We Will Never Surrender!

The third session of the seminar "80 Years, End of the War in the Southwest" (1944/45) dealt with the final military battle in spring 1945 (Der militärische Endkampf im Frühjahr 1945).

The East

Before the Endkampf, the Russians had successfully pushed back the German Heeresgruppe Mitte (Army Group Center). 

The "Operation Bagration" began on June 22, 1944, with a massive artillery bombardment of German positions. Nothing was to be left to chance. Initially, four Soviet "fronts," i.e., the 1st Baltic and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Belorussian armies, went on the attack. In the rear area, the Red Army concentrated more than a dozen armies, more than two million soldiers, over 5,000 tanks, around 5,000 fighter planes, and tens of thousands of guns. The Heeresgruppe Mitte had nothing to oppose this enormous superiority.

The date of the attack and the name chosen were highly symbolic. On this day, three years earlier, Germany had invaded the Soviet Union and begun a merciless war of annihilation.

Joseph Stalin chose "Operation Bagration" for the name. Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration (1765 to 1812) was a Georgian compatriot of the Soviet dictator and a hero in the "Patriotic War" of 1812 against Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion.

No better name than Bagration could be chosen for the decisive offensive in the "Great Patriotic War," as the Russian defensive struggle since the German invasion in 1941 was called.

The Eastern Front collapsed within a month. By December 1944, the Red Army had "liberated" the Baltic states and was on the border with East Prussia. At the end of March 1945, the Russian Winter Offensive had reached the Oder River. During its advance, the Red Army had surrounded the cities of Danzig and Breslau, leaving them aside.

The West

 The Allies reached the Rhine River in March 1945. The metropolis Aachen had already fallen on October 21, 1944.

In mid-December, Hitler put all his eggs into one basket. He scraped together whatever reserves the German military machine had left and started an offensive against the Allies in the Ardennes on December 16.

The first wave of the German attack involved more than 200,000 soldiers spread across three armies, around 600 tanks, and assault guns. This concentrated power drove a bulge into the Allied front in Belgium and Luxembourg. For the Americans, this desperate attempt to turn the tide of the war went down in history as the Battle of the Bulge.

The predetermined target of the Battle was far away Antwerp, the Belgian port on the Channel, through which the Allies had been delivering large quantities of supplies for their troops.

While the fight was going on, Paul Scherrer invited Werner Heisenberg, head of the German atomic project, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, professor of physics at the Reichs University Strasbourg, to give a scientific lecture at ETH Zurich on December 18.

The OSS agent and former baseball player Morris Berg, whom Alan Dulles had smuggled in with Paul Scherrer's help, sat in the lecture hall. Although Berg had completed a crash course in physics with Bob Robertson in England, he, like the experimental physicist Scherrer, could not follow Heisenberg's lecture on the S-matrix theory. At the time, nobody in the room knew that Berg was carrying a loaded pistol with him to shoot Heisenberg if anything, he said, convinced him the Germans were close to a bomb. As is well known, this political murder in neutral Switzerland did not take place.

The follow-up meeting to the physics seminar was scheduled at the Kronenhalle restaurant. Heisenberg bought a copy of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung from a passing vendor, eagerly read about the Ardennenoffensive, and commented, "Sie kommen gut voran*." The Jewish physicists sitting at the table, who had fled from Germany and Austria to Switzerland to escape the Nazis, felt their blood run cold. After the war, Heisenberg's remark stamped him as a Nazi in the eyes of many of his colleagues.

*They are getting on well.

Hitler's Ardennenoffensive was as megalomaniacal as it was doomed to failure.

The Southwest

End of January 1945, the Gauleiter (Nazi Governor) of Baden and the Alsace, Robert Wagner, tried to boost the population's will for defense with daily slogans, 

We will never surrender!
Remain unyielding, believe, trust, fight.
Resistance to the last kitchen knife.
Victory or doom.
Fight back or die! Fight to the death!

We must replace what we lack in material things with faith, will, bravery, tenacity, and obedience ... We don't sit down; we fight! Anyone who leaves his place without orders will be tried by a court martial. There can be no doubt about his end.

