decoration and as an emotional link to the medieval era. The merchant and collector Jakob Johann Nepomuk Lyversberg (1761–1834), for example, had a two-pane tracery window depicting Christ Carrying the Cross and the Crucifixion installed in the chapel attached to his house on Heumarkt; both panes are in the collection of the Museum Schnütgen.13 Soon after secularisation, Cologne became one of the most important trading centres for stained glass in Europe.14 It is said that around two thousand panes changed hands here within two decades. Many of the new collectors and dealers were soon involved in the lucrative business, especially as demand from English dealers in particular had increased considerably. Christopher Hampp (1750–1825), a native of Germany who had settled in Norwich as a cloth manufacturer, played an important role as an agent in the sale of Rhenish stained glass to England.15 By 1850, most of the German stained glass still in England today had arrived there.16 scenes (e.g. cat. nos. 4, 5) or impressive, monumental individual figures such as saints, prophets and apostles (cat. no. 1) on what were often large surfaces. Firmly integrated into the framing architecture, most medieval stained-glass windows often remained in their original locations for centuries. Damage from storms, fires or military conflicts had repeatedly led to the loss of older windows and the installation of newer ones, but it was not until the Baroque renovation of churches that the medieval panes were systematically removed and replaced with light-coloured windows, which allowed more light into the interior and were considered more in keeping with Baroque architecture.6 Only a few of the panes that were replaced at that time ended up in private collections. Unlike other medieval works of art, their material value was considered low. They were difficult to store, difficult to reuse and difficult to display without a great deal of effort. Removing them from their architectural context usually meant destroying them.7 It was not until the 18th century that interest in the systematic collection of medieval stained glass developed, particularly among English antiquarians and the nobility. The latter wanted to decorate their representative neo-Gothic estates, and especially their private chapels, with medieval stained glass.8 Complete stained-glass windows were in great demand and were for a long time difficult to obtain. This only changed at the turn of the 19th century, with secularisation. This momentous consequence of the French Revolution (1789–1799) led to far-reaching political, social and cultural upheavals throughout Europe, particularly in Cologne and the Rhineland.9 Following the invasion of French troops in October 1794, some 120 churches and monasteries in Cologne were secularised and their furnishings, including countless precious stained-glass windows, removed. Medieval stained glass that had not been destroyed was, for the first time, available in large numbers for sale and collection. With the secularisation decree of 30 June 1802, a new collecting field, that of stained glass, was born.10 The historical conditions were generally favourable. Whereas in the 17th and 18th centuries there had been a number of private collections in Cologne, which often existed as such for only a few years and were usually dissolved by auction, at the beginning of the 19th century many art and culture enthusiasts among Cologne’s upper middle classes began to collect systematically and to display their works of art in their private homes.11 In a way, secularisation was an unexpected stroke of luck for this new generation of art collectors. It was Cologne’s wine, cloth and tobacco merchants in particular – the wealthiest group of the city’s upper middle class alongside its bankers – who began to buy and sell medieval stained glass. The Cologne wine and tobacco merchant Johann Heinrich Pleunissen (1731–1810) managed to amass one of the most exquisite collections of medieval stained glass ever assembled by a private individual. This included sixty-four stained-glass windows from the Cistercian Abbey of Altenberg, which Pleunissen had acquired in 1806 to settle outstanding wine bills from the abbeys of Heisterbach and Siegburg. Forty-four of the stained-glass paintings from the cloister glazing of Altenberg still exist today, nineteen of which are in the Museum Schnütgen.12 As well as collecting stained glass, people of Cologne were increasingly interested in integrating original medieval glass paintings into neo-Gothic buildings as 6 See Schumacher 1998, 111. 7 Gast 2019, 405. 8 For more detailed information, see, among others, Schuhmacher 1998, 111–112; Williamson 2003, 10. – For more detailed information on the early collections of the 18th century, which were first compiled in England and from about 1780 also in Germany and France, see Gast 2019, esp. 405–407. 9 On the background, implementation and consequences of the secularisation in Cologne, see Diederich 1995. 10 Wolff-Wintrich 1995, 341. 11 For more detailed information on this and the following, see Kronenberg 1995, esp. 123–125, 132–133; Berghausen 1995, 149–151. 12 Cologne, Museum Schnütgen, inv. M 559–M 570, M 709–M 714. Johann Heinrich Pleunissen bequeathed his collection to his daughter Maria Franziska Hirn, and in 1824 his grandson Heinrich Schieffer sold the collection. Of the nineteen panes now in the Museum Schnütgen, thirteen were transferred from the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) to the Museum Schnütgen as part of the reorganisation of Cologne’s museums, and a further six were added in 2011 through Irene Ludwig’s bequest; see Lymant 1982, 192–193, no. 119; Wolff-Wintrich 1995, 345; Cat. Rheinische Glasmalerei 2007, vol. 2, 30–31, no. 5 (Dagmar Täube); Woelk/Beer 2018, 338–339, no. 227 (Iris Metje). 13 Cologne, Museum Schnütgen, inv. M 167a–b; Lymant 1982, 77–80, nos. 45, 46; Mädger 1995, 195–196; Woelk/Beer 2018, 232–233, no. 151 (Pavla Ralcheva). 14 Wolff-Wintrich 1995, 341; Gast 2019, 412 15 Wolff-Wintrich 1995, 341. 16 For more detailed information, see Williamson 2007. Fig. 2 Death of the Virgin, Cologne, c. 1250–1260 24 25
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