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Copyright by Alexandria N. Kotoch 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Alexandria N. Kotoch certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Seeing is Behaving: Frau Welt and the Fürst der Welt, Art and Moral Messages in the Rhineland ca. 1300 Committee: Joan A. Holladay, Supervisor Jeffrey Chipps Smith Martha G. Newman Louis A. Waldman Charlotte A. Stanford Seeing is Behaving: Frau Welt and the Fürst der Welt, Art and Moral Messages in the Rhineland ca. 1300 by Alexandria N. Kotoch, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2014 Acknowledgements I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my advisor, Joan A. Holladay, on completion of this dissertation. I have benefited greatly over the years from her guidance, encouragement, and expertise. I am deeply grateful for her insight, critical questions, and meticulous editing through different stages of my research and writing, all of which helped bring this dissertation to fruition. It has been a privilege to work with her and have her as a scholarly mentor. I also extend enormous gratitude to my dissertation committee, Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Martha G. Newman, Louis A. Waldman, and Charlotte A. Stanford, for the thoughtful comments, suggestions, and questions that they supplied throughout this project. A number of sources provided generous financial support for the research and writing of this dissertation. Fellowships from the DAAD (The German Academic Exchange Service) and the Gerda Henkel Foundation supported extensive periods of research abroad, and the Mellon-CES Dissertation Completion Fellowship supported me during the final stages of writing and editing. I extend deep thanks to my fellow graduate students and friends who offered moral support, traveling companionship, and lively discussions throughout this process. Above all, I thank my family for their unwavering support, encouragement, and love, and it is to my family that I dedicate this dissertation. iv Seeing is Behaving: Frau Welt and the Fürst der Welt, Art and Moral Messages in the Rhineland ca. 1300 Alexandria N. Kotoch, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Joan A. Holladay Frau Welt (Lady World) was a popular German allegory in the Middle Ages, which warned against the false nature of worldly things and desires through a uniquely deceptive appearance: her attractive front side concealed a horrid backside covered with toads, snakes, and worms. While the allegory remains uncommon in visual art, her male counterpart with a similar iconography and warning, the Fürst der Welt (Prince of the World), survives in several sculptural examples. The two allegories, however, appear in very different contexts. While the Frau Welt allegory appears frequently in courtly literature and Minnesongs of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it only appears once in monumental sculptural form, at Worms cathedral. Here the allegory appears with three other female personifications: Synagogue, Charity, and Faith. Surviving only in visual form, the Fürst der Welt appears often with the Wise and Foolish Virgins. The best-known and earliest example of the Fürst der Welt stands on the west facade of Strasbourg cathedral. v While previous scholarship has noted the similar iconographies of the two allegories, this dissertation will aim to contextualize the figures beyond iconography by posing larger, overarching questions: Why do these figures appear mainly nestled on cathedral facades along the Rhineland? And why is their popularity confined to the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries? I address these questions of geographic and temporal exclusivity by considering this artistic phenomenon against a changing theological and cultural backdrop. I argue that the appearance of Frau Welt and the Fürst der Welt allegories in visual form is part of a growing interest in medieval society in visuality and moralizing themes. The Frau Welt and Fürst der Welt sculptures take these interests further through their “foolproof” iconography, which calls attention to their divided and deceptive nature. In short, the moral transparency of the sculptural representations of the Frau Welt and Fürst der Welt allegories takes the emerging interest in visuality to the extreme and makes it possible for the viewer to grasp the basic moral message or meaning without any prior conditioning to the allegories or their stories. vi Table of Contents List of Figures ...................................................................................................... viii Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Frau Welt: "There was Never a Lovelier Woman Beheld on Earth" .................................................................................................................