Gothic Symulachra

Abstract

Naumburger Stifterfiguren have tended to blur the approximately 750 years that separated modern scholars from the objects of their studies: the statues were perceived as contemporary personages, with whom the viewers could identify within early twentieth-century cultural constructions and through intuitive understanding. This un-restrained Pygmalionism, to paraphrase Willibald Sauerländer, 1 generated an (art-historical) dream industry, in which the im-ages were transformed into characters of novels and dramas, both in and outside Germany. By transplanting the face of Joan Crawford onto the figure of Uta, Walt Disney created Snow White's unforgettable stepmother; 2 Count Timo was cast as the hunter type; while in German romanticism the figures became national heroes, blending German past and present into one another in the arts as well as in academic studies. 3 After World War II, however, these fervent ekphrases were considered irrelevant, lacking any historical legitimacy or methodological validity. This article seeks to reexamine the fictions evoked by the Stifterfiguren in the German national discourse, and show how the abolition of historical distance should be seen as an interpretive strategy devised by the medieval mechanism of simulacra-making, as a consequence of the subversive rela-tions between the inscriptions, documentary evidence, and the semiotic fields of the gestures and garments. While the inscriptions allegedly identify the statues with certain histor-ical figures in their memoria context, the visual narrative sug-gested by the sculptures contradicts such ascription. These deconstructive relations, as will be argued here, were devised to produce pure simulacra, an assemblage of images that eliminate their referential network and undermine the origins upon which they were constructed. Regarding the Naumburger Stifterfiguren as a portrayal of historical personages or replicas of some exterior reality is long outmoded; nevertheless, in their being simulacra, one must re-reconsider their function not only as a replica of reality, but also as its substitute and alternative, receptive to the imaginative horizons of the view-ers. Following the late medieval distinction between the imago, as the sign of the ideal godhead, and the simulacrum, as the unstable simulation of the ephemeral and the naturalistic likeness, this study is engaged with the potential of imagina-tive, intuitive responses evoked by the figures. 1 Willibald Sauerländer, Die Naumburger Stifterfiguren: Rückblick und Fragen, in: Cathedrals and Sculpture, London 2000, pp. 593–711, p. 605. 2 On the inspiration of Gothic art for Walt Disney, see Robin Allan, Walt Disney and Europe. European Influences on the Animated Fea-ture Films of Walt Disney, Indianapolis 1999, pp. 37–66; Bruno Girveau, The Nostalgic Builder, Walt Disney: Architecture and Design, in: Once Upon a Time. Walt Disney: The Sources of Inspira-tion for the Disney Studios, München/New York 2006; and recently Guy Cogeval,Roger Diederen, andBruno Girveau (eds.), Walt Dis-neys wunderbare Welt und ihre Wurzeln in der europä ischen Kunst,

Full text

Romantic accounts of the Naumburger Stifterfiguren have
tended to blur the approximately 750 years that separated
modern scholars from the objects of their studies: the statues
were perceived as contemporary personages, with whom the
viewers could identify within early twentieth-century cultural
constructions and through intuitive understanding. This un-
restrained Pygmalionism, to paraphrase Willibald Sauerländer,
1
generated an (art-historical) dream industry, in which the im-
ages were transformed into characters of novels and dramas,
both in and outside Germany. By transplanting the face of
Joan Crawford onto the figure of Uta, Walt Disney created
Snow White’s unforgettable stepmother;
2
Count Timo was
cast as the hunter type; while in German romanticism the
figures became national heroes, blending German past and
present into one another in the arts as well as in academic
studies.
3
After World War II, however, these fervent ekphrases
were considered irrelevant, lacking any historical legitimacy
or methodological validity.
This article seeks to reexamine the fictions evoked by the
Stifterfiguren in the German national discourse, and show
how the abolition of historical distance should be seen as an
interpretive strategy devised by the medieval mechanism of
simulacra-making, as a consequence of the subversive rela-
tions between the inscriptions, documentary evidence, and
the semiotic fields of the gestures and garments. While the
inscriptions allegedly identify the statues with certain histor-
ical figures in their memoria context, the visual narrative sug-
gested by the sculptures contradicts such ascription. These
deconstructive relations, as will be argued here, were devised
to produce pure simulacra, an assemblage of images that
eliminate their referential network and undermine the origins
upon which they were constructed. Regarding the Naumburger
Stifterfiguren as a portrayal of historical personages or replicas
of some exterior reality is long outmoded; nevertheless, in
their being simulacra, one must re-reconsider their function
not only as a replica of reality, but also as its substitute and
alternative, receptive to the imaginative horizons of the view-
ers. Following the late medieval distinction between the imago,
as the sign of the ideal godhead, and the simulacrum, as the
unstable simulation of the ephemeral and the naturalistic
likeness, this study is engaged with the potential of imagina-
tive, intuitive responses evoked by the figures.
1 Willibald Sauerländer, Die Naumburger Stifterfiguren: Rückblick und
Fragen, in: Cathedrals and Sculpture, London 2000, pp. 593–711, p. 605.
2 On the inspiration of Gothic art for Walt Disney, see Robin Allan,
Walt Disney and Europe. European Influences on the Animated Fea-
ture Films of Walt Disney, Indianapolis 1999, pp. 37–66; Bruno
Girveau, The Nostalgic Builder, Walt Disney: Architecture and
Design, in: Once Upon a Time. Walt Disney: The Sources of Inspira-
tion for the Disney Studios, München/New York 2006; and recently
Guy Cogeval,Roger Diederen, andBruno Girveau (eds.), Walt Dis-
neys wunderbare Welt und ihre Wurzeln in der europä ischen Kunst,
München 2008. On the Disneyfication of medieval history, see
Susan Aronstein and Nancy Coiner, Twice Knightly: Democratizing
the Middle Ages for Middle Class America, in: Medievalism in North
America, ed. Kathleen Verduin, Cambridge1994, pp. 212–31.
