Heinrich Brabender

Heinrich Brabender (* around 1467; † around 1537 in Münster ; also called Beldensnider and Beldensnyder as well as Brabant ) was a sculptor of the late Middle Ages .

His late Gothic sculptures are preserved in Westphalia and northern Germany, primarily in Münster , Osnabrück and Lübeck . Through his life-size statuary sculptures and his reliefs with personal characterization of the people portrayed, he shaped sculpture beyond the region until the middle of the 16th century. Heinrich Brabender founded a family dynasty of sculptors that existed in Münster until the third generation after him. Art history still led him in the 19th century under the emergency name Master of the Entry of Christ .

Life

There is no evidence of the origin of Heinrich Brabender, and only individual life dates are known. The naming as Hinrich Beldensnyder alias Brabant could indicate his origin or that of his ancestors from the Duchy of Brabant . Beldensnyder is probably the Low German description of his profession as a picture cutter . It is possible that his father was Mester Henrich von Brabant , mentioned as a doctor in the Münster civil register in 1475 , who was naturalized in Münster that year with his wife Alheidis and probably moved from Coesfeld . His father was possibly the Steinbicker Cope Brabant, who lived in Coesfeld in 1461 and probably came from Brabant.

In 1491 Heinrich Brabender was first mentioned in a document as Mester Hynrick Brabender, beldensynder, borger to Munster . To be able to work as a master sculptor, he had to be at least 24 years old and married. The time of his wedding is not known; his wife Elisabeth died around 1550/1551. With her he had the sons Johann Brabender and Franz Brabender, who both became sculptors.

Heinrich Brabender's workshop was in the parish of St. Martini in the end of the road no. 5 at the end of a dead end to the Aa . The property with the house and outbuildings belonged to the painter Johann Koerbecke († 1490). Heinrich Brabender took it over from his widow Else Koerbecke around 1495 and paid an annuity of two guilders to the monastery of Our Lady of Überwasser . The property and workshop were owned by the Brabender family until Heinrich's grandson Jasper sold the property in 1579.

Heinrich Brabender belonged as Scheffer (also Schaffer ) and guild master to the leadership of the stone mason guild , in which all stone masons had to be organized in order to be allowed to practice their craft. In the years 1511, 1516 and 1525 he and another Scheffer had to ensure the smooth running of the annual guild meal of the Münster general guild, at which representatives of the 17 individual guilds met. In 1503 Heinrich Brabender represented the interests of the stone carvers as guild master in the general guild, the amalgamation of all artisan guilds in the city.

In addition to tasks in the guild, Heinrich Brabender took on local political responsibility in the Martini corps . Leischafts denoted city districts and citizenship departments in Münster. The corpses were responsible for the judiciary, defense and taxation. In 1525 the corpse elected him to be a member of the cure. As a member of the electorate, he elected the councilors of Münster.

At the church level he worked in the parish administration of St. Martini. In 1519 he was together with Goddert Travelmann as Templar head of the Martinikirche. In 1520 he became provisional in the poor house Zurwesten, located in today's Stiftsherrenstrasse behind the Martinikirche. In this office he was appointed by the city council, the document names him as one of two " vorwarerß der poor des huses tor Wessede ". In 1532 he was also provisional to the poor house in the end of the road. As a provisional he belonged to the city's second social leadership class .

Heinrich Brabender's membership in the Brotherhood of Our Lady and St. Johannis is documented in a document dated May 9, 1517 ; he acts as the legal representative of the secular association when it purchases a pension. The previous owner of his property, Johann Koerbecke, had also been a member of the brotherhood ; The brotherhood also had a relative, the stone carver Johann Block, neighbors and craftsmen like an iron smith, with whom Brabender worked. Heinrich Brabender was thus integrated into a close-knit social network.

In 1532, most of the members of the guilds in Münster joined the Reformation , and the city council also became Protestant. During the time of the Anabaptist Empire in Munster , the situation in the city escalated. Brabender left Münster with his family, either at the beginning of 1534, or the Brabenders were expelled by the Anabaptists on February 27, 1534. Presumably they went to Havixbeck , southwest of the Baumberge , whose Baumberger sandstone is widely used as a building material and for stone carving. In Havixbeck, the magistro Hinrico Baldensnyder was commissioned to make an epitaph for the canon Wilhelm Staell from Münster, who died on May 3, 1535 in Warendorf .

