#4: Nazi Party Rallying Grounds (Nuremberg)
#1: King Ludwig's Cribs (Neuschwanstein & Linderhof)
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Showing posts with label Munich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Munich. Show all posts
Friday, October 13, 2023
Saturday, October 7, 2023
Home of the Monks
I can't believe I never knew Munich meant "home of the monks" before now! What would those eighth-century fellas have thought of the "Endless Staircase?" I sought it out to see if the Germans were more relaxed about allowing people to ascend than they find when they visit the Vessel in New York City, now off limits because of multiple suicides. Surprisingly, they aren't. A chain blocked the entrance.
Nearby, the statue of Bavaria towers over the Oktoberfest grounds.
You can climb inside her head to get a view.
Tired of his homeland being shuttlecocked between Napoleon and the Hapsburgs, King Ludwig I erected the monument, one of three, as a showcase for accomplished Germans in the mid-19th century. Walhalla is more inspiring for my money. The busts here are added a little haphazardly.
Did you know Diesel was a man before a fuel? Rudolf died mysteriously as World War I approached. Some speculate Germans murdered him because he was en route to England to show its navy how to adapt his engines for use in their submarines.
Security guards prevented me from entering the Oktoberfest grounds which were being struck like a stage set. The festival ended shortly before my arrival. I was not disappointed.
Scaffolding enveloped the exterior of the Asam Church, named for the two brothers who built the late Baroque chapel, my next stop. Once inside, you don't know quite where to look because there's so much to see.
Believe it or not, the Asam brothers--a sculptor and a painter who appear to have been tripping--designed the chapel as their private place of worship, although they did encourage the neighborhood kids to use their seven confessionals.
Once word got around about the beauty of the interior, the Asams were forced to open the chapel to the public.
A Deutsche Post employee delivered the mail on Sendlinger Strasse. Energy efficiency in motion--just look at those calves. He's no kid, either.
Ersatz can be lovely.
I had half an hour to kill before the noon chiming of the Marienplatz glockenspiel so I headed to St. Michael's, a church, where Ludwig II, was interred at the age of 40. Die young, stay pretty, although not as pretty as Helmut Berger who introduced me to the Mad King of Bavaria in a 1973 Luchino Visconti biopic.
More ersatz, this time Renaissance .
I gripped an angel before entering.
It cost three euros--money well spent--to enter the crypt. Ludwig's design sense--which can be boiled down to more IS more-- resulted in two of Bavaria's most visited tourist destinations, Neuschwanstein and Linderhof.
Still time for a selfie before the glockenspiel.
It probably helps to have been born long before the smart-phone era to appreciate its slow-moving charm.
En route to Kunstareal, Munich's museum quarter, I came across an imposing Jewish monument.
Built in 1826 by King Ludwig I to house the Wittelsbach collection of Old Masters paintings, the Alte Pinakothek has some excellent new graphics.
The huge canvases of Peter Paul Rubens fill an enormous gallery but his work just doesn't do it for me. I headed straight for the Dürers, knowing that I soon would be visiting the home of Germany's da Vinci in Nuremberg.
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| "Portrait of a Young Man" by Albrecht Dürer (1500) |
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| "Madonna of the Carnation" by Leonardo da Vinci (ca. 1475) |
Some of the other works were familiar from a "Northern European Painting" course I took in college.
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| "St. Luke Drawing the Virgin Mary" by Rogier van der Weyden (after 1484) |
You can't beat Bruegel's depiction of peasant life.
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| "Wedding Dance in the Open Air" by Pieter Bruegel (1614) |
This looks like folk art to me. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
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| "The Birth of Christ" by Stefan Lochner (1445) |
I never would have guessed who painted this self-portrait. He reminds me of Tintin.
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| Rembrandt Self-Portrait (1629) |
More recent works were on display, too.
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| "Don Quixote" by Honore Daumier (1868) |
The man at the admissions desk seemed surprised when I asked him where to find his favorite painting. I liked it, too, but the figure in blue is a reflection not a vision.
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| "Morning After A Stormy Night" by Johan Christian Dahl (1819) |
The Neue Pinakothek is just across the street. I explored only the entrance and the lobby, but I love how each of these four photos anticipates the next.
European Union passports comprised the exhibit beneath the atrium.
I saved the colorful Museum Brandhorst for next time, too.
BMW isn't the only German brand name with an ugly past.
Yesterday's ticket to the Residenz included admission to the Cuvilliés Theatre, good for a year so I went back to check it off my list with barely enough battery juice to get this shot. The red velvet and gold decor of the place--completely rebuilt after the war--reminded me of the Hungarian Opera. It's still used for concert and stage performances.
After recharging my phone (and myself) back at the hotel, I took the U-Bahn to Glockenbachviertel, reputedly a gay neighborhood.
I didn't see much evidence of that, but I did enjoy walking around a residential neighborhood that borders the Isar River.
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Friday, October 6, 2023
House of Bling
It's modestly called the "Residenz" but I easily achieved more than my daily step count exploring the premises of Germany's largest city palace. This is one of the few exterior ornamentations to have survived the 1944 carpet bombing of Munich.
My visit began in the Treasury which gathers the most precious objets d'art commissioned or collected by the House of Wittelsbach, a dynasty that ruled Bavaria for nearly 750 years and occupied the Residenz for five centuries. These tchotchkes were created from crystal, gold, coral and rhinoceros horn.
