Status: 02.09.2024 00:01
Caspar David Friedrich has been keeping the art world on tenterhooks for months. With anniversary and special exhibitions, the superstar of Romanticism is attracting visitors to museums in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden and his hometown of Greifswald.
250 years ago, on September 5, 1774, the free spirit and visionary was born. His birthplace Greifswald has prepared a varied program for this. Katja Weise goes with the director of the Pomeranian State Museum, Ruth Slenczka, through the special exhibition “Places of Longing”, looks at prominent paintings such as the loan from the Swiss city of Winterthur “Chalk Cliffs on Rügen” and visits places that played a role in Caspar David Friedrich’s childhood: his birthplace, the harbor, the Greifswald Cathedral with the new windows by installation artist Ólafur Elìasson.
Events
We begin our tour in the current exhibition in the Pomeranian State Museum. It is already the second exhibition this year, after “Lifelines” comes “Places of Longing”. Caspar David Friedrich’s chalk cliffs have already been on display in Hamburg and Berlin and are now for the first time in Greifswald, near the place that inspired them. What did you think when the picture was hanging here?
The new Gallery of Romanticism is currently under construction. Ruth Slenczka hopes that it will be finished in 2025.
Ruth Slenczka: It was a very moving moment. At first you couldn’t really believe that they were actually hanging there and that it was really the original. But the aura that surrounds such an original is very effective. I think it’s just wonderful.
Friedrich was born in Greifswald, left the city early, lived in Dresden for many decades and kept coming back. He also hiked a lot, a theme you repeatedly take up in the exhibition.
Slenczka: For him, as for a whole generation of young, freedom-loving men, hiking was a very important way of experiencing the world and the landscape. This was particularly important for artists of the Romantic era. Friedrich usually came to Greifswald on foot from Dresden and on every trip he travelled in the surrounding area and usually also on Rügen. He set off early in the morning. He loved the twilight, the transition from darkness to light, from night to day. Many of his pictures reflect this. He set out on long journeys, walked quickly, usually 30 kilometres or even more, and it must also be taken into account that he drew in between. He did not do this hastily; many of the drawings in his sketchbooks show that he sat on a tree stump or a stone for a long time and thought about it before he started. These drawings make it clear that he never chose just any tree, but that he devoted a lot of time to his subjects, with particular calm and a whole eye. He ran fast, and he often ran alone, sometimes with a friend. But even when he was with a friend, they would sometimes split up. The experience that led to the chalk cliff marks is one of those personal hikes connected.
The picture is closely linked to the hikes in 1815 and 1818, and some of this personal experience is also reflected in the picture. In 1815 there was this story about his friend Kummer, who climbed into the rocks and couldn’t get out again. He was then rescued in a spectacular operation at night. That wasn’t so clear, because the storm was also brewing. It was the story of great distress and fear, and the experience of this danger, which also comes from the rocks, and then the miraculous rescue. Friedrich made the first sketch of the chalk cliffs two days later. This was certainly under the impression of this experience of menace and miraculous rescue, which also make up the tension of the picture.
In 1818 he came to Greifswald with his young wife. It was the only time he ever travelled with his sister-in-law and brother, and not on foot. He later commented that he would never do it again. “Such rubbish,” he said. But I think that the female figure in the red dress in the picture is closely connected to this trip and his own wife.
The conversation was Katja Weise.
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