Styles and Symbols of the Lüftlmalerei in Garmisch-Partenkirchen County
Poets paint with words, painters speak with works.
– Annibale Carracci
House Names
Starting in the 12th and 13th centuries in what is now Southern Bavaria, people began to name their houses and farms.
With a growing rural population it became important to be able to locate people exactly — even in small villages — for taxation, for civil administration, and for organization of military service. Since no one had yet named the streets or numbered the buildings, the only means of designating someone’s address on official records was by the name of their house.
Houses were thus named for the past owners, their nicknames, or the names of their profession.
It soon became common for people to be known by the name of their Hof (their farm or estate), and generations of the original owners’ family would traditionally be known by their Hofname before the development of the Nachname, or family name. Many of the surnames that developed in Southern Germany were in fact just Hofnames, or the name of the Haus people lived in.
In cases where someone’s Nachname and Hofname weren’t the same, because there was no male heir or the original family moved out, the new tenants might still be registered with the church or on official documents by the name of the house where they were living, and not their actual names.
While this is no longer the case — as last names (and first names, for that matter) are dictated by German naming laws — you will still find many homes and businesses in Bavaria still bearing a Haus name.
While there are no real rules for naming one’s house, you will find that most owners stick with the tradition of christening their buildings after someone in particular — their mother or father, for instance — or simply giving it a colloquial and pleasant moniker, like “the sunshine house”, “mountain view”, or “satisfaction”.
Inscriptions
People have carved inscriptions onto buildings since ancient times. They usually contain wise advice or admonitions. In Bavaria, there are inscriptions and sayings on gables, above the entrance, and even over driveways . The inscriptions are a form of German folk art all their own, most favoring proverbs and religious scripture, but there are also sayings and poems, and — in at least at one instance in Garmisch-Partenkirchen — an outright insult to the neighbors.
The Bavarian Flag
Uniquely among German states, Bavaria has two official flags of equal status — one with a white and blue stripe, the other with white and blue checkers. (In the language of flags, or vexillology, these checkers are specifically called “lozenges“.)
Either may be used by civilians and government offices, who are free to choose between them. Unofficial versions of the flag, especially a lozenge-style with coat of arms, are sometimes used by civilians.
Window Surrounds
In German, “Fensterereinfassungen” (literally “window surrounds”) or “Fensterumrahmungen” (“window frames”) are the words for the artistic scroll-work painted around windows.
Cartouches
A cartouche is a decorative, ornamental, curved scroll with rolled-up ends, sometimes framing painted panels, and often done in relief, which means they are sometimes slightly raised from the surface. Architects began using cartouches with increasing frequency in the 16th century,
The word “cartouche” is French, but comes from the Italian “cartoccio,” itself from the Latin “carta” or “charta,” — all of which mean something similar to “a scroll of paper.”
The Wetterstein Mountains and the peak of the Alpspitze
The Wetterstein Mountain range rings the Southwest basin of the valley the market town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen sits in.
Artists often incorporate an image of this range in the background of their paintings to give a sense of place — this particular perspective can only be seen while standing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
And while this range is home to the Zugspitze, the tallest mountain in Germany, the Zugspitze is actually difficult to see from town, blocked as it is by the smaller — but closer — Waxenstein.
Thus, it is the clearly visible pyramidal peak of the Alpspitze that Garmisch-Partenkirchen has adopted as its own. Its familiar face is an anchor for artists, rooting any image with this mountain in the background as a scene that could only be seen there.
The Eye of Providence
The “Eye of Providence,” or the “All-Seeing Eye of God,” is a symbol of an eye surrounded by rays of light or a halo and usually enclosed by a triangle.
In Renaissance iconography, the eye surrounded by a triangle was an explicit depiction of the Christian Trinity — the triangle’s three sides representing God the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit — with the eye of God in the center watching over humanity.
In the modern era, a notable depiction of the eye is the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, which appears on the United States one-dollar bill.
Sundials
A sundial is a device that indicates the time during the day by the shadow cast by a gnomon — often a rod or a stick — on a marked dial face. A “gnomon” (from the Greek word “γνώμων,” which literally means “one that knows or examines”) is the part of a sundial that casts a shadow. Later, the term was used for an L-shaped instrument used to draw right angles.
Before the first clocks were constructed in the Middle Ages, people depended on sundials to tell the time. Such sundials could be found on many churches and public buildings, but also on prominent Burghers‘ houses. Sundials could be at the same time an orientation aid and wall decoration. Often sundials were lovingly decorated with pictures and ornaments or composed into more elaborate facade paintings. One of the most original and artistic of these sundials on Bavarian soil can be found on the parish church of Saint Jacob in Dachau, built in 1625. There, in 1699, Johann Georg Hörmann painted with baroque panache the symbols of the twelve signs of the zodiac or month – from January to December – in a loop of eight underneath the hour numerals of the sundial, which are arranged in a curved rectangle, in such a way that the shadow of the gnomon not only falls on the number of the hour of the day, but also on the month’s Zodiac symbol every day at noon. The mechanism is painted in such a way that the god Chronos, the lord of time, holds the gnomon in his hand, seeming to conduct the path of time itself.1
Because the dial needs to be oriented towards the sun, these days sundials often seem located in hard to see sections of houses, and frequently hidden by trees and bushes.
