History of The Lüftlmalerei of Garmisch-Partenkirchen

When you think of Southern Germany, you likely immediately picture Lederhosen, Tyrolean hats, and Oktoberfest.

But just as quintessentially Bavarian, are the murals one finds — scenes from the Bible, the lives of Saints, or just rustic, rural life — on the sides of homes, businesses, and even barns. All of them outdoors, and in the open air.

And there is something strange about this antique street art. Even if you recognize the images, you may still wonder, just exactly why is there an image from Revelation painted on the wall of a second-hand clothing store? Why are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse painted so large on the wall of such a tiny church? And just who is that hockey player perched so precariously on a wall overlooking a rental car company?

The answers to those mysteries, like the origins of all modern painting, stretches back some 5,000 years….

As famed art historian Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich wrote in his seminal book, The Story of Art: “there is a direct tradition handed down from master to pupil, and from pupil to admirer or copyist, which links the art of our own days, any house or any poster, with the art of the Nile Valley of some five thousand years ago.”¹

While the past often seems stark and colorless — our imaginations likely tinged by images of desiccated ruins, rows of bleached statues in museums, and archival photos in black and white — the ancient world was awash in color.² The ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians decorated the walls of their buildings with elaborately colored murals and sculptures. Their style was adopted by the Greeks, who painted their temples and their statues in vibrant, life-like hues. Artists in the Roman Empire then copied the Greeks.

“The sculptures in our museums are, for the most part, only secondhand copies made in Roman times for travellers and collectors as souvenirs, and as decorations for gardens or public baths. We must be very grateful for these copies, because they give us at least a faint idea of the famous masterpieces of Greek art; but unless we use our imagination these weak imitations can also do much harm. They are largely responsible for the widespread idea that Greek art was lifeless, cold and insipid, and that Greek statues had that chalky appearance and vacant look which reminds one of old-fashioned drawing classes.”³

By the 1st century, throughout the Empire, wealthy Romans had begun decorating the walls of their estates — both inside and out — with plaster and stucco. Dye and pigments were applied to wet plaster over several layers, and once dry, there was a waterproof and lasting “fresco” (Italian for “fresh”) painting to accentuate and ornament an otherwise inexpensive facade.

Throughout the Roman Empire, plaster facade painting became a key design element in castles, mansions, town houses, and farmhouses.

Such wall decorations have survived wholly intact, excavated from such places as Pompeii, which was buried and preserved by ash when the nearby volcano erupted in 79 AD.

Since before the Bronze Age, people from what is now north Italy and south Germany traded over the Alps through what eventually became known as the Brenner Pass.

In the 1st century, the Romans built and fortified a road across the Alps, the Via Claudia Augusta, connecting Verona in Italy to “Augusta Vindelicorum” in Germany — the present-day city of Augsburg. They also fortified the route through the Brenner Pass, the Via Raetia, establishing a trading post on the German side of the mountains they called “Partanum,” which later became the town of Partenkirchen.

When the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century, it ushered in the Medieval Period in Europe, or the Middle Ages, as well as the rise of the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire.

At that time, life was concentrated on separate major traffic arteries. Culture flowed in fixed lines.⁴ And as innumerable goods passed from the powerhouse cities of Venice and Milan, up past Bolzano and through Mittenwald, to the commercial areas around Augsburg and Munich in modern Germany, so, too, did religion.

As Christianity spread throughout the pagan world from the South, a cult of saints began to form — places where the Divine once walked amongst men. As their cults grew, saints’ remains became relics — magical objects capable of performing miracles long after the saint had died — and saints’ graves soon became places of pilgrimage.

If the people wanted “to rub themselves against the tombs, to take away their dust and their candle wax, and to drink the oil of their lamps”⁵, as Peter Brown wrote in his book, The Cult of the Saints, the Catholic Church was only too pleased to oblige. They took to building holy places over saints’ graves — such as the Constantinian Basilica at the Vatican over the presumed tomb of Saint Peter — or, instead, transferring pieces of the saints’ bodies from their graves to a reliquary — a shrine — inside a church. “The tomb of the saint was declared public property[…]: it was made accessible to all, and became the focus of forms of ritual common to the whole community. Every device of architecture, art, ceremony, and literature was mobilized to ensure that holy graves and relics were made both more eminent and more available[…].”⁶

As the number of Christians grew, so too did the number and the size of their churches. Mural and façade painting as we know it probably began with the emergence of large plaster decorations on the walls and ceilings of plain stone churches in the Gothic period. As a result, artwork devoted to the saints became ubiquitous throughout the Catholic world — notably that of Saint Christopher, who offered protection to travelers, whose image was often placed prominently on the walls of hostels and churches where he could be easily seen along pilgrimage routes.⁷

By the 14th century, church art had spread from the metropolitan hubs in Italy to the bourgeoning cities north of the Alps along the old Roman route.

