Architecture in Germany – Rococo or kitsch as kitsch can be?

Germany in the 17th century with delayed cheerfulness

The Germans had already to a rather late start with the Baroque period : The first Baroque forms appeared around 1575 in France, which fought battles more on the periphery of its territory and celebrated architecture in the heart of the country.

Italy fared relatively well, transitioning directly from Romanesque to Renaissance architecture and already boasting the first signs of Baroque by the end of the 16th century. Germany, as usual, was more embroiled in war. The conflicts of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) took place primarily within the Holy Roman Empire, accompanied by numerous secondary conflicts. By 1650, the population had dwindled from approximately 17 million to just 10 million, and many battlefields took a long time to recover from the war's aftermath.

Emperor Ferdinand III inherited the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from his not very suitable father a decade before the end of the war. His father was short in stature, weak, good-natured to the point of being gullible even towards unscrupulous advisors, and generous to the point of running out of money. Ferdinand III was in a rather precarious position (thank goodness, otherwise there certainly would have been no Peace of Westphalia).

He liked to learn from the skills and admirable artistry that France and Italy had meanwhile developed – the magnificent Baroque style came at just the right time to strengthen his power .

Taking credit for someone else's work doesn't work? It always has; the entire Baroque period was solely intended to emphasize the absolute power of rulers and church dignitaries. And those who proudly present "my house – my boat – my car" today usually haven't built the first one themselves, nor assembled the others.

Magnificent Baroque buildings are being built in Germany

Thus, it was only about a century later that many magnificent Baroque buildings were built in Germany, whose entire spatial composition was designed to convince the public, through enormous heights and much pomp and splendor, that their secular and ecclesiastical rulers were incomparably powerful.

This audience admired dutifully for a while, but eventually had enough. Baroque architecture not only delighted, but also constantly and vehemently reminded the viewer, in many details, of his own mortality and of the need to lament how quickly his time would pass.

Regret could be useful even then, prayer was important to people; but they were just recovering from a protracted war that had overshadowed generations, and simply wanted to live, to live joyfully.

Thus, in the late Baroque period, buildings became increasingly brighter and more cheerfully decorated; serious admonitions gave way to playful invitations, and dark stone facades were replaced by radiant gold and pastel colors.

A good example is the Munich Asam Church (St. John Nepomuk, Sendlinger Straße), built by the Asam brothers, who worked as painters, architects and sculptors, according to the latest French trends.

Neither the facade (see Asam Church in Munich), nor the interior design (see interior view of the Asam Church), the Throne of Grace (see photograph), nor the portraits of the builders framed by curved arches and pink marble columns (see photograph) spread excessive fear of transience and gloom.

Construction began in 1733. Since 1726, Bavaria had been ruled by the art-loving Karl Albrecht (of Bavaria) , who in 1716 had been on an educational journey to Italy, on September 5, 1725, participated in the wedding of King Louis XV in France, and in 1742 placed the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire on his head, which he wore until 1745.

A year later the Asam Church was consecrated, so the building accompanied for over a decade the lively late phase of art history known as the Rococo is dated from about 1730

Rococo – exuberant, exaggerated late Baroque or a style in its own right?

This style, imported from France and developed from the late Baroque period, takes its name Rococo from an ornamental motif, the Rocaille (see photograph of the Catholic parish and monastery church of St. Alto and St. Birgitta in Altomünster), a rock shell composed of the two French words roc = rock and coquilles = shells.

A decorative element extremely popular in the Rococo period, which almost recklessly introduces asymmetry into architecture for the first time, thus boldly dissolving the established models of the Baroque.

Although architecture remained monumental and not every visual artist played with shells (which is why Rococo is only conditionally recognized as a separate stylistic period in these areas), the playful forms of Rococo a varied and decidedly delightful rejection to the pathos of the Baroque.

"Only" a decorative style, but decoration is what catches the eye first, in the case of Rococo with almost excessive ornamentation on the buildings, as in Peterhof Palace (see photograph) and in the gardens in front of it, as in Schwetzingen Palace (see photograph).

With entirely new ideas, one of the important elements of the Baroque, strict symmetry, was cheerfully thrown overboard in favor of tendrils and lianas, gyres and curls, sweeps and curves.

And decorations in rooms, those in churches (see photograph) and those at court, including the furniture and handcrafted objects.

