The Bauhaus School at Dessau

In 1925 the Bauhaus School moved to Dessau (near Berlin) where the new building was designed by Walter Gropius and completed in 1926.

The Bauhaus School Dessau, 1925-6

Marylouise Blog on Bauhaus Dessau has shown how Gropius' extensive facilities beautifully combined teaching, student housing, staff housing, an auditorium, offices, eating and other social facilities. These sections were all integrated: the school and work shops were connected via a bridge, over the Dessau Road. The administration was located on the lower level of the bridge, and on the upper level was the practice of architects, Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. The flats and the school building were connected via a wing to the communal facilities: assembly hall, theatre and dining room/canteen.

This radically modern building complex was built of starkly rectangular glass and concrete. The construction used the latest technological developments: a skeleton of reinforced concrete with brick workoom-shaped ceilings on the lower level, and roofs covered with asphalt tiles for walking. It was considered a fine piece of architectural design at the time, and is on the World Heritage List now. iainclaridge.net has a link to the most beautiful photographs of the building interiors I have ever seen.

Canteen

One detached Director's House became home to Gropius for a number of years. Three semi-detached Masters' houses housed the masters. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger initially occupied the first semi-detached house; Georg Muche and Oskar Schlemmer lived in the centre one; Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee shared the third. Again nothing was accidental. The masters’ homes were specifically planned to be models for students. Although the building costs were not cheap, students learnt how to create functional, modern, sleek homes. The three homes were all fitted out with a veranda and roof terrace, and all had working space for the artist and his family. Only the inside could be personalised with the artists' favourite colours and fittings. All fittings were of course Bauhaus designed and made.

Masters' House

Bringing the building in on budget was possible only due to the hearty assistance of Bauhaus teachers and students. But it wasn’t their charity. Cooperation in design was explicitly viewed as an ideal means of education.

Many thanks to Bola Sociology Design who indicated that the building has become a youth hostel in Design: Bauhaus Dessau. I don’t suppose the accommodation is grand or the bathrooms private, but visitors do get to see the pared back architecture and minimalistic furniture that Bauhaus students lived in from 1925-1933. The chairs in the hostel’s bedrooms and canteen were of designed by another famous Bauhaus master from the 1920s, Marcel Breuer.

Modern hostel bedroom, using an old student room from Bauhaus days

The Bauhaus’s next very important architectural commission in 1926-7 was an experimental housing project in Dessau’s Torten estate, not far from the School. Following the master architect Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus School felt that architecture should not be tied to any one culture. Architecture should be international in its style, intentionally designed to be mass produced with simplicity and adaptable to all cultures. The rectangle had been regarded as an ideal form by the De Stijl artists, and was fully adopted by the Bauhaus at Torten.

Torten Estate, Dessau

Torten was built with standardised concrete parts, made on site. Gropius was the architect, assisted by Hannes Meyer’s students. The initial construction of each house took only three days. They weren’t the most beautiful homes ever built; the mass produced interiors in particular were very austere! But 314 ordinary families suddenly found that they afford to buy a house and garden for the first time. The estate also contained a block of flats with shops beneath, the Konsum building.

PRESERVE THE MODERN  and SBeige blogs visited Torten Estate and found several units were open to visitors. I wish these blogs had provided some internal and external photos. It would be amazing to visit Torten now, some 83 years after Gropius and the students completed their project.

Degenerate Art in Dresden 1933 - I was wrong !

At the Modernity in German Art 1910-1937 Exhibition at the NGV in Melbourne this year, I read an amazing piece of historical information. The huge and popular Munich Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937 was not the first of its kind, as I had firmly believed. The forerunner of Munich, called Reflections of Decadence, had been held in the inner courtyard of the Dresden Town Hall in Sep-Oct 1933. How amazing!

Jacqueline Strecker noted that Dresden was already a conservative city politically and that the newly appointed director of the Dresden Art Academy was even more conservative. The Lord Mayor of Dresden was dressed in full Nazi uniform when he toured the exhibition in 1933.

But what does it mean when we note that the first decadent art exhibition was put on by the Nazis in 1933 and not in 1937?  Simple... the Nazis had clearly worked out their ideology as soon as they came to power! Thus no one in Germany could say in 1933 that they didn't realise what Nazism was going to mean for the country and its citizens.

The Reflections of Decadence exhibition from Dresden eventually toured to at least eight German cities between 1934 and 1936, before it was finally incorporated into the much larger and more infamous Degenerate Art Exhibition held in Munich. I don't have a catalogue from the Dresden show, so it is difficult to track the individual works of art by name.  But I do know two of Dix's paintings, The Trench (1923) and War Cripples (1920), that appeared in the Dresden exhibition.

Naum Slutzky, Female bust, 1931

Further information about this elusive 1933 exhibition came from a most unlikely source. During archaeological excavations carried out in Berlin in 2010, 11 pieces of modernist art were unexpectedly dug up and revealed. Created between 1918 and 1930, these bronze and ceramic sculptures by Marg Moll, Emy Roeder, Edwin Scharff, Naum Slutzky, Karl Knappe, Gustav Heinrich Wolff, Otto Baum and Otto Freundlich had been declared degenerate and had been put into the Dresden exhibition.

Given that some 21,000 art works produced by Cubist, Expressionist, Dadaist, Fauvist, Surrealist and New Objectivity artists were about to be removed by the Nazis from museums, sold abroad (eg auctioned in Lucerne) to earn foreign exchange or thrown onto a bonfire (1,004 paintings), no-one had expected any of the 1933 art horde to be intact. I would love to know how these works ended up in a Berlin subterranean hidey hole. Was it a fan of modernism, hiding the works from Nazi predators? Or was someone so disgusted by modernist art that he/she buried the pieces to destroy them?

Some of these Dresden exhibits went on to be part of the infamous Nazi propaganda exhibition in Munich eg Marg Moll’s Dancer c1930, Emy Roeder’s Pregnant Woman 1918 and Otto Baum’s Girl Standing 1930. Were the other modernist artists (Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Barlach, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Otto Dix, Ernst, Max Beckmann, Gerhard Marcks, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Otto Nagel, George Grosz and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff) not identified at degenerate as early as 1933? I am sure they were, but so far there is no evidence that their art was included in the Dresden exhibition. Or perhaps sculptures survived underground for 70 years or more, but paintings perished.

Dix, The Trench, 1923. Bought by the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.

