Exhibition about the Thirty Years War in Dresden – Culture

It was the “Hiroshima” of the Thirty Years War. The destruction of the city by the troops of the Catholic League under Tilly and Pappenheim in May 1631 was a cruel massacre even for this cruel war. Between 20,000 and 30,000 people were lynched by the Catholic soldiers in four days, and the city was completely looted and burned down. The term “magdeburgize” then entered European parlance for “completely extinguish”. And the bloodthirsty assassination was of no use either. The power struggle of greedy princes and unscrupulous leaders of professional armies raged on for 17 years and cost a third of the population of Central Europe their lives through spits, hunger and the plague.

The real war defines the framework in which the beauty of art must be talked about

That is why there is an engraving of this hideous event at the beginning of the exhibition “Bellum et Artes” in the Green Vault in Dresden. The exhibition with nine stations, which was developed from a research project by eleven European institutions, has its first performance there, because Saxony was a center of unrestrained killing between 1618 and 1648. And although the aerial view of the siege of Magdeburg is a distanced document of staged war luck, as victorious princes had their battles made, the real war nevertheless defines the framework in which the assembled beauty of art must be talked about.

If all the splendor of finely engraved stabbing weapons, chased globes for drinking games or gold-plated sundials is not to appear cynical, the story of those who suffered this endless sectarian war must first be told. And the team of curators of this skeptical show is really not guilty of trivializing. Immediately after the collection of battle orders and burning cityscapes, on which no slashed bodies, roasted peasants and raped women can yet be seen, a cabinet gathers all that is concrete, what the “Thirty Years War” meant for the people in contrast to the princes.

The depiction of the atrocities of war were “only partially worthy of the picture”

Around a carved “ogre” by Leonhard Kern from 1640, who is completely emaciated and bites into a severed human leg, the room gathers realistic engravings and drawings of the atrocities of the mercenary armies against the civilian population as well as audio examples of eyewitness reports of the brutal atrocities of all armies involved in the war whether Bavarian or Swedish. In the extensive volume of essays that accompanies the research project, Christoph Orth points out that the depiction of the atrocities of war was “only partially considered worthy of image” in this particularly terrible war. The “combination of military power and art led to a one-sided concentration on images that either served to glorify the client or show the war in a genre-like manner”.

What the reality of this war looked like for the heads of state is perhaps best described by a sword richly illustrated with engravings, which the Saxon Elector Johann Georg I received from a nobleman in the middle of the war. On the blade, the “heroes” of both sides are depicted in pious unity on proud horses and with fluttering feathers on their hats, as if they were all on the same team. And somehow that also corresponded to the reality of this royal class, which was not only closely related through multiple marriages between the mighty powers of the continent, but also constantly changed fronts and coalition partners in power according to current political and material interests.

Open detailed view

The Saxon elector, whom historians like to deride as “the emperor’s useful idiot” and the “Bierjörge” because he was always drunk or avoided confrontational power politics on the hunt, is a classic example of this harmless nobility. Although he was head of a Protestant empire, he remained loyal to the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II for a very long time, and even after changing the front to Gustav Adolf’s Swedish side, he could not prevent his country from becoming the main theater of the man-made apocalypse for ten years. Only in caring for his art treasure did he show himself to be far superior to cruel princes.

In his 45-year reign, Johann Georg diligently increased the treasures, some of which can be seen in this special exhibition or as satellites in the magnificent permanent exhibition of the State Art Collection, such as richly decorated armor and harness, an ivory frigate by Jacob Zeller, which the The theme of Saxony’s entry into the war, or splendid fashion in Georg’s favorite color, green. The alcohol esthete went shopping abroad, got lavish gifts from his wife for Christmas and had commissioned work financed from the state treasury. In fact, he brought this foundation of the grandiose state treasure, which has now become the main tourist attraction of Dresden, through all the chaos of the war – which otherwise not many succeeded.

The exhibition also tells of the stealing of art and the way of the spoils of war

Even the leader of the Catholic League, the Bavarian Elector Maximilian I, was robbed of his treasures in Munich by the Swedish King Gustav Adolf in 1632, for which he then held himself harmless in the Stuttgart collection in 1634. And even in the year of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the troops of Gustav Adolf’s successor, Queen Christina of Sweden, plundered the city where the European World War had begun with the fall of the window in Prague – in their pocket a wish list from the Queen of what to bring to Stockholm be.

Accordingly, this exhibition also deals with the migration of the booty. A digital search for traces, which will be continued at the following stations of “Bellum et Artes” in Prague, Innsbruck, Mantua, Gdansk, Wroclaw, Görlitz, Stockholm, Madrid and for the 2024 finale in Brussels, is to generate an interactive map on which the Tracing the path of the stolen art to its current whereabouts. There, many of the treasures that visitors took for granted as belonging to the museum will be marked as looted art for the first time in a historical context.

Open detailed view

Fortunately, the team of curators around the outgoing director of the Grünes Gewölbe, Dirk Syndram, namely Claudia Brink, Theda Jürjens and Susanne Jaeger, does not indulge in the Saxon pomp that can be enjoyed on the same floor in the new Grünes Gewölbe up to gold blindness. With concise exhibits and texts, they tightly illustrate their chapters, from an arsenal of killing weapons to oil paintings of equestrian battles (which, however, in some cases do not depict the Thirty Years War) to opulent vessels, portraits of rulers and documents, such as the Swedish ratification copy of the Peace of Westphalia.

A work of art refers to the Afghanistan conflict and thus to the present

Before the visitor leaves the Green Vault, he stumbles over a work of art on the floor consisting of three cartridge-shaped urns with shadowy faces. With these cenotaphs, the artist Till Ansgar Baumhauer reminds us that there are still armed conflicts that last several decades: in this case the Afghanistan conflict, which began with the invasion of the Russian army in 1979. And this indicates that many aspects of the Thirty Years’ War have not led to any insight in around 400 years: from the massacres of their people by the Syrian rulers to the unleashed cruelty of Mexican cartels to the sectarian coercive regime that China is waging against Uyghurs and Tibetans there are numerous parallels of horror. The cynical glorification of violence and just wars has increased compared to the “Magdeburg Wedding”. And that’s why “Bellum et Artes” is actually a lesson about the present.

Bellum et Artes, in the Dresden Residenzschloss. Until October 4, 2021. Catalog: Sandstein Verlag, 150 pages, 15 euros; Volume of essays: Sandstein Verlag, 544 pages, 48 ​​euros.