Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein - Basilius von Ramdohr

Friedrich Wilhelm Basilius von Ramdohr (21 July 1757 – 26 July 1822) was a German conservative

lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

based in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...

. From 1806 he was a

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...

n diplomat to

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

and

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

Life

Basilius von Ramdohr was born on the family estate, the ''Rittergut'' Drübber (near Nienburg), which was their property between 1686 and 1839. He studied

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

and

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...

at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

, before commencing a long and glamorous career as an art-critic and diplomat. He is remembered partly for his book ''Venus Urania'' (1798), an early work on the psychology of love and friendship (the book's name denotes " celestial love"), but mostly for the so-called "Ramdohr Affair" of 1809 (''Ramdohrstreit'') concerning his attack on the painter

Caspar David Friedrich Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscape ...

. Although he had a high reputation during his lifetime, to many contemporaries like

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...

Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendsh ...

Schlegel Schlegel is a German occupational surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Anthony Schlegel (born 1981), former American football linebacker * August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845), German poet, older brother of Friedrich * Brad Schlege ...

and Lessing he was not to be taken seriously. In his early twenties he had a brief affair with

Charlotte Kestner Charlotte Buff (11 January 1753, Wetzlar – 16 January 1828, Hanover) was a youthful acquaintance of the poet Goethe, who fell in love with her. She rejected him and instead married Johann Christian Kestner, vice-archivist and privy councillor ...

''née'' Buff, the model for Lotte in ''

The Sorrows of Young Werther ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (; german: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is a 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which appeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the main novels in the ''Sturm ...

''. The girl who had rejected Goethe in 1772 found herself rejected by Ramdohr in 1781. He died at

in 1822.

''Der Ramdohrstreit''

In the 17–21 January 1809 edition of the ''Zeitung für die elegante Welt'' he published an article severely criticising

's painting '' Cross in the Mountains (Tetschen Altar)'' (1808) and the school of German Romanticism to which it belonged. He was disturbed by the unacademic style of the painting, having little in common with the traditions established by

Claude Lorraine Claude Lorrain (; born Claude Gellée , called ''le Lorrain'' in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in It ...

and

Jacob van Ruisdael Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael (; 1629 – 10 March 1682) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He is generally considered the pre-eminent landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, a period of great wealth and cultural achi ...

, and deeply indignant that Friedrich should have presented it as an

altarpiece An altarpiece is an artwork such as a painting, sculpture or relief representing a religious subject made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting o ...

to a private chapel. "Indeed it is a truly presumptuous thing, that Landscape Painting should try to slither into our churches and clamber onto our altars," he wrote. Ramdohr brooked no compromise in denying landscape self-sufficiency. To him, landscapes were formless compositions which could touch the viewer only superficially. The public response to the article was unfavourable; nevertheless, Friedrich's supporters felt obliged to reformulate their positions more precisely. The debate about the relative merits of unmediated, spontaneous expression versus strict classical form (landscape painting representing the former) began in earnest at this time.

Works

*''Kaiser Otto der Dritte, ein Trauerspiel'' ("Otto III, a Tragedy", anonymous, 1783) *''Ueber Mahlerei und Bildhauerarbeit in Rom'' ("On Painting and Architecture in Rome", 3 volumes, 1787) *''Charis: Ueber das Schöne und die Schönheit in den nachbildenden Künsten'' ("Charis, or On the Beautiful and Beauty in the Imitative Arts", 2 volumes, 1793) *''Venus Urania: Ueber die Natur der Liebe, ueber ihre Veredlung und Verschönerung'' ("On the Nature of Love, its Ennoblement and Beautification", 4 volumes, 1798) *''Moralische Erzählungen'' ("Moral Tales", 2 volumes, 1799)

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ramdohr, Basilius Von 1757 births 1822 deaths People from Verden (district) German journalists German male journalists German art critics German male writers