“Interesting”, “Oh, I see”, “There’s something more modern about that” – the former Chancellor Angela Merkel is familiar with the painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). The tour by Marion Ackermann, General Director of the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD), in the exhibition “Where it all began” in the Albertinum alternates between technical talk, historical narrative and memories and even a chat.
It is a very personal visit from the CDU politician, who resigned in 2021 after 16 years as chancellor. Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer invited them and accompanied them. “It’s my present for her 70th birthday,” he says. Even in front of the museum building in the middle of the historic old town, passers-by nod in a friendly manner to the celebrity celebrating her birthday as she gets out of the car wearing black trousers, a burgundy blazer and an amber necklace.
Familiar and new things for the art lover
In the large exhibition hall, she looks impressed at the approximately 15 meter long wall with pictures of Friedrich’s contemporaries and students in the “Petersburg Hanging”. She lingers in front of the master’s paintings, drawings and engravings, sometimes getting up close and listening to explanations about colors, painting techniques, motifs, but also his life and work in Dresden – observed with curiosity and delight by surprised visitors. Art lover Merkel asks questions, contributes her own knowledge, comments and, like Kretschmer, talks about the Giant Mountains.
The Dresden exhibition ends the series of presentations marking the 250th birthday of the master of German Romanticism this year. Well over 200 works provide insight into Friedrich’s work and painting technique, but also into his emotional world and his life and artistic environment. On display are, among other things, all 47 of his known paintings, all of which were created in Dresden, as well as drawings by the Greifswald-born artist, for whom the Elbe city was the center of his life for over 40 years.
Here he studied the Old Masters in the picture gallery, began painting in 1807 and became probably the most important artist of German Romanticism. He also took part in art debates, hiked around the city to be inspired by nature, started a family and established a large network. He died in May 1840 and was laid to rest in what was then the New Cemetery.
“Dresden was of course a great place for a painter, for inspiration, and I think it still is today,” says Merkel. She is familiar with Friedrich’s motives, also because Greifswald and Rügen were in her constituency. “But you see things in a completely different way through a tour like this.” She particularly likes the connection with the time in which the artist lived, “that he was a visionary, but also that he didn’t come from nothing, but rather stood on the foundations of those who painted before him”.
Landscape images are fascinating
Merkel was particularly impressed by the landscape paintings “that show the vastness, where he paints a lot of sky and light”. But pictures with a political message or a religious background also make the trio pause on the way to the “Tetschener Altar”, one of the famous ones among the exhibits. There, Merkel tells a visitor who dares to get closer what she has just heard about it from Ackermann.