Not long after, town halls, market stalls, and city walls throughout Germany were decorated with images of important events, major battles, and the stories from the lives of Kings. Gate towers were covered with an impressive reproduction of the cities’ coat of arms and plastered with pictures of fearsome warriors. German legends were writ large across imposing castle walls.⁸

(In her 1975 book, Bemalte Fassaden, Margarete Baur-Heinhold highlighted some of those famed facades from this Gothic period that can still be seen: a fresco of Saint Christopher, the oldest in Tyrol, from the 13th century on the walls of the Church of Saint John in Taufers in Münstertal; Munich’s old city hall’s first facade paintings in 1371 and 1393; a series of frescoes painted between 1388 and 1410 depicting tournaments and German legends on the walls at Castle Runkelstein near Bolzano; and on and on.)

It wasn’t long before well-to-do Germans began decorating their homes in the same way — exactly as the Romans had, a millennia before — with secular and profane paintings.

The Church, which had helped spread the fire of frescoes, came to resent the idolatry. Dominican monk Johannes Tauler (1300 – 1361) railed in one of his sermons against the rich citizens of Cologne, who “build large and stately houses, have all kinds of monkeyshines and frivolity painted on them, and otherwise adorn them inside and out, roof to ground, in various and unnecessary ways”.⁹

Mela Escherich explained, however, that “[t]oday, we are no longer in a position to check his judgment; because almost nothing has survived from the fleeting art fashion of those days. All that has been handed down to us is that there was a secular trend, an offshoot of Romanesque sacred art. The penetrating Gothic prevented painting from the previously claimed large wall surfaces. Displaced then from the church, it fled to the community center, where it was warmly welcomed. But here it had to transform itself. Here it had to tell stories. No legends and passions, albeit edifying. So moral stories, moral anecdotes. They were then spiced with foolish marginal glosses, drolleries, with crude jokes — ‘monkeyshines,’ as Tauler called it.”¹⁰

“The Romanesque wall painting had been predominantly epic. This character was preserved. But from the large wall surface, it shrank into the living room — it went from a grand classic style, to that of the petite bourgeoisie. The broad form was lost in playful discourse. The wall friezes of the town houses might have all sorts of funny genres; but hardly any art that contained future value. That is why they fell victim to the ravages of time.”¹¹

While interest in this type of mural painting began to wane in the major cities, it was at the end of the Middle Ages — a period pejoratively known as the “Dark Ages” — in the 15th Century, when there was a renewed interest in Humanist philosophy, culture, and art, that the Renaissance (Italian for “rebirth”) began. This rebirth was marked especially in the economic and political hubs of Venice and Milan, where artists and architects — like the Romans a thousand years before — were rediscovering the styles and stories of the Ancient Greeks.

In 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, he kicked off the Protestant Reformation — and, without meaning to, laid the foundation for an entirely new style in art.

In response to the Protestants, the Catholic Church decided to rebrand itself, and, in order to better appeal to a wider audience, they decided to literally change their image.

As part of the Counter-Reformation, decided by the Council of Trent in 1545-1563, the Catholic Church officially declared that the arts should communicate religious themes and inspire emotional involvement. In order to inspire that feeling of awe and wonder, they commissioned artists who worked in what would eventually be labeled the “Baroque” style — artists such as Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Annibale Carracci, Barocci, Bernini, and Artemisia Gentileschi.

Baroque architects took the basic elements of Renaissance building — including domes and colonnades — and made them higher, grander, more ornate, and more dramatic. Meanwhile, Baroque painters created grandeur and a sense of divine space on the inside by painting murals on the walls and, above all, frescos on the ceilings. The scale of the fresco was limited by the physical space of the architecture. Therefore, one important aspect of Baroque painting became the Quadratura, or paintings in trompe-l’oeil, which literally “fooled the eye” into believing that flat walls had three dimensional depth or that the ceilings above opened to the infinity of Heaven.

Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and 1512 remains a definitive example — itself done in the same “fresco” style of painting in wet plaster as employed by the ancient Romans more than a thousand years before.

