Seeds of the Reformation
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the seeds of the Reformation were sown. Louis of Bavaria, Wycliffe in England and Jan Hus in Bohemia were rehearsing the drama that Luther, Henry VIII, Calvin and Knox were destined to stage. In Scandinavia the rapidly growing wealth of the clergy and its exemption from taxes were an almost unbearable burden on people and state. Critics claimed that half of Denmark was owned by the Church and that it dominated even Copenhagen itself. The nobles eyed with ominous envy properties that rested only on creeds, and even the orthodox opposed the Church.
In Switzerland the proud independence of the cantons was a prelude to Zwingli and Calvin. In 1433 the people of Magdeburg expelled their archbishop and clergy. The townspeople of Bamberg rose against the rule of bishops. At Passau they besieged their bishop in his fortress. In 1449 a professor at the University of Erfurt (where Luther later studied) defended the general council to Pope Nicholas V and declared its power above the Pope's. The revolt of Hus's followers in neighboring Bohemia echoed through Germany. Waldensian communities in corners of the land secretly kept their old heretical, half-communistic ideals. Piety itself had turned toward a kind of mysticism that differed little from unbelief.
Meister Eckhart
In the works of Johannes Eckhart, mysticism became a pantheistic creed that went beyond the Church's teaching and even ignored official religion. This Dominican friar was so learned that the title "Meister" became part of his name. His philosophical writings were composed in such coherent, scholarly Latin that, had only those treatises survived, he would have drawn neither fame nor harm. But in his Cologne convent Eckhart boldly preached pantheism in German, which provoked the Inquisition. Following Dionysius the Areopagite and John Scotus Eriugena, he tried to express his irresistible sense of an "all-present" God.
Eckhart does not imagine this all-pervading sea of Godhead as a person or a spirit but as "pure absolute unity, a formless, stateless whirlpool and an eternal, boundless silence, in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not distinguished, where no one is at rest, yet where the spark of the soul has more peace than when it is in itself." For him, essentially nothing exists apart from this formless Godhead.
God is everything, and everything is God. God the Father brought me and his Son Christ into being in a single moment. More: he gave himself being in me, and brought me into being in himself. The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me: my eye and God's eye are one.
In every person there is a ray of the divine essence, and through it we can communicate directly with God's holy being and identify our nature with his. The human soul can draw near to God and see him not through church rites, nor through the mediation of Scripture, but only through the mediation of universal consciousness. The more a person gives up worldly aims and disregards the self, the brighter the divine ray within grows, until it fills the whole being and the soul at last merges with the Beloved and becomes wholly "one with God." Heaven, purgatory and hell are not places but states of the soul: distance from God is hell, union with him is heaven.
The Archbishop of Cologne judged many of these statements to smell of heresy and summoned Eckhart to trial (1326). Eckhart affirmed his faith, piety and obedience to the Church and said his words should be taken as literary exaggeration. Even so, the Archbishop condemned him. Eckhart appealed to Pope John XXII and asked for a new hearing, but before the Pope answered, a timely death spared him the fire (1327).
Suso and Tauler
His teaching was spread by two Dominican pupils who knew how to keep his pantheistic ideas within the bounds of religion. Heinrich Suso practiced severe ascetic disciplines for sixteen years, and wrote his little Book of Eternal Wisdom in German because he believed God had inspired it in that tongue. Johannes Tauler called Eckhart his "most holy master" and taught in Strasbourg and Basel a mystical doctrine of self-annihilation in God. Luther attributed to Tauler the German Theology (the attribution is uncertain), a book that, with its plain motto of God, Christ and eternity, deeply stirred him.
The Church watched with concern the mystics who ignored dogma, neglected rites and claimed to reach God without priests and the teaching of the law. Here the seeds of Reformation ideas were set: private judgment, the idea that each person is his own priest, and that the test of rightness is not good works alone but pure faith. The Church held that supernatural revelations may come from demons or madmen, or from God and the saints, and that a trustworthy, authoritative guide is necessary to keep religion from falling prey to illusion and individual theology. This disagreement still divides honorable people in our day.
The Late Gothic Churches
The Gothic style stayed in Germany long after Italy and France had given way to the Renaissance under classical influence. The prosperous towns of central Europe grew more splendid with churches built this way. They were not like the grand temples and tombs of France, but they lifted the soul with a quiet beauty and a modest grandeur. Uppsala began its cathedral in 1287, Freiberg in Saxony in 1283, and Ulm in 1377, whose tower is the tallest Gothic spire in the world. Vienna began St. Stephen's in 1304, Stralsund its church of St. Mary in 1382, and Danzig its own St. Mary's in 1425. Cologne and Aachen added a choir to their cathedrals. Strasbourg finished its church, which seems music made visible, in 1439. Xanten built St. Victor's, destroyed in the Second World War.
Nuremberg was proud of four famous churches that cultivated piety together with taste and art. St. Stephen's in Vienna (1304–1476) was one of the lovable masterpieces of the age, its steep roof covering nave and aisles together, and it was damaged in the war in March 1945. St. Sebaldus in Nuremberg began rebuilding its aisles in 1309, added a new choir in 1361, completed the western towers in 1498, and received stained glass between 1360 and 1510. The Frauenkirche (1355–1361), with its portal full of statues, was nearly destroyed in the Second World War but has been rebuilt. Every day at noon, on the famous clock of its facade, four figures representing the electors bow tirelessly to Charles IV in gratitude for the Golden Bull. German carving was still rough, but wooden and stone Virgins in the churches of Breslau, Halle and St. Sebaldus in Nuremberg were not without dignity and grandeur.
