One of the reasons for Germany’s interest in the middle-ages is thought to have been dictated by a political solution to modern conditions. Unlike medieval times Germany consisted of several autonomous, self-governing bodies; thus, intellectuals turned back to a time when their country was united under the aegis of the Holy Roman Empire (800-1648). Then, the pre-Reformation Catholic Church exercised power, and the guild system provided a model for social organization and commercial activity.[1] Writings like the previously mentioned Goethe’s essay “On German Architecture” reflects this need for defining the German nation through a philosophy of political coherence, which was a debate that crossed over into theorising on style and the arts, especially the difference between the Greek and Gothic styles. This is most evident in Wilhelm Wackenroder’s splendidly titled Outpourings from the Heart of an Art Loving Monk, written just before his death in 1797. Set in the eighteenth-century this is a fiction about a monk who looks back to the middle-ages while articulating key romantic ideas such as theories of inspiration. Not seeking to place neoclassical art above Gothic art, Wackenroder pleaded for tolerance; he stated that his monk found the “Gothic temple as pleasing as the Greek temple” and looked fondly back to the age of Dürer (above) whose achievement though full of the spirit of the renaissance, was rooted in the craft traditions of Nürenberg and the middle-ages. Artists like K.F. Schinkel were influenced by this call for a romantic return to the middle-ages and the renaissance captured in poetic views of medieval towns and cathedrals against colourful landscapes and skies.
[1] Michelle Facos, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Art, (Routledge, 2011), 104.
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