Riga driver's chairs
The Rigafahrergestühl (also: Russefahrergestühl , Russlandfahrergestühl , Novgorodfahrergestühl ) is a relief image from the Middle Ages in the Stralsund Nikolaikirche .
The seating is almost unique; there are hardly any other evidence of this type. Most of the altar stalls that are still preserved today depict ecclesiastical themes; for example the patron saint of the company. In contrast, purely profane themes can be seen on the Riga driver's chairs. Three of the four relief panels show Russians at work: They hunt fur animals and collect honey and resin. The fourth panel shows the trade between Russians and the Stralsund merchants of the Riga drivers. The representation of the trading activity also shows the self-confidence of the traders.
Location
At the choir screen in the southern ambulatory of the church, on a whitewashed wall, there is the four-part , color-carved relic from the pre-Reformation period, carved from oak . The stalls belonged to one of the 56 altars of the Stralsund Nikolaikirche.
The four relief panels were part of the altar of the Stralsund company of the Riga drivers ; medieval traders who in the Middle Ages mainly traded with the city of Riga in Livonia ; there they mainly bought furs and honey . The Riga drivers developed as an independent company from the company of cloth merchants ( garment tailors ); they are mentioned both in Riga city debt registers and in documents and other records of the city of Stralsund. The company called itself "St. Anne's Brotherhood".
The original location of the altar is difficult to determine. The Nikolaikirche was a Catholic procession church; There were no community chairs in it, but side altars donated by brotherhoods, offices, patrician families or traders in addition to the high altar and the cross altar. In a visitation protocol after the Reformation , the Nikolaikirche is described except for the south aisle. Since the altar of the Riga drivers is missing in the protocol, it can be assumed that it was located in the same south aisle. In a source from 1465 the stalls are described as "standing in front of the clearing stole"; An iron oxide red can be seen on the back wall of the panels. From this it can actually be concluded that the stalls stood on a column, which is now called the "colorful column". A source from the middle of the 17th century mentions a location "in the middle of the hall", i.e. in the nave of the church. Wilhelm Hagemeister based his presentation on a location on the north side, Ernst von Haselberg also took on this in 1902. However, this is unlikely; the Buchholz organ stands here today , and the place in no way corresponds to the descriptions given.
Manufacture
The colored relief, made of oak, was probably created by a Stralsund artist. It was created around 1360 to 1370. There is no documentary evidence of where it originated, but some details indicate that it was made on site. On the one hand, it was unlikely that such a large carving would be transported at the time, as the Riga drivers could have had it made at home. There are also a few details in the depiction that suggest that the artist is ignorant of the location: the leaves of the trees are very finely worked out, but cannot be assigned to any known tree species. Fur hunting also took place in winter; the Mediterranean-looking trees, however, still have their full foliage. The representation of the city on panel four is also very finely executed. A clear assignment to a city is not possible, which would have been likely for an artist with local knowledge.
The panels were attached to the altar with pegs, which can still be seen today. They adorned the rear wall ( dorsal ) of the seats of the Riga drivers.
description
There are four relief panels carved from oak wood with the individual dimensions 86 × 98 cm and 86 × 104 cm. Three of the panels show fur hunting and forest beekeeping in Russia, the fourth panel shows the trade in these goods. The Russians are shown in their typical smocks and with twisted beards; this representation of the Russians is almost unique; there are few contemporary representations of this. It is incomprehensible what significance the different sized hats of the Russians have; possibly hunters of different rank.
The representations in detail
Panel A
The fur hunt is shown on the first panel. It takes place in the deciduous forest; an archer aims his arrow at an animal in the treetop that another is pointing at. The animal is probably a squirrel , whose fur was used to make the clothing called Feh . The depiction of the arrows, which are not tapered, suggests that the hide was the whole aim of the hunt; the animals were probably only stunned so as not to damage their fur. The animals stunned by the arrows were picked up by dogs. The hunter on the right scares the animals in the trees with his stick. In the lower area of the panel, sables or ermines are hidden in the roots of the trees.
The fact that the forest is shown leafy on the relief contradicts the fact that the hunt took place in winter.
Panel B
The second panel shows on the left one of the hunters pulling the hide of a captured animal; a dog sniffs the dead animal. Another archer is shown in the center of the relief, aiming at an animal in the treetops.