Bernd Reinhardt and Sybille Fuchs asked what made the Nazis respond so aggressively to modern art? The outlawed artists were accused of having fought on the side of artistic degradation during the years of Russian and Jewish assault on German art. The Nazis developed their hostility to modern art in the shadow of the unstable Weimar society, whose middle classes felt battered by crisis and sensed imminent disaster. This art offered a glimpse of how "international" the world had become, and it reflected the world’s contradictions and fractures. Naum Slutzky, whose 1931 sculpture of a female bust (see photo) was found in the Berlin excavations, worked with the Bauhaus in Weimar. The Nazis thought his bust was ugly, Jewish, anti German, internationalist, modernist and did not reflect well on German women. What was worse for the Nazis, Slutzky was Russian born and educated.

The 11 art works dug up in 2010 offer a glimpse of the cultural wealth and vibrant artistry destroyed by the Nazis. They also point to the gaps that the thefts caused in museum collections. Fortunately some of the lost art objects can be seen in Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive.

Origins of Guide Dogs for the Blind

I am besotted with labradors and thought, briefly, of putting my beloved labrador puppy into a training school for guide dogs. But Rudy was too playful and too distractible to take a blind person across our kitchen, let alone a busy street. In any case, his main goals in life were to locate pieces of dried liver and to run on the beach.

Puppies waiting for training (when they turn 12 months)

That led me to consider the history of training dogs for guiding blind people. I easily found 73 blogs and newspaper articles, but they all used the same words and they mostly started their history of guide dogs in the 1920s. Alas I don’t read German and have to rely on secondary sources, so my contribution will largely be the story as it was found in World War One records and images.

Invisible Paris blog wrote in 15-20 Vision that King Louis IX created the original Quinze-Vingts hospital in 1260. The King certainly wanted to look after the blind people of Paris but he was mainly motivated by the many soldiers who were returning from the Crusades and suffering from enemy-inflicted blindness. There are some suggestions that dogs were trained to work with the blind at this Paris hospital, at least when the hospital moved to a better site in 1780.

Vienna in 1819 was the critical city, as soon as Johann Wilhelm Klein became the founder of the Austria Institute for the Blind. The International Guide Dog Federation noted that Klein wrote about training guide dogs in his book on educating blind people, but it is not clear whether his ideas were carried out in practice or not. Still, a Swiss citizen called Jakob Birrer wrote in 1847 about his experiences of being guided over a period of five years by a trained dog. He may have been referring to Klein’s centre.

Dogs and handlers in the German army, World War 1

The historical details from the C19th become more firm when we learn of a smart breed of dogs, as Tiffany Proctor described. That breed was founded in 1899 by Capt Max von Stephanitz. He had been viewing a dog show where he saw what he believed to be the ideal sheep dog. The dog was then purchased and propagated by Stephanitz who, in time, became the founding father of the breed called German Shepherd Dogs. The German Shepherd or Alsatian breed grew and grew, and because of its intelligence and obedience, went on to star in seeing-eye work.

The labrador dog has been recognised as a great retriever and gun dog for hundreds of years. But I cannot find when the breed’s loyalty and willingness to learn made it absolutely ideal for seeing-eye work.

Most writers suggest that the biggest push in the 20th century was when dogs were used to lead blinded German soldiers during World War One. Formal, systematic training of guide dogs was started by Dr. Gerhard Stalling who opened the world's first guide dog school for the blind at Oldenburg in August 1916 and the second in Potsdam. The school flourished and new branches opened all over Germany, turning out some 600 dogs a year. Stalling's training became the role model for training guide dogs across the rest of the world.

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World War I trenches, men and dogs

Olive Drab blog in History of War Dogs agreed that dogs were invaluable to the German army in WW1. The Germans reported use of over 30,000 dogs as messenger and ambulance dogs, but I cannot find how many dogs were used/trained specifically to assist the blind. Photos of soldiers in trenches from firstworldwar.com show the dogs actively involved, but their exact role is unclear.

Gassed 1918, by John Singer Sargent

A painting by John Singer Sargent, now in the Imperial War Museum London, showed rows of soldiers who had been blinded by mustard gas. This is exactly the sort of situation that the trained German army dogs specialised in.

Meissen: the town and its porcelain

Being a passionate collector and admirer of early European porcelain, I had been very interested to read how Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and Chinese porcelain fanatic, was desperate to crack the secret that the Chinese had held for so long. Augustus had been spending too big a portion of his annual royal budget on importing porcelain, and he believed it should have been possible to create porcelain at home. Equally exquisite, but far cheaper!

Each Elector of Saxony lived in Albrechtsberg castle, built in the C15th as a late Gothic royal residence. In 1705 Augustus the Very Strong set up a secret laboratory within his castle walls. He imprisoned the alchemist Johann Friedrich Boettger (1682-1719) and others in his castle and probably would have kept them there for life, in order to find the magical formula.

Fortunately for Boettger, he discovered the formula. The first successful experiment took place in 1708 and within two years, the good citizens of Saxony were delighted to see European-created porcelain. Augustus the Strong immediately turned part of his castle into a porcelain factory, with workshops for hundreds of designers and craftsmen. Security against prying (royal) eyes from Vienna and other cities was paramount.

Albrechtsburg Castle and the Meissen Cathedral above the River Elbe

By the end of the C19th, the factory moved out of the Albrechtsburg which was by then looking a bit tatty. So the residential palace was renovated and the space that had been utilised as a porcelain factory was opened as a historical museum to the glories of the Saxon past. City pride expanded and soon after, Meissen’s cathedral was crowned with the skeletal spires in the late Gothic style that now lend such drama to this city. By the 1880s, Meissen was offering a splendid package-deal for tourists.

Albrechtsburg Castle Museum, historical murals

Apparently the exhibition put on at the Albrechtsburg for the 300th anniversary of Meissen porcelain in 2010 was particularly impressive. The exhibition hall presented a fine analysis on three centuries of porcelain manufactured by hand, including the porcelain made for Catherine the Great of Russia and the famous 3.5 m high centrepiece created for the dining table of King Augustus III.

When Joe and I were in Dresden, we found a brilliant 4-hour tour of the medieval city on the banks of the River Elbe. Situated only 25km northeast of Dresden, it is clear that the historic town of Meissen still owes its international reputation to its famous porcelain factory Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen GmbH. Its 1720 logo of two crossed swords, on the bottom of each porcelain object, is one of the oldest trademarks in existence and is still a guarantee of quality across the world.

The crossed swords logo was introduced in 1720 to protect the company’s exclusivity.

