Brothers Grimm and the Old Masters in Kassel

Brothers Grimm

When they came closer, they saw that the house was made of bread, and the roof was made of cake and the windows of sparkling sugar (Hansel and Gretel) Brothers Grimm.

Often, when we read stories like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Frog Prince, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Snow White, we don't realize that these European folk tales were popularized by Brothers Grimm, namely Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, two Germans among the most well-known story-tellers in Europe.

For those who enjoy culture and reading, "The Grimm's Fairy Tales" were compiled, edited and translated into 160 languages in Kassel, a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany, that is easily reached by train or car from Frankfurt am Main. And in this town there is a Brothers Grimm Museum, dedicated for the brothers.It is surely the town's flagrantly open secret. This also means that culture fans have something magical to discover on the fairy tales route. 

The Grimm Brothers had been collecting fairy tales from the people of Hesse since the early 1800's.  It was in Kassel that a law professor, Friedrich Karl von Savigny, impressed by Jacob's appetite for learning, opened his private library to the older Grimm brother. The experience awoke in Jacob a passion for deciphering and saving ancient German literature and folktales, a cause which his younger brother would also embrace.

Children's and Household Tales

Children's and Household Tales, their great collaboration, began in an almost offhand fashion. Immersed in editing and translating medieval manuscripts, the brothers started to gather fairy tales as a favor for a friend planning a collection of German folk literature. After several years, the brothers had collected 49 tales, taking a few from old books, the rest from acquaintances in Kassel. But when the friend failed to produce the collection, the brothers decided to expand their efforts and publish their own volume.

Altogether some 40 persons delivered tales to the Grimms. Many of the storytellers came to The Grimms' house in Kassel. The brothers particularly welcomed the visits of Dorothea Viehmann, a widow who walked to town to sell produce from her garden. An innkeeper's daughter, Viehmann had grown up listening to stories from travelers on the road to Frankfurt. Among her treasures was "Aschenputtel"-Cinderella. The other important storyteller was Marie Hassenpflug, a 20-years-old friend of their sister, from a well-bred, French-speaking family. Marie was credited with narrating many of the most famous tales: Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

Like the Grimms, Marie grew up in Hanau, which at the time was a very French town. Her nursemaids naturally told French stories. The Grimms may at first have thought Marie's tales all came from Hesse, but the famous ones we now know came from France and the book by Charles Perrault. Marie's wonderful stories blended motifs from the oral tradition and from Perrault's influential 1697 book, Tales of My Mother Goose, which contained elaborate versions of Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty among others. Many of these had been adopted from earlier Italian fairy tales. In the second edition of their own collection, the brothers acknowledged the deep international roots of many of their tales. Included in their notes are references to variants from many other cultures, including Russian, Finnish, Japanese, Irish and Slavic. Between 1812 and 1857 their first collection was revised and published many times, and grew from 86 stories to 200. In addtion to writing and modifying folk tales, the brothers wrote collections of well-respected German and Scandinavian mythologies and in 1808 began writing a definitive German dictionary, that remained incomplete in their lifetime.

Brother Grimm Museum - Kassel

The life and times of the Brothers Grimm are vividly portrayed in Brothers Grimm Museum in Kassel through various permanent exhibitions as well as exhibitions commemorating special events and occasions. The exhibition rooms are located in the baroque-style Palais Bellevue which was originally designed as an observatory for Hesse's Landgrave Karl in 1714 by the French architect Paul du Ry.

In 2012, Kassel commemorated the 200 years of Children's and Household Tales. The main focus of the celebrations starts in 2013 with the title "Grimm 2013". There will be several activities in the name and in honor of the Brothers Grimm, such as Literary Spring, Forest of Shadows-night walk through forest with lanterns, performances and puppet theater as well as fairy tales festivals. The highlight of the celebration will be "Expedition Grimm" a large exhibition in documenta-Halle, Kassel, starting from 27 April until 08 September 2013.