…..20 Chapter Two: The Fürst der Welt: "The Prince of this World Cometh, and in Me Hath not Any Thing" .....................................................................................49 Chapter Three: Courtly Figures on Church Facades: The Religious and Secular Contexts of the Sculpted Allegories ...........................................................129 Chapter Four: A New Attitude Toward Images: The Artistic Context of the Upper Rhine ...........................................................................................................182 Conclusion: The Afterlife of Frau Welt and the Fürst der Welt ..........................227 Figures..................................................................................................................235 Appendix I: “The Reward of the World” by Konrad von Würzburg ..................317 Bibliography ........................................................................................................320 vii List of Figures (All photographs by the author unless otherwise specified.) Figure 1: Illustration by Heinrich Hoffmann, The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb (photo: Heinrich Hoffmann, Struwwelpeter: Merry Stories and Funny Pictures (1848), Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12116/12116-h/12116-h.htm)………….…235 Figure 2: Illustration by Heinrich Hoffman, The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb (photo: Heinrich Hoffmann, Struwwelpeter: Merry Stories and Funny Pictures (1848), Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12116/12116-h/12116-h.htm)………….…235 Figure 3: Frau Welt, south portal, Worms cathedral……………………………….…..236 Figure 4: Backside of Frau Welt, south portal, Worms cathedral……………….....…..236 Figure 5: The Fürst der Welt, Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre-Dame, Strasbourg, inv. 66. Originally from Strasbourg cathedral………………………………………………..…237 Figure 6: Backside of the Fürst der Welt, Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre-Dame, Strasbourg, inv. 66. Originally from Strasbourg cathedral…………………………………………237 Figure 7: The Fürst der Welt, west facade, Basel cathedral (photo: Meier and Schürmann, ed., Himmelstür: Das Hauptportal des Basler Münsters, 2011, fig. 63)………….……238 Figure 8: Backside of the Fürst der Welt, west facade, Basel cathedral (photo: Meier and Schürmann, ed., Himmelstür: Das Hauptportal des Basler Münsters, 2011, fig. 12)….238 Figure 9: The Fürst der Welt, interior porch, west facade, Freiburg minster (photo: Spath, Das Tor zum Leben: Die Hauptportalhalle des Freiburger Münsters, 2005, p. 40)…...239 Figure 10: Cast of backside of the Fürst der Welt, Münsterbauhütte, Freiburg…………………………………………………………………………………239 Figure 11: The Fürst der Welt, interior wall leading out to the Brautportal, St. Sebaldus, Nuremberg……………………………………………………………………………...240 Figure 12: Backside of the Fürst der Welt, interior wall leading out to the Brautportal, St. Sebaldus, Nuremberg…………………………………………………………………...240 Figure 13: The Fürst der Welt, Haus Heuport, Regensburg……………………………241 Figure 14: Backside of the Fürst der Welt, Haus Heuport, Regensburg………………..241 Figure 15: The Fürst der Welt, the Carmelite cloister, Bamberg……………………….242 viii Figure 16: Drawing of the Fürst der Welt, the Carmelite cloister, Bamberg (photo: Borutscheff, Der Karmeliten-Kreuzgang in Bamberg, 1988, p. 70)…………………...242 Figure 17: Map of the Upper Rhine in the Middle Ages (Erzbischöflichen Ordinariat, ed., Das Erzbistum Freiburg 1827-1977, 1977, p. 13)……………………………………...243 Figure 188: Plan of Worms cathedral (photo: Bildarchiv Foto Marburg)……………….244 Figure 19: South facade, Worms cathedral (photo: Digital Archive Services, University of Texas at Austin)……………………………………………………………………...244 Figure 20: South portal, Worms cathedral……………………………………………...245 Figure 21: Coronation of the Virgin, tympanum, south portal, Worms cathedral……...246 Figure 22: Old Testament figures, south portal, Worms cathedral……………………..246 Figure 23: Four Evangelists, south portal, Worms cathedral…………………………...246 Figure 24: Archivolts and gable, south portal, Worms cathedral………………………247 Figure 25: John the Baptist, angel, unidentified bishop, exterior wall of Nikolauskapelle, south facade, Worms cathedral…………………………………………………………248 Figure 26: Virgin and Child, exterior wall of Nikolauskapelle, south facade, Worms cathedral………………………………………………………………………………...248 Figure 27: Saint Catherine of Alexandria, exterior wall of Nikolauskapelle, south facade, Worms cathedral………………………………………………………………………..248 Figure 28: Four female allegories, exterior wall of Annenkapelle, south portal, Worms