Siegburg lion cloth

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The Siegburg lion fabric is a Samite pattern from Byzantium with six lions . The body of Archbishop Anno of Cologne , who was canonized in 1183 and who was regent of the Holy Roman Empire from 1063 to 1065 , was wrapped in lion cloth when buried in the Anno shrine in the former St. Michael Abbey in Siegburg in 1075 .

history

It is believed that the lion cloth was created in the 10th century. Since the names of the emperor Romanos and his older son Christophoros as co-emperor were mentioned on the fabric , the period from 921 to 931 was assumed to be likely for the creation. It is not known how the material got from Constantinople to Cologne and how it was part of the estate of the archbishop who was buried with it. A speculative assumption is that the lion's fabric at the end of the first millennium as part of the dowry with Otto II. Married Theophanu came to Germany.

The Anno Shrine was opened for the first time in 1862/1863 and the lion's cloth became known again. The skull of the brain was covered with another oriental fabric. Julius Lessing published in 1900 about the tissue collection at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin and showed in the publication the lion cloth as a panel painting , naming the dimensions of 80 cm high and 230 cm long. On the fabric, there are six lions, three each in two rows, heraldically adorned and shown confronted. It is believed that in the 19th century the fabric - mounted between two glass plates - was brought to the treasury. In 1901 and 1910 the Anno Shrine was opened a second and third time and both fabrics were shown at the Düsseldorf art exhibition.

During the Allied occupation of the Rhineland (1919–1930) as a result of the First World War , unlike the Rhineland occupation in 1936, the entire treasure, especially the shrines, was walled up in a cellar that was believed to be dry. In 1924 the cellar was broken into and it was found that the wooden cores of the shrines were rotten. The lion cloth had clumped together. The wooden cores of the shrines were replaced with new wood and the metal parts were reassembled and exhibited on the occasion of the Rhineland Exhibition (1925) with Wilhelm Ewald and Bruno Kuske in the hussar barracks in Cologne. The hussar barracks in Cologne received the name Haus der Rheinische Heimat in 1936 with the National Socialists .

In a letter from Otto von Falke in the mid-1920s it was stated that the lion's cloth cannot be saved in its entirety, he wants to save what can be saved, i.e. That is, dry the fabric and, if possible, have a regenerative effect on it . His work was only partially successful and the pastor and prorector saw the remains of cloth between two glass plates in the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts in the Old Castle.

In 1952, when the treasure of the Servatius Church in Siegburg was published, it was not without recklessness that the lion's cloth was reported as having been lost, with the assumption that it had been burned in the Second World War . In 1972 Hans Wentzel considers the lion cloth in the Aachen art papers to be destroyed or lost. In 1980 the Italian art historian Laura D'Amo studied lion cloth in Köpenick Castle, and describes two fragments mounted one below the other, below 152.5 cm × 42.5 cm, above 79.2 cm × 34 cm, and calls the state fort mauvais . Leonie von Wilkens seems to have never seen the lion cloth. In 1984 (!?) Anna Muthesius reports the discovery of the lion's cloth in Köpenick. In 1990 Laura D'Amo inquired again about the state of the lion's cloth in connection with a congress on Byzantine silks in Rome. After the fall of the Berlin Wall , the lion's cloth was shown to a larger group of experts for the first time and the St. Servatius parish in Siegburg commissioned the German Textile Museum with the conservation and restoration.

The lion cloth is exhibited today in the St. Servatius Treasury and Healing Chamber.

literature

  • Carl-Wolfgang Schümann : The Byzantine lion cloth from Siegburg. His fate in the 20th century and its restoration in the German Textile Museum Krefeld - conservation of a Byzantine silk fabric. In: Michael Braunsteiner, Heimo Kaindl (Hrsg.): Historical textiles from the sacred area. Importance and use. Research and conservation (= writings on the art and cultural history of the Benedictine monastery Admont. Vol. 7). Benediktinerstift Admont et al., Admont et al. 1998, ISBN 3-901810-02-1 , pp. 18–20, (Colloquium as part of the Admont Talks on historical textiles from the sacred area, conference, 6th and 7th November 1996 in the Benedictine monastery Admont).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Archdiocese of Cologne: Löwenstoff. In: Siegburg Treasury and Medical Chamber. Archdiocese of Cologne, accessed on November 12, 2019 .