Sommerkurs: Barock – Tod (Einsiedeln, 22-26 Jun 25)

Baroque – Death
Twenty-fourth International Baroque Summer Course of the Werner Oechslin Library

Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin, CH 8840 Einsiedeln, Jun 22–26, 2025
Deadline: Feb 23, 2025

Concerning the topic:

Death is omnipresent. No one can escape it; it is among us and goes about its business as it sees fit. If one takes seriously the “memento mori” that we encounter in droves on tombstones and that is addressed to us, the (still) living, then one can see that this commingling of life and death is of central importance to human culture and has always had a significant impact on its art forms.

This ubiquity and omnipresence of death was summed up in the long-popular Dance of Death: “we all die” according to the biblical saying « Omnes Morimur ». Patritius Wasserburger put this into verse for Count Sporck as “Zuschrift an das sämmtlich-menschliche Geschlecht” (“Letter to the whole human race”):

“You popes! Cardinals!
You bishops! You abbots!
You lappeted gentlemen!
You canons! You prelates!
All manner of priests,
Of high dignity, and also of lower rank. […]”
He records them all, even the “drunkards”:
“Oh you brothers of the wet stream!
Guzzle, dance, sing songs!
You are wild and tipsy, jolly: bluster, sleep around, shack up, rave!
Go on, twirl, feast, roister!
But: woe for eternity.”

Michael Heinrich Rentz illustrated this in his dramatic images and emphasized the direct partnership – and equality – of man and death. The series of images, first printed in 1753, was realized as a perfect baroque book, « full of meaning, instruction, and spirit ». And we are already amid the exuberant baroque pleasure in shaping and designing. Baroque rhetoric, with its astute precepts of “argutezza” or even “cavillatio”, takes particular pleasure in the boundaries, in the contact between life and death. Nothing is alien to this and the desire to transcend such boundaries fires the imagination. In 1774, the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz, who had been blessed with the « temporal right of sovereignty », was mourned accordingly:
“The tombstones may restrict his generous hands, but his heart allows no limits to be set, such as to work immortally in faithfulness to God, thus in love for his needy people”.
After the “passing away”, as if only a small disturbance had occurred, it is all about the “denatus”; he has merely changed his condition – for the better, of course.

Glorification of human deeds in light of the future life after death, as the motto of the Duke of Brauschweig, Johann Friedrich, says: EX DURIS GLORIA. The separation through death is followed by reflection and the gain of a “better life”. Death is given this powerful, dialectical function of the historical continuation of “lived reality” by virtue of idealization. It challenges all the arts and the artifices of rhetoric, which “mediate” in all possible tones of a “heroic poem” in an “Imitatio Epica”, whether allegory, or panegyric or in the “Epicedium” particularly assigned to funeral ceremonies.

Those who focus so much on the afterlife, as was the case in the Baroque ecclesiastical world in the most pronounced way, have before their eyes all the glory that is emulated in this world with the greatest artistic effort in order to convey it to people and their sensory perceptions. This is what led someone like Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger to recommend: “He who cannot reach God in his spirit should seek him in images, he will not be led astray”. To “draw God down into his sphere” was the motto and it fit best precisely where the scene is changed, as it were, with death. Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling saw it correctly: “This symbolic view is the church as a living work of art”. And there is more, something fundamental, hidden behind this paradigm of human destiny and the conditions of privileged human existence. Marsilio Ficino states this in the first sentences of his “Cristiana religione” (1474/5). If man could not distinguish between good and bad in the “lume dell’intellecto”, he would be the most miserable creature, as he, unlike other living creatures, also has to dress himself. And at the beginning of “Platonica Theologia” (1482), he formulates its essence: “Si animus non esset immortalis: nullum animal esset infelicius homine.”

Art draws its deeper justification from this and declares that no effort is too great for it, especially when it comes to the furnishings for funeral ceremonies, when entire church interiors are covered with allegorical scenes and high catafalques are erected. The unsurpassable dialectic of life and death calls for the greatest artistic invention, which is particularly desirable in “baroque” times and results in works of art that would give even someone like Wölfflin a headache. When Rudolf Wittkower opened the Guarini Congress in Turin in 1968, he had a whole repertoire of “unorthodox” forms at hand: “Paradossi ed apparenti contraddizioni, volute incongruenze”; it is much more than just “varietà” and – in the tradition of Nicholas of Cusa – also encompasses mathematics: “Famose (!) compenetrazioni di spazi diversi”. He observes the juxtaposition of “morbidi moduli ornamentali manieristici” and “forme cristalline di estrema austerità”. They are “prodigi strutturali”. And Wittkower’s insight was: “intelletto” and “emozione” are not separate, but belong together, just as – in art – life and death appear intertwined and death, if man takes his divinely inspired, spiritual life seriously, is ultimately only a gateway to another world. It is understandable that a cemetery is then described as “the Elysian Fields”. There are no limits to the imagination and to art.

Terms and conditions:

The course is open to doctoral candidates as well as junior and senior scholars who wish to address the topic with short papers (20 minutes) and through mutual conversation. As usual, the course has an interdisciplinary orientation. We hope for lively participation from the disciplines of art and architectural history, but also from scholars of history, theology, theatre and other relevant fields. Papers may be presented in German, French, Italian or English; at least a passive knowledge of German is a requirement for participation.

Conditions: The Foundation assumes the hotel costs for course participants, as well as several group dinners. Travel costs cannot be reimbursed.

Please send applications with brief abstracts and brief CVs by e-mail to:
anja.buschow@bibliothek-oechslin.ch

The CFP deadline is 23 February 2025.

Concept / Organization: Dr. Anja Buschow Oechslin (Einsiedeln), Prof. Dr. Axel Christoph Gampp (Uni Basel, Fachhochschule Bern), Prof. Dr. Werner Oechslin (Einsiedeln)