George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

The groining of early German churches is generally simple. The lanterns, where central, are covered in with a plain kind of domical vault; and the apses have generally hemispherical groining, sometimes marked with ribs. The vaulting is first of all plain waggon-vaulting, then simple quadripartite, and sometimes—especially where (as is often the case in Germany) one bay of the groining covers two bays of the nave—it is sexpartite, and generally then very much raised in the centre.

Doorways are almost invariably square-headed, under pointed arches. In the north porch of Lübeck cathedral, as also at Andernach, and at S. Cunibert, and again at S. Gereon, Cologne, is a very peculiar doorhead, formed by two straight lines sloping to the centre at a very obtuse angle.

The windows are generally of a very simple and rude kind. There was no approach in their treatment to that delicacy which is such an especial characteristic of our English first-pointed; and this mainly because the science of mouldings was never worked out thoroughly by the early German school. It is true that no school of architects has ever rivalled the English in this particular; and one reason, perhaps, for this is to be found in the resolute way in which foreigners resisted any modification of the square abacus, whose only fault was, no doubt, the limitation it imposed upon the outline of mouldings.

One other feature of these churches must not be forgotten, viz., the great size of their triforia. This was usual all over Europe in Romanesque buildings; but in Germany in this, as in other things, the early tradition was long adhered to, and you have nowhere else such elaborate constructional galleries as theirs. Even in works of the latest date they are found,—as, for instance, in the curious church of S. Andrew, at Frankfort, where the outer aisles are galleried all round with a triforium, the arches in front of which are about twice the height of the main arches below them. The interior of Andernach cathedral will explain how grand the treatment of this feature was in the earliest buildings.

I trust I have said enough now to show you, at any rate, the general characteristics of early German work. Its great marks of distinction from French and English work are to be seen mainly in its planning, the treatment and number of its towers and spires, and in the peculiarly Italian character of its apsidal terminations; and, as I have said, this style prevailed, with but little modification, up to the very time at which the completely developed German middle-pointed made its appearance.

I suppose the characteristics of this later work must be known to most of you. Cologne cathedral is in fact so completely an embodiment of nearly all the essential features of the style, and is so well known to most people that I suspect less description is required of it than of any other foreign style. It has been often said—and that by no mean authorities—that the German middle-pointed was identical with our own, and indeed that this one style prevailed for a time all over Europe. The theory would be pretty if it were true: the gradual working up to the same point in various ways, and the gradual divergence of art again in different directions, would certainly be a strong ground for giving in our adhesion to this one perfect and universal style. But I confess that though there is something of a similarity, I have not been able to trace anything like an identity between German and French and English work at any time. I am thankful for this because, with all its beauty, the best German middle-pointed style is not a great style, and has many and obvious defects. From the very first is conspicuous that love of lines which is so marked and so unpleasant a peculiarity in German art, and that desire to play with geometrical figures—I know not how else to express what I mean—which in time degenerated into work as pitiful and contemptible as any of which mediaeval architects were ever guilty.

I have here a large collection (which should have been larger had I had time to select all the examples which I have scattered through my sketch-books) of German window traceries, which will enable you to judge whether I am too severe in my opinion of their demerits. And you may observe, by the way, that whilst in the earlier styles we have very many points for consideration in studying the characteristics of the style, in this work there is a sacrifice of almost everything else to the desire to introduce in every direction specimens of new and ingenious combinations of tracery. The windows at Paderborn are some of the finest and purest examples of early tracery. They are genuine and noble examples, and quite free from any tinge of the faults of later examples, and worthy of comparison with the best of our own early traceries. The mouldings of these windows are simple, but composed mainly of a succession of bold rolls, and so entirely free from any lininess. In the cupola of S. Gereon at Cologne, and a little later in its sacristy are also some good early traceries, whilst most of the windows at Marburg are also examples of the same character. So too are the traceries in one of the Brunswick west fronts, and in the apse of the church of S. Giles in the same city. From these look to the windows of S. Mary, Lemgo, and you have the commencement of the new style, though these are fine windows, boldly and simply conceived and carried out. Next to these come the marvellous series of traceries in Minden cathedral; a series, I suppose, quite unmatched for variety, and indeed, I must own, for a certain grandeur of effect, by those in any church in Europe. You will be struck, I think, by the curious desire for variety of arrangement which these traceries evidence. They are a series of aisle windows, placed side by side in a cathedral church of very modest pretensions. S. Martin in the same town has a great variety of traceries of a later type—good examples of the kind of tracery which henceforward is to be found for a long time predominant throughout nearly the whole of Germany, in which, whilst one admires and wonders at the ingenuity which has devised so many combinations of spherical triangles and circles, one is tempted to think that the men who excelled in this sort of work would have been admirably fitted for designing children’s toys and puzzles, but had much better have been kept away from church windows. Among the other sketches of traceries, those from Ratisbon are of the best kind, whilst those from the cloister at Constance (essentially German work) are almost as interesting as the Paderborn examples in their ingenious variety of form. They show too, occasionally, a tendency to ogee lines in the tracery, which leads me to say a few words on the curious fact, that whereas in England the ogee line was always seen in the later middle-pointed work, this was by no means the case in Germany. The tracery in the staircase to the Rathhaus at Ratisbon, though of late date, is noticeable for the almost entire absence of any but pure geometrical figures, but then these are thrown about in a confused and irregular manner, and are entirely wanting in due subordination of parts. When, however, the ogee line does show itself in German work, it is always a certain evidence of debasement.

But to leave the question of traceries and to justify my denial of the virtues of German pointed architecture, let me ask you to compare the effect of French and German work side by side in some of these most valuable evidences of facts which photography so liberally affords us. You have here side by side a west door from Amiens and from Cologne; and again here, some door-jamb sculpture from Amiens between similar works from Strasburg. Now striking as these German examples are, do you not see how entirely the Germans sacrifice all nobility and simplicity of expression, all that we call repose, to the vain desire to arrest attention by some tricky arrangement of a drapery and some quaint speckiness or lininess of detail?

The German love of tracery is evidenced by the fondness for such spires as that of Freiburg, which, striking as it is, is not altogether a legitimate kind of thing, and is certainly inferior in its effect to the much simpler spires of which we are so justly proud.

I can only say a few words as to the plans of German complete Gothic, and this only to repeat what I have before said as to the extent to which they contrived to build on the same plans as in earlier days. The parallel and transverse triapsidal plans were as popular in Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as they were in the twelfth and thirteenth, of which the little chapel in the castle at Marburg is a curious example. It is apsidal at the east and west ends, and the bay between has the window-splay so contrived as to make another apse north and south. It was in detail more than in plan that the later architects developed.