''Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany'' (), also known as the ''Peasants' War Panorama'' (''Bauernkriegspanorama''), is a monumental painting by the East German painter

Werner Tübke Werner Tübke (30 July 1929 in Schönebeck, Germany – 27 May 2004 in Leipzig, Germany) was a German painter, best known for his monumental '' Peasants' War Panorama'' located in Bad Frankenhausen Bad Frankenhausen (officially: Bad Frankenhaus ...

, executed from 1976 to 1987. It spans by is the main attraction of the Panorama Museum, built specifically to house it, in

Bad Frankenhausen Bad Frankenhausen (officially: Bad Frankenhausen/Kyffhäuser) is a spa town in the German state of Thuringia. It is located at the southern slope of the Kyffhäuser mountain range, on an artificial arm of the Wipper river, a tributary of the Unstr ...

, Thuringia. Despite being commissioned by the East German government to commemorate the

Battle of Frankenhausen The Battle of Frankenhausen was fought on 14 and 15 May 1525. It was an important battle in the German Peasants' War and the final act of the war in Thuringia: joint troops of Landgrave Philip I of Hesse and Duke George of Saxony defeated the ...

, fought on 15 May 1525 during the

German Peasants' War The German Peasants' War, Great Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt (german: Deutscher Bauernkrieg) was a widespread popular revolt in some German-speaking areas in Central Europe from 1524 to 1525. It failed because of intense oppositio ...

, the painting is not a typical

battle painting Military art is art with a military subject matter, regardless of its style or medium. The battle scene is one of the oldest types of art in developed civilizations, as rulers have always been keen to celebrate their victories and intimidate po ...

, nor in the style of socialist realism prevalent at the time. Instead, Werner Tübke created an immense allegory of Renaissance society with more than 3000 characters, containing strong fantastical and

surreal Surreal may refer to: *Anything related to or characteristic of Surrealism, a movement in philosophy and art * "Surreal" (song), a 2000 song by Ayumi Hamasaki * ''Surreal'' (album), an album by Man Raze *Surreal humour, a common aspect of humor ...

elements. The artist named

German Renaissance The German Renaissance, part of the Northern Renaissance, was a cultural and artistic movement that spread among Germany, German thinkers in the 15th and 16th centuries, which developed from the Italian Renaissance. Many areas of the arts and ...

painters

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...

and

Lucas Cranach the Elder Lucas Cranach the Elder (german: Lucas Cranach der Ältere ; – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is know ...

as his most important influences; his style is sometimes also considered as magical realism.

Creation

The painting was commissioned in 1976 by the Ministry of Culture of East Germany. It was finished in 1987. The canvas was woven in one piece at the textile factory in Sursk, the Soviet Union, and weighs 1.1

ton Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses. Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean * the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds ...

s. Tübke dedicated 480 workdays to the painting and used a total of 90,000 tubes of paint. The museum opened to the public on 14 September 1989, in time for the 500th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Müntzer.

References

External links

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Panorama Museum
Cycloramas 1987 paintings East German culture German paintings German Peasants' War History paintings Paintings in Thuringia Thomas Müntzer War paintings {{Coord, 51, 21, 58, N, 11, 6, 12, E, type:landmark, display=title