Die Poesie der Linie. Eugen Napoleon Neureuthers „Randzeichnungen zu Goethe’s Balladen und Romanzen“

In the organizer's words:

"Who rides so late through night and wind?" - Almost everyone knows the famous beginning of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's ballad 'Der Erlkönig' and almost everyone immediately has the second line of the poem in their ears: "It is the father, with his child". No wonder! Goethe's poems and ballads are an integral part of the German cultural heritage and quite a few people memorized the 'Erlkönig', 'Zauberlehrling' or 'Heidenröslein' at school. This was also the case in the 19th century, when Goethe was proclaimed the national poet of the Germans.

Accordingly, visual artists also frequently devoted themselves to his works. Eugen Napoleon Neureuther, born in Munich in 1806, was one of the most influential illustrators of Goethe's poetry with his 'Marginal Drawings to Goethe's Ballads and Romances'. Between 1829 and 1839, he produced more than 30 lithographs in five large-format booklets, which juxtapose Goethe's texts with artistic marginal drawings. These include not only famous poems such as 'Mailied', 'Der Fischer' and 'Mignon's Sehnsucht', but also texts that are less well-known today, such as 'Adler und Taube' and 'Der Schatzgräber'.

However, Neureuther's marginal drawings do not only have the function of illustrating Goethe's poems. For as appealing as it may be to find the motifs of the texts in the ornamental and small-scale depictions, on closer inspection the pictures reveal a profound art-theoretical potential. This is primarily due to the formal design of the sheets: they are laid out as imaginative arabesques, an art form that experienced a renaissance during the Romantic period and was seen less as decoration and more as a symbol of nature. The countless lines of the arabesque, with their echoes of plant tendrils or curious figures, were recognized on the one hand as chaos, while the mostly symmetrical overall composition was seen as an orderly cosmos emerging from chaos. Added to this was the playful fantasy of the arabesque depictions, which not only offered the artist a space to work grotesquely, creatively and freely, but also encouraged the viewer to let their own imagination wander through the thicket of lines.

This tradition can also be recognized in Neureuther's marginal drawings. The pictures are not mere additions to the text, but independent and subtle pictorial inventions full of poetry and wit, which illustrate and comment on the poems and repeatedly give the abstract line an intrinsic value that goes far beyond the motivic representation.

In its current temporary exhibition, the Romantikerhaus Jena is bringing together a large selection of Neureuther's 'Marginal Drawings to Goethe's Ballads and Romances', situating them in the tradition of Romanticism and inviting visitors to be enchanted not only by Goethe's poetry, but also by Neureuther's poetry of the line.

Price information:

Free admission for children and young people up to and including the age of 18 and pupils of general education schools up to the age of 20.