Such art not only made the plain walls and ceilings of churches appear grander, but the murals helped to tell the stories of the Bible and the lives of Saints to church-goers without the need for words — a population, still by and large, illiterate or incapable of reading Latin, the language of the Catholic church. The artists who painted them started to develop a number of very specific symbols for each of the saints and the Biblical stories — a sort of visual short-hand, or pictorial vocabulary — so that the characters could be easily identified, without the need for words.

As art historian Hans Hildebrandt wrote in his exhaustive 500-page survey of the rules and styles of the medium of mural painting, Wandmalerei, Ihr Wesen Und Ihre Gesetze, published in Germany in 1920: “this colorful, unsystematic, but splendid illusory architecture, which boasts palatial motifs even in simple residential buildings and opens up views of the outside world everywhere, is populated with lifelike, but usually larger-than-life figures, with fashionably dressed gentlemen and ladies, who talk and dally with each other or, leaning over carpets, look down on the street, and close by with no less bodily allegorical figures and the marveled heroes of antiquity. Humor is also allowed to drive its essence. […] The German Renaissance was particularly fond of depictions that had something surprising, almost frightening about them, and where the creation of complete deception was an end in itself, depictions such as that of a rider who seems to leap over the railing of a terrace with a sudden jump into the street.”¹²

It is this combination of false grand architecture (“fronts” or “façades” in French) and life-like depictions of Catholic religious-themes and subjects that makes up the foundation of what we see in the lüftlmalerei of Southern Germany, Austria, and Northern Italy today.

The discovery of America at the turn of the 15th century led to a boom in naval shipping and a sharp decline in overland trade, which devastated the Werdenfels economy. The valley floor was swampy and difficult to farm. The population suffered from periodic epidemics, including several serious outbreaks of bubonic plague. Adverse fortunes from disease and crop failure occasionally led to witch hunts. Most notable of these were the trials and executions of 1589–1596, in which 63 people — more than 10 percent of the population at the time — were burned at the stake or garroted at the Werdenfels Castle.

The Protestant Reformation and the Catholic response also subsequently led to the Thirty Years’ War — a war that raged through Central Europe from 1618 until 1648 and entangled every major nation. One of the most destructive conflicts in human history, it resulted in eight million fatalities, including about one fifth of the German population — not just from direct military conflict, but also from the subsequent violence, famine, and disease.

In the wake of that destruction, between 1632 and 1634 the Black Plague swept through the area around Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

The Spanish War of Succession raged here from 1701 till 1714.

Then came the French Revolution, beginning in 1789 and ending in 1799.

The Napoleonic Wars that followed were also a period of territorial reorganization of Europe. The Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist and sovereign states from what was once a loosely unified Germany emerged — such as the Kingdom of Bavaria.

The price of becoming a newly sovereign kingdom was a costly one for Bavaria. In 1812, Napoleon crossed into Russia with 450,000 soldiers — more than 30,000 of whom were Bavarians. Very few of them survived. The majority lost their lives to starvation, thirst, disease, and extreme weather. Allied and enemy armies roved. Requisitions, quartering, rape, and looting ravaged the countryside and dominated everyday life. All told, the populace had to endure some twenty years of uninterrupted war and its aftermath.

By the 18th century, even as mural painting was again falling out of fashion in the the major cities, it began to take hold in the foothill regions of the Alps with traders, warehouse owners, and craftsmen, who started to display their wealth on the walls of their homes. Religious motifs continued to hold, but there were also references to locals living everyday life — farmers tending livestock, harvesting fields, hunting in the mountains. Anyone could afford to have their patron saint, or their family, or some simple slogans extolling the wisdom of rural life, tattooed on the stucco walls of their simple Hof for a small fee.

Hans Hildebrandt wrote that “the often very charming, if sometimes primitive handicraft paintings on the outer walls of Upper Bavarian and Tyrolean farmhouses mostly show the same peculiarities, as they almost all originate from the 18th century.”¹³ “Biblical representations predominate on the facades of these farmhouses, but there are also references to the business of the house owner.”¹⁴

Hildebrandt explained that the architecture of Alpine homes in the 18th century were a perfect medium for this specific style of painting, as the “walls of the Bavarian and Tyrolean farmhouses are almost always plastered white, so that the façade painters were allowed to indulge uninhibitedly in the folkart’s lust for bright, cheerful colors.”¹⁵ Author Paul Ernst Rattelm¨uller suggested that it was actually architecture that kept this style of exterior decoration going farther north, because, he wrote, Franconian houses were half-timbered buildings which did not offer the same large plaster surfaces as in the south.¹⁶

