Orangeries as a Décor of Imperial Princely Claims in the Stately Representation of Monasteries and Princely Abbeys (Die Orangerie als Dekorum reichsständischer Ansprüche in der herrschaftlichen Repräsentation reichsunmittelbarer Klöster und Stifte)
Author : Helmut-Eberhard Paulus
Abstract :
Since the Roman poet Virgil, the Golden Apple has been a metaphor for participation in divine and eternal salvation. In its secular dimension, this metaphor alludes to the Roman Empire and the secular mission of the "eternal" city of Rome. The possession of the Golden Apple thus proves to be an "in realia allegory" of claim and share in this universal empire, in the continuity of which the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the early modern period until 1806 also stood.
But the Golden Apple is not just an allegory of the empire in its secular dimension. It is also a spiritual symbol of eternal and divine salvation – which ultimately establishes all legitimation of rule. He thus also claims a religious dimension, this already in Roman antiquity as an attribute of the Roman state goddess Venus, then later in Christian times as a metaphor of paradise.
The orangery culture in its range recognized today developed in a secular form around the year 1450 at the courts of Aragon, Valencia and Naples, and a little later received by the courts of Angevin, Burgundy and the Habsburgs. In the centre of Europe, it found its own architectural expression much later in the orangery buildings of the 17th and 18th centuries, which today often form the only remnants of more extensive hybrid complexes, which, in their allegorical dimension and thus far beyond architecture, once combined garden art and architecture, pictorial arts and plant presentation into theatrically staged subject groups. While research into the courtly orangery culture in its entirety beyond the partial aspect of architecture has been underway since the 70s and 80s of the 20th century, the recording in the ecclesiastical sphere and especially in the common intersection of the ecclesiastical lords is still largely overshadowed by research interest today.
There are indications that the orangery with its evergreen plants and golden apples was an undiminished decoration of the imperial self-image of the imperial estates until the late phase of the old empire and became a formative part of representation befitting their status, especially in the imperial princely area. It is therefore hardly surprising that the staging of the Golden Apples also played a prominent role in the area of ecclesiastical lordship.
On the other hand, such forms of representation of the imperial prince's participation in the imperial regiment in the form of the Golden Apple seem to have been deliberately exterminated precisely by secularization. At that time, the orangeries of a large number of imperial monasteries were not only abandoned and misused, but from then on virtually negated in their tradition and historical appreciation. Exemplary references in the monument inventory show that it was precisely the monasteries and monasteries that struggled for imperial immediacy or even for imperial estates that made particularly pronounced use of the orangery culture for self-expression. At least it offered an opportunity for the metaphorical representation of imperial claims at the level of the decorum, which could only be achieved at the level of heraldry and imperial predicates under the elaborate prerequisites of a consensus of the estates and imperial privilege.
Keywords :
Virgil, Golden Apple, Holy Roman Empire, Eternal and Divine Salvation, Spiritual Symbol, Orangery Culture, Orangeries etc.
