelashes and hair were set into this material, the eyes were made of painted glass plates. The figure was posable so that its posture could be changed.
origin
It is said that the hands and face were made from plaster casts that were removed from the body after Luther's death in 1546. Such casts are nowhere reliably attested; All that is known is that Luther was portrayed on his death bed by one or two artists, from which a whole series of paintings and prints later developed, which probably had their roots in the area around the Cranach workshop. Jochen Birkenmeier emphasizes: "It must [...] be noted that between Luther's death and the presumed creation of the wax mask there was at least 80 years in which there was not a single reference to a Luther death mask."
Furthermore, in order to enable the hand posture that the Luther effigy showed, one would first have to bend the hands of the corpse into shape and then possibly move them back into a different position for laying out.
The first evidence of the existence of the wax portrait of Luther comes from the year 1663. On November 19, a Lucas Schöne, probably a painter from Halle, signed a receipt for ten thalers that he had received from church father Peter Untzer. Schöne uses the phrase “to manufacture” for his work, but this does not necessarily mean that he was the creator of Luther in effigy. Because the day before the receipt was issued, it was noted in a church account book that the sum had been spent on “Luther's education to be repaired”, which must have been there at the time. Another invoice, this time for the clothes of the Luther figure, comes from December 14, 1663 and amounts to about half the amount that Schöne had acknowledged.
Uta Kornmeier considers the total amount to be too small to be appropriate for the production of such a figure. She also assumes that the depiction of the face and hands was actually based on casts taken from Luther's body. She suspects that Luther's friend Justus Jonas the Elder may have arranged for these casts and that the painter Lukas Furtenagel , who is probably responsible for the portrait of the late Luther, which is the starting point for many portraits of Luther on his death bed, was commissioned to do so. As arguments for this theory, she cites that Jonas was familiar with the ancient custom of portraying the deceased in wax and that such a face cast could also have had a propaganda function. They wanted to prove Luther's peaceful death. She points out that the practice of these casts, coming from Italy, was not uncommon in Germany since the early 16th century and that, for example , casts were made of Albrecht Dürer's face and one of his hands after a secret exhumation . Furtenagel and Jonas might have had a more extensive three-dimensional representation of Luther in mind as early as 1546, possibly a monument of Luther in a seated position, which also explains the position of the hands of the Luther figure. Furtenagel only returned to his home in Augsburg in 1546 and Jonas was expelled from the city in 1547, so that these plans were no longer implemented. Where the casts were supposed to have been before Luther was assembled in effigy sometime in the 17th century leaves them in the dark. Kornmeier's assumption that a plastic representation of Luther was planned as a funeral effigy as early as Furtenagel’s time can, according to Birkenmeier, "not be substantiated in terms of art history, since the first representations of this type are only known from the beginning of the 17th century".
history
After the figure was assembled, it was first placed in the Marienbibliothek and treated as a sight. It may have been made for the new library building in 1612. Uta Kornmeier thinks that it could have been inspired or even made by David Psolmaier .
Early images of Luther in effigy date from the 18th century. There is an engraving from 1730 and another from 1736 showing the same motif. The latter, made by Christian Gottlob Liebe based on a painting by Johann Anton Rüdiger , bears the inscription: “This copper is drawn from the picture, cast in wax from the dead body in Halle in 1546 and placed on the library on the 1st floor. Woman standing there. "
A picture in the Luther life series of Wilhelm Baron von Löwenstern dates from the 19th century . The lithograph made around 1827 represents an anachronism : Luther is shown in his cell on the Wartburg . In this environment, his portrait would have to correspond to the bearded Junker-Jörg type, which Luther's appearance came close to in the Wartburg period. In fact, however, Luther is depicted as the shaved bearer of a hat and a cap, because, according to the title of the picture, the artist was guided by the "original wax cast in the Marien-Bibliothek in Erfurth [!]".
Even before Löwenstern in 1806 , Johann Gottfried Schadow had been busy with the preparatory work for his Luther memorial in Halle with Luther in effigy. He had drawn and measured the mask. Schadow's Luther statue was erected in Wittenberg in 1821 .
In 1891 Luther changed his location in effigie. The Marienbibliothek was housed in a new building and the Luther figure was placed in a tower room, where it was probably no longer seen by numerous visitors. On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Luther's posting of the theses, photo postcards were produced of the figure, from which it can be seen that the figure had already changed significantly at that time. If Luther had previously been portrayed as a writer looking up from his work, he was now sitting bent over the book as a reader. Age-related signs of decay had apparently affected the figure. At the latest at the time of the photographs on the occasion of the anniversary in 1917, the wig was replaced by a large cap, and the wax showed deformations and discoloration. Designations such as “Lutherschreck” and “Schreckgespenst” came into circulation for the battered figure, and doubts began to arise as to the authenticity of the casts and the authenticity of Luther's depiction.