Foreign tourists first began to take note of the local “lüftlmalerei” in travel guides and travelogues published outside of Germany around the turn of the 19th century. (At the same time the very word “tourist” first appears in French in 1793, and in English in 1800.¹⁷)

In her book De l’Allemagne (first published while in exile in England in 1813, as all 10,000 copies of the first edition published in France in 1810 had been destroyed by Napoleon), French writer Anne Louise Germaine de Staël noted of her travels through Germany at the time: “The houses, in several towns, are painted outside in various colors: there are figures of saints, ornaments of all kinds, the taste of which is certainly not perfect, but which vary the appearance of the houses and seem to indicate a benevolent desire to please fellow citizens and foreigners. The brilliance and splendor of a palace serve the self-esteem of the one who possesses it; but there is something hospitable about the careful decoration, the adornment and the good intention of the small houses.”¹⁸

First published in 1836, in A Handbook for Travellers in South Germany, Englishman John Murray described the houses in Munich at that time as, “built in the quaint, but not unpicturesque style adopted also at Augsburg: they are irregular in size and form; their fronts, crowded with windows, are ornamented either with stucco patterns and scroll-work, or with rude fresco paintings.”¹⁹ Later he noted that Mittenwald was “a village consisting of very old houses curiously painted outside”.²⁰

This latest wave of German Romanticism, this nostalgia for the art of the medieval and pre-modern times, was partly a product of the preceding devastating wars.

Franz Joseph Bronner was probably the first to seriously study and catalogue the facade painting around Garmisch-Partenkirchen, “armed with a camera, hunting for such farmhouses”, just before the turn of the 20th century.²¹

In 1908, he published Von Deutscher Sitt’ und Art, which contained a comprehensive chapter articulating the location and description of all of the lüftlmalerei he found on “numerous hikes through the Bavarian highlands, […] purposefully follow[ing] the traces of old fresco paintings”.²²

He succinctly summarized their history, writing:

The old fresco paintings of our alpine landscape are almost all from the middle to the end of the 18th century (ca. 1750-1800). This can be explained as follows: The wars of succession were over and a certain sedentariness had returned to the peasantry. The great Rottverkehr [the organized transport of goods along the route from Italy to Augsburg] on water and on land brought the alpine country into lively contact with beautiful towns in the lowlands and larger neighboring villages, which often displayed magnificent façade decorations. This encouraged imitation. One or the other wealthy man had his house painted; the neighbor liked that, and soon his home had to be decorated in the same way. This corresponded to the pious and artistic sensibility of the people at the same time! One had one's favorite saints painted, thus giving the house not only decoration, but a Christian touch, so to speak. The mottoes on the houses were a constant source of edification and traveled as rules of wisdom and life (in those days of poor elementary school education) by word of mouth. In a fortunate coincidence, with such a need for local home decoration, brilliant local masters of color arose among the Alpine people, who took the wishes of the population into account for the cheapest price.²⁶

Partenkirchen was twice ravaged by devastating fires — first in 1811, and then again on December 5, 1865 — destroying most of its original buildings. This is part of the reason that, unlike the nearby towns of Mittenwald and Oberammergau, the lüftlmalerei one finds in Garmisch-Partenkirchen today are relatively new.

They are also the product of a popular resurgence in the style that swept through the region a century later, in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

While the motifs and themes remain nearly identical to their centuries-older progenitors, it was the post World War II building boom in West Germany and Austria that led to a localized renaissance in this form of mural painting — a product both of a renewed identification with the local history and traditions — “heimatkitsch ” — but also with the surge of tourism.

Again, a wave of nostalgia for “the good old days” was partly a product of the devastation of the preceding war.

In Southern Germany, people began to resurrect the idea of the idyll of Alpine life before the sobriety of the War, and began to paint the new but empty white plastered walls of their houses with motifs from a time before the Nazi regime’s rise. Numerous single-family houses from the 1960s and 1970s still feature hunting scenes, figures of saints, sunsets over green treetops or family coats of arms. Like the wall paintings of the past, they referred to the residents of the house and provided information as to the family’s origin (coats of arms or inscriptions), inclinations and habits (hunting and nature scenes), and religious attitudes (in their choice of saints).

