Ottheinrich's View of Heidelberg

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CHAPTER 5 Ottheinrich’s View of Heidelberg

Figure 70 Unknown artist, View of Heidelberg. From Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1550). Woodcut, 25.3 × 70.2 cm.

The view of Heidelberg (fig. 70) is a large, four-page foldout panorama of the city and Heidelberg Castle, on the banks of the river Neckar, a tributary of the Rhine. The view was not submitted by Heidelberg’s ruler, the Wittelsbach prince-elector Friedrich II of the Palatinate but by his nephew, Count Palatine of the Rhine Ottheinrich of Palatinate-Neuburg (1502–1559). Prince-elector of the Palatinate was the most prestigious office in the lineage of the counts palatine of the Rhine, held by the Wittelsbach family. Due to the division of territories among different branches of the family, by the sixteenth century younger branches held the less important office of count palatine in Simmern, Zweibrücken, Veldenz, and Neuburg. The curious discrepancy between patronage and rulership in the view of Heidelberg makes this view the perfect case study for testing the validity of the ancestral mode as a category of city views. At the time of Ottheinrich’s submission, between 1547 and 1550, the re- bellious and bankrupt count lived in exile from his domains in Neuburg and could not make any territorial claims to Heidelberg. Nor did he attempt to do so in the intricate program of texts, genealogical trees, and illustrations that he submitted to the Cosmographia. Instead, Ottheinrich’s program served to advance and publicize his long-standing ancestral claim to the electorship. To elucidate the role of topography in this program I will examine this material within the broader context of Ottheinrich’s art patronage. For Ottheinrich,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi ��.��63/9789004353961_007 Ottheinrich’s View of Heidelberg 155 topography was principally malleable, symbolic, and tied to the history of the Wittelsbach family. The outsize importance of the Rhine and its tributaries in Ottheinrich’s topographic commissions placed the ancestral lineage of the Wittelsbach counts palatine, called counts palatine of the Rhine, at the core of the German nation. In adopting the Rhine as a personal, ancestral, and na- tional symbol, Ottheinrich purports to personally embody the German nation as future elector palatine.

Ottheinrich’s Claim to the Electorship

The four-page foldout view of Heidelberg (fig. 70) is among the three larg- est views in the Cosmographia. The panorama, depicted from the north bank of the river Neckar, offers a good view of Heidelberg Castle (fig. 71), the residence of the Wittelsbach prince-electors of the Palatinate. Above the castle, directly below the coat of arms with the palatine lion, is a patch of rubble labeled “Remains of the old castle.”1 Until 1537 a second Wittelsbach

Figure 71 Heidelberg Castle, labeled “Arx regal” (Royal castle) and “ Schlos” (palace), and the remains of the old castle, labeled “Reliquiae uetustae arcis” (Remains of the old castle), detail of fig. 70.

1 “Reliquiae uetustae arcis.” Ever since 1303, sources have told of two extant castles in Heidelberg. Although it is uncertain which of the two castles is older, the upper castle has