Town Halls and Half-Timbered Houses
The towns beautified not only their churches but also their public buildings, shops and houses. Half-timbered houses with steep gabled roofs began to be built at this time, and gave German towns a medieval beauty that astonishes modern eyes. The Rathaus, or council hall, was the center of civic activity and sometimes the meeting place of the great guilds. Its walls were painted with frescoes and its woodwork carved with the thoroughness and sturdiness that mark the Teutonic race.
The Bremen Rathaus (1410–1450) had a carved timber ceiling, a spiral staircase with carved railings and posts, and splendid chandeliers in the shape of ships. The Cologne Rathaus (1360–1571) was where the first assembly of the Hanseatic League met; the Münster Rathaus (1335) was where the Peace of Westphalia was signed; the Brunswick Rathaus was one of the masterpieces of fourteenth-century Gothic; and the Frankfurt Rathaus (1405) was where the electors dined with the new emperor. All were destroyed in the Second World War. At Marienburg, home of the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order, the huge Deutschordensschloss was built (1309–1380). The Nuremberg Rathaus stands opposite St. Sebaldus; begun in 1340 for the meetings of the imperial Reichstag, it retains little of its medieval form after repeated rebuilding.
In the market in front of the Frauenkirche, a sculptor from Prague, Heinrich Parler, designed the "Beautiful Fountain" (from 1361), crowning it with statues of Christian, Jewish and pagan heroes. In its statues, churches and secular buildings, Nuremberg shows the German spirit at its best over three centuries (1250–1550). Its winding streets were mostly narrow and uneven, yet the man who later became Pope Pius II wrote that when one comes up from lower Franconia and sees this splendid city, one finds its glory great indeed. On entering, the beauty of the streets and the proportion of the houses add to the first impression. Its churches are as admirable as they are fit for worship. The imperial castle rises high and overlooks the whole town, and the citizens' houses resemble princes' palaces. Truly, if the kings of Scotland were housed in the luxurious homes of ordinary Nuremberg people, they would be delighted.
Crafts, Music and the Mastersingers
In the German cities the small industries and crafts, such as carving and fine work in ivory, wood, copper, bronze, iron, silver and gold, reached the final degree of medieval perfection. Artists and weavers designed marvelous tapestries. Engravers prepared the way for Dürer and Holbein. Master miniaturists illuminated manuscripts on the eve of Gutenberg. Artistic carpenters made and carved splendid furniture, and in the fifteenth century founders cast church bells of perfect tone. Music was not only an art; half of people's free time was given to it. In Nuremberg and other towns great carnivals were arranged from popular dramas and songs.
Folk songs expressed the people's piety or their tender love feelings. The middle class took on the difficulties of polyphony, and guilds competed for the prize of "Meistersinger" (master singer) in noisy singing contests. The first famous Meistersinger school was set up at Mainz in 1311, and others followed at Strasbourg, Frankfurt am Main, Würzburg, Zurich, Augsburg, Nuremberg and Prague. Students who passed the four grades of Schüler, Schulfreund, Dichter and Singer (pupil, school friend, poet, singer) received the title "Meister." When the townspeople tied their ardent realism to the wings of song, the romantic, idealized tunes of the German minnesingers were pulled down from the heavens to earth.
Realism in German Painting
Because the merchant class dominated the towns, all arts except church architecture took on a realistic color. The cold and often damp climate did not suit nudity. For this reason the human body in the arts of this region never won the pride and praise it had in Renaissance Italy or ancient Greece. When Konrad Witz of Constance painted Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, he dressed them in clothes suited to an Alpine winter. Still, a number of towns, such as Ulm, Salzburg, Würzburg, Frankfurt, Augsburg, Munich, Darmstadt, Basel, Aachen, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Colmar and Cologne, had schools of painting in the fifteenth century, and examples of all survive.
A chronicle of 1380 says that at this time there lived in Cologne a famous painter named Wilhelm, whose equal was not to be found in the whole country. He painted people's faces so exactly and masterfully that they looked alive. Master Wilhelm was one of several pioneer masters of this age. He and masters such as Master Bertram, Master Francke, the Master of St. Veronica and the Master of the Hausterbach chapel, mostly under Flemish influence, created a manner of German painting and combined biblical subjects with a religious feeling whose tone can be traced in Eckhart and other German mystics.
Stephan Lochner
Stephan Lochner, who died at Cologne in 1451, brought this early manner to perfection, and with him we reach the peak of the first school of German painting. His Adoration of the Magi, now the pride of Cologne Cathedral, can be compared with most paintings made before the mid-fifteenth century: a graceful face of the Virgin, proud yet modest; a fresh child; wise Magi from the East with German features but visibly wise; an original composition; and coloring made bright and radiant by blues, greens and gold.
In the Virgin in the Rose Bower and the Madonna with Violets the faces are ideal young German mothers, delicate in beauty and lost in thought, painted with all the technical mastery of medieval art, which visibly moved toward the modern. Germany stood on the threshold of the greatest age in its history.