End of March, security services reports frequently complain about the opinion in the population that the war will soon be over because of the rapid advance of the Anglo-Americans, while the majority is "almost happy" that this war is finally coming to an end.

On April 1, we know from Goebbels's diary that Wagner complained to him about the people in Baden, that morale among the population and the troops had sunk extraordinarily. People no longer shy away from harsh criticism of the Führer ...

In contrast to the Soviets, the Anglo-Americans were not feared by the people ... on the contrary, large sections of the people were happy when they came so that they would be protected against the Soviets...

[In Alsace], the population exercising resistance has occasionally taken active action against the troops, which has a highly depressing effect on them.

This misery prompted Wagner to publish in a last effort the following leaflet at the beginning of April:

German men and women on the Upper Rhine! National Socialists!

The enemy is now trying to break into our immediate homeland with a violent attack. This means that we in the Upper Rhine region now have to pass the most challenging endurance test ... 

The Gaullist Negro divisions are to be unleashed on our women again as a black disgrace*. At the same time, behind the Americans, the Jews lurk as occupation officers, military policemen, and economic exploiters for the hour of their revenge ...
*Allusion to assaults after the end of the First World War

Even from Alsace, we have enough witness reports to make things unmistakably clear: Arsons out of sheer destructive rage, stabbings, non-stop theft, violent separation of German-conscious families, sadistic torture of German people, rape and defilement, alcoholic excesses... Forced labor in Negro quarters ...

There is only one thing to do against the intentions of our enemies. Fight to the death by all means, with our last strength. The Siegfried Line must be defended with fanatical ferocity! None of the positions erected by the Volksaufgebot (people's corps), no town, no village, no farmstead, must be abandoned without a fight. There is no turning back!

At the end of our brave struggle is our victory!

In the following days, no further consideration was given to the civilian population. The Führer's Nero-Befehl (officially "Burnt Earth Order"), issued on March 19, 1945, and aimed to destroy Germany's infrastructure, was primarily exercised in blowing up bridges.

Thousands of apprehended men were court-martialed by hastily assembled tribunals that carried out their bloody work.

Click to enlarge

The last edition of "Der Alemanne," the Kampfblatt (combat journal) of the National Socialists of Upper Baden, was issued in Freiburg on April 12, 1945. It had only two pages. 

In the article "Under the Sign of the Werewolf," we read that 1945 we entered the decisive phase of the mighty world struggle. And once again, the methods of warfare have intensified, for the final battle is always the hardest, cruelest, and most ruthless.

At the Yalta Conference at the beginning of February 1944, the Allies had formulated their war aims. Among other things, it was decided that France, if it so wished, would be invited by the three Allies to take over an occupation zone and participate as the fourth member of the Control Commission. The size of the French zone was to be decided.

The French wished to create a fait accompli and were hurrying towards the war's end. At the beginning of 1945, French troops, mostly comprised of colonial men, quickly advanced in southwest Germany, which the Americans did not like at all.

In the French press, the advance of General Jean-Marie Gabriel de Lattre de Tassigny is described as follows: To the complete surprise of the Germans and the Allied General Staff, General de Lattre pushed his forces southwards and seized Freudenstadt, at the foot of the Black Forest, cutting the enemy line in two. From there, he returned to the Rhine, between Offenburg and Kehl, and launched offensives in two other directions: south of Stuttgart, towards the Swiss border and the Danube. On April 21, Stuttgart was taken; on the 24th, our flag flew over the walls of Ulm. On the 26th, our tanks entered Constance. Two days later, our troops crossed the Austrian border.

The tricolor flies over the walls of Ulm, and French troops enter Austria; the thought of Napoleon may have inspired de Lattre in his advance.

Before that, on April 21, 1945, the French occupied Freiburg.

In the meantime, Werner Heisenberg had returned from Switzerland to his experimental nuclear reactor at Haigerloch near Hechingen. In his autobiography, Heisenberg reports that the last remnants of disbanded German troops moved eastwards through Hechingen in mid-April. One afternoon, we heard the first French tanks. In the south, they had probably already advanced past Hechingen to the crest of the Rauhe Alb.

