25. Internationaler Barocksommerkurs BAROQUE: Religion – Confessions. (Einsiedeln, 21-25 Jun 26)

BAROQUE: Religion – Confessions.
Twenty-fifth International Baroque Summer Course of the Werner Oechslin Library.
The colloquium will take place from June 21 – 25, 2026.

Concerning the topic:
Nothing new!? The decline of religion and, even more clearly, of “religious practices” is well behind us. People have settled into what is often referred to in the most superficial sense as “religion within the boundaries of pure reason.” Everything mystical and the “baroque kitsch” has been discarded to make way for what is considered “reasonable” as a basic ethical and moral attitude and perhaps even acceptance of the necessity of the concept of God. In the course of the sporadically pursued systematic expulsion of religion from all rational (self-sufficient) areas of life, a category that for centuries had been one of the most important and adamant markers of difference in the Christian societies of Europe has now lost much of its significance: confession (that is, religious denomination).

When examining the arts and other cultural manifestations of the baroque period, however, it is impossible to get around religious denominations and confessional cultures as formations in which creed-based approaches to the Christian faith (with other factors) leave their mark on the social and cultural environment. Images and their use are perhaps the most striking example of this: subject to regulation by theologians on both the Protestant and Catholic sides, the spectrum of how they were dealt with ranged from decisive rejection, including secularization or even physical destruction, to the indifference of adiaphora, to the confirmation and upgrading of their traditional role as a medium of decoration and instruction. New forms of confessional images, the use of striking pictorial themes, and an intensification and simultaneous containment of forms of image cults seek to lend pictorial evidence to confessional specificity. In architecture, too, the development of denomination-specific traditions can be observed, albeit only from around 1650/1700, as evidenced by the emergence and spread of so-called transverse churches (“Querkirchen”) in some Protestant territories of the empire. Accordingly, in 1718 Leonhard Christoph Sturm reproached Goldmann, whom he admired, for not taking into account “the difference between the churches for the papacy and then for those religions that originated from the Roman Church”, and for the first time clearly contrasted designs for “papist” and Protestant churches. The question of how confessional convictions could be translated concretely and in individual cases into artistic form and—even more so—into “baroque theatrical staging” remains relevant and can never be fully exhausted.

Conversely, it has now been demonstrated many times that the confessions themselves should by no means be understood as monolithic blocks and that the supposedly fixed boundaries between them were anything but impermeable. Research into Lutheran denominational culture has revealed the widespread reception of non-Lutheran devotional literature, including, ironically, that of Ignatius of Loyola. In Berlin, Lutherans long practiced a liturgy that differed little in its outward forms from the Catholic liturgy – and defended it against the Reformed sovereign as part of their confessional identity! Several attempts were made to unite the Christian denominations, but they all failed. Such blurred boundaries can also be observed in the arts. Sturm found St. Paul’s Cathedral in London “magnificent” but could not understand “why such a form had been chosen for a reformed church service”.

The fact that opulently decorated churches rich in imagery are not a purely Catholic phenomenon, but also occur in Lutheranism is now widely accepted – in a reversal of the opinion of decades of research this was recently even described as a “magnificent faith” (B. Heal). This broad acceptance threatens to obscure the view of opposing phenomena – such as the fact that, conversely, even the Reformed Church tolerated or had to tolerate images, even images of God, in church buildings under certain circumstances. Confessional “identity,” as can be seen here, is usually only one facet of works of art; its overlap with other factors that bestow meaning is an important topic, the consideration of which often allows for more precise statements about confessional content.

Moments of denominationalism and the overcoming of it must therefore be considered together, or at least examined together: “refertur ad prototypa”—there are always appropriate references. External evidence led Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger to reflect on the deeper questions of religious art; during his visit to Einsiedeln, he was impressed by the lively forms of piety and came to the conclusion: “Those who cannot reach God in their spirit should seek him in images; they will not err.” “Pulling him down into his realm” is the motto for countering the invisible church with the advantages of the visible church – it reverses one of the core arguments with which members of the Reformed Church had fought against any form of pictorial representation of God. Schelling explored such questions in depth in his lecture “On the Historical Construction of Christianity” (“Über die historische Construction des Christenthums”). He knows that even in science and art, the individual and the particular only have value if they incorporate the general and the absolute. Thus, a circle is closed, and for Schelling, the following holds regarding this sensually perceptible (Catholic) art: “This symbolic view is the church as a living work of art.”

Religion cannot be completely eradicated. Art history has been least able to exclude the subject of religion. After all, religion and its denominations in the arts are, if you will, the flip side of “musealization”. It has created cultural-historical repositories and assigned visible cultural refuges to the “invisible” church, refuges that are particularly overfilled today. The “art-historification” of religion has accelerated this process, transforming “religious” works of art into purely aesthetic objects and creating a connoisseurship of them. But at least one of its roots lies in the denominational — paradoxically, precisely in the Reformed Church’s prohibition of images, which resulted in the transfer of images recognized as valuable to princely collections when they were no longer tolerated in their original ecclesiastical context.

Taking this idea one step further, who would claim that religious practice, and religious “feelings” in particular, cannot also develop outside of confessional bonds? Ernest Renan evoked such an effect in his “Prière sur l’Acropole,” and no one would deny him insight into the depth of his thoughts. After all his travels and his stay in Syria, he finally finds the long-awaited fulfillment on the Acropolis in Athens: “L’impression que me fit Athènes est de beaucoup la plus forte que j’aie jamais ressentie.”

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 2026.

Concept / Organization: Dr. Anja Buschow Oechslin (Einsiedeln), Prof. Dr. Jens Niebaum (Universität Münster), Prof. Dr. Werner Oechslin (Einsiedeln)