The depiction of forest beekeeping begins on the right edge of the picture. The forest beekeeper depicted hacks a hollow in a tree with an ax , the trunk of which is significantly thicker than that of the other trees by cutting the crown; it was thickened by the cap in order to attract colonies of bees. The bees that live in the tree produce honey and wax that are taken from the trunk by the breeders. The bear on the tree is used to illustrate the process of obtaining honey (and wax); the forest beekeeping was unknown in the Baltic Sea area, a bear with a pot indicated that honey was obtained here.
Plate C
The third panel shows the return of the successful hunters. The hunter shown on the left has an animal carcass attached to his belt; he defends himself against an attacking animal, possibly a wolf . The hunter shown on the right, who holds an animal carcass in his left hand and presses it against his body, is also defending himself against an animal.
Squirrels sit in the treetops and a dog runs at the feet of the returning hunters.
Panel D
The fourth panel shows the trade between Russians and Stralsund traders. The two Russians on the left in the picture offer wax and furs, both of which were extremely sought-after and valuable commodities in the Baltic Sea region and in Western Europe. The skins were used for clothing, the wax for making candles .
The hides offered were already pretreated and made durable (so-called tobacco products ), which was typical for the Riga traders; in other regions raw hides were usually traded.
In the right part of the relief a German trader and the gatekeeper of a city are shown. Both evidently shout something to the dealers; however, the inscription on the banners is only fragmentary and can therefore not be interpreted.
Both the Hanseatic merchant and the gatekeeper wear the typical pointed shoes.
The city has a stone city wall . This is in contrast to the interpretation of the city depicted as the Peterhof in Novgorod , which was demonstrably surrounded by wooden bridles. However, the city is probably Riga , as Friedrich von Keussler stated in 1921 and as Thomas Brück also interprets it. Brück considers the relief to be the oldest depiction of Riga.
The houses have pointed gables, as they were typical for Hanseatic cities in the Baltic Sea region. The spiers in the background are onion-shaped.
Artistic importance
After the Reformation, which in Stralsund was associated with a great loss of church objects, the relief panels were preserved, but were probably used elsewhere; it is proven that they were used in the footwell of the chairs of the Gewandhaus elders who rented their chairs in 1820. In 1840 the four panels are part of an overall picture of the church furnishings of St. Nikolai by a Stralsund man named Weinrauch in connection with the renovations; here the tablets were "rediscovered" in 1884. For the first time, the artistic importance of the panels has now been recognized and a rescue sought.
The color representation of the trading activity is almost unique. For this reason the panels are only shown behind glass; only very rarely are they awarded at exhibitions; the good preservation is mainly due to the constant climatic conditions in the church.
At the exhibition "The Parler and their beautiful style" in Cologne in 1978, the panels were presented to a broad public for the first time outside of Stralsund. In 1989 and 1990 they were part of the exhibition "Hanse - Reality and Myth" in Hamburg and Rostock . In 2006 they were shown in Dortmund in the exhibition "Far Worlds - Free City".
"Novgorod driver stalls"
The name Novgorodfahrergestühl only came into being in the 1960s, when Paul Heinze, for lack of consideration of the available Stralsund sources (a company of Novgorod drivers never existed here), wanted to classify the relief that was then known as Russia driver's chairs more precisely: Since the Novgorod Peterhof was very well known and a company in Lübeck the Novgorod driver existed parallel to the Riga driver, this confusion probably arose.
literature
- Sabine Maria Weitzel and Christoph Freiherr von Houwald: The reliefs of the Riga driver's stalls in St. Nikolai Stralsund (published by the Friends of St. Nikolai zu Stralsund eV), Stralsund 2010
- Thomas Brück: On the history of the Stralsund Riga drivers from the middle of the 14th to the beginning of the 17th century , in long-distance trade and trade policy of the Baltic cities in the Hanseatic city , Lüneburg 2001, pages 97-136
Exhibition catalogs
- Anton Legner (ed.): "The Parler and the beautiful style 1350–1400", handbook for the exhibition, Cologne 1978, volume 2, page 541
- Jürgen Bracker (Ed.): “The Hanseatic League - Reality and Myth, An Exhibition of the Museum of Hamburg History”, Hamburg 1989, Volume 1, Pages 291-293
- Jürgen Bracker (Ed.): "The Hanseatic League - Reality and Myth, An Exhibition of the Museum of Hamburg History", Hamburg 1989, Volume 2, Pages 176 f.
