German baroque cannot, however, be described as a uniform phenomenon. Curiously, the copy of Paul Decker’s Fürstlicher Baumeister at Dumbarton Oaks is bound together with a book that conveys an aesthetic vision antithetical to Decker’s animated baroque: Leonhard Christopher Sturm’s (1669–1719) Prodomus architecturae Goldmannianae. Sturm was an architect and a professor of mathematics at the Academy of Young Noblemen at Wolffenbuttel and later superintendent of building at Schwerin, in Mecklenburg. He supported French and Dutch classicism as an antidote to the baroque prevalent in Germany, asserting this more restrained approach in the coastal areas, which remained on the fringes of German architectural production. Sturm also left a commentary on the works of the classical theorist Nicolaus Goldmann (1611–1665), in which his glosses are often impossible to distinguish from the original text.
Like Paul Decker’s designs, Sturm’s work presents an ambitious architectural vision, but couched in a more classicizing language.
Bibliography
- Mittenbühler, Robert L. “Aesthetic Currents in German Baroque Architecture.” PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1969.
Image Source
- Sturm, Leonhard C. Prodomus architecturae Goldmannianae. Augsburg: Jeremiae Wolff, 1714.
More Exhibit Items