We were taken on a walk through the winding and quite steep medieval streets, and very much enjoyed Albrechtsburg castle and adjacent cathedral. It is not a coincidence that Meissen's historical district is located close to the market at the foot of the castle hill.

But the highlight of the excursion for me was going through the showrooms of the Meissen factory. The tour began with a short film on the history of the factory, the raw materials used and the processes adopted. In the following four rooms, the visitors saw how Meissen porcelain was made by hand. Relief-moulded cups were thrown, and parts of figures cast, at the workbenches of a thrower and modeller. The fettler then joined the parts of a figure together. Underglaze painting was demonstrated and the tour concluded with a display of overglaze painting. Floral decorations and painting based on oriental motifs were used to illustrate this multifaceted technique with its extensive nuances of colour.

On leaving Meissen, the tour offered a chance to stop for photos at the magnificent Moritzburg Castle. Nestled among woods and lakes, the former hunting grounds of Augustus the Strong were seen en route back to Dresden. But I don’t remember Moritzburg.

A painted Meissen porcelain circular bowl and cover, mid-C18th, auctioned by Toovey’s.

A useful porcelain reference can be found in Country Life Travel (Winter 2011-2). For fine photos of Meissen's main architecture, see Bird of Prey's nest.

Leica cameras and its Jewish employees: 1938

In 1849 Carl Kellner had established an optical institute in Wetzlar for the development of lenses and microscopes. Ernst Leitz I (1843-1920) became a partner in the company in 1865 and took over sole management in 1869. Ernst Leitz was a socially aware employer whose humanitarian attitude to his employees was best seen in his whole-hearted acceptance of health insurance, pension and housing schemes, and, by 1899, an eight-hour day. The number of his employees expanded to 120.

The first Leica camera prototypes were built by Oskar Barnack at Ernst Leitz Optische Werke, in Wetzlar (north of Frankfurt) in 1913. Intended as a compact camera for landscape photography, particularly for challenging mountain trips, the Leica was the first practical 35 mm camera. Soon after Ernst Leitz II (1871-1956) became sole owner of the business in 1920, the Leica prototypes had moved to the manufacturing stage. It was very successful.

Leica advertisement, 1938

Ernst Leitz II ran the company with the same humanitarian values his father had held, but in the years just before WW2 erupted in 1939, many companies were moving in the other direction - fostering a close association with the Nazi regime. So although there was still time to help their Jewish employees escape, very few companies bothered. Yet the Leitz family, designer and manufacturer of Germany's most famous photographic product, actually tried to save all its Jewish workers.

As soon as Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933, Ernst Leitz II increasingly got worried calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country. As Christians, Leitz and his family were protected from Nazi Germany 's Nuremberg laws, which controlled the work, movement and liberties only of Jews.

To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz carefully designed a programme that would allow Jews to leave Germany; they were Leitz employees who were simply  being "assigned" overseas. Employees, retailers and family members were each given a Leica camera and were assigned to Leitz sales offices in USA, France, Britain & Hong Kong.

And not just long-standing members of the firm. The Guardian said he began taking on a string of young Jewish apprentices from the town of Wetzlar, to train them from scratch so that they could work abroad. After their training, Leitz personally applied for an exit permit to send the new employees abroad, to assist in generating sales.

Particularly after the Kristallnacht catastrophe of November 1938, German employees travelled on the ocean liner Bremen and made their way to the Manhattan, London or Paris offices of Leitz Inc. Apparently an editor of the Leica Magazine called every Leitz account in Britain, France and the USA, to help place the new employees in local jobs in the photographic industry. Leitz paid full salary for 3 months, and half salary for the next three months! It must have been difficult at first since the recent arrivals couldn’t speak a word of English or French, but out of this migration came some of the best designers, repair technicians, salespeople and writers for the photographic press.

Ernst Leitz II (1871-1956)

The Leica Freedom Train, as the programme came to be called, peaked in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to safety every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland in Sept 1939, Germany sealed off its borders. By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had already escaped abroad, thanks to Leitz's heroic efforts. The programme saved their lives and the lives of their children.

How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it? Leitz Inc. was an internationally recognised brand that reflected credit on the powerful Third Reich and Leitz was a man above suspicion. The company produced range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also the German government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz's single biggest market for optical goods was the USA. To the Nazi government, the programme was transferring skilled salesmen abroad, to generate hard currency sales.

How ironic that, due to the Nazis' dependence on the military optics that Leitz's factory produced, as well as their belief in the importance of the Leica camera for their propaganda purposes, the company was able to get Jewish workers and their families out of Germany! The Guardian said that the government actually DID know what he was doing; that the Gestapo turned a blind eye, so important was it to them that production at the plant continued.

Even so, members of the Leitz family did not get off scot-free. One Leitz executive, Alfred Turk, was gaoled for helping Jews. Ernst Leitz's own daughter, Dr Elsie C. Kühn-Leitz (1903-85), was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland. Both Turk and Kühn-Leitz were eventually freed, but the risks were clearly very high.

In all, nearly 300 people benefited from the programme, perhaps two thirds in the USA and one third in Britain and other parts of Europe. Yet when Ernest Leitz II died in 1956, his efforts remained unrewarded, as far as I can see. His daughter Dr Kuhn-Leitz, on the other hand, received many honours for her humanitarian efforts. So if the story was known after the war, why has it been forgotten since? And why did the family insist that no story be published until the last member of the Leitz family was dead?

Read the book The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train, written by Rabbi Frank Dabba Smith. And a film is being made about the great courage of the Leitz family/company during the years leading up to WW2. The film, called One Camera, One Life, is being produced by Liz Boeder and Doris Bettencourt, and directed by Mark de Paola.

Degenerate Music, Dusseldorf 1938

It stands to reason that some nations profited immensely from the unexpected arrival of brilliant musicians and artists who fled Nazi Germany and Austria from 1933 on.  I certainly knew all about the visual artists from Nazi-controlled countries. But what happened to the musicians who were still in Germany before the war and what happened to those who came to Australia?

In 1938, senior Nazis wanted to open a Degenerate Music Exhibition in Dusseldorf, much like the Degenerate Art Exhibition that opened in Munich in 1937.  As fuzzy as the concept of Degenerate Art was, at least it was visually detectable – anything Jewish, Bolshevik, abstract, negroid, abstract, cubist or anti-Teutonic. But what was Degenerate Music?

catalogue cover, Degenerate Music Exhibition, 1938

Because the Dusseldorf curator in 1938, Dr Hans Ziegler, was an expert on theatre and was not a musicologist, he had no idea what “degenerate music” meant. But he was a very loyal member of the Nazi Party and did his best. Ziegler decided that a simple chord structure was inherently Germanic and natural. And anything which departed from tonality was basically Jewish and therefore degenerate. Hitler believed that music had absolutely immense power and that with music, a human personality could be shaped. Thus Dr Ziegler also thought that music was powerful, and that they needed to mould their fellow citizens along approved cultural lines.

