Caspar David Friedrich exhibition in Weimar: sensual present | EUROtoday

Als Caspar David Friedrich wirklich noch unbekannt battle, im Jahr 1805 (er battle damals dreißig und hatte noch kein einziges Ölbild gemalt), schickte er am 25. August zwei Sepiazeichnungen nach Weimar an den hochberühmten Goethe. Der hatte die jähr­liche „Weimarer Preisaufgabe“ ausgeschrieben: Darstellungen der Taten des Herkules sollten eingereicht werden. Friedrich aber lieferte zwei Motive ab, die man als um zweitausend Jahre am Thema vorbeigezeichnet ansehen musste: eine christliche Wallfahrt bei Sonnenuntergang und einen Herbstabend am winter­lichen See. Keine Spur von Arkadien oder an­tikischer Heroik, geschweige denn irgendeines Tatendrangs.

Except for that of the Dresden-based artist himself, who concluded his accompanying letter with the sentence: “If lovers are found, the price of each drawing is 25 th.” So Friedrich did not need to compete for victory within the competitors, however slightly to be exhibited on the market. But he gained, as a result of Goethe was enthusiastic and had the perfection of the craftsmanship acknowledged within the jury’s assertion as an alternative of the success of the theme, and so each males got here off nicely: Friedrich acquired 180 thalers for his two footage as an alternative of the hoped-for gross sales proceeds of fifty, however Goethe saved the sepia drawings. And Friedrich remained in his reminiscence as a extremely unique artist. An enthusiasm that Goethe handed on to his Duke Carl August, who in 1810, after Friedrich had began portray, bought 5 footage without delay from the artist – right this moment one would say: the primary main public buy. Even earlier than the well-known “Monk by the Sea” and the “Abbey in the Eichwald” by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III.

In brief: Nowhere else was anybody all for Friedrich as early as in Weimar. And nowhere else, so to talk, has so little curiosity on this pioneering act. Weimar sees itself as a metropolis of classical music, not romanticism. Especially since just one image of the Friedrich Ensemble from 1810 continues to be right here right this moment: the divine “Bohemian Landscape”. Two footage from Carl August’s buy grasp in different German cities, one was stolen by American troopers in the summertime of 1945 (it’s nonetheless lacking right this moment), and the fifth is now not even identified what it regarded like. But for a very long time this was not identified about Friedrich’s letter to Goethe on August 25, 1805.

This letter is now being exhibited for the primary time as a part of the exhibition “Caspar David Friedrich, Goethe and Romanticism in Weimar” that has simply opened. It was present in a fascicle within the Goethe-Schiller archive, however its state of preservation is so unstable that the preliminary spark can solely final till subsequent weekend, when the fragile written object should vacate its place in a show case originally of the exhibition circuit. So, Friedrich pals: rapidly to Weimar, and no excuse for having already been to Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, and presumably additionally Schweinfurt and Greifswald on this anniversary 12 months. The remaining level of the German Friedrich dance is the place the place the profession started. And after the mind-blowing and generally plowing-under materials battles of the massive exhibits, you be taught to suppose for your self once more right here. And this can actually proceed within the greater than three months that issues proceed with out Friedrich’s letter to Goethe.

Both most likely solely met 3 times, and by no means in Weimar, the place Friedrich stopped by as soon as: on July 8, 1811, he visited the Anna Amalia Library and signed its visitor ebook (that is additionally on show within the exhibition). Neither of them wrote to one another anymore after 1805, preferring as an alternative to have their mutual communications despatched by mutual acquaintances. The position of the Dresden painter Louise Seidler was excellent – what the exhibition manages to convey with succinct precision with only a hundred objects is the event of the Central German community that developed round Friedrich and Goethe: Philipp Otto Runge, Caroline Bardua, Carl Gustav Carus, Johanna Schopenhauer, Gerhard von Kügelgen. But the inventive coronary heart of Germany beat in Weimar, a small state that was a significant mental energy. The exhibition is predicated on this and, based on Annette Ludwig, director of the Weimar Museum Association, intentionally selected “the small, intimate format”. And achieves an incredible efficiency.

The present exhibits all the things that Weimar von Friedrich owns right this moment (three work, eight drawings, a sketchbook, 5 graphics, two autographs), in addition to works and testimonies from the aforementioned community. Only ten loans had been requested, and at first look they are not even spectacular. But it completely enhances the exhibition’s concept of ​​the connection between classicism and romanticism when two early Friedrich watercolors come from the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, with which he illustrated two scenes from Schiller’s “Robbers” in 1799. The grasp romantic liked the Weimar classics; His Weimar portray, which has been lacking since 1945, was additionally created as an adaptation of a Goethe poem, “Schäfer’s Lamentation” from 1803, which Friedrich set within the acquainted surroundings of the island of Rügen. Goethe will need to have been very charming.

How a lot he valued Friedrich’s expertise is made clear by one other discovery: the beforehand unknown drawing of a chunk of meadow that Friedrich made on January 1, 1807 and will need to have despatched to Goethe. It lay unrecognized amongst his personal botanical drawings till the exhibition was ready.

In return for their very own loans to the Dresden anniversary present (FAZ from August twenty fourth), two Friedrich drawings with related motifs had been despatched from there, dated two days earlier than and two days after January 1st, 1807. And then there may be the one mortgage of a Friedrich portray: “Cross (with Crown of Thorns) in the Mountains” from 1823 arrived from Gotha and flanks the best Weimar Friedrich superstar: the portray “Hutten’s Grave”, which was created on the similar time, and which isn’t identified is aware of when it even entered the grand ducal assortment. We now know which names Friedrich depicted as graffiti on the grave monument: Jahn, Arndt and Stein as representatives of the German resistance towards Napoleon, who the artist loathed, had been identified, however within the newly created Weimar archaeometry laboratory (whose analysis outcomes are a part of the native Friedrich stock create your individual extremely attention-grabbing ground of the exhibition – plan time for this, if solely due to the reconstruction fantasy concerning the image “Moon over the Moon, which has been drastically cropped to a panoramic format Riesengebirge” (Weimar’s third portray), the three different names might now even be deciphered: Krug, Görres and Tzschirner – every of them propagandists for the Greek wrestle for freedom. Friedrich, who was decried as a nationalist, immediately turns into an internationalist.

One of Friedrich’s largest sepia drawings additionally hangs in the identical room: “Hünengrab am Meer”, the primary work bought by the Weimar court docket in 1808. For his surroundings, the illustrator used his templates from the “Karlsruhe Sketchbook”, which was just lately acquired for the museums in Berlin, Dresden and Weimar and might now be seen right here. But solely till January, when it travels to New York to grace the primary American Friedrich retrospective (on the Metropolitan Museum). The “Dresden Sketchbook” will take its place in Weimar for the remainder of the exhibition, which by no means left the Saxon capital after Friedrich’s demise in 1840. This is how the exhibition collection continues. But nowhere else was and can be like in Weimar: so concentrated and so sensual.

Caspar David Friedrich, Goethe and Romanticism in Weimar. In the Schiller Museum, Weimar; till March 2, 2025. The complete catalog, printed by Hatje Cantz, prices 29 euros within the exhibition, in any other case 40 euros.