3 The literature on the topic is vast; see for example Jens-Fietje
Dwars and Siegfried Wagner, Fortgesetzte Spiegelungen. Bilder
und Geschichten zur Entdeckung des Naumburger Meisters aus
fünf Jahrhunderten, Naumburg 2011; Wolfgang Ullrich, Uta von
Naumburg: eine deutsche Ikone, Berlin 1998; Volker Gebhardt, Das
Deutsche in der deutschen Kunst, Cologne 2004, pp. 150–53.
Assaf Pinkus
GOTHIC SYMULACHRA:
THE „NAUMBURGER STIFTERFIGUREN“

CASTING THE HEROES
According to the scant evidence that has survived, among
the Stifterfiguren the brothers Hermann and Ekkehard were
the most important donors, and both are mentioned as power-
ful warrior lords at the eastern border of the empire, distin-
guished from one another only by name, not by character or
appearance.
4
Why, then, were they depicted as so visually dif-
ferent from one another? Ekkehard is shown in his prime; he
holds a sword firmly by its hilt, while tugging at the guige
(Schiltvezzel) of his shield between forefinger and thumb, in-
dicating his proficiency in both warfare and court etiquette
(figs. 1, 2). He has a plump face with a heavy double chin; his
eyes are wide open, the eyebrows raised, expressing arro-
gance or disdain. This veristic physiognomy aroused strong
emotional responses in the German nationalistic studies.
Drawing on his personal experience of daily life, Schmarsow,
for example, declared that Ekkehard is a type that can be
found in Halle or Magdeburg;
5
while for Dehio, Ekkehard was
the embodiment of German Herrenbewusstsein;
6
and Pinder
contended that with Ekkehard one can really feel the German
folk that had yielded Luther, Bach and Leibniz.
7
This ekphrasis
completely ignored the historical distance so essential for
modernist historians and their objects of study, and relocat-
ed the figure of Ekkehard in the present tense of the viewers,
grammatically, syntactically, and practically.
Hermann’s statue radically differs from that of Ekkehard (figs.
3, 4): he appears younger; less certain in posture; his head is
inclined; his deeply carved eyes are sloping, expressing sor-
row. Holding both his sword and shield in one hand, in an im-
possible manner, Hermann seems less skilled than his brother
in use of the weapon. He is attired in the sleeveless robe, the
Kursît – an official high rank Insignia. Schubert referred to Her-
mann as both a count and a canon, and suggested that this
might have been the reason for the differences in casting of
the two figures, as representing the vita activa versus the vita
contemplativa. However, as pointed out by Holger Kunde,
since this was based on an incorrect reading of the Mor-
tuologium, the interpretation collapses.
8
For Sauerländer, Her-
mann’s facial type belongs to the cycle of male aetaes, in this
case – juventus;
9
while more recently, Martin Büchsel has
speculated as to whether such a type of an agonized ruler may
allude to his participation in Christ’s suffering and Passion.
10
Nevertheless, it is still unclear as to how the individual and
differentiated modeling of the brothers was conceived.
This problem becomes more acute when addressing the fe-
male figures. (figs. 1, 5) Uta wears a long robe, girded around
her hips, and a woolen cloak, which she clasps, as shown by
Kerstin Merkel, in an impossible masculine manner, unac-
ceptable in the medieval decorum;
11
her code of appearance
thus displays an internal contradiction and unstable semi-
otics. Her head is covered by a Gebende adorned with an im-
posing Schapel shaped like a fleur-de-lis. As often described
in the Minnesang, her forehead reveals a golden cowlick.
12
Uta’s immaculate and composed face manifests the me-
dieval Zuht, hövescheit, and self-discipline. In the early twen-
tieth century her calm and assertive gaze was perceived as
seeking the spiritual future of Germany; the somewhat
melancholic figure of Uta became Sieglinde’s twin sister,
waiting and watching for the heroes to return from the battle-
field. For Heinrich Bergner, she personifies everything that
the Germans admire in women: an intuitive soul and sworn
chastity;
13
and together with the Bamberger Reiter, she came
to embody the Nibelungentreue.
III. DIE STIFTERFIGUREN IM WESTCHOR DES NAUMBURGER DOMS | 205
4 For the historical evidence vis-à-vis the sculptural findings, see
the seminal studies by Walter Schlesinger, Meissner Dom und
Naumburger Westchor: ihre Bildwerke in geschichtlicher Betrach-
tung, Münster 1952, pp. 46–73; Ernst Schubert, Der Westchor des
Naumburger Doms: ein Beitrag zur Datierung und zum Verständ-
nis der Standbilder, Berlin 1965; and Willibald Sauerländer, Die
Naumburger Stifterfiguren (note 1).
5 August Schmarsow, Die Bildwerke des Naumburger Domes,
Magdeburg 1892, p. 22.
6 Georg Dehio, Geschichte der deutschen Kunst, Berlin 1919, vol. 1,
p. 341.
7 Willibald Sauerländer, Die Naumburger Stifterfiguren (note 1),
p. 604.
8 The entry Hermannus comes et canonicus refers to a local canon
from the late thirteenth/early fourteenth century, see Holger
Kunde, Der Westchor des Naumburger Doms und die Marienstifts -
kirche. Kritische Überlegungen zur Forschung, in: Religiöse
Bewegungen im Mittelalter (Festschrift für Matthias Werner zum
65. Geburtstag), eds. Enno Bünz et al., Köln/Weimar/Wien 2007,
p. 231, note 87.
9 See Willibald Sauerländer, Die Naumburger Stifterfiguren (note 1),
p. 642.
10 Martin Büchsel, Nur der Tyrann hat sein eigenes Gesicht: Königs-
bilder im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert in Frankreich und Deutschland,
in: Das Porträt vor der Erfindung des Porträts, eds. Martin Büchsel
and Peter Schmidt, Mainz 2003, pp. 124–125.