Around three o'clock, I set off on a bicycle toward Urfeld*. When I reached Gammertingen at dawn, I had probably already left the battle line behind me. I only had to avoid the threat of strafers again and again. Because of this threat, I traveled principally at night in the following two days.
*in Bavaria on Walchensee

On the third day, I came to Urfeld and found the family safe and sound.

Many returnees were not so lucky.
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Wokeness

Wokeness is often identified with non-national/non-religious identity politics. It claims that under the guise of equal rights for all kinds of marginalized identity groups, a claim to power is enforced by authoritarian means. 

 Red Baron is appalled by the extent the wokeness has reached. Anyone who criticizes 'woke' theories that advocate for the oppressed automatically makes common cause with the oppressors. This divides the world into strict categories of good and evil, and wokeness exerts moral pressure to silence its critics. 

 Even in a factual debate, criticizing wokeness is impossible because it makes itself irrefutable: It rejects scientific objectivity as a fairy tale of white, patriarchal, Western-individualistic knowledge production. Michel Foucault should have already stated that every claim to truth, including that of science, is nothing other than a claim to power. 

 And even worse. Wokeness scrutinizes every even thoughtless statement for political correctness, and if it doesn't meet the standard, it is denigrated as hate speech. 

In his lecture at the Museumsgesellschaft  Science and Freedom of Opinion in the Whirlwind of Contemporary Cultural Wars, Prof. Rainer Asch discussed the limits that wokeness imposes on freedom of opinion in science. Do scientists have to bend politically correct, for example, when justifying the financing of their research projects? Isn't this opening the floodgates to hypocrisy because the proposed project could fail without great overcautiousness in the wording?

Universities feel compelled to establish professorships or academic positions dedicated to critical race theory, diversity (LGBTQ+ studies), and social justice in inclusivity and that critically assess how language and behavior impact marginalized communities. These institutions develop a life of their own.

Cancel culture can erase parts of our history, such as renaming the Eberhard Karls University ofTübingen. Canceling the founder's name for Eberhard Karl was an anti-Semite like many of his contemporaries.

For Red Baron, above all, the corruption of the German language is an abomination. It all started with the Green Party, which introduced the gender starlet in November 2016. What is simply called migrants in English will become one word in German, too, using a starlet: Migrant*innen. 

This would "correctly" address the two genders, Migranten (male) and Migrantinnen (female). When written, it is ugly, but what is worse is when speakers on television try to pronounce the starlet, inserting an artificial pause between Migrant and innen. 

You may think that English-speaking people don't have the same problems as Germanophones. However, there is gender madness at Brighton and Sussex University Hospital (BSUH). It is the first hospital in the UK to formally implement a gender-inclusive language policy for its maternity services department, now known as "perinatal services."

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Association Supporting the Freiburg Documentation Center on National Socialism

The Förderverein Dokumentationszentrum Nationalsozialismus Freiburg held its annual meeting on November 18. Red Baron has previously reported on the Center.

The flyer

Having been a member of this supporting association for nine months, this was the first time I could meet fellow supporters of the Center in person. Indeed, the annual meeting was well attended.

The new logo

The association board gave its annual report and showed photos of the progress of the construction work at the former tourist office that will become the NS Documentation Center, which is due to open in March 2025.

Last year, donations to the Center amounted to almost 35,000 euros, and membership rose from 39 to 147.

The resurrection of the Old Synagogue, which was burnt down
on Reichskristallnacht on November 9, 1938, in its present surroundings.

The Center will employ the latest technologies to make the past present.

During the slide show, Red Baron suddenly appeared in a photo, listening attentively to Prof. Bernd Martin, who gave a guided tour to members of the Förderverein Dokumentationszentrum Nationalsozialismus Freiburg in 2022 about the Nazi history of the Albert Ludwig University.

Here he talks about the Nazi eagle that used to hang on the façade of the Kollegiengebäude 1 above the university seal. It was removed after the war, but you can still see the traces all too clearly in the photo.

