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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title To the Vandals They Are Stone: A Profane Pre-History of the German Temple of Art, 1794- 1830 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8wq5j46b Author Goff, Alice M. Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California To the Vandals They Are Stone: A Profane Pre-History of the German Temple of Art, 1794-1830 By Alice Mae Littman Goff A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Thomas W. Laqueur, Co-chair Professor Jonathan Sheehan, Co-chair Professor Carla Hesse Professor Beate Fricke Spring 2015 Abstract To the Vandals They Are Stone: A Profane Pre-History of the German Temple of Art, 1794-1830 by Alice Mae Littman Goff Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Thomas W. Laqueur, Co-chair Jonathan Sheehan, Co-chair This is the story of how German writers, scholars, bureaucrats and custodians of art at all levels witnessed and participated in the French despoliations of European art collections over the course of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and how in the aftermath of these events they developed new ideas about the place and purpose of art in modern cultural and political life at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In this period German scholars were forming new theories about the autonomy of art and its ability to remake the social and political order. At the same time they were gaining unprecedented experience of art’s material fragility and its dependence on the contingencies of the environment and good will of human actors. This dissertation argues that the tension between the twin discoveries of art’s powers and its limitations defined the cultural politics of the Prussian state during this revolutionary era. This dissertation begins with the looting of Italian and German art collections by French officials from 1794-1807, and investigates Germans’ confrontation with the vulnerability of the objects thought to be the source of ideal beauty in the world to material displacement in the tumult of military conflict and occupation. The second chapter turns to the German reaction to the museum founded in 1793 in the Palace of the Louvre in which the collections won through battle were exhibited to a broad and international public. In the face of the brilliance and innovativeness of this museum, German visitors rethought their repulsion to the despoliations and articulated new visions for the methods and contexts under which art could be known and appreciated. The silence of art and the difficulty of getting it off its pedestal is the subject of the third chapter, which takes up the challenges for Prussian delegates of identifying, reclaiming, and returning looted artworks to German cities and towns after the fall of the Napoleonic regime. The last two chapters are about the promise, forwarded by aesthetic theorists and cultural administrators, that once back in German custody, looted art objects would achieve new vitality, becoming vibrant participants in the cultural life of the state. In Prussia this achievement was to be secured by the establishment of a centralized public museum of art, an institution that hoped to abandon the chaotic, limited, dangerous, and frustratingly silent material basis of art in favor of a realm of pure ideal aesthetic experience. “To the Vandals they are stone!” Schiller wrote of the antiquities in Paris, expressing the desire not only to transcend the object but to cordon off art’s materiality as the domain of those unable to experience its true spiritual charge. The 1 assessment, however, both enlightens and deceives. Indeed, to the Vandals they were stone—the various transgressions against art objects which we will encounter in the following could not be conceived as such without the bottom line of art's materiality. To be an object in this period was a deeply vulnerable proposition. At the same time, however, the object was not only the purview of the victor, but also the ultimate concern of the vanquished. The problem and, I will argue, fundamental impossibility of escaping from this truth—of making stone transform into something beyond itself—became in this moment the defining paradox of the museum of art in the nineteenth century. The inheritance of this history continues to inform and challenge museum practices today. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ ii INTRODUCTION Stepping into the Gap ..................................................................................................................... iii Introduction Illustrations ..................................................................................................... x CHAPTER 1 The Tragedy of the Object in the Napoleonic Kunstraub ............................................................... 1 Chapter 1 Illustrations ....................................................................................................... 27 CHAPTER 2 A Brilliant Place: German Responses to the Musée du Louvre, 1800 .......................................... 35 Chapter 2 Illustrations ....................................................................................................... 65 CHAPTER 3 To the Places Where They Were to be Found Previously: The Restoration of Prussian Art Collections, 1814-1815 ................................................................................................................. 67 Chapter 3 Illustrations ..................................................................................................... 102 CHAPTER 4 Stepping Onto the Pedestal: The Liveliness of Art in Prussian Museum Planning, 1815-1820 ................................................................................................................................... 107 Chapter 4 Illustrations ..................................................................................................... 127 CHAPTER 5 The Limits of Autonomy: Building the Royal Museum of Art in Berlin, 1823-1830 ................ 130 Chapter 5 Illustrations ..................................................................................................... 156 AFTERWORD ............................................................................................................................ 163 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 167 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation results from the generous support of many to whom I offer sincere thanks. The assistance of archivists and staff at the repositories where I did my research was invaluable. In particular Dr. Andreas Becker of the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Dr. Ulrike Möhlenbeck of the Historisches Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Stephan Fölske of the Akademiearchiv at the Akademie der Wissenschaften, Dr. Antje Adler and Evelyn Zimmerman of the Stiftung Preussischer Schlösser und Gärten, and Dr. Jörn Grabowski and Beate Ebelt of the Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen Museen gave expert and thoughtful help in navigating their collections. My research and writing was funded by generous grants from the Council for Library and Information Resources, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Foundation. The German Historical Institute, through the archival summer seminar under the leadership of Mario Daniels and the transatlantic doctoral seminar led by Richard Wetzell, provided invaluable opportunities to discuss work, meet colleagues, and learn the skills of German historical research. This project has been strengthened immeasurably by conversations with a community of incomparable colleagues. The participants in the colloquium at the Lehrstuhl für Wissenschaftgeschichte at the Humboldt Universität provided helpful feedback during this project’s earliest phases and lively discussions throughout my research year, in particular Kirsten Otto, Anja Sattelmacher, Alrun Schmidtke, Mario Schulze, Skúli Sigurdsson, Katharina Steidl and Christian Vogel. The members of the History Club—Sarah Goodrum, Kate Horning, Gabriella Szalay, Molly Taylor-Polesky, and Christoph Willmitzer—were also always ready with humor and thoughtful discussion in Berlin. Molly Taylor-Polesky was a constant resource for problems paleographical; Susannah Brower provided help with Latin translations. At Berkeley the unflagging solidarity and critical insights of so many, but especially Jenni Allen, Nicole Eaton, Hannah Farber, Sheer Ganor, Bianca Hoenig, Elena Kempf, Vanessa Lincoln, Terry Renaud, Tehila Sasson, Brandon Schechter, James Skee, Gene Zubovich, Katherine Zubovich and the members of the German history working group, Der Kreis, have been sources of much inspiration over the years and fill me with enthusiasm for the years to come. I am deeply grateful to my teachers for their guidance and inspiration. In particular I thank Anke te Heesen, Martin Jay, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman, and Elliott Shore for their feedback and engagement with this project as it developed. Beate Fricke, and Carla Hesse have been insightful readers and resourceful advisors. Tom Laqueur and Jonathan Sheehan have