„Zum Andenken und zur Ehre Gottes“: Kunst und Frömmigkeit im frühneuzeitlichen Luthertum

Abstract

This article explores the motivations behind Lutheran patronage of ecclesiastical art. Drawing on a number of case studies from amongst the lesser nobility in Albertine Saxony during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it asks why Lutherans gave images - pulpits, altars and epitaphs - to churches in the absence of any salvific imperative for doing good works. It argues that although individual and family commemoration had always been and remained an important motivator, we should not understand Protestant visual culture as purely commemorative. Lutheran patrons were prompted by their desire for dynastic representation, but also by a sense of duty to their local church and by their desire to express confessional loyalty. Yet other examples, such as a memorial church in the village of Prießnitz near Leipzig decorated in 1616 by Hans von Einsiedel as a memorial to his dead wife, show that after the Reformation, as before, religious and secular objectives sat side-by-side. Such monuments are in no sense secularized - their most obvious parallel was perhaps the Lutheran funeral sermon, which aimed to console, to promulgate confessional norms and to strengthen communal ties as well as to commemorate. The article closes with a consideration of other possible motivations, presenting sources that demonstrate the continued importance of pleasing God through such donations.