The economic boom between 1970 and 1990, triggered by the huge increases in summer and winter tourism, led many inns, hotels, businesses and banks — not to mention farmers — to pay to have their blank whitewashed walls filled with facades.

Tyrolean author Ulla Fürlinger anecdotally asked in her essay, “Wand-lungen,” was this return to the traditional lüftlmalerei painting “a quiet but visible protest against the faster and ‘bigger’ world? A memorial? Perhaps a clear expression of patriotic sentiments? A demonstrative show of pride in the alpine region? Or fear of the perceived loss of this idyll? Does it reinforce the real idyll? Or did one pay for a mural because one’s neighbor had one on his facade, and one has a windowless wall on their own house that calls for ‘decor’?”²³

Likely all of these.

Today, this sort of outdoor mural painting has become a local form of folk-art all its own — an authentic illustration of a cultural history of the people, shaped by the peculiarities of location, history, religion, and tradition.

As Franz Joseph Bronner extolled more than 100 years ago: “What we see before our eyes is a piece of German folklore, which in its uniqueness and core nature deserves the attention and appreciation of wide circles.”²⁴

Unfortunately, the stories behind each individual work of art is fast disappearing.

As local Mittenwald lüftlmalerei tour guide Regine Ronge explained to a writer from Monumente magazine in 2016, “‘The knowledge of the age, the originators, and the meaning of the paintings is no longer available to many people[… .] In the past, it was passed on from generation to generation.’ Today she traces the history of each individual work, searches for historical photos and interviews the people of Mittenwald to ensure that information handed down through the generations is not lost.”²⁵

