The Püsterich of Sondershausen: An Explosive Bronze Object between Art, Science and Questions of Human Nature in the 13th Century

Abstract

Preserved in the Castle Museum at Sondershausen in central Germany is a bronze taking the form of a rotund, kneeling man. The object, nearly 22.5 inches tall and cast in a single piece, is known today as the ‘Püsterich’. Since its archaeological discovery in the 1540s, it has proven to be a subject of intellectual debate: numerous authors have sought to understand either its iconography or, on the basis of its hollow shape and the two openings in its head, its function. The resulting studies have been surprisingly varied in their claims. With a method of approach rooted in ‘object studies’, this article explores both of the aforementioned aspects as well as form-function relations. Starting with a basic art-historical analysis of the bronze—thus far lacking in the scholarship—the article recognizes the work as having been produced in Hildesheim between c. 1220 and 1250, a context in which it can be related closely to the philosophical concerns of the prominent theologian Albertus Magnus. In its function as a ‘sufflator’ (hearth-blower) and its depiction of a ‘pygmeus’, the ‘Püsterich’, along with seven other related figures, can be understood as a ‘Wissensobjekt’, an object or bearer of knowledge. With and through them, viewers/users negotiated complex problems about the nature of living beings; specifically, the bronze thematized the question of what distinguished human beings from animals: in Albertus’s thought, the mastering of science and art. This new understanding of the ‘Püsterich’ allows us to recognize its special position at the origins of ‘philosophical anthropology’ and the history of science.