Neubrandenburg (painting)

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Neubrandenburg (Caspar David Friedrich)
Neubrandenburg
Caspar David Friedrich , around 1816
Oil on canvas
91.0 × 72.0 cm
Pommersches Landesmuseum Greifswald

Neubrandenburg , also called Neubrandenburg in the Morning Fog , is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich from around 1816 . The painting in oil on canvas in the format 91 cm × 72 cm is in the Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald .

Image description

The painting shows the silhouette of the city of Neubrandenburg seen from the northwest with a view of the Friedländer Tor . A mountain range rises in the background. In front of the medieval city fortifications and the oak wall, a concave, painted meadow area extends. In the foreground are two hikers in traditional German costumes on the path that leads to the city, watching the sunrise. The posture of the two men suggests that the hiker on the left is explaining the view to the one on the right. Bird migration can be seen in the sky. The hikers stand to the right of a man-high boulder, surrounded by autumn bushes and a row of megalithic graves lined up to the south . At the height of the city there is a pine forest on the right edge of the picture.

Image and nature

Map of the city of Neubrandenburg from 1820 with the northern surroundings
Caspar David Friedrich: Church ruins in a meadow landscape , around 1835
Krappmühlenstein
Carl Gotthold Heinrich Arndt: Neubrandenburg , 1775

In this picture, the painter deviates considerably from the realities of nature in comparison to other cityscapes he has made. The situation of the landscape around 1815 is taken up by the free grassland, called "The Heiden", extending northwest behind the city wall, and the exact location of the Friedländer Tor in the north of the city . This is evidenced by a map of Neubrandenburg from 1820. The layout of the path on which the hikers stand and which leads to the Friedländer Tor also corresponds to the historical conditions. The Marienkirche is shown in the main axis with a slight counter-clockwise rotation. In the picture , the painter has equipped the tower of St. Mary's Church, which had a baroque hood until 1842 , with a Gothic spire extending over two floors . Two other sacred buildings are fantasy architectures.

The mountain in the background is a free ingredient, although from the position shown the terrain rising to the south behind the city could be seen elevated, the painter's position is located on the Datzeberg. There were no barrows on the western edge of "The Heiden". The boulder moved into the center of the picture is probably a stone from the madder mill , about three kilometers from this location. Friedrich's interest in the compositional effect of the large open meadow area in front of the city gate is shown by the sepia church ruins in a meadow landscape , which shows the view from the opposite side of the Zingel of the Friedländer Tor.

Image interpretation

The main interpretations of the picture argue from religious, architectural-historical and biographical considerations. Helmut Börsch-Supan recognizes the Gothic city as a symbol of the Christian promise of the afterlife, defoliated bushes and the barrows as symbols of death . The hikers have thus reached the goal of their life hike. The afterlife theme relates, among other things, to the wrongly assumed sunset in the picture. Gerhard Eimer sees in the motif Friedrich's idea of ​​the ideal image of a north German city, the “ apotheosis of Neubrandenburg” and thus shaped the way of looking at the painting for a long time. In Werner Hofmann's view, Friedrich's cityscapes are “material for poetic paraphrases whose place is nowhere”. For Detlef Stapf, the picture tells of how Friedrich shows the Dresden mint official Kummer the city of his ancestors in an enthusiastic gesture. The pointed tower of the Marienkirche announces the Gothic vision of the Neubrandenburg pastor Franz Christian Boll .

Time of origin

The dating of the picture is mainly based on the painting style in the period between 1815 and 1817. The old German costume of the hikers gives the painting a political statement that relates to the city motif. A possible background may be the trip to Rügen that Friedrich undertook in 1815 together with the Dresden mint official Benjamin Friedrich Gotthelf Kummer. When the two hikers arrived in Neubrandenburg at the beginning of July, the city was in a patriotic frenzy of joy. On July 1, news of the victory over Napoleon's troops on June 18 at the Battle of Waterloo had arrived. The commemoration for the citizens of Neubrandenburg who fought against Napoleon had already taken place in March. Friedrich and Kummer were linked by the events of the Wars of Liberation. The painter was taken in by Kummer's family in cribs in Saxon Switzerland when the French troops marched into Dresden in 1813 .

Biographical place

Caspar David Friedrich's parents, Adolph Gottlieb Friedrich and Sophie Dorothe Bechly, were born in Neubrandenburg. In addition to extensive relatives, his brother Johann Samuel lived there as a blacksmith in 1815 and his sister Catharina Dorothea outside the city gates in Breesen . Friedrich stayed in Neubrandenburg again and again from his childhood until the end of 1818. A large part of the work relates to the area of ​​the Tollensee lake in front of the city . The painter had a special relationship with the pastor of the Marienkirche, Franz Christian Boll , who is depicted several times in the painter's pictures. If there was no post from Neubrandenburg to Dresden, Friedrich was disappointed, as he confided in his Loschwitz diary on August 5, 1803.