11 See the contribution by Kerstin Merkel in this volume.
12 Ortrun Dautert and Susanne Plaumann, Kleidung und Gebärde als
Mittel der Charakterisierung der Naumburger Stifterfiguren. Versuch
einer Gegenüberstellung von Skulptur und Literatur, in: Meister -
werke mittelalterlicher Skulptur. Die Berliner Gipsabgusssammlung,
Ausstellungskatalog, ed. Hartmut Krohm, Berlin 1996, pp. 298–305.
13 Heinrich Bergner, Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und
Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Naumburg, Halle 1903, p. 109.

Reglindis’s figure on the other hand, was accepted reluctantly
(figs. 3, 6): her face is broader; her smile is tight-lipped; her
eyelids are heavy, and a brown cowlick escapes her modest
Schapel. For Schmarsow, Reglindis was a pleasant but servile
Polish maidservant, prophesying Polish servitude versus Ger-
man dominion.
14
This interpretation was backed by the von
Wettin document, attesting that Reglindis was indeed the
daughter of the King of Poland. The implausibility of such
interpretation is obvious: while Uta is of modest origin,
Reglindis is of a much higher rank; just as Hermann, as first-
born, is of higher rank than Ekkehard.
In his seminal study, Sauerländer has interpreted the figures
as emboding a social pattern within a structuralist model.
He compared them to parallel depictions in the Minnesang
and Chanson de Geste, and analyzed them as a stylized arti -
culation of courtly etiquette.
1
5
Reglindis’ smile, for example,
manifests the courtly code of cordiality and temperance
(mâze), as well as her certainty of her acceptance into para-
dise;
16
her elegantia morum and schoene site are comparable
to literary depictions of Isolde.
17
Moreover, as explored by
Kathryn Starkey in her study on the politics of emotions and
their social demonstrative function in the Nibelungenlied,
this particular tight-lipped smile signals its owner’s superi-
ority and claims to preeminence in the face of a rival; if so,
this establishes the figures of Reglindis and Uta within a con-
flicting and competitive situation:
18
while Reglindis embod-
ies the aristocratic courtesy of a lady of the highest rank, Uta
manifests the breeding suitable to her somewhat lower sta-
tus in the hierarchy. This historical identification, however,
collapses in the face of their attire: while Reglindis’ firm
drawing of the mantle cord, and her smile, indeed attests to
her higher rank, Uta’s fleur-de-lis suggest her as the „first lady“.
Being lower ranked than Reglindis, Uta’s attire thus contra-
dicts her social status.
Perplexed by the deconstructive relations between appear-
ance and assumed historical identity, Sauerländer contends
that both constituted a paradigm of social type, equally bal-
anced and complementing one another. This, however, solves
nothing. If we are dealing here with merely a social pattern,
why is there such exceptional individuality in portrayal of the
figures? Why, moreover, preserve the age relations between
Ekkehard and Hermann? Although Ekkehard was the younger
brother, he died at a much greater age than his older brother.
On the other hand, whereas Hermann’s garment signifies his
higher rank in relation to Ekkehard, his facial expression sig-
nifies him as less authoritative. If one insists on reading the
III. DIE STIFTERFIGUREN IM WESTCHOR DES NAUMBURGER DOMS | 207
14 August Schmarsow, Im Stifterchor zu Naumburg, in: Zeitschrift
für Kunstgeschichte 3 (1934), pp. 8–9.
15 Willibald Sauerländer, Die Naumburger Stifterfiguren (note 1),
p. 627; Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Uta and Isolde: Designing
a Perfect Woman, in: Essays in Medieval Studies 19 (2002), pp. 70–
89; Elina Gertsman, The Facial Gesture (Mis)Reading Emotion in
Gothic Art, The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 36/1 (2010),
pp. 28–46.
16 Ortrun Dautert and Susanne Plaumann, Kleidung und Gebärde
(note 12), p. 305; Willibald Sauerländer, Die Naumburger Stifter -
figuren (note 1), 627; Jean Wirth, L’imageàl’époquegothique, Paris
2010, p. 148.
17 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Uta and Isolde (note 15), p. 79.
18 Kathryn Starkey, Brunhild’s Smile. Emotion and the Politics of
Gender in the Nibelungenlied, in: Codierungen von Emotionen im
Mittelalter, eds. C. Stephen Jaeger and Ingrid Kasten, Berlin 2003,
pp. 159–73.
Fig. 1 Naumburg, Cathedral, West Choir, Stifterfiguren Count Ekke-
hard II. and his wife Uta (Guido Siebert)
Fig. 2 Naumburg, Cathedral, West Choir, Stifterfigur Count Ekke-
hard II. (Bildarchiv der Vereinigten Domstifter, Sarah Weiselowski)

figures as historical personages, their clothing contradicts
their identity. Although Uta’s statue draws the viewers into
perceiving her as a real flesh and blood woman, the mecha-
nism of representation collapses: the figure can be identified
neither as a representation of the historical Uta nor as the
embodiment of a general social code. If indeed any inscrip-
tion should have accompanied her figure, this should have
been: Ce n’est pas Uta.
The dysfunctional semiotics is heightened in the polygon fig-
ures, a constellation that has triggered what has been known
since the studies by Schmarsow and Bergner as the Zwei -
kampf these.
1
9
Both authors rely on such sources as the Sach-
senspiegel in an attempt to match the gestures of the figures
to their historical identity and social situation. As the inscrip-
tion testifies, it is Dietmar who has been assassinated (fig. 7);
this is visually reinforced by his defensive gesture. Next to
him is Syzzo, addressing Dietmar with a troubled gaze. His
sword rests on his shoulder, marking him as an intermediary
(fig. 8). North of him stands Wilhelmus, holding up his cloak
with his right hand (fig. 9). According to Bergner, in the old
Rechtssymbolik this could be a gesture of admitting guilt or
of calling for a duel. Imaginary as the duel thesis might
sound, such an interpretation is indeed encouraged by the
visual narrative itself. These three figures, however, were never
208 | GOTHIC SYMUL ACHRA
19 For the duel thesis, see August Schmarsow, Die Bildwerke des
Naumburger Domes (note 5), p. 27; Heinrich Bergner, Be schreibende
Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Sach-
sen. Band 24: Naumburg, Halle 1903, pp. 109–12. Schlesinger proved
this thesis to be impossible, see Walter Schlesinger, Meissner Dom
und Naumburger Westchor (note 4), pp. 68–73.
