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Friday March 19, 2021
There is so much mystery about you, dear Mr. “Man with a blue bandage”!
They have so many names!
“The stranger with the blue ribbon” (Are you unknown? Some think you are Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy from the House of Valois.)
Her headgear with fringes, which was fashionable at the time, has the same characteristic of her portrait name: Sendelbinde, chaperon or turban. Only part of your name is the same in all German name variants: “blue”.
How did the oil painting come about? Did you sit as a model for Mr Jan van Eyck or did he draw it from somewhere?
What are you holding in your right hand?
Was your small-format portrait occasionally wrapped in cloths, stowed in a drawer and only occasionally hung up, as was the custom with such pictures in your day?
Where were you when the baron’s art agent discovered you in the middle of the 18th century at the art market and bought you? However, he thought at the time that you were a creation by Albrecht Dürer.
Her patron, Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, died in 1803. As he was, he wrote a will on January 3, 1802, which has survived to this day. It contains the clear statement that the Brukenthal Gymnasium, at that time an institution of the evangelical parish in Sibiu, is the heir to the Brukenthal Foundation. A board of trustees of the Brukenthal Museum was in charge after the death of the founder until it was expropriated.
Please allow me to take a leap forward two centuries and remember the 20th century. Around 1911/1912, an offer from a Budapest art agent caused a stir among Saxon artists: a Budapest art agent offered 800,000 guilders for your portrait and the paintings of the two donor portraits by Hans Memling.
That was a lot of money (lawyer Dr. Guido Gündisch, Elisabethstadt, called it: “an insane price”) and enticed local art lovers and artists to come up with ideas for renewal for the museum, e. For example, some dreamed of expanding the museum to include a new gallery by purchasing modern paintings by local artists. The majority of the people of Sibiu probably did not know at the time that this high purchase price was being offered not only for their oil painting, but also for the two portraits of Memling’s donors.
Transylvanian-Saxon artists, as well as artists from Germany (Munich, Berlin, Cologne) turned to the board of trustees and asked urgently to make the sale. I take the trouble, dear Mr. in van Eyck’schen picture, to list the names in the following, because there are many who spoke out in writing in favor of the “alienation” of your picture: Prof. Arnold Siegmund, Hermannstadt; Eduard Morres, Deutsch-Weißkirch; Arch. Fritz Balthes, Schäßburg; Architects Schuller and Goldschmidt, Kronstadt; Fritz Mieß, Kronstadt; Prof. Adolf Meschendorfer, Kronstadt; Emil Honigberger, Kronstadt; Walther Teutsch, Kronstadt – Munich; Rudolf Thör, Kronstadt; Ernst Honigberger, Munich; Prof. Heinrich Ritter von Zügel, Munich; Prof. Ludwig Ritter vom Zumbusch, Munich; Prof. Angelo Jank, Munich; Franz Josef Brakl, Munich; M. Haymann, Munich; Prof. Karl Ritter von Marr, Munich; Thomas Theodor Heine, Munich; Baron Fritz von Ostini, Munich; Prof. Karl Roesger, Munich; Architect Wilhelm Schmidts Munich-Neustadt; Prof. Leo Putz, Munich; Director Heinrich Tannhäuser, Munich; JF Lehmann Munich; Fritz Gurlitt, Berlin; Prof. Walther Schmarje, Berlin; Paul Cassierer, Berlin; Prof. Max Slevogt, Berlin; Dr. A. Hagelstange, Cologne; Prof. Karl Ziegler, Poznan.
The city pastor of Bucharest, Rudolf Honigberger, referred to the advantage of annual interest of 35,000 to 36,000 guilders in the event of a sale. With a crisis-proof local economy (such as in Sweden or Switzerland) that would certainly have been realistic and would have been a great benefit for running the museum. Dr. Ludwig Kirchgatter, lawyer for the evangelical parish in Sibiu. Above all, however, the board of trustees of the Baron Bruken-thalschen Museum, consisting of D. Adolf Schullerus, pastor of the evangelical Ecclesie in Sibiu, Karl Fritz, secretary of the evangelical regional church and Karl Albrich, director of the Brukenenthal gymnasium, were clearly against a sale of the three precious paintings from the Brukenthal collection.
You, dear world-famous stranger, were not sold, and neither were the Memling portraits of the two donors.
In the middle of the 20th century. we all felt bad. The Second World War had raged and territorial, political and economic power shifts, not only in Transylvania, were the result. The Saxon community property fared badly again. By decree 176/1948 of the new Romanian, socialist government, the museum was expropriated and the archaeologist Nicolae Lupu was appointed the new director of the Brukenthal Museum. It and a few other paintings were, as it later turned out, “temporarily” forcibly loaned to the Bucharest state painting exhibition.
How did you fare as a prominent elected Bukarester?
Towards the millennium, we experienced another profound vortex in Romania: The great turning point in 1989, which corrected what was previously different.
Let us move into the 21st century. switch.
On November 10, 2006, you left the National Museum in Bucharest in the direction of Sibiu. Not only you, dear thoughtful: “Six vans with several hundred million euros of valuable freight, minibuses of the gendarmerie, weapons, curious people, officials and the press” is in the “Siebenbürgische Zeitung” (SbZ) of November 20, 2006 about your journey home. Minister of Culture Adrian Iorgulescu handed over the temporarily expropriated art treasures to the Brukenthal Museum under the direction of Dr. Sabin Luca in the presence of Mayor Klaus Johannis, Bishop D. Dr. Christoph Klein, District Council Chairman Martin Bottesch, Prefect Ion Ariton. Why did the pastor of the evangelical parish of Sibiu, Kilian Dörr, not belong to the reception committee as the authorized representative of the community of owners as evidenced by will, the current curator asks.
One had prepared extensively. You are unimaginably precious! Neither bodyguards nor sophisticated alarm devices are secure enough to reliably protect you. You and your kind are on the short list of coveted art theft. Your new, old home was almost like a maximum security prison. So it seemed to me at the time. You, dear patient, were locked in a popemobile-like glass case.
They are an important point of attraction of the museum for tourists, also of the 21st century. But maybe it is better that way than lying in a drawer, wrapped in protective fifteenth-century cloths. Let yourself be marveled at in a constant room climate, separated from sunlight and the lively, hustle and bustle of the Großer Ring.
On February 26, 2021 we stood in front of your portrait: The presbytery of the Protestant parish with its pastor, Kilian Dörr and the art expert and Brukenthal lover Dr. Frank-Thomas Ziegler. The presbytery of the evangelical parish in Sibiu is responsible under canon law for all church property.
We stood by and in front of you for a long time. We looked at you for a long time. We felt a common sympathy for your view of the timelessness of past centuries. We also stood in front of other exhibited paintings and let them affect us. And then we went to the new part of the gallery: paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries. Mr. Ziegler said that the Brukenthal Museum has the most important collection of Transylvanian-Saxon painters. They are exhibited here in the new gallery.
Isn’t it a wonder you’re back, that you’re still there?
If you remember the struggle about a hundred years ago to choose between you or a new picture gallery, today you can gratefully say: We have you as well as a respectable modern picture gallery. But this development is again a long and sometimes painful story.
Use Philippi
Curator of EK Hermannstadt, March 5th, 2021
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