"I can't understand how it may come about that I don't receive any letters from [New] Brandenburg."

- Caspar David Friedrich

Sketches

For the boulder in the foreground ( stone from the madder mill ), the sketch of the Gützkower Hünengrab from May 19, 1809 was used. The Rügen hill landscape with a large crumbled stone grave. July 1, 1806 , is used in the middle distance on the right. The mountain range in the background goes back to a sketch from 1804. There is a missing drawing of the city silhouette, which, however, resembles a sketched city silhouette by Carl Gustav Carus .

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Hünengrave near Gützkow , 1809

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Rügen hill landscape with a large stone grave , July 1, 1806

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Mountain Range , 1804

  • Carl Gustav Carus: View of Neubrandenburg , 1819

Provenance

Until 1900 the painting was in the collection of the Greifswald merchant Langguth, a relative of Friedrich. The picture was acquired by the Stettin City Museum around 1928 and from 1945 to 1970 it was deposited in the Stettin painting collection at the Veste Coburg , then in the holdings of the Pommern Foundation in Kiel , and since 1999 with the dissolution of the foundation in the painting collection of the Pomeranian State Museum Greifswald.

Painting copy

The Greifswald painter and Friedrich student Johann Friedrich Boeck made a copy-like replica of the picture, which also belonged to the Langguth Collection until 1900 and is now in private ownership.

Counterpart

Caspar David Friedrich: Mountainous River Landscape , 1830–1835

Thematically, the painting in Neubrandenburg is matched by a transparent painting with the title "Mountainous river landscape in the morning and at night (night)", which can be assigned to the older work between 1830 and 1835. The banner is painted on both sides. To view the night scene, the image must be backlit. Because of the double island shown in the foreground, which existed around 1800 between the southern end of the Tollensee and the Lieps , one can interpret the Gothic city silhouette at the end of the valley as the Neubrandenburg. Here the transfigured moment is heightened again by the fantasy architecture and the mood of the picture and confirms the painter's emotional attitude towards this place.

City images

In Friedrich's city pictures, the city silhouettes have different functions in the picture narration. Views emerged from the biographical locations that reveal an inner relationship between the painter and the respective city. The representations of Greifswald show a vedute-like clarity. Neubrandenburg appears transfigured or burning. Dresden is preferably placed behind a hill or a wooden fence in the picture compositions . Usually one can assume that these pictures are true to nature.

A second group of pictures shows dreamy fantasy cities in the deep space, as in the paintings Gedächtnisbild für Johann Emanuel Bremer or Auf dem Segler .

A third group places figures in the foreground in a symbolic relationship to a city in the background, as in the painting The Sisters on the Söller at the harbor . In this case, identifiable picture elements can be used to assign a real city.

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Meadows near Greifswald , around 1820

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Greifswald in the moonlight , 1817

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Burning Neubrandenburg , around 1835

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Hill with Bruchacker near Dresden , around 1824

  • Caspar David Friedrich: On the Sailor , 1818

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Memorial picture for Johann Emanuel Bremer, 1817

  • Caspar David Friedrich: The sisters on the Söller at the harbor , around 1820

Ideal of the Gothic city

Karl Friedrich Schinkel Medieval City on the River , 1815
Carl Wilhelm Götzloff: Winter Landscape with a Gothic Church , 1821

For the painting Neubrandenburg , the medieval city on a river by Karl Friedrich Schinkel , created in 1815, is used in an art historical comparison . In both pictures, the high Gothic sacred building is the defining element of the city. After the victory over Napoleon, a national interpretation is obvious, because the Gothic was called the “German style” at that time and served as a projection screen for national identity. But the Romantics also idealized the medieval city with the Gothic cathedral buildings . Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder discovered the picturesque beauty of Nuremberg with the description of St. Peter's Church. The painter Carl Wilhelm Götzloff , captured by his enthusiasm for Gothic, composed his winter landscape with a Gothic church from 1821 based on the model of his teacher Caspar David Friedrich. In a review of the picture it was said: "Like this [Friedrich] he seems to be fleeing beautiful leafy trees, clinging to coniferous wood, snowstorms, churchyard, moonlight, etc." He was "a great friend of German hustle and bustle, and spoke to himself in his last year's landscape completely as such ”.

reception

The Rügen pastor Theodor Schwarz wrote the novel Erwin von Steinbach or the spirit of German architecture under the pseudonym "Theodor Melas" in 1834 . The author provides the fictional character, the cathedral builder Erwin von Steinbach , with a painter named Kaspar, who is close to Caspar David Friedrich in his character and in his biography. Painter and pastor were good friends. In the novel, Kaspar reveals himself as an admirer of Gothic architecture who compares his art with that of the master builder. Erwin von Steinbach had the reputation of being the sole builder of the Strasbourg cathedral.

