NORDISK MUSEOLOGI 1994•1, S. 31-46 THE TO-BINGEN CONSPIRACY Beat Wjtss In March of1913, a fragmentary manuscript, a folio written on both sides in the handwriting of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, was auctioned offin Berlin. Four years later, after a publication by Franz Rosenzweig, it became known as the «Oldest System-Program ofGerman Idealism.1>1 One hears the murmuring ofa genius in this little text, which has been attributed to Schelling, Holder/in, or Hegel three friends who studied together in TU.bingen. This <<fetish» ofresearch on idealism2 continues to feed the scholarly debate over the fragments authorship and the obscurities ofits origin and content. 3 Some new ideas about the purpose ofthe early public art museums may emerge from the study ofthe document. It is possible to discern a connecting line ofthought, a com­ mon concept ofpurpose, between Holderlin's idea of 'eternal return' and Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, as well as between Hegel's historicism, Schinkel's Altes Museum and James Sterling's Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. For each of the three friends, the System­ ing the French Revolution in a transcen­ Program would seem to be the seed of ding light. The System-Program begins later works. In fervent language, the thesis with the announcement of a "revolt .... demands the merging of art and philoso­ through reason itself." 5 After this great phy, myth and science. The manuscript revolution, which would have done away must have originated in the Winter of with ignorance, superstition, and prosely­ 1796-97, perhaps as an "agitation pro­ tizers, the new age would stand under the gram" to be read alound to a circle of col­ sign of beauty, for within beauty all con­ leagues.4 cepts of reason are united: At this time, Hegel and Holderlin were employed as preceptors in Frankfurt, I am convinced now that the highest act of reason, which allowed them to pick up their dis­ the one in which all other ideas are united, is an cussions where they had left off in aesthetic act and that truth and goodness become Ttibingen. There, they had shared a room closely related through beauty alone. with Schelling, and together the three had read Fichte and Rousseau and had foun­ This philosophy of the future, however, ded the league of Reason and Liberty, evok- culminates in aesthetics not only in con- BEAT WYSS 32 tent, but also in form: Philosophizing itself must become aesthetic: thought The absolute didactic poem or the speculative epic should present itself in the form of poetry: becomes one with the fulfillment of science; and, just as science once became independent of poetry, Poetry attains a higher dignity, in the end it will be so it is her last and most sublime destination to again what it was in the beginning - teacher of the flow back into this ocean.' history of humankind; for there is no more philo­ sophy, no more history, the art of poetry alone will As in the System-Program, Philosophy of survive all other sciences and arts. Art construes history as a circle: The topos of the great poets as creators of The development runs from the poetic age of anti­ myth and as teachers of the people stems quity through the scientific prose of modernity to from Johann Gottfried Herder. 6 Homer the newly-proclaimed age of poetry, whose last and Hesiod had given myth to human­ Homer we still await. Therefore, we must draw the kind, but this myth was corrupted by sci­ same conclusions about the epic that we have ence over the course of history. A final drawn about mythology, namely, that Homer, who Homer was now anticipated, one who was the first artist of antiquity, will also be the last would preserve and fulfill the sciences in a in modern arr, and will fulfill the ultimate purpose new mythology. Through it, philosophy of arr irself.9 was to become poetry, and poetry philo­ sophy. The ultimate Gesamtkunstwerk The circular model of history, antiquity would be identical in form and content: a versus modernity, is rooted in the beautiful expression of the idea of beauty Renaissance view of history, which culmi­ that could embrace everything in perfec­ nated in the Baroque period as the querelle tion. des anciens et des modernes. The systematic Friedrich Schelling gave his lecture polarity of art versus philosophy corres­ entitled Philosophy of Art in 1802-03 at ponds to the historic polarity between Jena, and in 1804-05 at Wiirzburg.7 By antiquity and modernity. But just as art then, important points of the anonymous and philosophy are merely two different manifesto had been expanded upon and sides of the same truth, antiquity and developed as a systematic philosophical modernity give shape to the formal con­ project. Like the System-Program, Schel­ trast of the same