Fig. 3 (right) Naumburg, Cathedral, West Choir, Stifterfiguren
Count Hermann and his wife Reglindis (Guido Siebert)
Fig. 4 Naumburg, Cathedral, West Choir, Stifterfigur Count Her-
mann (Bildarchiv der Vereinigten Domstifter, Matthias Rutkowski)
Fig. 5 Naumburg, Cathedral, West Choir, Countess Uta (Bildarchiv
der Vereinigten Domstifter, Sarah Weiselowski)

involved in that situation. Again, historical biographies can-
not be used here as an interpretive strategy, as they are con-
tradicted by the visual narrative, while neither is there any
coherent social pattern.
The Naumburg figures cannot plausibly represent reliable like-
nesses since they were created approximately two hundred
years after the founders’ deaths. They fail to represent a social
pattern due to their vivid appearance and interaction, and fail
to embody an abstract courtly ideal due to their individual
appeal, while also failing to represent the founders since the
historical data do not match the visual apparatus. In brief, each
interpretation of the statues invalidates and abolishes its
chain of references to any origin or model, whether social, tex-
tual, natural, or visual. The Stifterfiguren cannot be interpreted
through the iconographic, iconological, or stylistic means,
since they undermine the notion of origin: rather than being
an imago, they constitute a pure simulacrum.
SYMULACHRA DAZ IST AINEM
MENSCHEN GELICH
The creation of man in the image and likeness of God and the
doctrine of the Incarnation were the fundamental tenets of
medieval image-making in the west.
20
The incarnation of
Christ, as the perfect imago of the Godhead, legitimized not
only the production of his likeness, but also those of other
individuals. The graduation of likeness between the arche-
type (God), the prototype (Christ), and humanity, defined hu-
man individuals as existing by virtue of their relationships to
the origin and in perpetual inner movement toward the real-
ization of the imago dei – by their virtues, as well as by ap-
pearance.
2
1
This thinking is rooted in the Platonic notion of eiko ˉn or imago
as articulated in The Sophist (236 a–d).
2
2
Imago is an iconic
true likeness endowed with resemblance to the Idea, and as
such it is its good copy; while the imago might reveal an ex-
ternal dissimilarity to its original model, it has an internal re-
semblance to the ideal. The phantazein, or simulacrum, on
the other hand, while endowed with perfect semblance, lacks
any trace of the Ideal. The proportions of a colossal statue,
as Plato exemplifies, might be changed so that the upper
part will not appear too small and the lower part too big;
such sculpture no longer internalizes the ideal proportions
but rather a distorted version, in order that it will look perfect
from the viewer’s perspective. Outwardly it resembles the
real thing; nevertheless, it has no internal trace of the origi-
nal and Ideal and is therefore a simulacrum, a false claimant
210 | GOTHIC SYMULACHR A
20 The literature on the medieval imago is vast; I refer here to several
seminal studies in which extensive bibliographies can be found,
see Kurt Bauch, Imago, in: Beiträge zu Philosophie und Wis-
senschaft: Wilhelm Szilasi zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Helmut
Höfling, München 1960, pp. 9–28; Gerhart B. Ladner, Ad imaginem
Dei. The Image of Man in Mediaeval Art, Latrobe 1965; Jean-Claude
Schmitt, La culture de l’imago, in: Annales. Histoire, Sciences
Sociales 51/1 (1996), pp. 3–36; Jeffrey F. Hamburger, St. John the
Divine. The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology,
Berkeley 2002, pp. 1–20 and 185–201.
21 Peter Dronke, Fabula. Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval
Platonism, Leiden 1974, pp. 34–41; on the stamping semiotics, see
Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, Medieval Identity: A Sign and a Con-
cept, in: The American Historical Review 105/5 (2000), pp. 1525–26.
22 On resemblance and origin in Plato’s Sophist, see John Muckel-
bauer, Sophistic Travel: Inheriting the Simulacrum through Plato’s
‘The Sophist’, in: Philosophy and Rhetoric 34/3 (2001), pp. 225–44.
On the distinction between imago and simulacrum as true and
false claimants of truth, see Gilles Deleuze and Rosalind Krauss,
„Plato and the Simulacrum,“ in: October 27 (1983), pp. 47–51.
Fig. 6 Naumburg, Cathedral, West Choir, Stifterfigur Countess
Reglindis (Bildarchiv der Vereinigten Domstifter, Matthias Rutkowski)

to being. The simulacrum, therefore, is constructed around
a disparity, interiorizing at least two divergent series of signs,
of which neither can be assigned as the original. It is desta-
bilized by the viewer and as such it avoids final identity or
homogeneous meaning. Might the several contradictory
semiotic fields at work in the Stifterfiguren attest to the rein-
vention of the simulacrum?
Although The Sophist was not translated into Latin during the
Middle Ages,
23
the term simulacrum was used in a negative
sense throughout the period to signify Judaism, optical de-
ception, and above all idols and their uselessness. Although
the many simulacra of the pagans might resemble deities,
seemingly as their res, they have no internal similitude to
such entities; if the simulacra have any inner referents at all,
these are the demons, who in their deceptiveness pretend to
be Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Diana, and so on. As noted
by Beate Fricke, crucial to the medieval notion of idols was
that these exist only through the virtue of being simulacra,
namely: effigies and statues of human appearance.
24
All such
demon-possessed sculptural simulacra are nothing and their
worship is nothing, to use Gregory of Tour’s (ca. 538–594) fa-
mous words: nihil esse Dianam, nihil simulacra nihilque quae
eis videbatur exercere cultura.