Here, stucco workers, carvers, joiners, embroiderers, and so on, produced some incredibly detailed work (even if the result can sometimes seem a bit kitschy today). Interior designers and decorative artists therefore see the Rococo as a distinct period, strictly separate from the Late Baroque.

Overall, the architecture loses much of its pompous character through all these decorations; the castles become smaller, and main buildings are often separated from service buildings.

Alongside lavishly decorated state rooms, there are smaller private rooms or private castles with light-footed architecture and details that are both elegant and playful (although from today's point of view one can certainly argue whether a private castle like this has really lost its pompous character:

A touch of freedom can be felt…

With the renewed interest in decoration, the solemn veneration of power also suffered, and suddenly it no longer seemed so important to courtly society.

The rulers were clearly tired of the pomp; they simply wanted things to be beautiful and elegant, as a new fashionable word from France dictated. During the Rococo period, all aspects of court life became considerably more refined and thus (sometimes) more meaningful.

Even Louis XIV of France celebrated his life as a public event in an exalted, baroque manner. With the aim of keeping his followers (the nobility) compliant at court and controlling them as he wished, he led his retinue through favors or by withdrawing them.

So, a very similar model to the one celebrated by many Facebook stars today, who promise their followers favors or withdrawal of favors from their environment if they buy/use (or fail to buy and use) beauty products (containing hormonally active, allergy-inducing and carcinogenic ingredients), (exploitatively produced) designer clothes, (machines for producing vegetable mush that are only operational for a few seconds at a time) and utensils for optimizing one's appearance (eye-disturbing neon-colored plastic, production costs approaching zero).

People were now too refined for such clumsy obsequiousness and domination; in the Rococo period, they withdrew into the private sphere to cultivate a sophisticated lifestyle, a refined sense of life, delicate sensuality, and gallant manners.

This culture also included, in the intellectual sphere, the first harbingers of the Enlightenment, the epochal project of the approaching century. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), Montesquieu (1689–1755), and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) had presented their seminal writings, which spread slowly but inexorably.

From around 1700, rational thinking was permitted; one could appeal to reason as a universal arbiter of judgment, not only as a ruler, but also as a citizen – and as an architect. Therefore, these new ideas also influenced architecture. The works of Baroque theatrical artists were rejected as church propaganda or as aids to a ruler's self-promotion; Rococo, as an art of the Enlightenment, rejected such glorifications.

Besides flourishes and arabesques, there are certainly some bizarre things to discover; some seemingly refined, restrained facial expressions say something completely different upon closer inspection, and some grotesquely exaggerated gestures can safely be interpreted as pure irony.

… but form triumphs over content

And it exceeds the limits of what is acceptable: Enlightenment ideas resonate in this new desire for more freely designed ornamentation, but the flourishes and arabesques of the design take center stage.

Embellishments, accessories, decorations, ornaments, plaster and stucco, tendrils, flourishes, and who knows what other ornamentation proliferate in abundance. They bury any attempt at the path to freedom of the spirit.

Pastel colors were also present, and the stucco slowly crept along the wall , perhaps loosened up a little by a cabinet of mirror shards with irregularly shaped pieces of mirror on the walls and ceiling.

Artificial plants crawled across the walls of so-called trellis rooms, while lavishly decorated portraits of actors and musicians working at court lined the walls of music rooms. The flourishes and tendrils are just as breathtaking as the heavy and oppressive forms of the Baroque – curves and bulges cause dizziness when they are ubiquitous.

Here are a few of the excesses that will probably become difficult to bear in daily use/sight at some point:

• Square, practical, good
• Before the ornament, another ornament, another ornament
• As everyday clothing, it's a delight for breeding birds
• After the birds had arrived (picture 2)
• Beneath the decoration, another decoration, another decoration
• Even pastels can be colorful

If you're already screaming inside, you're probably right. At some point, refinement becomes platitude, graceful becomes kitschy, meaningful becomes meaningless, spicy becomes bland, capricious becomes banal, witty becomes hackneyed, coquettish becomes mannered, and amusement becomes torture.

The more the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed, the more decisively thinking people felt out of place in salons like this one:

It is therefore only logical that the Rococo was replaced by Classicism around 1770, with its aesthetic guiding principle of a pure formal language, just before the great storm of upheavals caused by the Enlightenment.