After the destruction of World War II, ordinary Bavarians united to gather shells from their freshwater lakes to reconstruct a magnificently peculiar Renaissance-era grotto. It's as if they found Legos underwater!
But the real "WOW" moment awaits visitors just around the corner in the Antiquarium, another Renaissance-era room, the largest in the Residenz. A Wittelsbach duke--there were no kings in Bavaria until the early 19th century--built it to house his classical art collection.
The paintings on the ceiling depict allegories of fame and the virtues, but this one looks like vanity to me.
I had to take an hour-long break to re-charge my phone after a delirious visit to the BMW Museum earlier in the day, using an electrical outlet near the very grand Yellow Staircase built by King Ludwig I as the entrance to the royal apartments. I'm flanked by Justice and Perseverance.
Here's a portrait of King Ludwig I dressed in the Order of St. Hubert.
The Order comes with a lot of bling on display in the Treasury.
Before there were kings, Bavarian dukes helped elect the Holy Roman Emperor, a millennium-long chapter of European history that ended with the Napoleonic Wars, and one that I'm only beginning to understand. These dukes were called Electors and when Duke Maximilian III Joseph, the last Wittelsbach died childless from smallpox in 1777, it ignited the small-bore War of Bavarian Succession. The Austrian Habsburg dynasty next door--which then occupied the Holy Roman Emperor throne--wanted to grab Bavaria to ensure its continued power but either the duke's widow or sister secretly enlisted the aid of Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia, to protect it. Long story short: when the imperial dust settled, another elector of the Holy Roman Empire (there were seven, most of them from other parts of what now is Germany), became the first King of Bavaria. Got that?
The Bavarian electors slept in an entirely separate wing than the kings to come.
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The Residenz is so large that after every few rooms--there are 130--a sign points to "exit" or "longer tour this way." I kept walking, mouth agape at the furnishings and finger poised to capture the most exquisite. Although the Nazis had the foresight to remove many of the portable items for safekeeping prior to the bombing, much the Residenz has been re-created using their extensive photographic records of the palace. Props to the artisans for their incredible restoration work!
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| Persian Tapestry Bird (1641-42) |
Frescoes, commissioned by King Ludwig I, depict Italian cities and landscapes in the All Saints Corridor. A patron of the arts so impassioned that he gave up the crown for his mistress, the actress Lola Montez, in 1848. Ludwig wrote lines of verse to accompany each of the scenes, printed beneath them. According to Google Translate, this one reads "Near Messina, the Scylla rise and the Charybdis; when one danger frees themselves, the other person falls." I wonder if he was thinking of the impact of his abdication on his wife at the time?
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| French Tapestry Detail (after 1762) |
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| Bedroom, Court Garden Rooms and Charlotte Chambers |
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| Bed Detail |
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| Sconce, Court Garden Rooms and Charlotte Chambers |
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| Music Room, Court Garden Rooms and Charlotte Chambers |
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| Backgammon Set, Room of Justice, Trier Rooms |
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| Emperor's Staircase |
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| Bavarian Coat of Arms, Inlaid Wood, Emperor's Hall |
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| Marble Detail, Entrance to Four White Horses Hall |
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| Ceiling, Room of the Seasons, Stone Rooms |
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| Cupid, Stone Rooms |
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| Tapestry Detail, Stone Rooms |
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| Detail, Court Chapel |
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| Interior, Ornate Chapel |
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| Scagliola (imitation marble) Wall, Ornate Chapel |
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| German Reliquary (1625-50), Ornate Chapel |
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| Deer Etching, Ornate Chapel |
Electors often campaigned to become Holy Roman Emperor themselves. Karl Albrecht began adding the Ornate Rooms to the Residenz in 1726 to persuade other electors that he had the right kind of Baroque crib for diplomacy and ceremonial occasions. His architectural strategy worked: after three centuries of Holy Roman Emperors from the Habsburg dynasty, Charles VII (he and Karl were the same person) hailed from Team Wittelsbach.
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| Audience Chambers, Ornate Rooms |
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| Mirror & Hearth, Green Gallery, Ornate Rooms |
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| Red Canopy Bed, Cabinet of Mirrors |
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| Figurines & Clock, Cabinet of Mirrors |
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| Cabinet of Miniatures |
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| Queen's Throne Room, King's Tract |
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| King's Study/Living Room, King's Tract |
Ludwig decorated his study with busts of the two men he most admired: Frederick the Great and Julius Caesar.
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Frederick the Great, King's Study/Living Room, King's Tract |
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| Wall Fresco |
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| Porcelain Figurines |
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| Achilles by Giuseppe Ceracchi (1789-93) |
Scorched porcelain paintings in an exhibit called "Burned Beauty"remain the only on-site evidence of World War II's destruction inside the Residenz. King Ludwig I had them copied from paintings of pretty women because he recognized how enamel-painted vases had helped preserve Greek culture.
He was so committed to German culture that he had a series of rooms built to illustrate the Nibelungenlied, an anonymous epic poem from 1200. As soon as they were completed he opened the Nibelungen Halls to the public.
It's said that Richard Wagner may have been inspired to compose the Ring Cycle as a result, with significant patronage from King Ludwig's grandson, the Mad King of Bavaria. Lots more to come about HIM. He's the reason I made this trip!
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| "Murder of Siegfried by Hagen," Mural by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Hall of Treason, Nibelungen Halls More Bavaria: |
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