25
The first to discuss the term in a systematic manner, and
within a visual sign theory, was the twelfth-century scholas-
tic William of Conches. In his Glosae super Timeum,
26
he en-
dows both simulacrum and imago with positive meaning in
their ability to reveal truth.
27
William distinguished between imago/imagines as painted
or divine images, and the simulacrum as an effigy or three-
dimensional representation, although at times he blurs the
boundaries between the terms. In trying to account for the
Creator and his Creation, he elucidates, all we can achieve is
an inexact simulacrum, an imaginary account;
28
this world is
called a simulacrum of the divine wisdom, namely, of the
imago of the archetypal world of ideas (the exemplum) and
eternity. The temporal birth of Christ enabled a perfect imago
of the transcendent God and guaranteed humanity the pos-
sibility of knowing the invisible through numerous simu-
lacra; namely, knowing the immutable through the mutable.
What remained from the Platonic distinction between imago
and simulacrum was the core of their essence: imago is
everything which is permanent, stable, and a-temporal; simu -
lacrum is that which is changeable, unstable, and ephemeral.
Even if at times he uses both terms interchangeably, William
assigns to the imago a closer affinity to the eternal arche-
type, while simulacrum is attributed to the signs of the tem-
poral material world.
In his commentary on De Coelesti Hierarchia of Pseudo-Diony-
sius the Areopagite, probably written between 1125–1137,
Hugh of St. Victor seeks to focus on the appearance of the
world as an inadequate, if not impaired, simulacrum of the
divine things and their demonstration.
2
9
Two simulacra have
been delivered to humanity in order to enable it to compre-
hend the invisible: the simulacrum naturae, and the simu-
lacrum gratiae. The first subsists in the form, appearance, and
species of this world; the second exists in the incarnation of
the Word. While the simulacrum naturae indicates that God
exists, the simulacrum gratiae indicates his knowledgeability
through vision; and while in the simulacrum gratiae essentia
and forma are identical, in the simulacrum naturae they are
not; the latter therefore offers only an emulative likeness,
similitudo aemulationis. Hugh indeed recognizes the simu-
lacrum of nature as a means by which divine truth is partially
materialized; yet, by its intrinsic separation between appear-
ance and essence, he retains the old Platonic notion of the
simulacrum as having multiple deceptive referents.
The idea that a gap between appearance and essence is inher-
ent in the simulacrum was repeated in many medieval trea-
tises and sermons. Abbot Absalon – a thirteenth-century Au-
gustinian regular canon at St. Victor, and later abbot of
Springiersbach in Germany – elucidated that simulacrum, as
a derivative of the verb to copy and to counterfeit, means a
statue made after the likeness of a certain creature, Simula -
crum vero, quod a simulando dicitur, statua est ad alicujus crea-
turae similitudinem facta.
30
The thirteenth-century Thomist
23 Its terminology filtered mainly through the Celestial hierarchy of
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.
24 Beate Fricke, Fallen Idols and Risen Saints: Western Attitudes
Towards the Worship of Images and the ‘culture veterum deorum’,
in: Negating the Image. Case Studies in Iconoclasm, eds. Anne
McClanan and Jeffrey Johnson, Aldershot 2005, pp. 70–71.
25 Gregorio di Tours. La storia dei Franchi, ed. Massimo Oldoni, Milan
1981, vol. 2, pp. 266-8. On the metamorphosis of Diana’s simulacra
in medieval times, see Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol. Ideology
and Image-Making in Medieval Art, Cambridge 1989, pp. 101–14.
26 William of Conches, Glosae super Platonem, ed. Edouard Jeauneau
(Paris: Vrin, 1965).
27 See Peter Dronke, Fabula (note 21), pp. 32–43.
28 Glosae super Timeum, p. 114, translation after Peter Dronke,
Fabula (note 21), p. 34.
29 On this topic, most recently, see Claus Blessing, Sacramenta, in
quibus principaliter salus constat. Taufe, Firmung und Eucharistie
bei Hugo von St. Viktor, PhD Diss., Universität Wien 2009, pp. 91–96.
30 Absalon Abbot of Springiersbach, Sermones Festivales (Cologne,
Joannem Gymnicum, 1534), reprinted in Migne, ed., PL 211, col. 207.
III. DIE STIFTERFIGUREN IM WESTCHOR DES NAUMBURGER DOMS | 211

Guillelmus Wheatley, while discussing how to choose an
appropriate mentor, advises his readers not to be deceived by
beauty and external appearance, not to be misled by fictio,
and falsa similitudine, as these do not necessarily correlate to
the virtus intranea. In this context, Wheatley continues and
explains that Simulacrum imago vel effigies dicitur; et dicitur a
simulo-as quasi rem aliter ostendens quam sit,“ namely: the
simulacrum means image or effigy; it derives from the verb „to
feign“ (simulo), as it shows a thing differently to what it really is
– a definition that could be applied to the Stifterfiguren.
3
1
Between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries the term
was systematically used to signify a three-dimensional decep-
tive imitation in general, and of a human being in particular.
Peter of Tarentasia (1225–1276) reflected upon a more refined
difference that exists within the same category, namely be-
tween simulacrum and idolon. In his influential commentary
on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Peter explains that
There is a difference between an idol and a likeness, because
simulacrum means that which is made in the similitude of
what is natural, while idolon is not a likeness of anything [that
exists in this world], as for example when one adds the head of
a horse to a human body.
32
This distinction thus divided the
Platonic simulacrum into two: the idols are empty signs,
lacking both internal and external resemblance to the ideal;
while simulacra are semi-claimants to truth, based upon the
real and bearing a resemblance to it.
In spite of being derived from a theological discourse, the in-
troduction of the term simulacrum as an acceptable semiotic
system may have laid the foundation for the creation of sim-
ulacral representations in the lay milieu, or defined an al-
ready existing practice that was not subject to the censorship
of the ecclesiastics. The Salle aux images or Bildersaal – hall
of images – in Thomas de Bretagne’s Tristan Roman (ca. 1170)
offers an illuminating insight into the lay polemics of me-
dieval sign theory.
