Art: The painter and his kingdom of heaven

In the middle of the lively Lange Straße in the old town of Greifswald, two shop windows draw attention to what is probably the city’s most famous personality. The dull, earthy brick red of the richly decorated brick building is the birthplace of Caspar David Friedrich. He was born here on September 5, 1774, where he spent his childhood and youth and from here he moved into the world. This property, which Friedrich’s father Adolf bought in 1765 and which was owned by the family and their descendants until the 1970s, is now home to the Caspar David Friedrich Center, which was named after the great painter and son of the City remembers. And of course it is the focus of the events this year to mark the 250th birthday of Caspar David Friedrich. The anniversary year was ceremoniously opened last Saturday in the Greifswald Cathedral of St. Nikolai, the master’s baptismal church, in the presence of the Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens) and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD). The two politicians are also patrons of the anniversary year.

Friedrich’s birthplace might no longer exist if, at the time of the “reunification” in the GDR, visual artists and members of the Greifswald Old Town Initiative had not started a campaign to save the house, which was in danger of falling into disrepair. Today it houses a museum, documentation and research center. You can visit the old workshop of the father’s soap factory in the historic cellar vault; Historical equipment and reconstructions of work processes make the old craft clearly tangible for visitors. The family cabinet with the family tree as well as the Rügen and Eldena rooms with famous motifs from Friedrich’s work and the Caspar David Friedrich Gallery also offer a number of surprises and new insights.

“The house has a lot of charm and soul; I’ve really grown attached to it,” says Caroline Barth. “It’s still easy to imagine yourself back in the old days.” During a tour, the managing director of the Caspar David Friedrich Center provides information about Friedrich’s origins, his career and his creative methods, as well as his family history. Of course, the art historian is particularly interested in his paintings. She was particularly impressed by the colors of his pictures. »I used to believe that the yellow skies he painted were a total invention of his. I thought, it’s amazing what he’s thinking up with the sky and what meaning it brings into the picture. And then years later I came to Greifswald to study and am standing here, turning around and looking around towards the west in the evening. And see it: Friedrich’s heaven. And it’s actually so yellow. In exact shades of yellow that only occur in Friedrich.«

Sometimes it is a “cloudy evening sky”, sometimes a “woman rising towards the light”, sometimes a “landscape with a rainbow” or “twilight by the sea”, sometimes it is “two men contemplating the moon”. Sometimes the sky appears at dawn, sometimes wintry, sometimes brightened with a delicate pink. Then again fiery red or breathed in fog, sometimes dark gray and almost threatening over a stormy sea. His works are always metaphorical, cloud illusions as wide as the sea. In order to achieve the special luminosity of the sky, he used smalt in his fine cloud painting technique, a cobalt-colored granular glass powder that was produced in blue paint factories from the middle of the 16th century to the 19th century and used as a pigment by many painters of his time . »What else is contained in the pictures wasn’t that important to me, but rather the fact how someone manages to convey this atmosphere through the color. That fascinates me a lot.«

Friedrich came from a family of craftsmen and was the sixth of ten children. The painter’s childhood was overshadowed by the early death of his mother and two of his siblings, which is why he is often portrayed as the great melancholic. »He is repeatedly described as having a depressive and mysterious nature, as someone who seeks loneliness. “You often only focus on this aspect of your personality,” believes Caroline Barth. But Caspar David was also a boy who turned out to be quite a bully. »Letters tell us what kind of practical jokes he got up to. For example, how, just for fun and mischief, he jumped around on the beds with other children during overnight stays in hostels until they broke; how he daringly climbed around in the chalk cliffs, even though it was very dangerous. At the same time, it is said that the young Caspar was quite clumsy and clumsy, reports city guide Dr. Ingolf Wegener. “Nothing will ever come of it,” people said, not knowing at the time that Caspar David Friedrich was autistic.” In his opinion, this also explains the detailed, precise image compositions. And perhaps also that later, as an adult, he was very fond of children and liked to play with them and go swimming. They called him uncle.

“He was a very complex personality with many facets,” says Caroline Barth. “Of course, as an artist, he also needed moments of solitude, moments in which he was just for himself, where he created ideas, where he let inspiration prevail and materialized everything on paper in his work.” But the art historian doesn’t want him to be that to understand a depressed artist. »So he had a large circle of people around him to whom he wrote letters, to family, friends and acquaintances. He was married, a father. He was politically active. In Dresden he was in the hotspot of poets and thinkers, artists and socialites, all of whom belonged to his circle. He was hiking with friends. He knew Goethe. He held meetings in his studio where he talked about his paintings. He was in correspondence with buyers. Nobody does all of this if they are just looking for melancholy, being alone and lonely.«

After the first years of his apprenticeship and his studies in Copenhagen, Friedrich settled in Dresden. But he was always drawn back to his Western Pomeranian homeland. His intimate and lasting relationship with the northern German landscape and with his birthplace, Greifswald, have had a lasting impact on his personality and art. Many of the original locations, places of birth and work, such as the chalk cliffs on Rügen, the meadows near Greifswald or the Eldena monastery ruins, are among his famous romantic motifs. Whether on the Baltic Sea or on the Elbe around Dresden, it seems that he has already seen his landscapes in front of him without holding the brush in his hand. His compositions tell of the simplicity of existence, of longing and beauty. About the unity of heaven and earth as well as of heaven and man.

“The chalk cliffs as he painted them never existed,” claims Dr. Ingolf Wegener. »He didn’t want to depict the landscape, but rather shape it. Out in nature he always just made sketches, it was only at home that he implemented them creatively.” With the monk by the sea, the chalk cliff on Rügen with the white cliffs that rise sharply into the sky, of the three people who look up looking down at the glittering Baltic Sea or the hiker above the sea of ​​fog, Friedrich created some of the most important motifs in German painting history.

The Greifswald anniversary program 2024 focuses on four aspects and illuminates Friedrich as a child, as a hiker, as a color virtuoso and as the shining figure from Greifswald. Picturesque sunsets over the Western Pomeranian coast, fascinating lighting conditions in nature, the silence and tranquility delight and inspire many artists to this day and provide an opportunity for artistic exploration. Artists such as Ólafur Elíasson, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Gerhard Richter draw heavily on the visual work of the Greifswald painter.

For Caroline Barth, it is a great pleasure to build a bridge from romanticism to contemporary art at the Caspar David Friedrich Center. »The place is not just a monument that honors Friedrich’s memory. Through changing exhibitions of current art, we also want to show how modern the painter was in his time and still has an impact on many artists today.” This is also demonstrated by a special exhibition opened last Sunday in Friedrich’s birthplace under the title “Yun Shou – Cloud Hands” with works by the Chinese artist Xianwei Zhu. The motifs and compositions of his works seem like a homage to the German painter Caspar David Friedrich. The Far East greets the West.

Casper-David-Friedrich-Zentrum, Lange Str. 57, 17489 Greifswald, open Tuesday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The painter can also be discovered in the Pomeranian State Museum, Rakower Straße 9, 17489 Greifswald, Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., which also has three special exhibitions on the master from April to the end of the year under the titles “Lines of Life,” “Longing Places,” and “Hometown” offers. Further information at: Home page – 250 years of Caspar David Friedrich (cdfriedrich.de)