Old Masters

Waterfall and Hercules statue

Visiting Kassel will be incomplete without visiting the Gallery of Old Masters, in Wilhemshöhe Castle. Landgrave Wilhelm IX of Hesse-Kassel had built the Castle, at the end of the 18th Century. The Castle itself was built at the foot of Hercules statue, and waterfall display, crowned by a fantastic 71 meter high monument: the Oktogon, built by Landgrave Karl in 17th century.
The Gallery of Old Masters contains the largest collection of Dutch paintings outside the Netherlands, as well as paintings from Germany, Italy, French and Spain from the 16th and 17th centuries. An outstanding connoisseurship and feeling for quality that informed Landgrave Wilhelm VIII as a collector, as well as the taste of his own time and his personal connections and resources, have left their indelible stamp on the gallery. Building on the collection left by his princely predecessors, it was he who created the Kassel Picture Gallery. In the 17th century, he became a knowledgeable connoisseur of Dutch culture, learning to speak the language fluently, and developed a strong interest in Dutch paintings. From the leading painters of The Hague he acquired delicately-painted decorative flower-pieces, allegorical works and history paintings, and he maintained relationship with countless painters and collectors in the Netherlands. He also bought seventeenth century French and Italian paintings.

Wilhemshöhe Castle

Under Wilhelm's successor, his son Landgrave Friedrich II, the Landgrave's formerly entirely private painting collection was opened to a select but general public, as part of a programme of educational reform inspired by the spirit of early Enlightenment. With the opening of the Picture Gallery for the diversion and education of the public, the Landgrave's art collection became enormously popular and drew many visitors to the city, some from great distance. During the French occupation, the gallery suffered great losses when many paintings were stolen and lost. In 1974, Wilhemshöhe Castle rebuilt as a museum has served as a home to the antique collection and to the Old Masters Gallery.

Old Masters Gallery

In the Old Masters Gallery, you will find Early German Paintings, such as from Martin Schaffner (Painted tabletop for Erasmus Stedelin), Albrecht Dürer (Portrait of Elsbeth Tucher), Michael Wolgemuth (Ursula Tucher).  Italian Paintings, such as from Jacopo Negretti (Venus and Cupid at Vulcan's Forge), Tiziano Vecellio (Portrait of Military Commander), Mattia Preti (The Feast of Herod), French Paintings, such as from Nicolas de Largilliėre (Portrait of a Man in Purple Robe), Nicolas Puossin (Bacchic Scene), Simon Vouet (Sophonisba Receiving the Poisoned Chalice), Spanish Paintings, such as from Jusepe de Ribera (Mater Dolorosa), Bartolomė Esteban Murillo (Joseph and Potiphar's Wife).

Saskia van Uylenburgh - Rembrandt

Early Netherlandish Paintings, such as from Maerten van Heemskerck (Pieter Jan Foppeszoon and Family), Frans Floris (The Judgement of Paris), Anthonis Mor (William I of Orange-Nassau), Dutch Paintings, such as from Jan Miense Molenaer (Schoolroom with Family Entering), Adriaen van Ostade (Merry Peasants), Adriaen van de Velde (The Beach at Scheveningen) Jan Weenix (An Italian Seaport), Gerard ter Borch (The Lute Player) and the famous Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (A Man Sharpening a Quill; Portrait of Andries de Graeff; Saskia van Uylenburgh and Jacob blessing the Sons of Joseph). You can also find Flemish Paintings, such as from Peter Paul Rubens (Venus, Cupid, Bacchus and Ceres), Jacob Jordaens (The Satyr and the Peasant), Anthony van Dyck (Double Portrait of Frans Snyder and His Wife, Margaretha de Vos).



Note : This Blog is based on research of articles and books as well as private visits to Kassel.



  

The Dark Romanticism - The Realm of Darkness

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. In Romantic art, nature-with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability and potential for cataclysmic extremes offered something more than given reality.

The Dark Romanticism is primarily a 19th century literary movement. It is popularly known as a sub-genre of the larger Romantic Movement. This is because it retains and expounds several of the characteristics with the same movement.

Post Shakespearean era in Europe had several puritanical constraints as far as literature was concerned. The Classical literature of the age was governed by conventions and lacked freedom of thought and expression. This was the notion that began to be challenged with the onslaught of the French Revolution and industrialization. Consequently, literature too began to change hands - from Royalty to Common Man. The author of the Hymns to the Night, moreover, penned the still oft-quoted  and applicable credo of Romanticism : "By giving the common a higher meaning, the everyday a mysterious semblance, the known the dignity of the unknown, the finite the appearance of the infinite, I romanticize it".