In 1926 the anthropologist Hans Hahne was commissioned to examine the waxy parts of the figure. He came to the conclusion that they were actually casts of a dead person, but that these casts had been adapted to the appearance of Luther in his younger years, and in his report he also commented on the racial, physiognomic and phrenological findings that he had wanted to have won the investigation. In addition, Hahne reworked the showpieces he was given to examine and redesigned them in the spirit of Furtenagel's drawing, albeit with considerable freedom.
From 1924 Luther was in effigy in the sacristy of the Marienkirche in Halle. The original wax parts that Hahne received for examination were not reattached to the figure, but kept in a separate box. The figure in the sacristy was now only equipped with copies of these parts. In addition, it probably lost its attractiveness because the first films about Luther's life were shown in 1923 and 1927, which were able to convey a more vivid picture of the reformer. In 1927, the art historian Ernst Benkard also put forward the provocative thesis that the representation of Luther in St. Mary's Church corresponds to Catholic figures of saints. Pastor Fritze disgusted this statement, but was soon confronted with further and sometimes absurd statements. In a 1928 inflammatory pamphlet it was claimed that Luther had been murdered by Jews, Jesuits and secret allies.
From then on, Fritze was violently attacked because of the depiction of Luther in his church, which was perceived as unworthy, among others by the doctor Mathilde Ludendorff , who not only further developed the conspiracy theory about Luther's death, but above all criticized the fact that Luther in an effigy figure reminded of a panoptic figure and the The visitors who entered the sacristy, unsuspecting, were shocked.
Fritze put up a fight. In 1931 the figure was inspected by the church leadership, Johannes Ficker , Hahne and other people who came to the conclusion that Luther in effigie did not represent desecration, but on the contrary an honor of his original, but had to be restored and adapted to the current Luther images become. In the same year a small guide was published which explained Luther's presentation in the Marienkirche to the public. But a few years later, after Mathilde Ludendorff had taken the initiative again in 1933, the figure was apparently removed from the church and probably destroyed. According to Kornmeier, a church leader from 1941 only contained a reference to Luther's alleged death mask. Horst Bredekamp, on the other hand, claims that the figure remained in the church until 1943, then was moved to a bank, still existed in remnants in the 1960s and was moved back to an adjoining room of the Marktkirche in 2006.
Plaster copies of the hands and face of Luther in effigy were shown from 1933 in the alleged place where Luther died in Eisleben . They were presented in a historicist setting. The house was closed in September 2011; Before presenting the exhibits in a new setting, their authenticity should be checked.
literature
- Jochen Birkenmeier, Luther's death mask? On the museum's handling of a dubious exhibit , in: Lutherjahrbuch 78, 2011, pp. 187–203
- Uta Kornmeier, Luther in effigie, or: The “Specter of Halle” , in: Luther Staging and Reformation Memory , ed. by Stefan Laube and Karl-Heinz Fix, Leipzig 2002, pp. 342–370 ( digitized version )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. Jochen Birkenmeier, Luther's death mask? On the museum's handling of a dubious exhibit , in: Lutherjahrbuch 78, 2011, pp. 187–203, here p. 189.
- ↑ Birkenmeier 2011, p. 192
- ↑ Birkenmeier 2011, p. 194
- ↑ A quotation of the document can be found in Uta Kornmeier, Luther in effigie, or: The “Schreckgespenst von Halle” , in: Lutherinszenierung und Reformationserinnerung , ed. by Stefan Laube and Karl-Heinz Fix, Leipzig 2002, pp. 342-370 ( digitized version ), here p. 346.
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, p. 346
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, p. 347
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, pp. 349-352
- ↑ Birkenmeier 2011, p. 195
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, p. 352 f.
- ↑ Quoted in Kornmeier 2002, p. 357
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, p. 360
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, p. 361
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, p. 362
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, p. 345
- ↑ See Kornmeier 2002, p. 364 f.
- ↑ Quoting from Kornmeier 2002, p. 367.
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, p. 367
- ↑ Kornmeier 2002, p. 369
- ^ Horst Bredekamp: Bodies in Action and Symbolic Forms. Walter de Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-050-06140-5 , p. 159 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
- ↑ Birkenmeier 2011, p. 187 f.