The 1938 Degenerate Music Exhibition included works by Jewish composers or those with Jewish parents or grandparents (eg Felix Mendelssohn, Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill, Gustav Mahler), by socialists, by modernists and by jazz musicians. Why a right winger like Igor Stravinsky was included as a degenerate eludes me, but he was just as reviled as the Jewish and Jazz musicians were.

For this event, a small catalogue was published that included the opening-speech by Ziegler and Goebbels, quotations of Hitler's words, photographs, caricatures and paintings as they appeared in the exhibition.

Dr Ziegler must have done his job well. After Dusseldorf, the Degenerate Music Exhibition travelled to Weimar, Munich and Vienna, where the displays continued to be very popular.

Visitors to the Degenerate Music Exhibition, 1938. Anne Frank Museum photo.

No musician was safe from scrutiny or Nazi re-branding. In his recently published book Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon, Erik Levi explored the way in which the Nazi regime manipulated Mozart's music for political gain. Puccini and Verdi seemed to have been subject to a similar appropriation.

Now let us leap forward to the 1980s. Dr Albrecht Dumling is a Berlin-educated musicologist who was responsible for Entartete Musik in 1988, a reconstruction of the Nazis’ Degenerate Music Exhibition in Dusseldorf fifty years earlier (in 1938). How perfect that the reconstruction opened, of all possible places, in the Dusseldorf Tonhalle. The exhibition travelled to other countries, but alas did not come to Australia.

In 2003-4 the same Dr Dumling used the National Library of Australia’s music and manuscript collections to document both the personal experiences of refugee musicians and their professional contributions to the musical life of Australia. In his new book The Vanished Musicians: Jewish Refugees in Australia, 2011, he discussed the reception Australia offered to German-speaking refugee musicians who arrived in Australia from 1933 on.

book by Dr Dumling, The Vanished Musicians: Jewish Refugees in Australia, 2011

Australia should have felt blessed when world-famous Jewish musicians arrived on our shores. Consider Jascha Spivakovsky and the other two members of the trio (Nathan Tossy Spivakovsky and Edmund Kurtz), Artur Schnabel, Richard Tauber and Yehudi Menuhin and the conductor Maurice Abravanel. German born and educated Felix Werder was only 18 when he was imprisoned on the Dunera ship in 1940, so his splendid works, including his symphonies, chamber music, choral works and operas, were all written in Australia. The composer and bassoonist George Dreyfus was even younger when he left Germany in 1938, so he did all his musical studies in Australia.

How tragic that these Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazism at home, would be declared enemy-alien-Germans in Australia. Most were imprisoned in rural camps, in isolated Hay and Tatura.

The modern viewer wants to ask if at least the Musicians’ Union of Australia tried to save these professional musicians and composers during the late 1930s. Apparently not. The Musicians’ Union of Australia felt it was hard enough to find full-time work for “real” Australian citizens and applied pressure to the Immigration Department to turn foreign musicians away from our shores or put them in non-musical jobs.

The idiocy of making a truly gifted violinist become a shoe-maker must have seemed breath-taking. If a musician wanted citizenship in Australia in 1939, he was well advised to say he was a factory worker or farmer. Most did.

Spivakovsky-Kurtz Trio c1936, published in The Australian.

German Expressionist art - fakes!

An art copier has admitted in court in Cologne that he faked 14 modern paintings that sold for millions of euros (see The Age 29/9/11). Together with 33 other suspected forgeries not included in this indictment, the case is believed to be biggest art deception in Europe in living memory.  A total of three other people are accused of fraud in the same case, but those three are still awaiting their day in court.

Did anyone in the art world suspect that the 14 paintings were fakes? In the early 1990s the canvases were presented for sale to an auction house in Germany. The first warning that something may have been amiss didn’t come until 2008, when a George Grosz expert questioned the authenticity of the Gallery Fechtheim labels on the picture-backs. Two years later, word of possible forgeries had leaked out and the Berlin state criminal police started an investigation. Only now, in 2011, has 60 year old Wolfgang Beltracchi become the first of the four people accused of fraud to admit to the charges.

Campendonk, Man Horse Cow, c1918, 64 x 77 cm, private collection. Legitimate

The cost so far: €16 million in forgeries, resulting in total damages of €27 million. The list of fakes included works apparently by Max Pechstein, Heinrich Campendonk, Max Ernst, André Derain, Kees van Dongen and Fernand Léger. If I was designing a course for students on Expressionist artists, I could not have selected a better group of artists myself.

Rich investors were tricked into buying what were claimed to be long-lost paintings by these German and Dutch artists of the early 20th century. According to the story given to the auction house, the paintings had belonged to a rather secretive collector, Werner Jaegers. Werner who?

Jaegers was said to have been a client of Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937), the famous Jewish gallery owner whose business really WAS seized by the Nazis. Jaegers' granddaughters said he had bought this degenerate art from Flechtheim and had to hide it in the mountains near Cologne. Jaegers, according to the granddaughters' story, feared Nazi art-confiscators might discover his stash and take the offending pictures away. This was the reason, the women said, why the paintings were totally unknown by the modern art world.

Wolfgang Beltracchi, who had once been a student in an art school, had learned to copy art from his father, an art restorer who did replicas of the Old Masters. Beltracchi said he began copying on a professional basis in the 1970s, not because he liked the art market, the greedy dealers or the greedy buyers, but because he loved doing the paintings.

Why did Beltracchi choose to copy lesser known WW1 era expressionists and not, for example, Cezanne or van Gogh where he could have made more money per fake? I am assuming because a mother lode of previously unknown Cezannes and van Goghs would have provoked amazement in the art world, and therefore close scrutiny. WW1 expressionist works were less well known, more scarce and their prices were rising at a slow but acceptable pace. All that was missing was an adequate supply of new works, which Beltracchi and his team provided.

Campendonk, Landscape with Horses, 1915. Faked by Beltracchi

Judge Wilhelm Kremer said it was amazing that art collectors had not noticed the deception about the supposed collector, Werner Jaegers, who was in reality the grandfather of Wolfgang Beltracchi's wife and co-defendant. “Jaegers was supposed to have collected Rhineland expressionist artists from the age of 16 or 17”, said Judge Kremer incredulously. As it turned out Jaegers, who died decades ago, did not collect art at all.