beauty. Schelling envisi­ ling's Philosophy of Art was prophetic, an ons the abolition of opposites. The fusion aesthetics that is not yet aesthetic itself. of art and philosophy in the didactic Voiced in reflexive prose, it dreams of the poem corresponds on a historical plane to flight of poetry: Not philosophical but the reconciliation of antiquity and moder­ didactic poetry expresses the highest form nity in the memory of aesthetic science: of conscience. The ultimate poem would voice the universe so that knowledge The history of arr will point out to us most clearly about the world would once again be the its direct connections to the determination of the song of Mytho-poesie, poetry that chants universe and toward that particular absoluteness for myth: which it is predetermined. The essential and inner THE TOBINGEN CONSPIRACY 33 jean-Dominique Ingres: Apotheosis ofHomer, 1828, Paris, Louvre unity of all artistic creation becomes manifest only The legitimate genealogy of the civilized in the hiscocy of arc, showing chat all poetcy is of old world is spread out before us: at one and the same genius, which also shows itself in Homer's feet are his spiritual daughters. two different forms as old and new arc.10 Ilias and Odysse. Then comes the court of scholars, artists, and poets. Ingres counts In 1826-27, Ingres painted the Apotheosis them among the sons of Homer - "!es of Homer as a ceiling decoration for the grands hommes enfants d'Homer rendant exhibition hall of the old Louvre, which hommage a sa divinite. ·~ 1 The simultane­ Pierre Fontaine had rebuilt for use as a ous presence of the Homerids as a com­ 'museum'. Ingres illustrates The Unity of munity in this tableau demonstrates the all Art by grouping artists, musicians, and identity of beauty as the manifold of those poets from the history of European civili­ who sing its praises. Homer is the first, zation around the figure of Homer, who is the founder of the entire treasury of old himself being crowned with a laurel wre­ world myth. His figure is at once the sour­ ath by Nike, the female genius of Victory. ce and mouthpiece for the noble geneolo- BEAT WYSS 34 gy that is the history of civilization; von first poet to the first high culture of the dorther kommt und zuritck deutet der kom­ old world. Homer serves Mnemosyne, god­ mende Gott. 12 In these words of Holderlin, dess of memory and mother of the muses. one can read the two-fold movement of the Ingres thus establishes the connection bet­ central perspective in Ingres's painting: ween the concept of 'museum' and that of The circular movement of the totality an institution that houses the works of Schelling describes is presented here grap­ visiual artists. What Homer creates with hically: antiquity and modernity are his verses, the museum presents in its gal­ reconciled through a reciprocity of recei­ leries and halls, in those convolutions of ving and giving. Thus Apelles as court the public memory that safeguard the tes­ painter of Alexander the Great passes his timonies of material culture. The word mastery on to Raphael. 'museum' was not always connected with As Ingres composed the picture, the gar­ the process of caring for works of art. In land of occidental spirit paradoxically antiquity, painting never achieved the finds its point de vue in the extinguished value that it would achieve in modern eyes of the poet. In the lower right hand times. The muses were goddesses of scien­ corner, the Palmyran rhetorician of late ce, poetry, and music. Plato began his phi­ antiquity, Longinus tries to catch the glan­ losophical teachings at the Hekedemeia, ce of the blind Homer. What he writes the academy at the gates of Athens, by about it will in turn become the model for offering a prayer to the muses. The desig­ the modern artist Nicolas Boileau, who nation of this word 'museum' to describe laid down the rules of French classicism a place where art objects would be exhibi­ with his L 'art poetique in 1674, and whom ted is directly connected with a revolutio­ we see at work in the painting. In his nary cultural act that effected a brutal blindness, Homer looks into the future; at inversion of the public conscience: On the same time, he is commemorated by January 21, 1793, the King of France was his descendants, who look back toward his executed. The case file names the condem­ face. On the left of the painting, Poussin ned Louis Capet. This was indeed a poin­ teaches us that it is not only the famous, ted humiliation: Louis XVI of the Capets, the guests of honor, but we too, who are a public figurehead, was degraded to the intended to profit from the example of the status of private individual with the family observer in this painting: making eye con­ name of a civilian, while his property was tact, he shows us which way to look.