Rococo in miniature
Rococo en miniature - The castles of the vaunted island is the name of a permanent exhibition in the Thuringian State Museum Heidecksburg in Rudolstadt . The exhibition presents the fantasy world The vaunted island with the great empires Pelariums and Dyonia . Both kingdoms represent a miniature rococo world that Gerhard Bätz and Manfred Kiedorf created together over the course of more than 50 years.
history
Gerhard Bätz and Manfred Kiedorf, both of 1952 in Sonnenberg training as use recruiters began, met in business school know. They shared a passion for playing battle games with armies of Halma stones , which started out under the school desk at first. This soon turned into living room battles with cannons loaded with match heads . The figures were given uniforms and faces painted with poster paint, feet were glued under, and an initial hierarchy of straw stones was created. The Halmaststein characters were refined more and more, from them kings and subjects and the first castles made of foldable cardboard emerged. A role-playing game developed that became more and more sophisticated.
When Manfred Kiedorf contrasted the Halmaststeine with a first figure on a scale of 1:50, the end of the “Halmasteinzeit” was initiated. Two realms have now emerged, which meanwhile comprise ten castles with detailed interiors made up of around 1,000 individual figures and 1,000 furnishings, which is probably unique in this scope and attention to detail in the German-speaking area. At the beginning the work was accompanied by a certain naivety. That changed later through intensive preoccupation with historical models and reading specialist literature, supplemented by visits to castles in the vicinity. This is expressed in the impressive authenticity of style in the buildings, which can be compared with the real historical models in terms of architecture and display of splendor. However, the aim was not to create castle models that had been reconditioned as a museum, but rather Bätz and Kiedorf wanted the castles to have scope for imaginary figures. The castles are inhabited by hundreds of individuals with names, family trees and all sorts of quirks.
The vaunted island
The world created in the imagination of Bätz and Kiedorf is located on the vaunted island , a large land mass that is divided into two kingdoms by the border river Dempa , Dyonia in the Jonadent (east) and Pelariums in the Pezident (west). The sun rises in Pezident and sets in Jonadent , at noon it is in Filipent (north), the fourth main direction is called Anadent (south). The vaunted island , surrounded by water and some smaller islands , is part of the fantasy planet Centus , which is said to be located exactly behind the moon and therefore cannot be seen from earth.
Right from the start of their role-play, Bätz and Kiedorf came up with a language of their own for the inhabitants of the vaunted island, Pezanian , which can be found in many of the letters and poems of the two creators. The language is based on thought associations and borrowings from the Sonneberg dialect .
Kingdom of Pelaria
The Kingdom of Pelariums was created by Gerhard Bätz. On display are Perenz Castle, the Court Church of Perenz Castle, the Perenz Castle kitchen and a column of shame ("Bas column"). The kingdom of Pelaria is ruled by King Talari III.
Kingdom of Dyonia
The Kingdom of Dyonia was created by Manfred Kiedorf. The castles Pyrenz and Eulenlust, the Prinzenpalais Musenhofen, the hunting lodge Dyona, the monastery Heilig Schläuchen, the Dyonic mausoleum, the great castle ruin Grauenstein, the Dyonic audit office, the temple of light and a small ruin in the castle park of Pyrenz are shown. Queen Onide I is the regent of the Kingdom of Dyonia.
exhibition
Until the end of the GDR , the miniatures were only known to a very small group. Only after German reunification was there a first exhibition in Sonneberg in 2000 . Then Bätz and Kiedorf presented their miniature buildings in the traveling exhibition The castles of the vaunted island to a broad public. Within seven years, the miniature Rococo castles were shown in Gotha , Erfurt , Weesenstein Castle , Wernigerode , Fulda , Bad Arolsen , Altena and Bergisch Gladbach .
In 2006, the Thuringian State Museum Heidecksburg in Rudolstadt succeeded in purchasing Bätz 'and Kiedorf's joint life's work of world-class museum quality. As an addition to the ballrooms and living rooms of the real residential palace of the princes of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt , the castles of the vaunted island have found their final home in the restored rooms of the former princely court kitchen. The incomparable one-offs can be seen there in a permanent exhibition since June 2007.
Their extensive correspondence plays a central role in understanding the total work of art by Bätz and Kiedorf. Around 2,500 letters from both of them are kept in the museum archive.
Quotes
“You don't know Dyonia and Pelaria, the two splendid kingdoms of the vaunted island ? That is fatal! The friends Gerhard Bätz and Manfred Kiedorf started spinning their ornate 1:50 dream world as youngsters in the fifties. Private tinkering, poetry and fantasizing lasted a lifetime and countless hours.
Now Rococo en miniature with its unbelievable castles, grandiose festivities and weird court closets forms its own wonderfully crazy private universe at Heidecksburg Castle - the ideal image of the Thuringian residence "
literature
- Helga Kämpf-Jansen, Jens Henkel (ed.): Rococo en miniature. The castles of the vaunted island. Thuringian State Museum Heidecksburg, Rudolstadt 2007, ISBN 978-3-910013-67-4 .
- Reinhild and Peter Schneider (eds.): The castles of the praised island. Rococo en miniature by Gerhard Bätz and Manfred Kiedorf. Kunstverlag, Gotha 2000, ISBN 3-931182-24-X .
- Peter Juppenlatz: Rokokolores für Zwei , In: Stern , Heft 12, p. 202 from March 16, 2000.
- Ulli Kulke: Build up, build up! In: Die Welt , January 28, 2009.
- Petra Ahne: Heart is splendor. In: Berliner Zeitung , October 18, 2003.
- Juliane Groh: The castles of the vaunted island. Imaginative from Gerhard Bätz and Manfred Kiedorf. Master's thesis at Friedrich Schiller University Jena 2008.
- Matthias Thalheim: Jewels of a backward utopia. In: Neues Deutschland , August 13, 2015.
DVD
- From the lust for splendor. A film by Ria Weber, Telepool and Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk , Landesfunkhaus Thuringia 2007 (total running time approx. 44 minutes)
Radio broadcasts
- "Oh you nymphs who live in the trees" - two painting bohemians in Weimar in the fifties. Memories by Manfred Kiedorf, directed by Matthias Thalheim, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk 1993
- The castles of the vaunted island. Gerhard Bätz and Manfred Kiedorf in the residences of their imagination. An audio image. Editing and direction: Matthias Thalheim, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk 2007
Web links
- Rococo en miniature - The castles of the vaunted island Exhibition in the Thuringian State Museum Heidecksburg