"Blind" or False Windows
A “Blind” Window is the architectural term for where a blank wall is painted to look like a real window — some even matching the size, shape, placement, shutters and shadows of the actual windows on the building.
While one might think these trompe l’oeil are a product of a prior “Window Tax,” — such as the one in the United Kingdom, which was eventually repealed in 1851 after whole tenements were constructed without a single window — but brick walls masquerading as windows were already a style employed by architects all throughout Europe well before the imposition of the tax in England.
In Renaissance Italy, architects incorporated blind windows by way of articulating and enriching façades, together with other ways of varying the surface treatment of their buildings. Indeed, “Fenestration” — the act of arranging windows, regular or otherwise — could sometimes take precedence over the practical purpose of actually providing air and light. (Not to be confused with “defenestration”, which is the act of throwing someone out of a window.)
Eventually the blind window become an architectural design element in and of itself.
The ones you see in Garmisch-Partenkirchen are painted in places where stairwells, elevators, or store rooms prevent an actual window from being inserted, while still maintaining the symmetry of the building’s look from the outside.
The most interesting and famous of these have a clever character painted looking out
Putti and Cherubim
A Putto (plural: “Putti”) is a figure in art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and sometimes winged. In Baroque art, the putto came to represent the omnipresence of God.
Curiously, in Baroque art, a Cherub (plural: “Cherubim”) was often represented as the head of an infant between a pair of wings, a figure termed a “Cherub’s Head.”
Chamois
The chamois is a species of goat-antelope native to mountains in Europe, including the European Alps. The tuft of hair from the back of the neck, the Gamsbart (literally the “chamois beard”), is an indispensable feature of Bavarian costume, traditionally worn as a decoration on hats.
While there is a legend one can only wear a Gamsbart in their hat if they’ve actually hunted and killed a chamois in the wild, someone pointed out to me that the animal is protected, and the Gamsbart can be collected by simply shaving the chamois. The animal doesn’t have to be killed for a hat decoration.
Oriel Windows
An oriel window is a form of bay window which protrudes out from the main wall of a building but does not reach the ground, instead jutting out over the sidewalk below. Here, they are often elaborately decorated and highly ornate.
While in German these are technically called “Erker” or “Bogenfensteror” (literally a “bow” or “arch” window), they might also be called a “Bürgermeister Fenster” — or a “Mayor’s Window” — because, as one local tour guide has explained to me, that is where you can sit on high and judge all the people walking on the street below.
While this sort of bay window has been a staple of architectural design in Germany since the Medieval period, used in castles to give a better defensive view (“Wehrerker“) or in churches to recess an altar or the choir (“Kapellenerker“), today such windows expand the interior living space without changing the footprint of the building — a centuries-old trick to skirt property taxes when they are calculated by measuring the length and width of the foundation.
Coat of Arms
Soldiers have been decorating their shields for as long as shields have been used by soldiers.
It was customary for the warriors in ancient Babylon, Persia, and China to put different symbols and figures on their shields. Various animals can also be found on the shields of the ancient Greeks.
The legions and cohorts of Rome had their own symbols and insignia. The Notitia Dignitatum, the “List of Offices” or the “Register of Dignitaries”, includes pictures showing the shield patterns of hundreds of units in the Roman army as they existed around the start of the 5th century AD.
The Bayeux Tapestry from the 11th century shows warriors in the Battle of Hastings (1066), some of the whom are depicted carrying painted shields.
While the shield colors and symbols from the 12th century almost always had a practical function, by the 13th century, decorated arms had spread beyond their initial battlefield use to become a flag or logo representing particular noble (“Burgher“) families in the higher social classes of Europe.
The popularity of the tournament system is responsible for the creation and spread of the imaginative helmet and shield decorations we think of today. Those mock battles were attended by hundreds, often thousands, of spectators, and, in order to identify their favorite knights under full suits of armor, participants bore the symbols of their noble house on their shields, flags, lances, and — most specifically — the tunics over their armor.
Thus a litany of literal “coats” of arms emerged.
Codified rules of heraldry — or the rules of coat of arms decorations and symbols — were created, and the office of herald was born. In an age when most people were illiterate, the herald had to know the symbols for the various titles, nations, cities, religious districts, noble families, and persons — knowledge of which allowed them to assign military functions and sign legal forms.
Heralds also had the job of identifying and calling out the names of the nobles and the knights as they entered the tournament or the court, thereby “heralding” their arrival.
