Die Renaissance der deutschen Renaissance (review)

Did you ever wonder about when the rebirth of the Renaissance began? When did the concept of the Renaissance as a widely acknowledged historical period truly take root? Ralf Mennekes’s superb book gives both complex answers and new insights about how Germany defined its own Renaissance especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. Leopold von Ranke’s Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (1839–47) and Jacob Burckhardt’s Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860) proved formative for German historical awareness. If Italy had a Renaissance, then surely Germany, the home of Albrecht Dürer and Martin Luther, must have had one too. With the rise of new city and state museums, questions about how to display and label German art became an issue especially when Italian art in adjoining galleries was referred to as Renaissance. Growing nationalism during the 1860s and 1870s drove the search for a German heritage, a quasi-mythic golden age, which could be proudly admired and self-consciously emulated.

Mennekes’s book, the publication of his 2002 dissertation at the University of Tübingen, offers a wonderfully rich examination of the artistic and art historical chapters of Germany’s claim for its own distinctive Renaissance. The subject is not new. There was a fascinating exhibition entitled Renaissance der Renaissance: Ein bürgerlicher Kunststil im 19. Jahrhundert organized by the Weserrenaissance-Museum at Schloss Brake in Lemgo in 1992. This catalogue and the two accompanying essay volumes (1992 and 1995) set out most of the major themes. Building upon this foundation, Mennekes presents a compelling narrative structured around three basic topics: history, style, and meaning.

In 1876, there was a large exhibition, Kunst- und Kunstindustrie-Ausstellung alter und neuer deutscher Meister sowie der deutschen Kunstschulen, held at the Glass Palace in Munich. One section, dubbed the “works of our fathers,” included an extensive display of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century German goldsmith work and furniture, among other things, borrowed from private and public collections. Queen Victoria permitted loans from the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in London. As Mennekes notes, the show stressed the vibrancy of German decorative arts of the past and how these serve as models for contemporary designers and artisans. While scholars debated how to label the sixteenth century, the period’s architectural and decorative forms, most of which actually date from about 1530 to the mid-seventeenth century, quickly entered the mainstream of German taste especially from the 1860s on. Using Nuremberg as a case study, Mennekes surveys the early nineteenth-century romantic vision of the city and its much-venerated genius, Albrecht Dürer. He considers how the founding of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in 1852 and the Gewerbemuseum in 1869 precipitated the redefining of Nuremberg as a Renaissance city. Local pageants with historical themes as well as Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger (1868) focused popular attention on the sixteenth century.

Germany enthusiastically embraced its “native” Renaissance style. Mennekes describes how contemporary architects adapted the eclectic and often quite hybrid forms of the later sixteenth century to new houses, public buildings, and commercial structures. This included monumental city halls, such as that in Leipzig (1897–1905), museums, and even train stations, including Danzig’s of 1900. The author assesses the impact of the German Renaissance on the visual arts of the nineteenth century. This encompasses commemorative public statues of Luther and Dürer, among others, as well as the vogue for history paintings evocatively imagining past events, people, and urban settings.

Part 2 provides a detailed analysis of period style during the second half of the nineteenth century. Throughout the book, Mennekes stresses this was a burgher style. After defining the term Chromatismus, which he employs to describe the diversity of neo-Renaissance forms, the author studies furniture and room designs.

Part 3 seeks to explain the meanings of this phenomenon. For Mennekes, the high point of the neo...