Bosch

by Wilhelm Fraenger

HARDCOVER First Edition German Language 1973 where Fraenger explores the Gnostic, Cabbalistic and Mystical thoughts expressed in Bosch’s works GERMAN LANGUAGE Edition by VEB Verlag der Kust, Large 12x10” Hardcover w dust jacket , 515 pages w numerous full page color plates Comes with original slipcase,.

Genres: Art, Biography, History, Art History, Nonfiction

526 pages, Hardcover

First published June 7, 1947

About the author

Bosch scholar and folk literature specialist. Fraenger's father was a judge and twice mayor of Erlangen, Emil Karl Hermann Fraenger; his mother was Wilhelmine Jacobine Fraenger. He entered the university in Heidelberg in 1910, beginning his art writing career with reviews of contemporary art shows for the Heidelberger Zeitung in 1912, including Alfred Kubin und Max Zachmann. Fraenger was awarded a prize by the University in 1913 for an essay, "Kunsttheorie des 17. Jahrhunderts und ihr Vertreter Arnold Houbraken," on the art theory of the seventeenth century as manifested in the artist (and proto-art historian) Arnold Houbraken (q.v.). He studied art history at Heidelberg beginning in 1915, serving as a volunteer in the reserve infantry during World War I. Fraenger joined the art history institute there (Kunsthistorischen Institut der Universität Heidelberg), receiving his doctorate in 1917 with a dissertation on the pictorial analysis of French Academy theorist Roland de Chambray Fréart (1606-1676), supervised by Carl Neumann (q.v.). He founded the Heidelberg intellectual group "Die Gemeinschaft," (the Community) in 1919 to counteract the elitism of academic treatment of the arts. Fraenger was initially interested in Mathias Grünewald and lectured on the artist during this time. He married Auguste "Gustel" Esslinger (1892-1979) in 1920. While lecturing on art, he met the artist Louise "Lulu" Darmstädter (later) Kayser-Darmstädter (1894-1983) with whom he exchanged an intimate life-long friendship. Fraenger's strong interest in the study of folk culture began with the founding of the Jahrbuch für historische Volkskunde (historical ethnography yearbook), which he edited for the 1925-1926 year. He was hired at the Schloßbibliothek Mannheim as its library director in 1927. Though not Jewish, he was forced out of this position with the asumption of power by the Nazis in 1933 because of his progressivist views and his books burned. A book on Grünewald appeared in 1937 which was again opposed by the Nazis because of Fraenger's interpretive approach to an artist the National Socialist's consider "urdeutsch." He worked as an artistic advisor for a Berlin theater company beginning in 1938 through 1943. After World War II he was briefly interned in a Soviet prison camp. After release, Fraenger joined the Communist Party and became involved in politics in what was declared East Germany. He was mayor of Brandenburg an der Havel between 1945 and 1947. During that time he acted as councilman for Education under its famous Communist mayor Fritz Lange (1898-1981). As educational councilman he established and led an adult education school in the city. Perhaps his best known book, his study on Hieronymus Bosch, was published in 1947. In it, Fraenger argued controvercially that Bosch's most famous picture, the "Garden fo Earthly Delights" (Museo del Prado, Madrid), should not be read through Christian iconography, but rather as a social utopian statement. He was appointed director for the center for German folk studies (Institut für deutsche Volkskunde), part of the German Academy of Sciences (Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften or DAW) in Berlin in 1952. He helped found the literary and art journal and publishing house Castrum Peregrini with the Dutch painter Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht (b. 1912) and Wolfgang Frommel (1902-1986) in 1950. He was named a professor at the Institute in 1955. After his death, a foundation was established in Potsdam for him in 1992. His papers are held at this institution, the Wilhelm Fraenger Gesellschaft administered by his wife and stepdaughter, Ingeborg Baier-Fraenger (1926-1994).

In his book on Bosch, Fraenger constructed an explanation of the artist's work based on his theory that Bosch belonged to a heretical group, the Adamites in 's-Hertogenbosch, which practiced many of the rites depicted in Bosch's paintings. The theory remained controversial and unaccepted by other Bosch scholars.

Reviews

[Dan Tower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes Da Vinci code look like paint by #s.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilhelm Fraenger's The Millenium of Hieronymus Bosch was put on my radar by Henry Miller in his memoir Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Henry Miller's understanding of Bosch's "Millenium," better known as "The Garden of Earthly Delights," was largely shaped by Fraenger's interpretation, which - though controversial even then - was very popular at the time, even if it is today largely discredited.

Fraenger's work reads like a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation and my copy from 1951 looks very much like it could be such. The work relies on art history, philosophy and psychoanalysis to give a detailed interpretation of Bosch's most celebrated work down to the smallest detail. Whereas the consensus today is that the central panel in "The Garden of Eathly Delights", much like Bosch's "Haywain Triptych" or the imagery depicted in his "Ship of Fools", depicts all that is wrong with society (lust, excess, perversion), Fraenger makes a compelling case for the panel being interpreted as an extension of Paradise.

Whereas the left panel in "The Haywain Triptych" clearly shows Paradise after the fall, Fraenger argues that the first one in The Garden of Earthly Delights shows Paradise before the Fall of Man, the central panel showing how earth could be and not as it is. What many take for sins, Fraenger argues, are really Bosch showing a shameless state of humanity, naked and sexually unashamed. If Bosch was not himself part of an Adamite sect, then surely he had a mentor who was and who instructed Bosch, so certain is Fraenger of his interpretation of the work and Bosch's association with the Adamites and the occultists of his day.

Compelling though Fraenger's argument is much of the time, modern scholars - despite limited information on the life of Bosch - argue that he was most certainly not part of an Adamite sect, belonging to the same church as his father and brothers. The fact is that Fraenger's arguments do at times feel like a stretch, but so too do the interpretations of the dominant crowd. Neither adds up completely; something is always missing, there's always that one thing that doesn't fit with this or that interpretation. There are countless ambiguities in the work.

If the first panel represents Eden before the Fall, how do we explain the animal-like creature reading a book and the violence in the animal kingdom? Were animals all herbivores before the Fall? Is the reading creature diabolical or does it represent a higher form of evolution that could have existed?

In the central panel is the sexual abandon being praised or condemned? What do we make of the people in the cave in the lower right corner?

I think of the filmmaker David Lynch (who is, no surprise, a great admirer of Bosch's work and particularly this one). Lynch has made many films that are surreal and nightmarish. His work defies analysis and when asked to speak about his films he has said, "The film is the talking." Art to Lynch is largely based on emotions and is very subjective, both the creation and the interpretation of it. "A film or a painting," he has said, "each thing is its own sort of language and it’s not right to try to say the same thing in words. The words are not there. The language of film, cinema, is the language it was put into, and the English language – it’s not going to translate. It’s going to lose."

People today are still discussing Fraenger's interpretation, even if to mostly dismiss it. In the Taschen publication on Bosch, Walter Bosing writes much about Fraenger's interpretation, if only to conclude, "Fraenger's constructions are nowadays rejected almost without exception as scholarly nonsense. We have no historical evidence that Bosch was ever a member of the Adamites or that he painted for them. . . . Bosch himself can hardly have been anything other than an orthodox Christian."

Whether or not people will still be talking about Fraenger's analysis in another 50 or 100 years, it's certain (if humanity doesn't manage to bring about its own ruin before then) that people will still be trying to figure out the meaning of Bosch's work. It's been more than 500 years since his death, but Bosch's work, and none more so than this one, remains as fresh and puzzling as ever.