Prof. Martin, an expert on Martin Heidegger, naturally focused on the philosopher who joined the Nazi Party as early as 1933, became chancellor of the university, and worked to subordinate it to the Führerprinzip (leader principle). Here, he was supported by a right-wing student body where National Socialist ideas were most strongly within the medical faculty.

The renovation work at the former tourist office is on schedule. Red Baron is eagerly awaiting the opening of the Documentation Center.

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80 Jahre Kriegsende im Südwesten (1944/45)

This year is not only the 80th anniversary of Freiburg's bombing but also the twilight of the Third Reich. This is why Dr. Heinrich Schwendemann is offering a seminar entitled "80 Years, End of the War in the Southwest" (1944/45).

Red Baron has long known and respected Dr. Schwendemann as the expert on Freiburg's Jewish and Nazi history.

Before I started writing blogs, Heinrich once led a group and explained how Freiburg had changed structurally during the Nazi era and would have changed after the final victory.

The name Joseph Schlippe recurred throughout the tour. As Freiburg's master builder under the Nazis, he retained this post after the war.

©Förderverein NS Dokumentationszentrum

One of Schlippe's preferred architectural elements was the installation of open arcades. The tourist information center on the corner of Rotteckring and Rathausgasse was already built during the Nazi era. Presently, Freiburg's National Socialism Documentation Center is moving into these premises.

Following the bombing raid of November 27, 1944, which destroyed the city center, Schlippe essentially implemented his idea of arcades after the war to expand the traffic area in Kaiser-Josef-Straße.

Before the coronavirus brought human contact to a virtual standstill, Dr. Schwendemann's last guided tour took place in March 2020. In freezing temperatures, he led us through Jewish Freiburg.

Due to his trip to Hamburg, Red Baron could not attend the seminar introduction and only joined the participants on the second evening. The event is scheduled every second week in a room on the upper floor of the Breisacher Tor.


On November 5, the session's topic was: Fall 1944 "People's War" at the Upper Rhine?

Dr. Schwendemann showed a map of the military situation in June 1944. The Russian central front had collapsed while the Allies, who had landed in Normandy on June 6, were advancing in France.

Territory lost by the German armed forces between April and December 1944

With the advance of the Allied forces in France, Baden suddenly became the front line in the fall of 1944.

    

The Military Situation on the Upper Rhine in early 1945

In Alsace, in a wide bridgehead around Colmar, fierce battles were fought between Wehrmacht units and American-French troops.

Old men and children are called into service to build ramps.

On the other side of the Rhine, the Baden Governor (Gauleiter) Robert Wagner called on the population to wage a "People's War."

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They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind

This verse 7 of Hosea 8 came to my mind during an ecumenical night prayer at the Freiburg Münster Church.

The Münster Church was packed. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Last night, we commemorated the 80th anniversary of Freiburg's bombing by the Royal Air Force that nearly annihilated the city.

Four years before, on November 14, the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) had bombed Coventry.

From a distance, the writer Christoph Meckel described the fire that followed the bombing of Freiburg, "And where, a few kilometers away, the silhouette of the city could usually be seen, a single, mighty flame was burning. The mountain walls were flooded with a flickering firelight, the valleys on the sides were immersed in black shadows, and the fir trees on the slopes of the Roßkopf stood out clearly. Thick orange smoke billowed into the night, rolling voraciously over the mountaintops, engulfing everything in darkness."

The three mayors, Sallie Barker, Guildford*, Martin Horn, Freiburg, and Anne Vignot (with an interpreter) Besancon*, united in their addresses: They called for peace.

*Freiburg's English and French sister cities

Together, they lit a peace candle that will shine in the Freiburg town hall.

After the prayers of intercession and the Lord's Prayer, the cathedral parish priest and the Protestant dean jointly gave the appropriate ecumenical blessing, "Go and bring peace!"

Meanwhile, a peace demonstration took place in front of the cathedral's main portal.

May Freiburg bear the title of City of Peace.

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MOND

 is the German word for moon, but it stands here for Modified Newtonian Dynamics, a theory that gets rid of Dark Matter.

Remember, Dark Matter was introduced in astrophysics to save Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. 

