Fritz Geiges

In 1835, he was christened Alois Sigmund Friedrich Geiges, but he insisted that they call him Fritz. He has influenced Freiburg's cultural heritage dramatically. A well-known example is his impressive painting of St. Georges at the Schwabentor (Swabian Gate).

©miJoergens/Wikipedia

 Another example is the stained-glassed windows of Sankt Johannes (St. Jean's Church) that Geiges created from 1898 to 1901.

Emperor Saint Heinrich II.  He was canonized for being the donor of Basel's cathedral.  Here, he carries a model of the Johanneskirche.

In Mediaeval style: Professor Fritz Geiges as   a donor figure in the corner of one of his stained-glass windows. In the bottom left, Geiges' coat of arms, the Freiburg raven.

Fritz Geiges was one of the founders of the still-existing Breisgau Geschichtsverein (historical society) Schau-ins-Land in his youth. The first edition of the society's annual book carries his handwriting, and he made nearly all of the drawings.

Page 77 of the first-year edition of the journal "Schau-ins-Land," written and drawn by Geiges.

During his life, Fritz was a workaholic and was known throughout the 2^nd Reich for his "historicizing art." At the invitation of Emperor Wilhelm II, he conceived the decoration of Berlin's Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (memorial church). Wilhelm was impressed and attributed to Fritz the title of professor. He was so proud that he signed all of his future works with Professor Fritz Geiges.

The restored mosaic in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche conceived by Fritz Geiges
showing some of the Prussian royals ©JoJan/Wikipedia

In 1890, Geiges restored the sculptures in Freiburg's Minster Church port. Before, he had made watercolor paintings of all the objects. Based on these paintings, a second restoration of the sculptures was started in 2001 and terminated in 2004, i.e., the Mediaeval figures were cleaned and restored to the state Geiges had documented in the late 19th century. The Münsterbauverein took the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the second restoration to honor Fritz Geiges with an exhibition, a series of lectures, and guided tours: Gothic in the Workshop.

Honoring Professor Fritz Geiges: Gotik im Atelier (©Münsterbauverein)

In the entrance hall of Freiburg's Minster church: Visitation of Our Lady.  Both Mary and her cousin Elisabeth  are bearing children.

The wall painting by Fritz Geiges of 1909 shows Dr. Faustus's end in Staufen.
When M. Hickel restored the painting in 1994, he forgot to add Geiges' title.

Following Geiges' success with restoring the statues of the Münster porch in 1917, the city council entrusted him, the expert on stained glass, with the restoration of the Mediaeval windows. Fritz worked according to his ideas, rarely observing the maxim of monument preservation: Niemals restaurieren, möglichst nur konservieren (Never restore, if possible only conserve). In the 1920s, Geiges was highly criticized for his "restoring vandalism."

Today, visitors of Freiburg's Münster enjoy the old and the new parts of the stained-glass windows and sometimes look with astonishment at the following example in the so-called baker's window:

©miJoergens/Wikipedia

The pretzel on the left looks bright; it must be one of Geiges' new additions. You are mistaken! Geiges had added missing glass windows and varnished them to fit the dirty originals. When the Münster windows were cleaned in 1980, the restoring scientists were fascinated by the blaze of the Medieval originals, as shown on the left-hand side.

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