My feeling is that Judge Kremer was overly optimistic. I probably know a little bit more about the pre and post-WW1 German Expressionists than the average person on the street, yet there is no way I would have picked up their fake status via inspection. Furthermore I most certainly would not have checked the provenance of a painting, IF the auction was being run by a reputable firm.

And examining the estimated prices for bargains that were too-good-to-be-true would not have been helpful either. In the biggest fake sale, Red Picture with Horses, supposedly painted by Heinrich Campendonk (1888-1957), sold at auction in Cologne for $A3.4 million. It was the highest price ever paid for work believed to be by the Rhineland expressionist - not a bargain at all!

According to German news magazine Der Spiegel, a famous American film star bought one of the forgeries in 2004, believing it to be a 1915 work called Landscape with Horses by Campendonk. If the film star’s expert art advisors didn’t pick the fake, there is no way that an ordinary art lover could have known.

In thinking in particular about Heinrich Campendonk, I would have been personally quite pleased to “rescue” one of his works. A German artist, he had been a member of the famous Der Blaue Reiter group in the years just before WW1 erupted in 1914. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was among the many modernists labelled as degenerate artists, his paintings were removed from German galleries and his career prospects were slim. He emigrated to the Netherlands where he spent the rest of his life working at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

van Dongen, La parisienne de Montmartre, 1911,  65x 54cm, Le Havre, Musée des Beaux-arts André Malraux. Legitimate 

I would have liked a Kees Van Dongen (1877-1968) as well. This Dutch artist began to exhibit in Paris, and participated in the controversial 1905 exhibition Salon d'Automne, along with the other artists who created the bright colours beloved by the Fauves. He was also a member of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke for a time. van Dongen's portraits of well dressed women with beautiful hats and jewellery were a delight.

van Dongen, Portrait of Woman in a Hat. Faked by Beltracchi

Like artnet, I would want to know how an art fraud of such magnitude could be so successful? How did all the control mechanisms in the art market fail so comprehensively? Clearly the supporting documentation was of no assistance since the collection’s authenticity was "confirmed" by fake documents and fake photographs.

Wagner's home: Wahnfried Haus

I knew that King Ludwig II of Bavaria largely bankrolled the Fest-spielhaus in Bayreuth, an opera house dedicated to the performance of Richard Wagner (1813–1883)'s works. But he also paid for the construction of Haus Wahnfried, in the same town, for the Wagner family.

The name of the villa is interesting. Wahnen means endless striving of an artist for the fulfilment of his aspirations and the triumph of his art. So Wahnfried (Wahnen free) was the name chosen and even today we can see Wagner's motto on the front: "Here where my delusions have found peace, let this place be named Wahnfried."

Wahnfried, front entrance, with King Ludwig's bust

Above the door is a giant mural, depicting Wotan, King of the Gods and the philandering wanderer, being welcomed by classical women. We should also note that Wotan was the name of Wagner’s beloved St Bernard dog.

The villa was built in 1872-74, based on architectural plans from Berlin architect Wilhelm Neumann. Once completed, Wagner lived here with his wife, children and step children until his death in 1883. Then several later generations of Wagners continued to live in the house until 1966.

After the house had been seriously damaged in a bombing raid in 1945, grandson Wieland Wagner decided to rebuild the villa in a more modern manner. Fortunately for history, these alterations were later removed when the house was restored to its original appearance.

Wahnfried has been a museum since 1976, displaying with a wide range of Wagner memorabilia, including manuscripts, pianos, furnishings, artefacts and set designs. The Richard Wagner Museum is going to celebrate Wagner’s 200th birthday in 2013 so the timing is perfect for refurbishing Wahnfried Haus in general and for extending the Richard Wagner Museum in particular.

What does the interior look like? The whole house was a place where Wagner could compose, raise his family and entertain guests. The Grand Hall is a two-storey space with a gallery around the second floor and a skylight in the ceiling. Furnishings include two of Wagner's pianos and numerous busts. The specially designed Bechstein piano was the piano Wagner used when he was composing Meistersinger, part of Siegfried and Parsifal. It was a present from the endlessly patient, endlessly generous King Ludwig II for Wagner's birthday in 1864.

To the right is the dining room and to the left the Purple Drawing Room, where Wagner's wife Cosima Liszt von Bülow Wagner received visitors. Both are exhibition rooms now, the dining room focusing on Wahnfried's history.

Wagner's original study (top photo). His study, today a space for small concerts (second photo)

Wagner's richly decorated study was a gathering place for family, as well as a music room and library. The semi-circular bay looks out onto the back garden. Now it is used as a concert space where visitors can hear Wagner’s music.

The mezzanine level was where the family had their dressing rooms. The one to the right showcases Wagner's life in the 1840s, while the one to the left covers the 1850s and early 1860s. Today the dressing rooms have exhibits on the post-war Bayreuth Festivals.

The second floor was where the bedroom of Wagner’s son Siegfried had been, directly over the vestibule. Now it displays artefacts from Richard Wagner's early life. To the east are the three bedrooms of Wagner's two daughters and two step-daughters. They contain exhibitions from Wagner's later life.

Grand Hall with the two pianos

Some of the rooms are dedicated specifically to the Bayreuth Festival. The large room over the study was the nursery; now it focuses on the first thirty years of the Festival. The displays in Cosima's old bedroom cover the Festival from 1908 to 1930, while materials in the master bedroom deal with the 1930s. Wagner's private study concentrates on the post WW2 Festivals. The basement level has displays of Bayreuth Festival stage designs.

Richard Wagner did not die in his home. Rather he died in Venice while visiting in 1883, but his family had his body brought to Bayreuth for burial. In 1886, the composer Franz Liszt died in Bayreuth while visiting his daughter Cosima Liszt, Wagner's widow. So Liszt was also buried in this smallish town.

Visit the garden behind the house. In a shady grove beyond the garden, surrounded with ivy, is the tomb of Richard and Cosima Wagner. The stone is unmarked, because as Wagner insisted, as long as it remained, everyone would know who was buried there. From there, visitors can go on a walk in the remote Hofgarten, the baroque park of Bayreuth's New Castle, via a direct path from the house.

Back of Wahnfried Haus. Ivy-covered tomb of Richard and Cosima

I recommend Paul Doolan's journal article called "Wagner & Mathilde" in History Today, November 2011. The story of their relationship and its impact on Wagner's life started long before Wahnfried Haus was built in 1872-74, but the disruptions and frustrations Wagner suffered in the early decades predicted the man he became in his later decades.