Gombrich, E. H. The Story of Art. Phaidon, Pocket Ed., 2006, p. 49.
Talbot, Margaret. "Color Blind". The New Yorker, October 29, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture. Accessed 28 Aug 2020. Quoting Mark Abbe, a professor of ancient art at the University of Georgia: "the idea that the ancients disdained bright color 'is the most common misconception about Western aesthetics in the history of Western art.' It is, he said, 'a lie we all hold dear.'"
Gombrich, E. H. The Story of Art. Phaidon, Pocket Ed., 2006, pp. 70-71.
Escherich, Mela. Die schule von Köln. Strassburg: Heitz & Mündel, 1907, p. 2: "Damals drängte sich das moderne Leben auf einzelne große Verkehrsadern zusammen. Die Kultur zog ihre bestimmten Linien."
Brown, Peter. The Cult of the Saints. The University Of Chicago Press, 2015, p. xxvii.
Brown, Peter. The Cult of the Saints. The University Of Chicago Press, 2015, p. 9.
Rattelmüller, Paul Ernst. Lüftlmalerei in Oberbayern. Werbeabteilung Süddeutscher Verlag, 1960, p. 7-8: "Fassadenmalerei in unserem Sinn beginnt wohl mit den ersten Außenmalereien an Kirchen. Das ganze Mittelalter hindurch kann man sie verfolgen, vor allem aber in der Gotik im Zusammenhang mit dem Entstehen großer verputzter Flächen. Da ist wohl eines der häufigsten Motive der heilige Christophorus, vor allem an großen Pilgerstraßen, denn Fuhrleute, Reisende und Pilger waren in [8] jener Zeit der festen überzeugung, daß sie an dem Tag, an dem sie das Bild des Heiligen gesehen hätten, nicht vom Tod überrascht würden."
Hildebrandt, Hans. Wandmalerei, Ihr Wesen Und Ihre Gesetze. Mit 462 Abbildungen, Darunter 266 Hilfszeichnungen Des Verfassers. Deutsche Verlags-Anstali, 1920, p. 276. "Nicht allein Wohnhäuser pflegte man seit den Tagen der Renaissance an den Schauwänden zu bemalen. Monumentalbauten wie Rathäuser, Tortürme usw. mußten, ihrer das Stadtbild beherrschenden Stellung zuliebe, erst recht mit prunkreichem Schmuck bedacht werden. Bei der Stoffwahl entschied wohl meist der Wunsch, die Macht des Gemeinwesens zu verherrlichen, so daß vor allem bedeutsame Ereignisse, siegreiche Schlachten, Bewillkommnungen von Fürsten usw., herangezogen wurden. Die Wiederherstellungen haben indessen an den Rathäusern, die heute noch Fassadengemälde aufweisen — zu Ulm, zu Lindau usw. — so viel verdorben, daß von den ursprünglichen Reizen kaum mehr etwas zu entdecken ist. Tortürme stattete man gern mit imponierender Wiedergabe des von Kriegern gehaltenen Stadtwappens aus."
Peltzer, Alfred. Deutsche Mystik und Deutsche Kunst. Strassburg: Heitz & Mündel, 1899, p. 91: "Sie bauen grosse und stattliche Häuser, lassen allerlei Affenwerk und Leichtfertigkeit daran malen, zieren sie sonst innwendig und ausswendig vom Dach an bis auf den Boden auf mancherlei und unnötige Weise: dass mann sich nicht genugsam verwundern kann, wie sie doch allenthalben nur ihrer Sinne Lust und Ergetzlichkeit suchen."
Escherich, Mela. Die schule von Köln. Strassburg: Heitz & Mündel, 1907, p. 11: "Wir sind heute nicht mehr in der Lage, sein Urteil nachzuprüfen; denn von der flüchtigen Modekunst jener Tage hat sich so gut wie nichts erhalten. Ueberliefert ist uns nur, daß eine profane Richtung bestand, eine Ausläuferin der romanischen Sakralkunst. Die eindringende Gotik verwehrte der Malerei die bisher behaupteten großen Wandflächen. Da flüchtete sich die aus der Kirche Verdrängte in das Bürgerhaus, wo sie freundliche Aufnahme fand. Aber hier mußte sie ihr Wesen verwandeln. Hier mußte sie Geschichten erzählen. Keine Legenden und Passionen, wenngleich Erbauliches. Also sittliche Geschichten, moralische Anekdoten. Sie wurden dann gewürzt mit närrischen Randglossen, Drolerien, mit derben Witzen, — Affenwerk, wie Tauler es nannte."
Escherich, Mela. Die schule von Köln. Strassburg: Heitz & Mündel, 1907, p. 11: "Die romanische Wandmalerei war eine vorwiegend epische gewesen. Dieser Charakter erhielt sich. Aber von der großen Mauerfläche ging es jetzt in den kleinen Raum der Wohnstube hinein, vom großen klassischen Stil in den der engen Bürgerwirtschaft. Die breite epische Form verlor sich in spielerischem Geplauder. Die Wandfriese der Bürgerhäuser mochten wohl allerlei drolliges Genre aufweisen; aber wohl kaum Leistungen, die Zukunftswerte in sich bargen. Darum fielen sie auch dem Zahn der Zeit zum Opfer."
