Walter Dodde and the mountain farmers at the battle of Worringen

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Walter Dodde and the Bergisch farmers at the Battle of Worringen (Peter Janssen the Elder)
Walter Dodde and the mountain farmers at the battle of Worringen
Peter Janssen the Elder , 1893
Oil on canvas
412 × 600 cm
Düsseldorf City Hall (Jan Wellem Hall)

Walter Dodde and the Bergische Bauern at the Battle of Worringen , also The Bergische Bauern in the Battle of Worringen or The Battle of Worringen , is the title of a monumental historical picture by Peter Janssen the Elder .

It shows how the lay brother or monk Walter Dodde, depicted as a rider in a Dominican robe on a white, cold-blooded horse , joined the Bergischen farmers, followers of Count Adolf V. von Berg , at the Battle of Worringen on June 5, 1288 cheered on their fight against the troops of the Archbishop of Cologne Siegfried von Westerburg . According to tradition, the peasants went into the slaughter with the battle cry “Hya, Berge romerijke” (high, glorious mountain), causing great damage to allies because they could hardly distinguish between friend and foe. The result of the battle, in which the Bergisch farmers were ascribed a large share, not only decided the Limburg succession dispute , but also shifted the previously dominant position of power in Kurköln in favor of the Counts of Berg and Mark .

The victorious Count von Berg manifested his triumph not only through demands for ransom and a contract of atonement through which the captured Archbishop of Cologne regained his freedom on May 19, 1289, but also through the granting of city rights to Düsseldorf on August 14, 1288 , which rose to the capital and residence of the Duchy of Berg around a hundred years later. Since the Battle of Worringen is generally interpreted as the historical starting point of the rivalry between Cologne and Düsseldorf , the painting has this additional meaning in addition to the reference to the brave efforts of the peasants as the founding myth of the city.

The painting was commissioned from the painter in 1889, one year after the commemorative year of the Battle of Worringen and the 600th anniversary of the town charter, by the pensioner Carl Weiler, a local patriotic citizen of the city of Düsseldorf, who later died in Vienna . The monumental oil painting with the color character of a fresco on a 412 cm high and 600 cm wide canvas was not completed until 1893 . Several of Janssen's students are said to have participated in the execution. In the same year, a smaller replica of the painting, which Janssen had painted with his own hands, measuring 115 cm by 150 cm, was presented to the general public at the first Great Berlin Art Exhibition in the Berlin Exhibition Palace . The jury awarded the artist, who was considered an important representative of the Düsseldorf Art Academy , the Düsseldorf School of Painting and pathetic-patriotic history painting during the Wilhelminian era , with a “great gold medal”. The award was presented by the German Emperor Wilhelm II. The picture was also celebrated as a “great work of art” in Düsseldorf. Friedrich Schaarschmidt , a Janssen student and chronicler of 19th century painting in Düsseldorf, wrote in 1902:

“There is something in it of the furor teutonicus of which the great Chancellor once spoke; a storm like before a thunderstorm, before the first hot drops fall, passes through the picture, a movement of courage to fight and a defiant sense of strength, as has been characteristic of German beings for thousands of years. "

The original monumental picture, which was intended by its client for an exhibition in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf , which was inaugurated in 1881 , hung for a long time in the Jan Wellem Hall of the Düsseldorf City Hall . In 1932 the picture was given to the Düsseldorf City Museum . In 2007 it became the property of the Museum Kunstpalast Foundation , Düsseldorf. In the same year it was hung there again after the Jan Wellem Hall had been renovated. The Düsseldorf brewery Schumacher has the smaller, handwritten replica.

Peter Janssen the Elder

The picture ties in with the Düsseldorf tradition of the large-format history picture painted on canvas. Influences of Carl Friedrich Lessing's main work Hus in front of the stake (1850) can be proven. Janssen's connection to Lessing is particularly expressed in the depiction of “individually designed people in the foreground, who, in connection with the figures in the middle and background, create the impression of a difficult to understand crowd, and that in the realistic, also in the color, reinforces the anecdotal gives every farmer a different face ”(Dietrich Bieber, Ekkehard Mai ).

About the pictures and painting Janssens whose mural once with the works of Michelangelo and Tiepolo were compared, which was art history but soon time. The artist was also hardly included in the general appreciation of 19th century art that began in the second half of the 20th century. The academic youth of Düsseldorf noticed already at the time of creation that Pothmann , the model most frequently employed by Janssen, appears in different figures in the picture. According to an anecdote by Peter Janssen the Younger , the painting was mockingly called “The fight of the Pothmen against the Pothmen”.

literature

  • Dietrich Bieber: Peter Janssen as a history painter. On the Düsseldorf painting of the late 19th century . Habelt-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-77491-602-9 , 2 volumes, Bonn 1979, text volume, p. 262 ff.
  • Dietrich Bieber, Ekkehard Mai : Gebhardt and Janssen - Religious and monumental painting in the late 19th century . In: Wend von Kalnein (Ed.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , pp. 180, 356 (catalog no. 121)
  • The battle of Worringen . In: The Gazebo . Issue 30, 1864, pp. 480 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Weidenhaupt : From Düsseldorf's past. Essays from four decades . Verlag der Goethe-Buchhandlung, Düsseldorf 1954, p. 156
  2. ^ Friedrich Schaarschmidt : On the history of Düsseldorf art, especially in the XIX. Century . Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia, Düsseldorf 1902, p. 312 f.
  3. ↑ New painting for Jan-Wellem-Saal , article from November 8, 2007 in the portal rp-online.de , accessed on August 14, 2018
  4. ↑ Anna Klapheck : The mural as a sermon. The Düsseldorf history painter Peter Janssen . In: Rheinische Post , October 18, 1980, reprint in the portal phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de (Frauen-Kultur-Archiv), accessed on October 2, 2016