33
In his attempt to recover from his unful-
fillable love for Iseut, Tristan married Isolde Weißhand – a sub-
31 Guillelmus Wheatley, Expositio in Boethii De scholarium disci-
plina, cap. 4. fl. 1309–1316, in: www.corpusthomisticum.org/xbd.
html, accessed July 2011.
32 Aquinas, Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, 314.
33 For the text, see Thomas de Bretange, Tristan, ed. Gesa Bonath,
München 1985, pp. 142–43.
Fig. 8 (right) Naumburg, Cathedral, West Choir, Stifterfigur Count
Syzzo (Bildarchiv der Vereinigten Domstifter, Matthias Rutkowski)
Fig. 7 (left) Naumburg, Cathedral, West Choir, Stifterfigur Count
Dietmar (Guido Siebert)

stitution for the real Iseut, her living simulacrum in Platonic
terms, as clearly implied by her name. However, unable to
forget the real beloved, Tristan erects a statue of Iseut. The
statue not only appears vivid and lifelike but it is mechani-
cally devised to provoke a simulacrum of a person: a sweet
fragrance emanates from her mouth and nape. Such a me-
chanical figure reflects a motif borrowed from earlier ro-
mances, such as Li romanz de Floire et Blancheflor (ca. 1150), in
which the statue of the beloved can move and speak,
34
or later
in Heinrich von Veldeke’s Eneasroman (1170–1188), in which
the effigies of Pallas and Camilla are invigorated and en-
livened by balsams.
3
5
This perception of the statue as a sim-
ulation of a living being offers a completely different model
of artistry than that found later in the Roman de la Rose, ca.
1270. Praising the beauty of nature, the author declares that
neither art nor artists have any chance of emulating the
works of Natura, because neither drawing, painting, metal-
work, nor carving have the ability to invigorate images to the
extent that they can move, feel, and speak;
36
Tristan’s sculp-
ture of Iseut, however, appears capable of all these.
Although Tristan’s living statue is clearly related to the myth
of Pygmalion, both he and the simulacrum of Iseut differ
radi cally from the ancient configurations. Unlike Pygmalion,
Tristan is not only the maker of the sculpture; he is also its
ideal viewer. While Pygmalion accepts neither his position as
a mere viewer nor the sculpture as an inanimate work, there-
fore requiring for its invigoration, Tristan gladly embraces the
position of the viewer, whose presupposition is that of view-
ing a simulacrum. As both its maker and viewer he does not
need the sculpture to waken to life; rather, he conceives it as
a substitution for the real. Moreover, while Galatea (invigo-
rated by Venus) is an imaginary creation of Pygmalion’s inner
immaterial phantasma,
37
the sculpture of Iseut substitutes
for a real woman, simulating her according to Tristan’s real
expectations; here, the boundaries between the inner and
outer worlds, regulated by phantasticum hominis,are voided;
but, in an inverted process, it is the material that is the phan-
tasma.
In Tristan, the living statue prevents the hero from consum-
mating his real marriage. Tristan often visits the statue, em-
bracing and kissing it, rebuking and complaining when he
feels that Iseut has forgotten him. Tristan had thus twice sub-
stituted the real: first for its duplication of a living person (Isol-
de in place of Iseut); and then as a full simulacral substitution.
When his brother-in-law, Kaerdin, comes to see the beautiful
lady who is preventing the fulfillment of his sister’s marriage
to Tristan, the latent semiotics of the Platonic notions of ima-
go and simulacrum come into confrontation. After seeing the
sculpture, Kaerdin wishes to become acquainted with the orig-
inal, the real Iseut, and refuses to perceive the statue as the re-
al lady; whereas Tristan is satisfied with the statue, which he
regards as a being in its own right. The protagonists provide
the readers with alternative models of response: while Kaerdin
conceives the statue as a sign demarcating the real, which is
elsewhere, outside the representation, Tristan perceives the
statue as a full simulation and substitution for the real, being
the only reality available in the ‘here and now’. Kaerdin under-
stands the statue as an imago while Tristan conceives of it as
a simulacrum. For Tristan, the statue no longer represents
Iseut; being neither Iseut nor her sign, it is a wax upon which
the subjective expectations of Tristan are stamped. Such Gothic
simulacra, therefore, are receptive to the imaginary horizons
of their viewers, offering a constantly changing meaning. Sim-
ilarly, Uta’s simulacrum is neither she nor her sign/represen-
tation; rather, it is a speculation of its viewers – an alternative
model of spectatorship with which the poet provides us.
The tense dialectics of the real and its substitution is ironi-
cally formulated in Gottrfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, 1217.
His depiction of Isolde entering the judgment hall in Dublin
includes an elaborate aesthetic description of her attire, move-
214 | GOTHIC SYMULACHR A
34 For a study of the origins of the Salle aux images as a memorial
and its symbolical meaning, see Volker Mertens, Bildersaal –
Minnegrotte – Liebestrank. Zu Symbol, Allegorie und Mythos im
Tristanroman, in: Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache
und Literatur 117 (1995), pp. 42–43; Horst Wenzel, Imaginatio und
Memoria. Medien der Erinnerung im höfischen Mittelalter, in:
Mnemosyne. Formen und Funktionen der kulturellen Erinnerung,
ed. Aleida Assmann and Dietrich Harth, Frankfurt 1991, pp. 67–70.
35 Heinrich von Veldeke, Eneasroman. Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhoch -
deutsch, ed. and trans. Ludwig Entmüller, Stuttgart 1986, p. 466,
vv. 8326–27.
36 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Rosenroman, trans. Karl
August Ott, München 1979, vv. 16039–40. On the Natura as a model
for a creative artistry, see Mechthild Modersohn, Natura Artifex –
ein alternatives Schöpfungsmodell, in: Studien zur Geschichte der
euro päischen Skulptur im 12./13. Jahrhundert, eds. Herbert Beck
and Kerstin Hengevoss-Dürkop, Frankfurt 1994,vol. 1, pp. 224–25.