Visit King Ludwig II's castles in Bavaria

From May-October 2011, the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte and the Bavarian Department of State-owned Palaces, Gardens and Lakes have established an exhibition that follows in the footsteps of King Ludwig II and his Bavaria. The event marks the 125th anniversary of the death of Bavaria’s most famous monarch. Herrenchiemsee New Palace, open to the public for the first time, will host the exhibition.

Born in Nymphenburg Castle Munich, Ludwig (1845-1886) was a member of the Wittelsbach dynasty. Ludwig’s mother Queen Marie enjoyed taking her two sons on vigorous rural hikes and this was where Ludwig developed his love of the peaceful Schwangau mountains.

He became king of Bavaria in 1864 at 18, but alas for the Bavarians, Ludwig had no interest in politics. Despite being a handsome teenager with a trim body that made women breathe heavily, he became a lonely, isolated man, with no wife and no friends. Ludwig II and his fiancee, Duchess Sophie were engaged throughout most of 1867, but Ludwig cancelled the engagement as soon as he decently could, and never married. Studies of his diaries suggest the King, a devout Roman Catholic, struggled with his sexual orientation throughout his adult life.

Ludwig had only two great manias in life: castle building and Richard Wagner's (1813-83) music. He did more than just listen to Wagner's music. He financed almost all the older composer's projects, had Wagner stay in his castles and bailed Wagner out when he was in debt. Wagner was fortunate and he knew it. Especially when Ludwig requested the presence of the conductor and piano virtuoso Hans von Bülow and his wife Cosima, who was in fact Franz Liszt's illegitimate daughter born to the Countess mistress of Liszt. The idea was that the pair would help Wagner in all his musical activities. Both were keen admirers of Wagner's music, but alas Cosima and Wagner fell in love. Wagner and Cosima’s relationship caused much hostility in court circles.

Wagner was soon forced to leave Munich for Switzerland, to a house rented by Ludwig for him. Ludwig retired to the castle Hohenschwangau. The one thing that was giving the king happiness, Wagner’s music, had been taken from him. He was inconsolable.

Neuschwanstein

Note that Ludwig visited Versailles in 1867 and was bowled over. This was before he started his building programme, but the influence remained in Ludwig's mind for 20 years.

Originally Ludwig had intended to surround his kingdom with five castles, although only 3 of them got started. In the south of the country is the castle Neuschwanstein, started in 1869 on top of a craggy, isolated mountain. This was the last castle Ludwig tried to build, but when he died in 1886 all construction stopped with most of the rooms unfinished. This was his fantasy castle, including with white towers, grey turrets and pinnacles.

Inside the bedroom is neo-gothic timber carving, completed by 14 sculptors in four years. Tristan and Isolde scenes dominate the walls. The rooms that were finished had a common theme in their decoration, Wagner’s operas, with scenes in sequence around the walls.

The great Singer's Hall on an upper floor has walls covered with heroic scenes from Lohengrin and Parsifal; internal halls are lined with fine oak timber and added marble. This isolated king arranged private performances in his castles or in Munich at fabulous cost, and appointed an official poet to his household.

The huge Throne Room of Neuschwanstein resembled a Byzantine church. Ludwig’s instructions were that it was to be based on Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Ludwig saw his throne room as a holy of holies, where he could realise his fantasies. The balcony, which is accessible from the Throne Room, has a magnificent view of the surroundings.

Linderhof Castle, just a few ks west of Oberammergau, was one of Ludwig's rococo palaces that was completed. It was built in the early 1870s, and had exquisitely decorated rooms that specifically tried to rival Versailles. As did a number of his buildings.

Built for a king who preferred not to meet people, the palace and its lovely grounds were isolated among the quiet hills and valleys several ks from town. Linderhof palace only contains ten rooms, and of the ten, four of them were waiting-rooms for the servants. Of course because of the King's reclusiveness, most of the amenities were designed to be enjoyed by the King alone. The dining room table is built for only one person and was lowered into the kitchen to be set so no servant had to enter the dining room. The gardens and pavilions were even more amazing.

Schloss Herrenchiemsee Hall of Mirrors, looking remarkably like Versailles

Moving further to the east and set against the Alps is the largest Bavarian lake of all, Chiemsee. As I mentioned, Ludwig was besotted with Louis XIV of France, considering him the absolute embodiment of monarchy. So when Ludwig bought the entire island in 1878, he had a new Schloss Herrenchiemsee 1878-86 built in direct imitation of Versailles. See the vertical axis of the estate run straight into the fine lake, modelled directly on Versailles. See the fountains and the statues. Nothing is quite as regal and as splendid as these frescoed ceilings, sculpture, chandeliers and gilt decoration.

By 1885, it was clear to the Bavarian Cabinet that Ludwig's building programme was not going to stop. By then the King had 3 building projects well under way, and was spending huge amounts of money. Although Ludwig paid for the castles and private performances out of his own pocket, it was still diverting his focus away from the affairs of state. So his grandiose building scheme, combined with Ludwig's disinterest in the Affairs of State, and his refusing to see his ministers, lead to a fraught situation.

In 1886, Ludwig began investigating the possibility of replacing his Cabinet. Cabinet got wind of his plan, and in order to protect the government, they had to get in first and get rid of their King. Speed and secrecy were important. If Ludwig heard of their scheme, he would have dissolved the Cabinet immediately. As it happened, three eminent psychiatrists (who had never met the king face to face) ruled that the king was permanently insane, so Ludwig could be safely declared unfit to rule.

In June 1886, it was officially announced that Prince Otto was to rule as permanent Regent in place of the ill King. Ludwig was imprisoned in a palace near Munich. Soon after, the body of this devout Catholic was mysteriously found in the lake. He drowned but was it suicide, murder or accident? He was only 41.

King Ludwig II

As part of this anniversary year, The Munich Residenz will show the exhibition "Ludwig II’s Conservatory in the Munich Residenz". Ludwig had a conservatory built on the roof of the Residenz where he had created a dream world of plants, animals and oriental buildings. This was his retreat when he visited Munich only once a year, to sign legislation. He did not like leaving his isolated mountain retreat and travelling to the city.

For fantastic photos of Ludwig's Bavaria, including the building and decorating of the castles, go to In Focus with Alan Taylor.