The Lambda Cold Dark Matter, or ΛCDM model, is the accepted (standard) mathematical model of the Big Bang theory.

So far, nobody has observed CDM. So wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of it?

New data collected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) conflicts with predictions based on ΛCDM and instead confirms predictions made with MOND. 

The James Webb Space Telescope looked deep into space and detected inexplicably big and bright galaxies in the early universe, i.e., shortly after the Big Bang.

According to the ΛCDM standard model of galaxy formation, the JWST should only find signs of small, primitive galaxies there. Bigger galaxies should form slowly by merging with smaller ones. 

But the opposite is true - large and bright galaxies are repeatedly discovered. Dark matter fails on galaxies that are “too big” or “too old.” Here, MOND comes in.

Click to enlarge

In a paper that just appeared, a research team from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland gives an excellent summary of the present situation, and it doesn’t look good for dark matter at all. 

Sabine Hossenfelder was quick with her explanatory video about the recent paper and MOND.

The recent observations of galaxies.
They are on the blue lines, as predicted by MOND.

According to Newton and Einstein, forces decrease quadratically with distance, while the 1/r dependence in MOND speeds up the formation of galaxies. 

 At the end of their paper, the authors make some dazzling remarks:  

A number of puzzling observations in cosmology were anticipated by MOND, including the early formation of massive galaxies. 

Despite the predictive successes of MOND, we do not yet know how to construct a cosmology based on it. In contrast, ΛCDM provides a good fit to a wide range of cosmological observables but does not satisfactorily explain the many phenomena that were predicted by MOND. 

We find ourselves caught between two very different theories that seem irreconcilable despite applying to closely related yet incommensurate lines of evidence. The simple force law hypothesized by MOND has made enough successful prior predictions that it cannot be an accident; it must be telling us something. What that is remains as mysterious as the composition of dark matter. 

 As the Bavarians use to say, “Nichts Genaues weiß man nicht*.” 

*Nothing exact is known
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War Requiem

On Sunday, November 10, Red Baron listened to Benjamin Britton's War Requiem at the Konzerthaus Freiburg.

Freiburg in ruins (©Stadtarchiv Freiburg)

It was a commemorative concert on the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Freiburg. On November 27, 1944, between 7:55 p.m. and 8:18 p.m., the Royal Air Force flew Operation Tigerfish and raided the city, catching the citizens almost unprepared, especially since the alert had only been given shortly before.

The death toll was 2797; in total, around 30% of all homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill walks with the Mayor of Coventry and a
Church of England clergy member through the ruined nave of Coventry Cathedral (Wikipedia).

The German Luftwaffe (Air Force) bombed Coventry on November 14, 1940, leaving 600 dead and more than 400 houses destroyed. The raid had the cynic codename Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata).

The world premiere of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem took place in 1962 to celebrate the reopening of Coventry Cathedral, which had been almost entirely destroyed and rebuilt (in a modern way).

The English poet Wilfred Owen wrote at the age of twenty-five in the spring of 1918 before he fell on the Western Front on November 4,

"My subject is War and the pity of War. 

The Poetry is in the pity ...
All a poet can do today is warn."

These lines serve as a preface to Britten's War Requiem, which combines the Latin text of the Missa pro Defunctis with texts of Wilfred Owen's war poems. The oratorio-like composition unfolds in three musical forces that alternate and interact with each other.

For the Freiburg performance, the large Freiburg University of Music Orchestra, an enlarged choir—the University of Music Choir and the Freiburg Bach Choir merged—and a solo soprano (Maria Bengtsson) were on stage in the concert hall. They played and sang in the oratorio style with Latin texts.

The Freiburg Cathedral Boys' Choir, divided into two parts and seated on the right-hand side gallery of the concert hall, sang, accompanied by the organ, the hopeful aspects of the requiem mass in the Introitus, Offertium, and "Libera me."

The third layer consists of the setting of Wilfried Owen's war poems, sung by a British and a German soldier* accompanied by a chamber orchestra.