37 On human perception as emanating from the phatasma and the
cognitive process in the brain faculties of imaginatio-ratio-
memoria in actualizing images, see Hans-Jürgen Scheuer,
„Numquam sine phantasmate. Antike in mittelalterlicher Imagi-
nation“, in: Germanistik in/und/für Europa. Faszination – Wissen:
Texte des Münchener Germanistentages 2004, ed. Konrad Ehlich,
Bielefeld 2006, pp. 381-90.
Fig. 9 Naumburg, Cathedral, West Choir, Stifterfigur Count
Wilhelm (Guido Siebert)

ment, smile, gestures, manners, and grace, these being not en-
tirely dissimilar to tomb effigies and cathedral sculptures of
the period.
38
What is crucial, as noted by Stephen C. Jaeger, is
that in an ironic reversal of the commonplace, Gottfried indi-
cates the closeness of Isolde to a plastic representation of Isolde
by calling her ‘ain lebendes bild’ – a living statue.
39
This ‘ironic
reversal’ seems to attest to the blurring of boundaries between
reality and its simulacrum and their reversible, deconstructive
relations as model and copy. Rather than art being nourished
by reality, it is the reality that is both constructed upon and
constituted by the sculpture. Isolde’s entrance as daz lebende
bild realizes the aesthetic potential of the simulacrum, not only
substituting but also generating the Real.
By the fourteenth century the differentiation between bilder,
ydola and symulachra seems to have become consolidated. In
the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, the author dedicates a dis-
cussion to the phenomena of idols and simulacra, stating that
between simulacres and idols is a great difference. For simulacres
be images made after likeness of men or of women or of the sun,
or of the moon, or of any beast, or of any earthly thing. And idol
is an image made of lewd will of man, that man may not find
among earthly things.
40
Mandeville differentiates between sim-
ulacra, as naturalistic representations, and idols as the cate-
gory of the hybrid, which refuses classification. His discussion
was thus transferred from a moral discourse to image and sign
theory, separating, as noted by Michael Camille, licit from illicit
representations.
41
In the same tenor, Sarah Salih has interpreted
Mandeville’s passage as a distinction between mimetic and
non-mimetic image-making.
42
By sepa rating between the non-
mimetic representations of the idols and the mimetic simu-
lacra, Christian makers of religious art seem to have legiti mized
the Gothic mimesis or simulacral representation.
Approximately one hundred German and Netherlandish
copies of Mandeville’s Travels are known, of which thirty-nine
are dated to the second half of the fourteenth century.
43
These can be divided into two groups: the translation by Otto
von Diemeringen, probably written in Metz or Strasbourg,
dated 1367–1398;
44
and that completed either by 1388 or 1393–
1398 by Michel Velser, a highly erudite lord from southern
Tirol.
4
5
Both translations significantly revised Mandeville’s
idea of simulacra: whereas for Mandeville, simulacra were
images made after the likeness of everything that is natural,
Velser restricted this category to human beings exclusively:
Nun sollent ir wissen daz underschaidung ist zwúschent symu-
lachra und ydola, wann daz symulachra daz ist ainem men-
schen gelich, ainem man oder ainer frowen. Das ydola haisset,
daz ist u der natur, als ich úch vor geseyt hon, halb mensch und
halb och… Unz daz sprechend sie och uff uns christen, dar umb
das wir an bettend unser frowen bild und ander hailigen“(bold
by author).
46
Velser’s precise definition goes back to the ori-
gins of medieval sculpture, to Roman times, when simulacra
designated the life-like portraits of dignitaries, substituting
for the once-living persons and offering their real simulacral
presence in this world. As a double for the absentees, the sim-
ulacra provided the deceptive illusion of seeing and hearing
the dead face to face, as if they were still alive.
47
Furthermore, Michel Velser also distinguished between three
notions of medieval image-making: bild, ydola, and symul chra.
The first designated sacred images, the imago; the second,
the hybrid idols of the pagans; and the third, the multiple ref-
216 | GOTHIC SYMULACHR A
38 See for example Gertrud Bäumer, Der ritterliche Mensch: die
Naumburger Stifterfiguren, Berlin 1941, pp. 116–18; Joachim Bumke,
Höfische Kultur: Literatur und Gesellschaft im hohen Mittelalter,
München 1986, vol. 1. pp. 21–23.
39 C. Stephen Jaeger, Medieval Humanism in Gottfried von Strass-
burg’s Tristan und Isolde, Heidelbergr 1977, p. 112; Gottfried von
Straßburg, Tristan und Isolde, ed. Dieter Kühn, trans. Lambertus
Okken, Frankfurt 1991, v. 10956.
40 The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The Version of the Cotton Man-
uscript in Modern Spelling, trans. A.W. Pollard, New York 1900, ch.
XVIII, 110. For essential bibliography and study, see Michael C. Sey-
mour, Sir John Mandeville (Authors of the Middle Ages 1: English
Writers of the Late Middle Ages), Aldershot 1993, pp. 1–64.
41 Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol (note 25), p. 4.
42 Sarah Salih, Idols and Simulacra: Paganity, Hybridity and Repre-
sentation in Mandeville’s Travels, in: The Monstrous Middle Ages,
eds.Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills, Toronto 2003, pp. 114–15,
119–120; Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol (note 25), pp. 37–38.
43 Jean de Mandeville, Reisen. Reprint der Erstdrucke der deutschen
Übersetzungen des Michel Velser (Augsburg, bei Anton Sorg, 1480)
und des Otto von Diemeringen (Basel, bei Bernhard Richel,
1480/81), eds. Ernst Bremer and Klaus Ridder, Hildesheim 1991. For
the translation and circulation in German speaking space, see ibi-
dem, pp. VII–XXI; Eric John Morrall, Michel Velser and his German
Translation of Mandeville’s Travels, in: Durham University Journal
55/1 (I962), pp. 16–22; Klaus Ridder, Jean de Mandevilles ,Reisen‘.