Hildebrandt, Hans. Wandmalerei; Ihr Wesen Und Ihre Gesetze, Mit 462 Abbildungen, Darunter 266 Hilfszeichnungen Des Verfassers. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstali, 1920, p. 274: "Und diese bunte, systemlose, aber prachtreiche Scheinarchitektur, die auch bei schlichten Wohnhäusern mit Motiven des Palastbaus prahlt und die allerorten Durchblicke ins Freie erschließt, wird bevölkert mit naturgetreu gemalten, aber meist überlebensgroßen Gestalten, mit modisch gekleideten Herren und Damen, die miteinander reden und tändeln oder, über Teppiche sich lehnend, auf die Straße hinabblicken, und dicht daneben mit nicht minder körperhaft wiedergegebenen allegorischen Figuren und mit den angestaunten Helden der Antike. Auch der Humor darf sein Wesen treiben. [...] Besonders gern brachte man in der deutschen Renaissance Darstellungen an, die etwas Überraschendes, ja fast Erschreckendes an sich hatten, und bei denen die Erzeugung vollkommener Täuschung Selbstzweck war, Darstellungen wie die eines Reiters, der über das Geländer einer Terrasse mit jähem Sprung auf die Straße zu setzen scheint."
Hildebrandt, Hans. Wandmalerei; Ihr Wesen Und Ihre Gesetze, Mit 462 Abbildungen, Darunter 266 Hilfszeichnungen Des Verfassers. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstali, 1920, p. 275: "Auch die oft sehr reizvollen, wenn auch manchmal handwerksmäßig-primitiven Malereien an den Außenwänden oberbayerischer und tiroler Bauernhäuser zeigen meist, da sie fast durchweg dem 18. Jahrhundert entstammen, die nämlichen Eigentümlichkeiten."
Hildebrandt, Hans. Wandmalerei; Ihr Wesen Und Ihre Gesetze, Mit 462 Abbildungen, Darunter 266 Hilfszeichnungen Des Verfassers. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstali, 1920, p. 275: "Biblische Darstellungen überwiegen an den Fassaden dieser Bauernhäuser. Doch finden sich auch Hinweise auf das Gewerbe des Hauseigentümers."
Hildebrandt, Hans. Wandmalerei; Ihr Wesen Und Ihre Gesetze, Mit 462 Abbildungen, Darunter 266 Hilfszeichnungen Des Verfassers. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstali, 1920, p. 275: "Die Mauern der bayerischen und tiroler Bauernhäuser sind fast immer weiß verputzt, so daß die Fassadenmaler der volkstümlichen Lust an bunten, heiteren Farben ungehemmt frönen durften."
Rattelmüller, Paul Ernst. Lüftlmalerei in Oberbayern. Werbeabteilung Süddeutscher Verlag, 1960, p. 8: "Fassadenmalerei findet man vor allem in Süddeutschland. Die Grenze dürfte etwa beim Main liegen. In Franken waren die Malereien allerdings nie sehr zahlreich, weil der Fachwerkbau in diesen Gebieten gar nicht die großen Flächen geboten hat wie eine verputzte Fassade."
Böröcz, József. "Travel-Capitalism: The Structure of Europe and the Advent of the Tourist", Comparative Studies in Society and History, 39, 4, October 1992, p. 727.
Staël, Madame de Anne-Louise-Germaine. De L'allemagne. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1852, p.15: "Les maisons, dans plusieurs villes, sont peintes en dehors de diverses couleurs: on y voit des figures de saints, des ornements de tout genre, dont le goût n'est assurément pas parfait, mais qui varient l'aspect des habitations et semblent indiquer un désir bienveillant de plaire à ses concitoyens et aux étrangers. L'éclat et la splendeur d'un palais servent à l'amour-propre de celui qui le possède; mais la décoration soignée, la parure et la bonne intention des petites demeures ont quelque chose d'hospitalier."
Murray, John. A Handbook for Travellers in South Germany; Being a Guide to Bavaria, Austria, Tyrol, Salzburg, Styria, &c., The Austrian and Bavarian Alps, and The Danube from Ulm to the Black Sea; Including Descriptions of the Most Frequented Baths and Watering-Places; the Principal Cities, their Museums, Picture Galleries, Etc.; The Great Hight Roads; and the Most Interesting and Picturesque Districts. Also, Directions for Travellers and Hints for Tours. With an Index Map. London: John Murray, 3rd Ed., 1844, p. 34.
Murray, John. A Handbook for Travellers in South Germany; Being a Guide to Bavaria, Austria, Tyrol, Salzburg, Styria, &c., The Austrian and Bavarian Alps, and The Danube from Ulm to the Black Sea; Including Descriptions of the Most Frequented Baths and Watering-Places; the Principal Cities, their Museums, Picture Galleries, Etc.; The Great Hight Roads; and the Most Interesting and Picturesque Districts. Also, Directions for Travellers and Hints for Tours. With an Index Map. London: John Murray, 3rd Ed., 1844, p. 119.
Rattelmüller, Paul Ernst. Lüftlmalerei in Oberbayern. Werbeabteilung Süddeutscher Verlag, 1960, p. 20: "Wohl der erste, der sich mit dieser Art Fassadenmalerei beschäftigt hat, dürfte Joseph Bronner gewesen sein, der bereits vor und um die Jahrhundertwende mit einem Photoapparat bewaffnet, Jagd auf solche Bauernhäuser gemacht hat."
