Imperial Icon: The Pergamon Altar in Wilhelminian Germany

Abstract

In August 1882, Jacob Burckhardt traveled to Berlin to see for himself the latest trophy of Imperial German archaeology, the remarkable external frieze of the great altar at Pergamon, parts of which had only recently been laid out for public exhibition. Burckhardt had already obtained photographs of the frieze and had been impressed, but coming face to face with it bowled him over. “This discovery,” he wrote to a Basel friend from his hotel in Berlin, “has shattered the systems of the archaeologists and tumbled an entire pseudo-aesthetics to the ground. . . . Since we have come into possession of these terrifyingly glorious spectacles [‘spectacles’ is the best translation I could find for Burckhardt’s striking ‘Evenements’] everything that has been written about the emotional power of the Laocoon is for the wastebasket. Try to imagine a frieze . . . as of now, well over 200 feet long; 8-foot tall gods locked in struggle with giants and protruding so far out from their background that they practically constitute free-standing sculptures; a scene of biting, battering, chopping, crushing, involving also powerful dogs and lions, and with the snake-like tail-ends of many of the giants forming into heads that bite the gods in the back and leg—all this taking place sans ombre de generosite [relentlessly and unforgivingly]. The artistry and style . . . such as to make Phidias tremble on his throne”1 (fig. 1; for additional illustrations, see