Studien zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der deutschen Übersetzung
des Otto von Diemeringen. München 1991.
44 Ibidem, pp. VII–VIII.
45 See Sir John MandevillesReisebeschreibung. In deutscher Überset-
zung von Michel Velser, nach der Stuttgarter Papierhandschrift Cod.
HB V 86, ed. Eric JohnMorrall, Berlin 1974, pp. LVIII–LXV; Morrall, Michel
Velser. Übersetzer einer deutschen Version von Sir John Mandevilles
Reisen,in: Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 81 (1962), pp. 82–91.
46 Ibidem, p. 105, v. 11.
47 Paraphrased after Schmitt, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the
Middle Ages:The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans.
Teresa Lavender Fagan, Chicago 1998, p. 12.

erents likeness (symulachra). While the German erudite clar-
ified that the Christians have imago and the pagans worship
ydola, the users of symulachra remain vague. It is unlikely
that the author did not know who these users were; rather,
he probably presupposed that his target readers or listeners
– the aristocratic laity – would know. Referring to princes as
god-like simulacra honored by the people and as simulacra
natu rae, remained a common topos in late medieval and Ren-
aissance Fürstenspiegel.
48
In his early sixteenth-century copper-
plate engravings of Martin Luther, Lucas Cranach the Elder
consistently declares that these are simulachra Lutherus;
49
and as a denotation referring to the portraits of the aristoc-
racy, Cranach specifies that such simulachra retain the living
likeness of the deceased.
5
0
Defining the Naumburger Stifterfiguren as symulachra is rad-
ical since it claims a conscious alternative to medieval im-
age-making, and as such it demands a retreat from the
search for a model and fixed meaning that has so far consti-
tuted the majority of research of these figures. The figures
exert a subversive relation to any sepulchral tradition: they
stand neither on animals, nor on any other symbolical im-
age; they do not appear in the conventional gestures of the
pious dead, but are actively interacting with each other and
with the viewers. They reveal themselves to the viewer as real
beings communicating and negotiating across the choir
space. Moreover, while tomb sculpture usually fixes identity
by means of inscriptions, coats-of-arms, etc., these serve in
Naumburg, instead, to destabilize definitive meaning or
identity. The semiotics of the figures always lacks an attrib-
ute or employs excessive ones, hindering production of a co-
herent meaning. As noted by Helga Sciurie, although each
figure seems to be involved in a dramatic situation, reacting
to its interlocutor, the exact context of the situation is never
made explicit.
51
In the absence of any stable relation to de-
finitive meaning or models, the statues offer themselves as
the only reality available. And this is precisely the potential
that Romantic and nationalist writers, as well as the Ameri-
can film industry, have identified. As flexible simulacra devoid
of any final meaning or referents, the sculptures become a
wax upon which the expectations and identities of the view-
ers are stamped. Being constructed as simulacral Iseuts, the
sculptures concomitantly initiate their own reality while also
being receptive to the viewers’ speculations. The viewers, who
experience a ‘Tristan response’ and react to the imaginary re-
ality generated by the sculptures, not only conceive the fig-
ures as living statues but also turn themselves into ain leben-
des bild, as did Gottfried von Strassburg’s Isolde.
A Gothic symulachrum means a statue or effigy; it is a statue
made after the likeness of men or women, or more precisely
it equals a human being, a man or a woman, yet showing
them differently to what they really are. A symulachrum of-
fers the ostensibly real presence of the depicted persons
– whether in their feigned likeness, their corporeality, or
emotionality – actualized by the viewers in the real space
and time of the viewing. According to Schwarz, through
their intense appearance and ‘medial’ quality, the Naum-
burg figures encourage the viewer to take an emotional po-
sition; rather than reacting to a work of art, the viewer reacts
almost as if to real flesh-and-blood figures, which is what
constitutes the lure of the simulacrum.
52
If these sculptures
were indeed designed to encourage new donations to the
church, each of the new benefactors could have had their
own identity stamped upon them. The founders’ figures
aroused – and still do – such fervent emotional responses in
the viewers not because of being an animated imago of a
far distant era, but because – in being symulachra –they of-
fer the spectators a subjective meaning, perpetually living
and changing.
III. DIE STIFTERFIGUREN IM WESTCHOR DES NAUMBURGER DOMS | 217
48 For example Sintque Principes tanquam quadam naturae in terris
simulacra, quibus reliquorum hominum dignitates praestant. In Re-
rum Germanicarum Scriptores anquot insignes Ex bibliotheca
Maquardi Freheri, ed. Burkhard Gotthelf Struve,Strasbourg 1717,
p. 373.
49 The inscription that recurs in several of the prints of Luther’s por-
trait reads Aetherna ipse suae mentis simulachra lutherus exprimit
at vultus cera Lucae occiduos MDXX, see Köpfe der Lutherzeit. Ka -
talog der Ausstellung in der Hamburger Kunsthalle, ed. Werner
Hofmann, München 1983, pp. 113–13.
50 In the portrait of the elector Friedrich der Weise von Sachsen, 1525
the inscription reads Talis erat princeps, dum mansit vita Fridricus
est vivos vultus lucae imitata manus, invida mors, nobis tantum
haec simulachra, reliquit et tulit, absumpto corpore, seva virum.
Parte tamen meliore sui vivitque manetque virtutis famam, mors
abolere nequit. For a reproduction, see ibidem, pp. 118–19.
51 Helga Sciurie, Überlegungen zu den Stifterfiguren im Naumburger
Westchor, in: Höfische Repräsentation: das Zeremoniell und die
Zeichen, eds. Hedda Ragotzky and Horst Wenzel, Tübingen 1990, p. 151.
52 Michael Viktor Schwarz, Visuelle Medien im christlichen Kult. Fall-
studien aus dem 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert, Wien 2002, pp. 26–27.