BUILDING FRENZY

View from my hotel room in Fuschl

Don't you worry! There is much more to tell about the fate of the Emser, which will be done in several more blog posts. For the moment, however, I feel the urge to let you participate in a present predicament of mine, and this in real time at that. I am sitting in my hotel room just now, snowed in, with nothing else to do but writing this blog post.

Yesterday, after four days of intensive explorations, I have been abandoned by my two brothers at Klagenfurt Airport. They hastened back home towards the East, whereas I took a more leisurely trip North, to the Salzkammergut, close to Salzburg on he border to Bavaria. Old friends have reserved a room for me at a nice hotel in Fuschl, alongside one of the lakes the region is full of.

Last evening, they gave a great party in the countryside, at an old mill converted to restaurant and banquet hall. The König family (isn't it a fitting name, considering the topic of our trip?) had reason to feast: the couple have reached the "mature" age of 65 (still young, seen from my perspective); they celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary; and they both have entered into retirement. The feasting and frolicking was intense, I can tell you. Alicja König even inveigled me to dancing, which I hadn't practised for ages. Friends and relatives had come from near and far, speeches were delivered and conversations held in a mêlée of German, Polish, French, as well as Austrian.

The Königs getting "crowned" at the Great Party

In the late evening, Jan König suddenly exclaimed "Look, it is snowing!", and indeed it was. And it has kept on snowing ever since.

I have nurtured great plans for today. One of the great Emser, Prince Archbishop Markus Sitticus (Merk Sittich) IV von Ems had, in the early 1600s, built a marvel of a place for himself in Salzburg, the famous Hellbrunn Palace. Its fame is above all due to an inventive park with jeux d'eau (water games), which I have been looking much forward to experiencing. But what can you do, with the roads being snowed in and difficult to navigate with summer tires, and the water plays most probably frozen up anyways?

Tomorrow, I will have to rush off to Vienna to catch the plane back home. Still, why not turning this calamity to my advantage? The trip so far has told us that here are many more places relating to the Ems family than we could, at the outset, have imagined in our wildest dreams. So, I am starting to  realise that our search will have to go on, even beyond the present trip. More outings will have to be made in future, be it to admire water games in Salzburg, the immense treasures of Altemps Palace in Rome, the collection of Emser portraits in Bistrau, ...

Whilst deep in thoughts about these future ventures, I get a phone call from the Königs in the afternoon. Would I like to join them in a short trip to Salzburg to visit some sights there? Of course I would and off we go! Fortunately,  the snowing has ceased by now and the town is welcoming us, even if wet after the storm and getting grayish in the late afternoon. 

Palace Mirabell
Section of Panorama of the town of Salzburg   Painter: Johan Michael Sattler (1829)
Source: Panoramamuseum Salzburg

The first station on our visit is not Hellbrunn Palace, but another grand complex, Palace Mirabell with its Early Baroque garden. In contrast to the former, it lies within the city and is thus more apt for a short visit. It was built in 1606 by Merk Sitttich IV’s predecessor, Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau (1559-1617), as home for his concubine, with whom he begot 15 children. But it got its name from Merk Sittich, who wished to erase the delicate association with an illegitimate arrangement. 

Across the river from the palace lie the impressive Residence Square and Cathedral Square (Domplatz), with the Cathedral as dominant centerpart. The late hour does not permit a close inspection of this marvel of Early Baroque, but we can admire its position opposite the Arch Bishop’s Residence and, overall, the group of illustrious buildings that constitute the very first great ensemble of Baroque buildings in Europe North of the Alps, granting the city the nickname of “Rome of the North". 

My hosts mention in passing that all of this grandeur had also been constructed by Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau. This gets me thinking. It is true that Wolf Dietrich was the initiator of the great building project. Had he not torn down the whole medieval town to make room for the modern Salzburg? Had he not also built the New Residence as counterpoint to the great Cathedral? Yes, indeed! But I vaguely recall that his successor was responsible for building the Cathedral, the jewel in the Salzburg architectural crown. Being not sure about who exactly built what, I leave it to later research to decide the issue. After a last admiring glance at Residence Square, we retrace our route to the hotel in Fuschl.

Prince Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau
Copperplate by Dominicus Custos (1597)  Source: Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg

Back home in Stockholm from our short trip to the “Emslands”, I now take a closer look at the issue. It turns out that, in fact, both Wolf Dietrich and Merk Sittich IV were involved in the building of the cathedral, and, furthermore, that Paris de Lodron, their successor, had it in his hands as well. 

