Court of muses

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A court of muses is the name of the court of a ruler who surrounds himself with a particularly large number of important artists and uses their works for self-expression and to spread personal fame.

The employment of artists at court is probably more or less part of the representation of power and the rank of ruler in all cultures . We are also familiar with patronage from private individuals ( Maecenas ) from ancient times .

middle Ages

Konradin von Hohenstaufen Manessian song manuscript

In the Middle Ages, Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204) set an example with her promotion of the trobadors .

Minstrels were promoted at the court of Duke Friedrich I of Austria (1175–1198) in Vienna . The best known of them were Reinmar the Old and Walther von der Vogelweide .

Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia (reign 1190–1217) is known for promoting minstrels and epic poets . At his court created Heinrich von Veldeke Eneasroman , Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Willehalm and Herbort Fritz Lars Liet of Troye u. a. On the Wartburg to 1206 the singer War took place, attended by Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach took part.

Emperor Frederick II gathered the Sicilian School of Poetry (around 1220–1260) around him in Palermo , from which Giacomo da Lentini probably wrote the first sonnet .

Renaissance

By promoting literature and the fine arts, several rulers of the Italian Renaissance emerged first, who were influenced by the concepts of Renaissance humanism and used antiquity as a reference culture. So at the courts of the Gonzaga in Mantua, the Estonians in Ferrara and at the court of Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino. The Medici became particularly well known , among whom Lorenzo de Medici held a special position, at whose court Michelangelo , Demetrios Chalkondyla , Angelo Poliziano , Cristoforo Landino , Giovanni Pico della Mirandola , Francesco Granacci , Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci were promoted. In addition, Pope Julius II was especially important because of large commissions.

In the German Empire, the concept was first taken up in the 1450s at the Heidelberg court of Frederick the Victorious . The promotion and use of art and literature at the court of Emperor Maximilian I is well known. In the 16th century, the combination of rule and promotion of art was one of the prince's generally accepted ideals of virtue.

Baroque

Large commissions were received in large numbers in the Baroque era , and in fact this art is essentially court art. But the element of the display of power prevailed so much at that time that one would hardly call the court of Louis XIV despite the prominent position of Molière a court of muses; because he was more in demand there as amusement director than as a poet, which can also be seen in the prohibition of tartuffe .

In contrast, the fruit-bearing society of the dukes Friedrich of Saxe-Weimar , Johann Ernst the Elder. J. von Sachsen-Weimar , Wilhelm IV. Von Sachsen-Weimar and other high nobility with the promotion of the German language definitely a cultural goal, but the courtly element predominated.

The Wittelsbach Duke Christian-August established the Sulzbacher Musenhof at his residence in Sulzbach around 1670, with Christian Knorr von Rosenroth at its center .

18th and 19th centuries

Things looked different at the small royal courts of the late 18th century. At the Swabian muse court of Count Stadion at Schloss Warthausen near Biberach an der Riss , Tischbein the Elder and Sebastian Sailer found support in the 1960s, but they were not involved in an extensive ceremony .

From 1780–1788 the Gohliser Schlösschen was the Musenhof am Rosental , where Friedrich Schiller worked on the 2nd act of Don Carlos and on Fiesco . He also wrote the first version of the poem An die Freude there on behalf of Christian Gottfried Körner .

But most often the title Musenhof was assigned to the court of Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach . In 1772 she appointed the Swabian poet Christoph Martin Wieland to be one of the teachers of her princes; In 1775 his teaching activities ended when the Hereditary Prince came of age, and since then Wieland has lived with a ducal pension as a writer, magazine editor and partner of Anna Amalia in Weimar. The Duchess is often assigned the appointment of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried von Herder , for which, however, her son Carl August was responsible. Friedrich Schiller is often mentioned in the same breath as Wieland, Herder and Goethe , who had lived in Weimar since 1799, but rarely attended Anna Amalia's court (see Weimar Court of the Muses ). The princely library named after her was not founded by her, but the book collection moved to the Green Palace during Anna Amalia's reign (1766).

In the 19th century, Maria Pawlowna (1785-1859), younger sister of the Russian Tsar Alexander I and later Grand Duchess of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach , often referred to Anna Amalia in her patronage and political memory efforts. This assertion of unbroken continuity across three generations of princesses has often been adopted in popular Weimar literature.

literature

  • Alison Cole: Renaissance from Milan to Naples. The art in the courts of Italy . Cologne 1996.
  • Claudia Brink: Arte et Marte. Martial arts and love of art in the image of rulers in the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy . Munich, Berlin 2001.
  • Heide Schulz: Weimar's most beautiful star. Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar and Eisenach. Source texts on the creation of an icon, Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8253-5887-7

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alison Cole: Renaissance from Milan to Naples. The art in the courts of Italy . Cologne 1996.
  2. ^ Henry J. Cohn: The early Renaissance Court in Heidelberg . In: European Studies Review 1 (1971), pp. 295–322.
  3. ↑ Jan-Dirk Müller: Gedechtnus. Literature and Courtiers to Maximilian I . Munich 1982. Larry Silver: Marketing Maximilian. The Visual Ideology of a Holy Roman Emperor the Visual Ideology of a Holy Roman Emperor , 2008.
  4. ↑ cf. on this: Literature archive Sulzbach-Rosenberg (ed.): Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. Poet and scholar at the Sulzbacher Musenhof. Festschrift for the 300th anniversary of death. Sulzbach-Rosenberg 1989, ISBN 3-924350-16-7 .

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