Today, heraldry is no longer limited to a select branch of nations and nobles. A coat of arms can stand as an emblem for a sport team, student association, or simply to symbolically represent any person or family with an individual Family Crest. The base of every crest remains a shield symbol in the center, with the possible added element of a helmet and plume on top.
Partenkirchen:
The ancient Romans first named this town “Partanum.” When the first Christian church was built here, it was referred to as the “Partanum Kirche” (in German, the “Church in Partanum”). Once the Roman empire fell — since the locals did not speak latin — the original latin label was lost. Over time, the name of the church overtook the name for the town, which became condensed into “Partenkirchen.” A visual depictions of that name, a “parted” (“Parten“) “church” (“Kirchen“), became an image of a chapel with an axe at its center — an axe symbolically cutting the church into parts, or parting the church.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen:
A new coat of arms was created and replaced the separate symbols of the towns of Garmisch and Partenkirchen when they were merged together in 1935.
The new coat of arms had two sides: on the left, half the black eagle with its tongue out of the Holy Roman Empire, while on the right, red armor with a silver bar in the center.
Almost identical to the coat of arms of nearby Eschenlohe just to the north (awarded in 1925), and Telfs, in Austria (awarded in 1908), this coat of arms is based on the coat of arms of the Counts of Eschenlohe. This followed the assumption that the Counts of Eschenlohe had been the lords of the County of Werdenfels, which had its seat at the Werdenfels Castle on a hill overlooking Garmisch-Partenkirchen. However, the Counts of Eschenlohe never ruled the area.
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Marraige
For an exhaustively more detailed explanation of the history of facade painting in Germany, and a thoroughly researched description of all of the associated architectural styles, symbols, and vocabulary, check out the RDK Laboratory’s wiki page — a website maintained and updated by the Reality Research Center at the Central Institute for Art History in Munich, in cooperation with the Institute for Information Science of the Technical University of Cologne — here.
It is, however, entirely in German.
- Weichslgartner, Alois J. Lüftlmalerei. Pannonia-Verlag, 2nd ed., 1981, p. 8: "Etwas an die Seite gerückt, aber nicht weniger dekorativ, ist an die Fassade des ehemaligen Gasthauses Zum Hirschen in Berchtesgaden auch eine Sonnenuhr gemalt. Sie kann sich dort gegenüber den so lebendigen Szenen mit den als Menschen verkleideten Affen nicht recht durchsetzen. In vielen anderen Fällen aber bildet eine Sonnenuhr den Mittelpunkt von Fassadenmalereien. Oft ist sie, samt ornamentaler oder figürlicher Umrahmung, sogar der einzige Wandschmuck. An ihrem Beispiel zeigt sich sehr sinnfällig, wie aus einem »Gebrauchsgegenstand« im Laufe der Zeit ein Schmuckelement geworden ist. Bevor im Mittelalter die ersten Turmuhren konstruiert und installiert worden sind, war man beim Zeitmessung auf die Sonnenuhr angewiesen, soweit man sich nicht mit Sanduhren oder ähnlichen Instrumenten behalf. Solche Sonnenuhren waren an vielen Kirchen und öffentlichen Gebäuden, aber auch an Bürgerhäusern zu finden, und zwar auch dann noch -- sogar bis in die Gegenwart herein -, als man sie eigentlich gar nicht mehr nötig hatte. Meistens wurde die Sonnenuhr liebevoll mit Bildern und Ornamentenausstaffiert oder in solche Fassadenmalereien »hineinkomponiert«. Die Fassadenmaler fanden hier ein besonders dankbares Betätigungsfeld, den da konnten sie ihrer Phantasie freien Lauf lassen. Solche Sonnenuhren waren gleichzeitig Orientierungshilfe und Wandschmuck. Eine der originellsten und kunstvollsten dieser Sonnenuhren auf bayerischen Boden finden wir an der 1625 erbauten Stadtpfarrkirche St. Jakob in Dachau. Dort malte im Jahre 1699 Johann Georg Hörmann mit barockem Schwung unter die im geschweiften Rechteck angebrachten Stundenziffern der Sonnenuhr in geradezu tüftlerischer Darstellung auch noch die Symbole der zwölf Sternzeichen beziehungsweise Monatszeichen - von Januar bis Dezember - in einer Achterschleife so plaziert, daß der Schatten des »Sonnenzeigers« jeweils nicht nur auf die Ziffer der Tagesstunde, sondern jeden Tag um 12 Uhr mittags auch noch auf das »zuständige« Monatszeichen fällt. Der Mechanismus ist so angeordnet, daß der über die Sonnenuhr gemalte Gott Chronos, also der symbolische Herr über die Zeit, das dazu notwendige Eisenstab-system in der Hand zu haben und so zu dirigieren scheint."