During the time of the Anabaptist Empire, numerous works by Heinrich Brabender in Münster were damaged by vandalism. After the end of the Anabaptist Empire on June 24, 1535, Heinrich Brabender returned to the devastated city with a decimated population, like the Catholic and Protestant residents who had fled. He is recorded in the list of returnees in October 1535. The time of the craftsmen's guilds in Münster was temporarily over. Franz von Waldeck , who abolished the election of the council after his return to Munster and set up a committee made up of heirs and citizens appointed by him, banned the craftsmen's guilds, including the stone carvers' guild, and issued a ban on assemblies. The guilds received their rights under the name of Amt only in 1553 after Brabender's death.

His son Johann Brabender († 1561/1562) took over the father's workshop after it had been managed by the widow Elisabeth until after his death. Johann's brother Franz († 1556) probably worked in the brother's workshop. Johann Brabender's son Jasper Brabender († before September 28, 1583) continued the family tradition as a sculptor and took over the workshop that his grandfather Heinrich had founded from his father.

Targeted excavations at the former Kreuztor in Münster at the end of 1897 / beginning of 1898 revealed fragments of a group of statues depicting the Pilati washing hands, the depiction of Christ before the people (Ecce homo), fragments of a life-size crucifixion group and the head of a mourning woman. They were probably knocked off by the Anabaptists in the spring of 1534 and used to fortify Münster.

Works

The research and classification of the work began increasingly in the period around the First World War . Brabender's widely scattered work first had to be put together by art history . In the early literature on art history his works are sometimes assigned the emergency name Master of the Entry of Christ (from Münster Cathedral).

Muenster

The works of Heinrich Brabender are only documented in individual cases by written sources, but before the Anabaptist Empire he was the only statuarius in Münster and was therefore the only one among the lapidarii , the town's stone carvers , who created large free-standing sculptures.

The order for the coat of arms of the epitaph of Canon Wilhelm Staell, for which he received eight Rhenish gold guilders, is documented. In May 1535 he delivered the epitaph for Ida von Merveldt . The abbess of the Überwasser monastery died in exile in Holthausen. He received 120 Rhenish gold gulden for the epitaph of the cathedral dean of Münster, Heinrich Hake († April 14, 1537). In addition, a large number of epitaphs are assigned to Heinrich Brabender.

Two altarpieces originally belonging to the Vinnenberg monastery in Warendorf, which were removed in 1718 when the monastery church was decorated in baroque style, came to Münster. The altar with St. Gregory's Mass (around 1502) is on loan from the Diocese of Münster in the LWL State Museum for Art and Cultural History , as is an epitaph with passion scenes from the monastery from the period between 1515 and 1520. The Johannes Altar (around 1506) was built in 1950 in St. Paulus Cathedral of Münster attached. In the State Museum in Münster there are also two console stones with male atlantic figures from the westwork of St. Paulus Cathedral. In the crouching figure with a belt pouch, whose face has individual features, a self-portrait of Heinrich Brabender is assumed. The second figure could show the leading stonemason.

Paderborn

Epitaph of the dean Wilhelm Westphal

The Philippus-Jakobus altarpiece from Paderborn Cathedral (around 1515) by Brabender and Evert van Roden , like other works, is also part of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum's inventory. The epitaph of the dean Wilhelm Westphal († 1517) has been preserved in the Westphalen chapel of the cathedral.

Osnabrück

Twelve statues remained from the rood screen of Osnabrück Cathedral, which was broken off in 1664 , including Christ and the figures of the apostles, as well as a smaller one of the founder, Duke Erich II of Saxony-Lauenburg , Bishop of Münster. You are in the Diocesan Museum Osnabrück.

Lübeck

Last Supper relief, Marienkirche Lübeck. In the lower left corner of the work the famous church mouse

In Lübeck there are four reliefs made of Baumberger sandstone with passion scenes from the choir screen (around 1510/12) in St. Mary , the washing of the feet, the Last Supper, the Mount of Olives and the capture. The reliefs were donated in the first years of the 16th century by the Lübeck citizen and later councilor Johann Salige . With the world-famous church mouse contained in the Last Supper relief, Brabender created one of Lübeck's landmarks . In the Jakobikirche in Lübeck, the relief in the middle section (Christ Erlöserwerk), such as the predella of the altar donated by Lübeck mayor Heinrich Brömse in a south side chapel by Heinrich Brabender , probably continues to come from.

