Baroque and Rococo in Germany and Austria
After the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War, princes, abbots and emperors built palaces and churches in which architecture, sculpture and ceiling painting merged into a single heavenly spectacle.
The century began promisingly. In Augsburg Elias Holl built a great town hall, and Adam Elsheimer from Frankfurt painted small, luminous pictures in Rome that were admired by Rubens. But the Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648 shattered large parts of Germany. Towns were plundered, villages burned and the population fell sharply in many regions. Swedish armies marched through the country, and much art was carried off as war booty. For several decades very little was built or commissioned. The memory of the war lingered long in German culture.
Only towards the end of the 17th century did building pick up again. In Vienna, which in 1683 had withstood an Ottoman siege, the emperor and the nobility built palaces and churches in a new, self-assured style. Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach designed the Karlskirche, and Lukas von Hildebrandt the Belvedere for Prince Eugene. In Dresden Augustus the Strong had the Zwinger erected, and in Würzburg Balthasar Neumann built a residence for the prince-bishop. Whole landscapes filled with Baroque domes and onion-shaped spires.
Around the middle of the 18th century the Baroque grew lighter and brighter and passed into Rococo. In southern Germany the Asam brothers and the Zimmermann brothers created churches where the walls seem to dissolve into white, gold and pastel. The Wieskirche and Vierzehnheiligen are high points. The church interior became a stage where heaven opens up in the ceiling painting. In Potsdam Frederick the Great built Sanssouci, a small summer palace for music and conversation. It was an art of faith, power and pleasure alike.