First of all, without thinking of the towers, we devote our considerations to the façade alone, which powerfully strikes the eye as an upright, oblong parallelogram. If we approach it at twilight, in the moonshine, on a starlight night, when the parts appear more or less indistinct and at last disappear, we see only a colossal wall, the height of which bears an advantageous proportion to the breadth. If we gaze on it by day, and by the power of the mind abstract from the details, we recognise the front of a building which not only incloses the space within, but also covers much in its vicinity. The openings of this monstrous surface point to internal necessities, and according to these we can at once divide it into nine compartments. The great middle door, which opens into the nave of the church, first meets the eye. On both sides of it lie two smaller ones, belonging to the cross-ways. Over the chief door our glance falls upon the wheel-shaped window, which is to spread an awe-inspiring light within the church and its vaulted arches. At its sides appear two large, perpendicular, oblong openings, which form a striking contrast with the middle one, and indicate that they belong to the base of the rising towers. In the third story are three openings in a row, which are designed for belfries and other church necessities. Above them one sees the whole horizontally closed by the balustrade of the gallery, instead of a cornice. These nine spaces described, are supported, enclosed, and separated into three great perpendicular divisions by four pillars rising up from the ground.
Now as one cannot deny to the whole mass a fine proportion of height to breadth, so also in the details it maintains a somewhat uniform lightness by means of these pillars and the narrow compartments between them.
But if we keep to our abstraction, and imagine to ourselves this immense wall without ornaments, with firm buttresses, with the necessary openings in it, but only so far as necessity requires them, we even then must allow that these chief divisions are in good proportion: thus the whole will appear solemn and noble indeed, but always heavily unpleasant, and, being without ornament, unartistical. For a work of art, the whole of which is conceived in great, simple, harmonious parts, makes indeed a noble and dignified impression, but the peculiar enjoyment which the pleasing produces can only find place in the consonance of all developed details.
And it is precisely here that the building which we are examining satisfies us in the highest degree: for we see all the ornaments fully suited to every part which they adorn; they are subordinate to it, they seem to have grown out of it. Such a manifoldness always gives great pleasure, since it flows of its own accord from the suitable, and therefore at the same time awakens the feeling of unity. It is only in such cases that the execution is prized as the summit of art.
By such means, now, was a solid piece of masonry, an impenetrable wall, which had moreover to announce itself as the base of two heaven-high towers, made to appear to the eye as if resting on itself, consisting in itself, but at the same time light and adorned, and, though pierced through in a thousand places, to give the idea of indestructible firmness.
This riddle is solved in the happiest manner. The openings in the wall, its solid parts, the pillars, everything has its peculiar character, which proceeds from its particular destination; this communicates itself by degrees to the subdivisions; hence everything is adorned in proportionate taste, the great as well as the small is in the right place, and can be easily comprehended, and thus the pleasing presents itself in the vast. I would refer only to the doors sinking in perspective into the thickness of the wall, and adorned without end in their columns and pointed arches; to the window with its rose springing out of the round form, to the outline of its frame-work, as well as to the slender reedlike pillars of the perpendicular compartments. Let one represent to himself the pillars retreating step by step, accompanied by little, slender, light-pillared, pointed structures, likewise striving upwards, and furnished with canopies to shelter the images of the saints, and how at last every rib, every boss, seems like a flower-head and row of leaves, or some other natural object transformed into stone. One may compare, if not the building itself, yet representations of the whole and of its parts, for the purpose of reviewing and giving life to what I have said. It may seem exaggerated to many, for I myself, though transported into love for this work at first sight, required a long time to make myself intimately acquainted with its value.
Having grown up among those who found fault with Gothic architecture, I cherished my aversion from the abundantly overloaded,complicated ornaments which, by their capriciousness, made a religious, gloomy character highly adverse. I strengthened myself in this repugnance, since I had only met with spiritless works of this kind, in which one could perceive neither good proportions nor a pure consistency. But here I thought I saw a new revelation of it, since what was objectionable by no means appeared, but the contrary opinion rather forced itself upon my mind.
Strasburg Minster.
But the longer I looked and considered, I all the while thought I discovered yet greater merits beyond that which I have already mentioned. The right proportion of the larger divisions, the ornamental, as judicious as rich, even to the minutest, were found out; but now I recognised the connexion of these manifold ornaments amongst each other, the transition from one leading part to another, the enclosing of details, homogeneous indeed, but yet greatly varying in form, from the saint to the monster, from the leaf to the dental. The more I investigated, the more I was astonished; the more I amused and wearied myself with measuring and drawing, so much the more did my attachment increase, so that I spent much time, partly in studying what actually existed, partly in restoring, in my mind and on paper, what was wanting and unfinished, especially in the towers.
Since now I found that this building had been based on old German ground, and grown thus far in genuine German times, and that the name of the master, on his modest gravestone, was likewise of native sound and origin, I ventured, being incited by the worth of this work of art, to change the hitherto decried appellation of "Gothic architecture," and to claim it for our nation as "German architecture;" nor did I fail to bring my patriotic views to light, first orally, and afterwards in a little treatise, dedicated to the memory of Ervinus a Steinbach.