The term "Dark Romanticism" can not be traced back to its origins, but above all, can be found in the literary studies. In Germany, the term is closely linked to the Professor of English literature Mario Praz and his 1930 book "La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica". Edmund Burke wrote that: "All that stuns the soul, all that imprints a feeling of terror, leads to the sublime". The Dark Romanticism was mainly characterized by horrifying explicitness, emotional intensity and conspicuous lack of hero.

Young writers and artists increasingly devoted themselves to the downsides of reason. They did not consider the inexplicable and mysterious as problems but rather as incentives to set off in search of the fantastic realm beyond visible and measurable reality. The terrible, the wondrous and the grotesque.

The basic philosophy of the movement was a belief in man's spiritual essence and his souls ability to transcend the physical. Therefore, a collections of art began concentrating upon themes of horror, tragedy, the macabre and the supernatural. My theory is that those themes better represented the nature of human soul, the human that is not perfect, and the desire to play with the unknown. It also illustrated the horrific consequences of man's ideal.

In many European countries, many painters produced images after the French Revolution, which was basically the horrors of its aftermath. In Spain, artist such as Goya dramatically depicted the atrocities of slaughter in war, whereas humans became cannibals in the truest sense of the word. Goya also depicted the atrocities committed in the war towards the victims, most notably the innocent civilians : knifed and strangled, raped women and murdered children. The orgies of bestiality captured on paper are too terrible to contemplate. While in Germany, artist such as Caspar David Friedrich painted his masterful landscape panoramas. Most of German paintings were about the dark panoramas that brought a sense of horror to the audience.

Nightmarish visions, Apocalypse, Decadence, Doom, Satanic rites and somber death scenes speaks of loneliness and melancholy, passion and death, of the fascination with horror and irrationality of dreams. This was the general idea that challenged the reasons and beauty of Enlightenment movement.

La Vague- Carlos Schwabe

My personal favorite is Carlos Schwabe, with his painting entitled "La Vague" or "The Wave" (1907, oil on canvas, 196 x 116 cm)  in which he illustrates the horrors of human soul. A fascinating and yet deeply disturbing look at the terrorized and anguished human soul.  To be able to paint the horror of a human soul really requires the ultimate observation and technique. It is my personal believe that to be able to illustrate such a thing with superb precision truly consumes the whole ability of the painter. Something you will never find in the beauty of objects, which only depicts the sun, buildings, still panoramas and people. But here you have a human emotion. I think that Schwabe used an observation on several mad women before painting them into one unity.

Procession in the Fog-Ernst Ferdinand Oehme

The other personal favorite is Ernst Ferdinand Oehme, with his "Procession in the Fog". Here you have the perfect example of the mysterious and somewhat dark panorama of monks walking to perform their procession. The fog in early morning that covers the trees and some of the monks that are in front presents the whole mysteriousness of the scene. Oehme did not used many colors, especially the bright ones, and that really was the main factor in presenting the mysterious and dark atmosphere.

The Abbey in the Oakwood- Caspar David Friedrich

The other favorite is surely Caspar David Friedrich with his "The Abbey in the Oakwood". This is also perfect example of the mystery, darkness and death.  A procession of monks, some of whom bear a coffin, head toward the gate of a ruined Gothic church in the center of painting. Only two candles light their way. A newly dug grave yawns out of the snow in the foreground, near which several crosses can be faintly discerned. This lower third of the picture lies in darkness-only the highest part of the ruins and the tips of the leafless oaks are lit by the setting sun. The waxing crescent moon appears in the sky.

The Nightmare- Henry Fuseli

Last but not least is "The Nightmare" by Henry Fuseli. The canvas seems to seems to portray simultaneously a dreaming woman and the content of her nightmare. The incubus and the horse's head refer to contemporary belief and folklore about nightmares. Fuseli caused sensation with his depiction of a woman dressed in a nightgown lying prone over the edge of a bed with naked demon squatting on her stomach. The picture's impact was so intense that visitors with delicate constitutions were warned to not come too close to the painting.










Note: This blog is based on my readings of articles, books as well as my personal views.