More places

Around 1500 he created a sculpture of St. Francis for the Franciscan monastery in Dorsten . Eleven preserved figures of the rood screen, Mary and the apostles, which were in the church of the Bentlage monastery , also date from this period .

From the period around 1510 to 1512 there are eleven apostle figures in the high altar in St. Stephan ( Krefeld ).

The double tumba , created around 1511 to 1515, with reclining figures of nobleman Bernhard VII zur Lippe (1429–1511) and his wife Anna († 1495), a Countess of Holstein and Schaumburg, is in the choir of the former Augustinian Canons Church Blomberg , the today Evangelical Reformed parish church. The sculpture Samson with the Easter candlestick from 1528 is in the parish church of St. Dionysius in Havixbeck .

After 1532 the relief of Saint Paul from Vechta was created, which has only been preserved in fragments and is one of the exhibits in the museum village of Cloppenburg .

Exhibitions

• The Brabender. Sculpture at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance , Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History, Münster, March 11, 2005 to August 28, 2005.

literature

• Hermann Arnhold (Ed.): The Brabender - Sculpture at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Aschendorff, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-402-03509-X .

Web links

Commons : Heinrich Brabender  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Heinrich Brabender in the catalog of the German National Library
• The Brabender exhibition in the Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History Münster 2005

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Reinhard Karrenbrock: Evert van Roden - The master of the high altar of the Osnabrück Johanniskirche. A contribution to late Gothic sculpture. In: Osnabrück historical sources and research. Volume 31. Osnabrück 1992, p. 151.
2. ^ Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff: Painters and families of painters in Münster between 1350 and 1534. In: Westphalia. 55, 1977, pp. 98-110
3. ↑ Sybille Brackmann: The Brabender called Beldensnider - their family, professional and social interdependence in the city society of Münster , in: Hermann Arnhold (Hrsg.): The Brabender - sculpture at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance . Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2005, p. 26.
4. ↑ On the legal term Leischaft in Münster and Osnabrück cf. Corpse . In: Former Academy of Sciences of the GDR, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (Hrsg.): German legal dictionary . tape 8 , issue 7/8 (edited by Heino Speer and others). Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1989, ISBN 3-7400-0096-1 ( adw.uni-heidelberg.de ).
5. ↑ On this Angelika Lampe: A city at the turn of the modern era - Münster in the age of the Brabender family. In: The Brabender - sculpture at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the modern age. P. 15: “The election for the city council took place regularly on the first Monday of Lent: All full citizens gathered at the town hall and elected two electors for each corpse, that is for each of the five city districts. The ten members of the spa elected in this way elected (...) the councilors ”.
6. ↑ Ralf Klötzer: Dressing, dining, lodging - poor welfare and social foundations in Münster in the 16th century (1535–1588). In: Franz-Josef Jakobi (ed.): Sources and research on the history of the city of Münster. Münster 1997, p. 323.
7. ↑ Ad. Brüning: Announcements from the State Museum. In: Westphalia magazine. 1909, p. 130.
8. ↑ Hans Josef Bröker: The late Gothic façades of the cathedral in Münster. In: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch. 54, 1993, pp. 31-75.
9. ^ Emil Ferdinand Fehling : Lübeck Council Line . No. 606: "1518 Councilor ... Married to a daughter of the mayor Heinrich Brömse ... † 1530."
10. ↑ Your touch should bring luck. You can see that in her. This mouse is the subject of a legend, see the digitized Die Maus in Wikisource .
11. ↑ Johannes Baltzer , Friedrich Bruns: The architectural and art monuments of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck . Issued by the building authorities. Volume III: Church of Old Lübeck. Dom. Jakobikirche. Aegidia Church. Nöhring, Lübeck 1920, pp. 351-360. Reprint: 2001. ISBN 3-89557-167-9 ; More recent views in art history assign the sandstone work on this altar to his companion Evert van Roden ; with regard to painting, reference is made to the master's participation from 1489 .