Meissen vases with superb landscape paintings: 1870

The Meissen Company, near Dresden, was the first European factory to discover the formula of hard paste porcelain, at a time when the Chinese had been making a fortune importing this very desirable product. But the discovery wasn’t easy. Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and Chinese porcelain fanatic, was desperate to crack the code. He imprisoned the chemist Johann Friedrich Boettger (1682-1719) at Albrechtsberg Castle and probably would have kept him there for life, in order to find the magical formula. Fortunately for Boettger, he found it!

The Meissen Company was founded in early C18th and delivered porcelain of the quality and purity that made that small town famous.

Dresden scenes on Leuteritz vases, 1870, Meissen (Country Life photo)

From 1720 on, the fame of Meissen depended largely on the painter Johann Gregorius Höroldt (1696-1775). It seems impossible to overstate Höroldt’s influence on much of Europe’s developing porcelain makers. He used Chinese exoticism, European landscapes and naturalistic birds and flowers, sublimely painted.

Meissen also had the sculptor Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775). Kändler was appointed court sculptor by Augustus II the Strong in 1731. He was responsible for the introduction of new forms for porcelain sets, including a wide range of figurines.

Wealthy families couldn’t buy up Meissen porcelain fast enough. And rival companies couldn’t get Meissen’s secrets fast enough, to develop their own porcelain lines. Naturally Meissen became a symbol of wealth and status, and in the 19th century the factory earned both Royal commissions and medals at the various World Exhibitions.

I have some good 19th century Meissen pieces in my own collection, which I thought were rather lovely. Then I saw a pair of Meissen vases, dating from about 1870, in David Brower Antiques. I am quoting them. Born in 1818, Ernst Leuteritz joined the factory in 1836 as an apprentice and by 1843 he was engaged as a modeller. This impressive pair of topographical vases was created by Leuteritz and are one of the most important and valuable works of 19th century Meissen porcelain available on the market today. Standing at 61cms high and produced in 1870, the vases show two different scenes of Dresden rendered in exquisite detail, a view of Pilnitz and a view of Schloss Weesenstein. Leuteritz first created the design for these vases in 1856, and in 1862 they were selected as one of the key pieces at the World Exhibition held in London.

Leuteritz vase, 1880, Meissen, based on a painting by Caspar Netscher. 69 cm high

Vases of this scale and detail are rare as they were only made for exhibition or special commission. One reason is because large objects of this nature (61 cm high) were very difficult to make and decorate. Minor imperfections in the structure of the piece or faults in the decoration and glaze were unforgiving, often causing failure during the firing processes. These monumental pieces are a testament to the experience and skills of the Meissen craftsmen.

Another lovely, tall Meissen vase was created by Ernst Leuteritz, this time exquisitely painted with Dutch-style images from the C17th.  The 1880 vase was decorated on a cobalt blue ground, heightened by detailed gilded scroll work and embellishments. The panel on the front was  based on a painting by Caspar Netscher (1639–1684) while the reverse was based on a painting by Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) which depicts the artist with his wife Isabella DeWolff in a tavern.

Far easier, for both the porcelain maker and the artist, were smaller flat plates that rarely broke in the kiln. Christies had a reticulated Meissen plate from c1879, painted with a view of Wesenstein inside a gilt scroll cartouche. The dark-blue-ground well gilt had scrolls suspending swags of flowers and the border was pierced with trellis pattern sections between panels of flowers, moulded with flowerheads. The scene was beautifully painted, but I have to admit that the entire plate was only 25 cm wide.

Scene of Wesenstein, Meissen reticulated plate c1879

The Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story is a super little book, written by Janet Gleeson and published by Little, Brown and Co. in 1999.  It tells the convoluted story of the invention of European porcelain and the founding of the Meissen Porcelain Company.

Rooms with a View: open windows in 19th Century paintings

The art exhibition called Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the C19th was held in the Special Exhibition Galleries, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, April-July 2011. This exhibition focused on the Romantic motif of the open window as first captured by German, Danish, French and Russian artists around 1810–40. 

Even though the exhibition has closed, you can still read the catalogue essay which was written by Sabine Rewald. And the review by Dr Ben Harvey.

You might have thought this was a limited topic for art historians to get exercised about. Especially since many of the rooms were sparsely furnished and very quiet. Most had one figure who was captured reading, writing or painting; some had more than one figure; the rest had no human presence at all. All 60 works in the catalogue had just one thing in common – an open window.

I am very familiar with the lone figure standing in front of an open window in 17th century Dutch art, so I had expected a lot of comparative works by Vermeer, Dou and de Hooch for example. But sadly there is very little mention of what came before 1800. I found just half a page lightly mentioning C15th Northern Renaissance artists, and the Dutch and Flemish interiors like Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window c1659.

So I went to Martha Hollander for an explanation about 17th century Dutch paintings. In her book An Entrance for the Eyes: Space and Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Dutch art, she suggested the view outside C17th Dutch windows positively enriched the primary scene at the centre of the canvas! Even if their open windows invited an analysis of the relationship between public and private life in urban life, Dutch artists never intended to detrimentally compare an unfulfilled life inside the home with a happier one outside.

Perhaps it was for this reason that the Metropolitan brought in paintings for this exhibition from museums in the USA, Denmark, France, Austria, Sweden, Italy and especially Germany, but not from the Netherlands.

Friedrich, View from the Artist’s Studio, c1805, graphite and sepia, 31 x 24cm. Belvedere, Vienna.

I will start with the most influential example of German artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840). In View from the Artist's Studio, Window on the Right, c1805–6, the viewer can see that Friedrich’s studio in Dresden faced the river Elbe. In this small sepia work and its pair, the artist did not seem to be very interested in all the activity out on the Elbe River; rather he focused on achieving a finely tuned balance between the darkened interior and the bright outdoors. I don’t think he quite pulled it off, since the inner walls were too bare and prison-like. But perhaps that was intentional. In this sober presentation of the cut-off point between the inside home and the outside world, Friedrich discovered a Romantic symbol for longing.

Friedrich’s influence was such that his followers settled in Dresden, then a centre of Romanticism. The motif of the open window was not previously known to the Carl Ludwig Kaaz, Johan Christian Dahl and Georg Friedrich Kerstin, but it soon appealed Friedrich’s immediate art circle. Because the younger men copied it and turned it into the classic Romantic subject, View from the Artist’s Studio took on a greater importance that might have been obvious at first.