“As you have given yourselves to noble architecture, you will also possess and keep it like a bride. On the whole I think like you do; my art is above everything to me, and so there is no obstacle that we, if you want, get to know each other better. "

- Kaspar in the novel about Erwin von Steinbach

Donations for restoration

The Pomeranian State Museum Greifswald raised the 15,000 euros for the restoration of the painting in Neubrandenburg in 2008 through an unusual donation campaign. The picture was symbolically divided into 375 squares, which the museum "sold" for 50 euros each.

natural Science

With the deep orange tint of the light of his sunsets, Friedrich may have become a faithful chronicler of the historical volcanic eruption on Tambora in Indonesia in 1815. The huge eruption had changed the air around the world. A group led by the physicist Christos Zerefos from the National Observatory in Athens examined landscape paintings from the past five centuries and compared the times when they were created with dates from major volcanic eruptions. The volcanoes blow so much sulfur particles into the higher atmosphere that the earth cools noticeably for a few years. The aerosols scatter the sunlight in such a way that particularly colorful sunsets are generated.

Web links

literature

  • Helmut Börsch-Supan , Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings . Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-7913-0053-9 (catalog raisonné).
  • Gerhard Eimer : Caspar David Friedrich and the Gothic. Analyzes and attempts at interpretation. From the Stockholm lectures . Baltic Studies 49, 1962/63.
  • Birte Frenssen, Ingo Timm: The painting Neubrandenburg by Caspar David Friedrich. Interpretation and art-technological observations. Association of Restorers , Issue 1/2010, pp. 36–61.
  • Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work (2 volumes). Munich 2011.
  • Werner Hofmann : Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 .
  • Pomeranian Foundation : Picture gallery of the Pommern Foundation in the Rant Zauberau of Kiel Castle . Neumünster 1972.
  • Herrmann Zschoche : Caspar David Friedrichs Rügen. A search for clues . Verlag der Kunst Dresden, Husum 2007, ISBN 978-3-86530-086-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eckhard Unger: Downfall in Neubrandenburg. Interpretation of the painting by Caspar David Friedrich in Hamburg . In: Das Carolinum , Vol. 26 (1960), ISSN  0008-6827 , pp. 108-111.
  2. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 16 (network-based P-Book ).
  3. ^ A b c d Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings , p. 338.
  4. ^ Friedrich Scheven: Neubrandenburg in the life and work of CD Friedrichs . In: Das Carolinum , Vol. 32 (1966), ISSN  0008-6827 , pp. 7-36.
  5. ^ Gerhard Eimer: Caspar David Friedrich and the Gothic. Analyzes and attempts at interpretation. From the Stockholm lectures . In: Baltic Studies , Vol. 49 (1962/63), ISSN  0067-3099 , pp. 39-68.
  6. ^ Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 , p. 114.
  7. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 321 (network-based P-Book ).
  8. ^ Hermann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrichs Rügen. A search for clues . Verlag der Kunst Dresden, Husum 2007, ISBN 978-3-86530-086-7 , p. 87.
  9. ^ Franz Boll : Chronicle of the Vorderstadt Neubrandenburg . Neubrandenburg, 1875, p. 261.
  10. ^ Karl-Ludwig Hoch : Caspar David Friedrich, Ernst Moritz Arndt and the so-called demagogue persecution . In: Pantheon , Vol. 44 (1986), ISSN  0031-0999 , p. 56 f.
  11. ^ Karl-Ludwig Hoch: Caspar David Friedrich - unknown documents of his life . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1985, p. 26.
  12. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work, vol. 2. Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61905-2 , p. 561.
  13. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work (2 volumes). Munich 2011, p. 415.
  14. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work (2 volumes). Munich 2011, p. 396.
  15. ^ Pomeranian Foundation: Picture gallery of the Pommern Foundation in the Rant Zauberau of Kiel Castle . Neumünster 1972.
  16. ^ Franz Boll: Chronicle of the Vorderstadt Neubrandenburg . Neubrandenburg 1875, p. 279.
  17. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 4 (network-based P-Book ).
  18. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 5 (network-based P-Book ).
  19. ↑ Gerhart von Graevenitz (ed.): The city in European romanticism . Publishing house Königshausen u. Neumann, 2000, p. 96.
  20. ^ Friedrich Matthäi in a letter dated December 9, 1822 to Count Vitzthum von Eckstädt
  21. ^ Theodor Schwarz (under the pseudonym Theodor Melas): Erwin von Steinbach or the spirit of German architecture . Hamburg 1834, Volume 1, p. 31.
  22. ↑ Silke Voss: Friedrich-Bild for sale piece by piece . In: Nordkurier of January 30, 2008, p. 21.
  23. ↑ Axel Bojanowski : color analysis. Climate secret on old masterpieces  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.spiegel.de   . In: Spiegel Online from March 25, 2014