*David Fischer, tenor, and Markus Eiche, baritone

More than 250 actors performed during the evening, making it challenging for conductor Frank Markowitsch to bring the three ensembles together.

The Requiem begins with a dissonance. The comforting tolling of the death knell and the Requiem aeterna donna eis, Domine, Et lux perpetua luceat eis* are answered by the soldier:

*Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, And let perpetual light shine upon them.

"What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns,
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning, save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires."

Owen's protest against the war and its cruelties culminates in the scene in which, in contrast to the Old Testament, Abraham slaughters his son Isaac. 

"Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builder parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son."

"When lol an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not the hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in the thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him."

"But the old man would not so,
but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one."

The male soloists recount a conversation between two soldiers who have died on the same day ("Strange Meeting"). One of them laments,

"I knew you in this dark, for so you frowned

Yesterday, through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried, but my hands were loath and cold."

The two end in a common, "Let us sleep now."

In the end, the three musical groups fully combine while the boys' choirs, chorus, and soprano respond with the well-known In paradisum deducant te Angeli and Resquiescant in pace*.

*May angels lead you to paradise and rest in peace

Britten built his War Requiem upon the interval of the tritone "C-Fis," labeled as "the devil in music" during the Middle Ages for its dissonance. This interval opens the work and is sounded again at the very end before a final F-major chord brightens the Amen. This was unusual for the listener but comforting.

The visibly moved audience paused for a minute in silence, but then frenetic applause broke loose.

Conductor Frank Markowitsch and the ensemble applaud the Cathedral Boys' Choir.

The Cathedral Boys' Choir is sitting high in the gallery on the right side.

The three solo singers with their flowers.

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Ensisheim

What is written in Micah 5:2 in the Old Testament about Bethlehem could be said about Ensisheim:

"But you, Ensisheim in Alsace, though you are small among the cities of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation, you will become the administrative capital of Further Austria (Vorderösterreich). Your origins are from of old, from ancient times."

Ensisheim around 1650

Ensisheim was first mentioned in a document in 768 under the name Engisehaim.

In Merian's Topographia Germania, Alsace 1663, it is written that after the death of the Landgraves of Ensisheim around the beginning of the 13th century, the town and castle, together with the landscape of Upper Alsace, came under the hegemony of the Counts of Habsburg.

The Habsburg or Habichtsburg (hawk castle) in Aargau

The Habsburgs took their name from a fortress built in the Aargau* in the 1020s. 

 *present-day Switzerland

Rudolf's monument on the square in front of the church by night

In the second half of the 13th century, King Rudolf I, previously Count Rudolf IV of Habsburg, built a "royal castle" in Ensisheim.

 
In 1510, the city became the seat of the administration of Further Austria (Vorlande), i.e., Alsace, Breisgau, Aargau, and Lake Constance.

On November 15 and 16, 2024, Ensisheim hosted a colloquium on the question, "Why did Ensisheim become a central place in the region?" In a future blog, Red Baron will attempt to answer this query.

The museum piece.
Note the meteorite's impact on a field outside Ensisheim in the background.
Click to enlarge.

One event has burned itself into people's memories. In Merians Topographia, we read, "1492 on November 7, a stone or dumpling weighing 280 pounds, a foot high, and the same color as iron ore fell from the clouds with a thunderclap."

Sebastian Brant wrote a poem: Since one counts fifteen hundred years on St. Florence's day, it was ninety and two at noon there was an enormous thunderclap a stone of three hundredweight fell in a field before Ensisheim.

King Maximilian ordered the "symbol of God" to be taken to the church and kept there. When he visited the site 14 days later, he did not know that he had inspected the first historically documented meteorite in Europe while it was still almost warm. Today, the meteorite is kept in the city museum in the historic Palais de la Régence.

Maximilian's press spokeswoman announces the King's visit.
He is surrounded by his bodyguards.

The children of the elementary school Jean Rasser at Ensisheim took Maximilian's visit to delight the colloquium participants with a performance, Retour au temps des Habsbourg.

The King is at the table with his attendants and looks graciously at his subjects.

They are entertaining the King performing ...

... and singing

Stay tuned for a blog about the colloquium proper.

