Byzantium in Bavaria: Art, architecture and history between empiricism and invention in the post-Napoleonic era

This dissertation explores interpretations of Byzantium as expressed in historicizing art and architecture and historical renovations commissioned by King Ludwig I of Bavaria (ruled 1825-48). The Allerheiligenhofkapelle and the Ludwigskirche in Munich, and the renovations of Bamberg and Speyer Cathedrals are the primary works taken into consideration; artists and architects include Heinrich Maria von Hess, Friedrich Karl Rupprecht, Johann Schraudolf, Josef Schwarzmann, Leo von Klenze, Friedrich von Gartner and Heinrich Hubsch. These men went to varying lengths to establish empirical evidence for how the buildings in question expressed, or would express, a Byzantine style in their polychromy (including frescoes and stained glass), as well as in their ground plans and architectural sculpture. Such evidence was integrated with, and at times overwhelmed by, concurrent efforts to recreate, or invent, a Byzantium that linked German culture with Classical Greece and the East. Friedrich Schlegel's responses to Napoleonic rule over Central Europe at the start of the nineteenth century had inspired this understanding of Byzantium as a cultural conduit. In emphasizing German cultural connections with the East and ancient Greece over connections with France and its Roman heritage, he had described Rhenish buildings that are today termed "Romanesque" in style as "Hellenizing." Subsequent intellectuals elaborated the category of German Byzantine art and architecture and how it documented the transmission of Eastern and Greek culture into German lands. Inspired by the Greek War of Independence, Ludwig I extended this approach in using his Byzantine commissions to articulate his Philhellenic, German nationalist, and Catholic loyalties. At the same time, since Ludwig gave his artists and architects wide latitude to investigate and create the Byzantine style as they saw fit, each project emphasized different empirical evidence and cultural links. The Byzantine revival embodied in Ludwig's commissions boldly combined elements drawn from Greek, Islamic, and medieval German art and architecture. The result proved attractive enough that from the late 1830s a number of buildings - particularly Catholic and Jewish houses of worship - were built in this style in other German lands. At the same time, with the appointment of Ludwig's younger son Otto to the new Greek throne, Germans were encountering Byzantine monuments that challenged their expectations, while Russian scholars and architects were developing their own Byzantine revival style to express their claims to Byzantium's cultural inheritance. Around mid-century, the relative strength of Russian claims, profound shifts in German geopolitical orientation, and developing scholarship brought an end to the utility of the early nineteenth-century Bavarian interpretation of the style. By the end of the century, the interpretation of Byzantine monuments had advanced to the point that the Bavarian Byzantine style was no longer discernable as such. Since then its existence has largely been overlooked or denied. This dissertation argues that the significance of the Bavarian Byzantine revival buildings and renovations cannot be fully understood without re-examining the ways in which they reflected and informed ideas about Byzantium's role in defining Germany. The Bavarian projects demonstrate how compelling historical and historicizing art and architecture could be for the investigation and invention of geopolitical identities. The evident potential of such projects for these purposes arguably contributed to, and inspired, the establishment of art history as an academic discipline in German universities during the second half of the nineteenth century. What is more, these projects provide an underappreciated context for the revival of the idea of a German Byzantine heritage that would gain a lively range of new adherents at the end of the century.