Kersting, Woman Embroidering, oil, 47 c 37 cm, 1811, Goethe Nationalmuseum Weimar

Georg Kersting (1785–1847) was another German artist who was 11 years younger than Friedrich but they were great friends and professional colleagues. After Napoleon defeated Prussia in 1806-7, Prussia was occupied by French troops. But by 1812-3, Napoleon retreated and a patriotic spirit revived in Germany. Yet Kersting reflected none of Dresden’s war destruction, plagues, hunger or, later, 300,000 French prisoners of war.

In a small oil, Kersting depicted artist Louise Seidler quietly embroidering in an immaculately clean room. The cool light of a summer morning, pale green walls and pale blue-and-white sky were all very gentle. Only the Empire-style furniture, curtain, musical accoutrements and potted plants on the sill gave a sense of the sitter’s personality.

Was Louise Seidler in mourning? Was she sick? The Rooms With a View catalogue suggests that this painting was not intended as a portrait of Ms Seidler, and clearly it was not a landscape; instead it was a study of contemplation and morning light.

Menzel, Artist's Bedroom in Ritterstrasse, 1847, Oil, 56 x 46 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin.

Adolph Menzel (1815–1905) was another German artist, but much younger than Caspar David Friedrich and Georg Kersting. He painted this small oil picture of his bedroom in daylight shortly after moving into a large fourth-floor apartment on Ritterstrasse, a lovely new district of Berlin. Menzel too was interested in the effects of light in a very ordinary bedroom. But Menzel turned expectations exactly upside down: he painted the person and furniture inside with room with broad brushstrokes but used exacting details in depicting the view of the distance city outside the window.

How is that possible? Every first year Perception student knows that the human eye can see details up close, but the further away an object gets, the blurrier it becomes. Clearly Menzel used the room interior only as a context for what he was most interested in: the rapidly expanding, and very exciting city outside.

The images in Rooms With A View were well painted, thoughtfully curated and beautifully printed in the catalogue. The question the viewer at the exhibition and the reader of this book has to answer is: “what theme held these 60 early-19th century works together”?

The German Romantics loved untamed nature invested with emotion. They valued their belief in the primacy of feeling, even in natural phenomena. So Rewald’s answer needs to be examined from that Romantic perspective. "The Rom­an­t­ics found a potent symbol for the exper­ience of stand­ing on the threshold between an interior and the outside world. The juxta­pos­it­ion of the close familiarity of a room and the uncertain, often idealised vision of what lay beyond was immediately recog­nised as a metaphor for unfilled longing”. Tahlib added that the “luminous windows were a yearning for something distant and ineffable, a metaphor for spiritual longing”.

In Constant Moyaux’s View of Rome from the Artist’s Room at the Villa Medici 1863, Rewald’s thesis seems perfectly sound. In Georg Kersting’s Young Woman Sewing by Lamplight 1823, no outside world is visible. Was the young woman longing silently and secretly? Even the best art historian could not answer that question.

The book, front cover (Friedrich, Woman at the Window, 1822)

Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century was written by Sabine Rewald for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It was published by Yale University Press, New Haven and London in 2011 and supplied by H Niyazi of Three Pipe Problem and Inbooks. Many thanks.

The finest silver art objects in European history?

Augsburg may well have been shaped by the trade in salt and silver in Roman times and by its sophisticated canal system, but Roman wealth was not enough to explain the demand for silver and gold art in Renaissance Augsburg.

The route to Rome developed, over the centuries, into a main trading route, linking Augsburg to other trading towns. After all, Augsburg was located in the south of Germany, not very far from the modern borders with Austria (to the east) and Switzerland (to the west).

By 1276 trade and banking were so important to this otherwise ordinary town that the good burghers of Ausburg were able to make their home into a Free Imperial City. The local municipal government was able to make its own plans, raise its own taxes and legislate for its own laws.

 gilt silver, embossed dish made by Abraham Waremberger with Roman emperor busts

Money was being made hand over fist and you can see that Maximilian Street, bordered on both sides by the original stately homes, witnessed the city's affluence in the days of the famous Fugger, Peutinger, Welser and other famous merchant families. I say “famous”, but for the purposes of this post I should have said “rich”. So let us include some of the important banking families: the Baumgartners, Herwarts and Höchstetters.

But power was being distributed more widely than expected; Augsburg's guild constitution provided that all the craft guilds were to send representatives to the Great and Small Councils. Although the patricians retained the mayoral position, the guilds actually shared power with the Great and Good Families. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, the Augsburg economy boomed because of its export of gold and silver art, armour, the establishment of textile manufacturing, and the city's continuing role in banking and finance.

nautilus cup with silver gilt mount, by Ulrich Ment, c1623, now in Galerie J Kugel, Paris

Wealthy, cultivated and powerful families became wonderful patrons of gold and silver art objects. And the demand must have been endless. Even when Augsburg had only 30,000 inhabitants, some 260-275 of them were occupied full time as master gold and silversmiths.

Although the objects were for domestic use rather than for public use, these objects still had to be grand enough to decorate halls designed for solemn ceremonies, large receptions and sumptuous banquets. Examine, for example, the gilt silver dish made and embossed by Abraham Waremberger in Augsbug. I would love to know just how heavy and how broad this dish really was.

Some art objects were clearly ceremonial or decorative, but not necessarily functional. A nautilus cup with silver gilt mount, made by Ulrich Ment in Augsburg during the early 1620s, had the outer layer of the shell removed to reveal the lustrous inner layer.  Sometimes the ornate lids of nautilus cups were detachable, as was the case with other forms of covered ceremonial drinking cups. But even then, I wouldn’t have allowed my teenage sons to play soccer in the dining room.

And not just private families. In 2008, The Moscow Kremlin organised an exhibition of 500 Augsburg masterpieces, often given as ambassadorial gifts by the representatives of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Holy Roman Empire, Denmark and Sweden. The display included gold and silver trays, tankards, ewers and decorative sculptures that were placed near fireplaces, all of which glorified Augsburg and its silversmiths, and thrilled the recipients. A lidded silver jug, made by Melhior Gelb in the c1654, was decorated with embossing and pouncing. This was an ambassadorial gift, brought by King Charles X Gustav of Sweden, in 1655. A silver double goblet, made in Augsburg between 1576-1583, displayed casting, embossing and pouncing.

lidded silver jug, by Melhior Gelb, c1654

In Augsburg itself, the place to visit would be The Maximilian Museum. It displays many fine exhibits from the city's great silver- and goldsmith artists. And for a very useful reference, see Lorenz Seelig Silver and Gold: Courtly Splendour from Augsburg (Art & Design), Prestel, 1995.

Patrician family homes, Maximilianstrasse Augsburg, C16th and C17th