Wolf Dietrich’s main contribution was that of the great “destroyer”. Ever since the beginning of his long reign as sovereign of Salzburg (1584-1612) he nourished the ambition to convert his capital from a medieval small town to a splendid residence worthy of its role as capital of a sizeable Prince-Archbishopric. He started by building the New Residence from 1595 onward. But, there were several obstacles to his ambition of further embellishments, foremost among them an agglomeration, medieval-style, of burgher houses around the cathedral, as well a a sizable churchyard stretching out from one of its sides. 

View of medieval Salzburg
Woodcut by Michel Wolgemut (1493) in Schedelse Weltchronik
Source: Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg 

A fire in the venerable Romanesque church gave him the pretext to address the obstacles. The resulting (minor) damages to the roof could have been repaired. Instead, the Archbishop ordered the complete tear-down of the ages old building, as well as of the some 50 houses surrounding it, and even had the churchyard demolished! Thus, a rather immense void was opened up within the town, awaiting to be filled with splendid new artifices!

To that effect, Wolf Dietrich engaged an Italian architect by the name of Vincenco Scamozzi (1548-1616), whom he had got to know at a stay in Rome around 1580. This architect, more a learned man and teacher than a builder of churches, went on to design a cathedral for him that would have become the largest North of the Alps, with a style more reminiscent of Venetian Renaissance than the more classic style prevalent in the rest of Italy at the time. With twice the size of St Mark’s Cathedral in Venice and about 60% of that of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, this monster of a building would have filled the void completeley and crowded out the several new splendid buildings already raised at its fringes!

An architect with a vision too large for Salzburg
Portrait of Vincence Scamozzi  Painter: Paolo Veronese (1585)
Source: Denver Art Museum

It took some time for Wolf Dietrich to realise that this monster of a building would shadow his breakfast table!. So, the foundations already laid down were speedily torn down again, and the Archbishop decided to take matters in his own hands. He jotted down for himself a plan for a building broadly of the same orientation North-South as Scamozzi’s proposal, but much smaller in size, and went on with it. Not personally, that is; he engaged for the task a young fellow from Italy, knowledgeable in the trade, to act as his builder. Had Wolf Dietrich prevailed, Salzburg might have benefitted from a classic design, well integrated with the new buildings on its fringes. Alas, soon after, in 1612, the “Architect Bishop” was deposed, which effectively stalled the building process at foundations and a bit of wall. 

His successor, Merk Sittich IV von Ems (1574-1619), at the outset went on to inspect the building site together with the “builder”, whom he consulted about work in progress. There he soon found out that the young man, far from being a pliant craftsman, was in fact a very gifted and promising architect! His name was Santino Solari (1576-1664). He had already ample building experience from Italy and was eager to modulate the prevalent renaissance building style. Impressed, the Archbishop invited him to present a new design for the cathedral in accordance with his ideas. 

The Cathedral and its Architect
Copperplate by Franz Danreiter (1735)                  Portait of Santino Solari (1735)
Source: Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg                 Source: Dommuseum Salzburg

The rest is history: the church regained its East-West orientation of old and was conceived at about the same sensible size as its medieval forerunner. The harmonious ensemble of open spaces and a well conceived church in the centre would vouch for the Principality’s grandeur, which the immense building mass of a cathedral envisaged by Scamozzi never could have done. The church would appear well proportioned in size, but its style would be revolutionary. Leaning broadly on the apparition of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, but with several new rounding-ups and accoutrements, it emerged as the very first example of the Early Baroque building style in Germany and arguably the most beautiful of its kind. 

The Cathedral in the making, in 1618
Artist: Donato Mascagni (1618)    Source: Magistrat Salzburg

Merk Sittich would not see its completion. He died already in 1619. But the architect staid on and saw to it that his original intentions were realised to the fullest. At the Archbishop’s death, the walls were already standing and the roof partly installed. Albeit, the cupola was still to be built. It was left to his successor, Archbishop Paris von Lodron (1586-1653) to put the last polish on Merk Sittich’s and Solari’s grand project. 

Three Princes to shape modern times Salzburg
Initiator                                           Creator                                 Perfactor

We recall with awe the labours of three great Princes of Salzburg, who despite unfavourable circumstances, and (as concerns Wolf Dietrich) with personal sacrifice, managed to carry through this great piece of art embodied in stone. The first two were Emser, even if one on his mother’s side only. Amazingly, the cathedral was completed at a time when the rest of Germany went up in flames, during the great upheaval of the Thirty Years’ War. It was the only grand building project North of the Alps within the first half of the seventeenth century!

Modern day Salzburg, as we know it and love
Source: DomQuartier Salzburg

Bella gerunt alii; aedificat Salczburga felix!

Whilst others wage war, lucky Salzburg is building!