Neumann, Balthasar (1687–1753)

NEUMANN, BALTHASAR (1687–1753)

NEUMANN, BALTHASAR (1687–1753), German architect. Born in Eger (western Bohemia, now Cheb, Czech Republic) to an impoverished weaver, Neumann was trained in a foundry and also learned about hydraulics and techniques of fireworks display. In 1711 he settled in Würzburg (southern Germany), where he developed his career as an architect and city designer as well as military officer. This coupling of professions occurred often at this time because military training included surveying and drawing, geometry, and mathematics, disciplines basic to the practice of architecture. Neumann's major clients were members of the Schönborn family, important political and ecclesiastical leaders within the hierarchy of the Holy Roman Empire and major patrons of the arts. Neumann's extensive practice included several score churches, almost two dozen palaces, other secular and utilitarian structures, and urban projects.

His buildings comprise some of the most complex and sophisticated explorations of architectural space ever created in the West. In them, space is shaped by open, curved, elegant frameworks and vault shells, rather than being shaped by the continuity of wall. Their space is transparent and lucid, charged with direction and counterpoint, the unexpected, and the startling. Huge windows deluge the interiors with light, which Neumann orchestrated with dramatic certainty. He promoted the integration of painting, statuary, stucco, color, gilding, metalwork, and carving to amplify spatial splendor and specify its meaning. This conception of design contrasted with traditional practice in the West, where continuous surfaces defined the interior. Only at moments during the Byzantine and medieval periods and in seventeenth-century Italy and France did the relation between mass and space depart from this norm. In the twentieth century, modern architecture would again be based on continuities of open, transparent space and lightweight, minimal (though reticulated) structure. A curvilinear architecture was recovered later, in the twentieth century, but based on different geometries than those employed by Neumann and his contemporaries.

Neumann's most ambitious secular structure is the Residenz in Würzburg, with which he was involved from the beginning to the end of his career. The imposing Residenz, which served both the court and government of the principality, was a statement of political prestige—the impressive representation of a well-organized, wealthy state. Based on a C-shaped plan, the centers and corners of the facade were marked by projecting pavilions, and the entire exterior was painted and gilded, giving it a festive appearance. For the major public areas inside, Neumann created one of the grandest sequences of spaces known in the West: a rectangular vestibule large enough for coaches, an oval garden hall, a grandiose stair spanned by a single vault, an elaborately stuccoed white hall, and the spectacular throne hall. This sequence of spaces served rituals of arrival and reception for important visitors to the principality.

Neumann's churches are greater in number and design variety than his almost two dozen palaces, in which the epic power of his architectural language is boldest. He employed a range of design strategies to achieve extraordinary spatial compositions, exploring relations between spatial figures, their arrangements within differently shaped outer shells, and lucid transparencies of the whole. He choreographed movement in the architecture (and for the user), orchestrated light, and promoted the elaboration of all his innovations by means of various artistic media such as painting, sculpture, stucco, and gilding. His great pilgrimage church at Vierzehnheiligen (1743–1753; completed 1772) and monumental Benedictine monastery church at Neresheim (1749–1753; completed 1792) are two of his most spectacular churches.

Neumann also undertook urban design projects for Würzburg, including its water system, transforming the walled medieval town into a representative Residenz city. Throughout Franconia, he built houses, monasteries, hospitals, a hotel, a city hall, a courthouse, and miscellaneous religious structures as well as fortifications for several towns, barracks, bridges, gardens, and fireworks displays.

Neumann worked within the design traditions for secular and sacred architecture that extend back into the sixteenth century. Even the more recent phenomenon of an architecture based on space composition had become an accepted approach among Neumann's central European contemporaries such as the Asam brothers and Johann Michael Fischer (1692–1766), the Vorarlberg architects, and the Dientzenhofers. But Neumann accepted this common ground only as a point of departure for explorations of architectural space that showed astonishing range and brilliance. With consummate authority, he combined clarity with complexity in plan and section. He boldly charged interiors with light and dematerialized mass, and thrust both into powerful encounters with space. Neumann orchestrated spatial experiences for the beholder in ways that were at once striking, lucid, and imposing, gradually revealed, demanding, and human, thereby transforming standard architectural assemblages into unique and bold statements.

See also Architecture ; Art: Artistic Patronage ; Baroque ; Dientzenhofer Family .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aus Balthasar Neumanns Baubüro, Pläne der Sammlung Eckert zu Bauten des grossen Barockarchitekten. Exh. cat. 1987.

Balthasar Neumann in Baden-Württemberg: Bruchsal, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Neresheim. Exh. cat. Stuttgart, 1975.

Freeden, Max H. von. Balthasar Neumann: Leben und Werk. 3rd rev. ed. Munich, 1981.

Hansmann, Wilfried. Balthasar Neumann: Leben und Werk. Cologne, 1986.

Schütz, Bernhard. Balthasar Neumann. Freiburg, 1986.

Christian Otto