Bronner, Franz Joseph. Von Deutscher Sitt' und Art, 1908, Volkssitten und Volksbräuche in Bayern und den angrenzenden Gebieten (im Kreislauf des Jahres dargestellt), mit einem Anhang über Friedhöfe und Freskomalerei. Munich: Max Kellerer, 1908, p. 305: "Auf meinen zahlreichen Wanderungen durch das bayerische Hochland habe ich anfänglich auch nur aus Liebhaberei das eine oder andere bildergeschmückte Bauernhaus, das mir besonders ins Auge stach, abgeknipst. Später ging ich zielbewusst den Spuren alter freskomalerei nach und scheute ost den 4-5 Stunden weiten Weg zu abgelegenen Einödhöfen nicht. Heute liegt vor mir eine Sammlung von 120 freskengeschmückten Gebirgshäusern; zwei Notizbücher sind mit Inschriften und Sinnsprüchen von alten Bauernhäusern vollgeschrieben; die Bilder und Schriften sind verglichen und ich glaube, das Ganze überblicken, sagen zu dürfen: Was uns da vor Augen tritt, ist ein Stück deutschen Volkstums, das in seiner Eigenart und Kernhaftigkeit die Beachtung und Wertschätzung weiter Kreise verdient."
Fürlinger, Ulla. "Wand-Lungen". Kulturberichte Aus Tirol Und Südtirol: Architekturen, 2010, pp. 115, https://www.tirol.gv.at/fileadmin/themen/kunst-kultur/abteilung/Publikationen/Themenheft_2010_Architekturen.pdf. Accessed 28 Aug 2020: "Ist es ein leiser aber sichtbarer Protest gegen die schneller und 'größer' werdende Welt? Ein Mahnmal? Vielleicht deutlicher Ausdruck einer patriotischen Gesinnung? Demonstrativ gezeigter Stolz auf die alpine Gegend? Oder Angst vor dem gefühlten Verlust eben dieses Idylls? Ist es Verstärker des echten Idylls? Oder legt man sich eine Malerei zu, weil der Nachbar auch eine an der Fassade hat und man am eigenen Haus eine fensterlose Wand, die nach „Dekor“ verlangt".
Bronner, Franz Joseph. Von Deutscher Sitt' und Art, 1908, Volkssitten und Volksbräuche in Bayern und den angrenzenden Gebieten (im Kreislauf des Jahres dargestellt), mit einem Anhang über Friedhöfe und Freskomalerei. Munich: Max Kellerer, 1908, p. 305: "Was uns da vor Augen tritt, ist ein Stück deutschen Volkstums, das in seiner Eigenart und Kernhaftigkeit die Beachtung und Wertschätzung weiter Kreise verdient."
Ricker, Julia. "Bilderbuchdörfer: Die Hohe Kunst Der Lüftlmalerei In Mittenwald Und Oberammergau." Monumente-Online.de, June 2016, https://www.monumente-online.de/de/ausgaben/2016/3/Lueftlmalerei_Mittenwald_Oberammergau.php. Accessed 31 Aug 2020: "In Mittenwald hat sich Regine Ronge den Lüftlmalereien verschrieben. Bis in die letzten Winkel des Alpendorfs kennt sie die farbenfrohe Häuserzier. „Das Wissen um das Alter, die Urheber und die Bedeutung der Malereien ist bei vielen Menschen nicht mehr vorhanden“, berichtet sie. „Früher wurde es von Generation zu Generation weitergetragen.“ Heute spürt sie der Geschichte jedes einzelnen Werks nach, sucht nach historischen Fotos und befragt die Mittenwalder, damit überlieferte Informationen nicht verloren gehen."
Bronner, Franz Joseph. Von Deutscher Sitt' und Art, 1908, Volkssitten und Volksbräuche in Bayern und den angrenzenden Gebieten (im Kreislauf des Jahres dargestellt), mit einem Anhang über Friedhöfe und Freskomalerei. Munich: Max Kellerer, 1908, p. 306: "Die alten freskomalereien unserer Alpenlandschaft stammen fast durchweg aus der Zeit von Mitte bis Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (ca. 1750-1800). Dies läßt sich folgendermaßen erklären: Die Erbfolgekriege waren vorüber und eine gewisse Behäbigkeit war beim Bauernstand wieder eingekehrt. Der beträchtliche Rottverkehr zu Wasser und zu Land e brachte das Alpenland in lebhafte Verbindung mit schönen Städten des flachlandes und größeren Nachbarorten, die oft prächtigen fassadenschmuck auszeigten. Das regte zur Nachahmung an. Ein oder der andere Wohlhabende ließ sich sein Haus bemalen; solches gefiel dem Nachbarn und nun mußte sein Heim in ähnlicher Weise geschmückt werden. Entsprach dies doch dem frommen Sinn und künstlerischen Empfinden des Volkes zugleich! Man ließ sich besondere Lieblingsheilige ausmalen und gab so dem Hause nicht bloß eine Zier, sondern gewissermaßen einen christlichen Schuß. Die Sinnsprüche an den Häusern bildeten eine stete Quelle der Erbauung und gingen als Weisheits- und Lebensregeln (in jener Zeit mangelhafter Volksschulbildung) von Mund zu Mund. In glücklichem Zusammentreffen mit solchem Bedürfnis nach Heimatschmuck erstanden damals im Alpervolke einheimische geniale Meister der farbe, die um billigstes Entgelt den Wünschen der Bevölkerung Rechnung trugen."