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Bellissimo

Bellissimo! Outstanding Italian paintings from the Gothic period to the Renaissance are displayed at Freiburg's Augustinermuseum. On the occasion of the renovation of the Lindenau-Museum Altenburg, the paintings are temporarily parked in Freiburg.

Freiburg's Minster Church, with the most beautiful tower in the world, did not want to be left behind. So the exhibition curator, Dr. Eva Maria Breisig, and the Münsterbaumeisterin (cathedral master builder), Dr. Anne-Christine Brehm, met for a joint lecture, "Bellissimo!" and "The Most Beautiful Tower," in which they compared the pictures in the exhibition to the contemporaneous developments at Freiburg Cathedral.

The "Bellissimo!" exhibition is dedicated to Italian painting from the 13th to the early 16th century. Over 100 paintings and altarpieces provide an overview of the developments of the time. These were style-defining and ground-breaking since, alongside Christian motifs, artists discovered secular motifs and strove for a greater closeness to reality than before. Over three centuries, a new artistic concept of movement, space, and the image of man emerged.

The architecture was also characterized by innovations in the 13th and 14th centuries, with statically bold constructions such as Freiburg's openwork spire, which gave the simple parish church "the most beautiful tower" on earth. The master builders of the Gothic period pushed what was feasible to the extreme and redefined boundaries. In the 16th century, the Minster was one of the few large medieval churches to be completed by closing the choir vault. However, the Renaissance also left its mark on the cathedral with the southern vestibule and a rood screen now folded into the sides of the transept.

I will present some of the highlights in the following, as a complete description of the exhibition would go beyond the scope of this blog. St. Mary and Child were the tenors of the exhibition.

Around 1478. Marco Soppo (Venice 1432-1478)
Madonna and Child

A sad mother holds her child, who is not dressed festively, tightly in her hands. This child looks at the world with big, questioning eyes.

Around 1549. Pellegrino Tibaldi (Milan 1527-1596)
Madonna del Silenzio Holy Family with St. John the Baptist

Thirty years before El Greco, Tibaldi paints clothes with unusual colors. The adolescent son trustingly lays his head in his mother's lap. The somewhat older John the Baptist looks thoughtfully at this scene. Does he already know what will happen to this sleeping youth?

Around 1495. Raffaello Carli, called Raffaellino del Garbo (1466-1524)
Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici receives the child's blessing before the Madonna.

About 50 years later, del Garbo painted the Madonna and Child, blessing a member of the Medici family. This was sorely needed because, during the Renaissance, the Medici family provided many of the mostly rather unholy cardinals and popes.

Around 1500. Sandro Botticelli (Florence 1445-1510)
Adoration of the Child.

This is a depiction of the Holy Family that is still common today. It shows the old man Joseph not yet understanding what has happened to him.  

Around 1370. Giovanni del Biondo (Florence 1356-1398)
St. Jerome.

Church Father St. Jerome presents a book. Without him, Erasmus of Rotterdam could not have produced his new translation of the Bible, the Novum Instrumentum.     

Around 1395. Agnolo Gaddi (Florence 1369-1396)
The Last Supper.

Due to the short length of the painting, the table is depicted here in the shape of a horseshoe. The favorite disciple's head seems to be growing out of the table while Judas has sat down quite provocatively on the other side opposite Jesus.

Around 1440. Pietro di Giovanni d'Ambrogio (Siena 1409-1449)
St. Augustine.

Church Father St. Augustine invented the Original Sin, which means that unbaptized children will go to hell. In the interpretation of the faith, St. Augustine is still regarded by many Catholics as the second St. Paul.

Around 1500. Unknown artist in Naples
Coronation of the Virgin.

God the Father and the Holy Ghost watch Jesus, who graciously puts the crown on his mother's head. Compare this to Hans Baldung Grien's masterpiece in Freiburg's Münster (1520/30). 

©Pogo Engel/Wikipedia

The altarpiece shows Christ in a somewhat leisurely posture, holding the world in one hand while clumsily helping his father coronate his mother as celestial queen. Still, today, some pious viewers are shocked.

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