Kyffhäuser

With his view of the Kyffhäuser mountains, Kanoldt has created more than just a depiction of a landscape. It constitutes an impressive example of the historically and mythologically charged German landscape painting of the second half of the 19th century. The path in the foreground of the picture leads our gaze to the peak of the mountain, where the ruins of the former imperial castle of Kyffhausen can be seen. According to a legend, Emperor Barbarossa (1122–1190) sleeps beneath it—enclosed in the mountain—waiting for his empire to regain its former strength.

The legend, however, goes on to say that so long as the ravens continue to circle the mountain, the time for Barbarossa’s reawakening has not yet arrived. Kanoldt has painted these ravens fleeing from an eagle, thus symbolically depicting the strengthening of the German Empire, which, following the victory of Prussia’s King Wilhelm I in the Franco-German War (1870/71), rose to the status of a major European power. The pronounced view from below, but also the dramatic use of directional light, heighten the picture’s pathos. Thus the landscape becomes a symbol linking the strands of history and myth.