For eleven years, Werner Tübke, one of East Germany's most renowned artists, labored on a colossal panoramic painting in the Thuringian town of Bad Frankenhausen. The monumental work depicts scenes from the Peasants' War, which marks its 500th anniversary this year. The Leipzig art professor was specially released from his university teaching duties by the East German government from 1976 to 1987 to focus entirely on this project. Reflecting on his monumental undertaking, Tübke once said: 'You have to be a bit crazy, otherwise you wouldn't tackle such things.'
Tübke was born in 1929 in Schönebeck an der Elbe as the son of a merchant and is considered one of the most significant painters of the former East Germany. He experienced the war years as a high school student, painting plant studies in his father's garden. However, a traumatic experience that would long shape the young man was his months-long imprisonment by the Soviets, who wrongly suspected the student of carrying out an assassination attempt on a Soviet soldier. This experience would leave a lasting impact on him.
After the war, Tübke learned his craft from the ground up. Following solid training in the painting trade, he began studying at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts in 1948. Shortly before beginning his studies, Tübke joined the Socialist Unity Party (SED). In 1950, he transferred to study art education at Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald, completing his degree with a state examination in 1953. After working as a research assistant at the Central House for Folk Art, he became a freelance artist.
With the beginning of the 1960s, Tübke received growing recognition for his work. He was given the opportunity to travel to Italy to study the old Renaissance masters, who provided him with lifelong inspiration for his art. Tübke often oriented his works toward the Early Renaissance style, which had caught the attention of colleagues and jurors early on. His historical conservatism didn't necessarily fit with East Germany's ideology of progress, but as the artist's fame grew, many party officials basked in his glory, allowing him a certain independence in his creative work and choice of themes.
Tübke lived in the reality of East Germany but painted as if from the past. With overflowing imagination, he brought his paintings to life. Werner Laux, rector of the Weißensee Academy of Art, noted with amazement as early as 1956: 'I almost have to assume that every figure was copied from some great Renaissance master, but I can't think of any.' Other critics, however, viewed this less favorably: 'Old! Old! How can a young person paint like this? This is how an old codger paints!' Indeed, Tübke's models were Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach, and his works often seemed like they had fallen out of time.
In 1973/74, the SED party leadership and the East German government decided to erect a panorama memorial site on the Schlachtberg near Frankenhausen to commemorate the 450th anniversary of the German Peasants' War. The project carried the official title 'Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany.' It was intended to honor the theologian and revolutionary Thomas Münzer and commemorate one of the last battles of the Peasants' War at Frankenhausen, where the peasant uprising was bloodily suppressed by an army of nobility and mercenaries on May 15, 1525. Münzer was captured, tortured, and later beheaded.
The party officials were particularly interested in presenting the peasant uprisings as a major event of historical significance. The Peasants' War was to be staged as an early bourgeois revolution. As stated in the brochure 'The Adventure of Image Creation,' the decisive idea was 'to show how the masses of people in the struggle against the exploiting class release great revolutionary energies and under our present conditions fulfill the legacy of the revolutionaries of 1524/25.' Through its location, it was intended to promote socialist patriotism, especially among youth.
The internationally known painter Tübke was recruited to execute the painting. The SED leadership had envisioned more of a heroic battle painting in the style of socialist realism. Instead of following this ideological directive, however, Tübke set conditions that gave him free rein in both the conception and execution of the work. Tübke's ideas and artistic autonomy were accepted, probably to avoid delaying the project. The rotunda to house the panoramic painting had already been completed in 1975.
In 1976, Tübke began work on his opus magnum: a gigantic circular painting 14 meters high and 120 meters in circumference. After several years of intensive preliminary work and research on the subject, as well as creating a model version at a 1:10 scale, Tübke applied the first brushstroke to the painting on August 16, 1983. It soon became apparent that commissioned work of this magnitude was not manageable for one man alone. Five carefully selected master craftsmen were brought in to assist him.
In total, Tübke and his assistants would need eleven years for the monumental work. The artists stood on scaffolding up to ten hours daily, sometimes in temperatures around 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Tübke later complained: 'They failed to create humane conditions. They only thought about the comfort of visitors. But the greatest misfortune is that I cannot continue working for all eternity.'
The work, featuring more than 3,000 figures, was completed in 1987. The painter was physically and psychologically exhausted. A documentary at the Panorama Museum shows the artist executing the final brushstrokes on the monumental painting. Almost reverently, he then sets the brush aside and dryly states: 'I have no more feelings, eleven years of misery.' Tübke's work did not become a conventional battle painting, but rather a historical-philosophical parade of images spanning an entire epoch, a historical parable of human errors and confusions, executed in the style of magical realism with surreal features.
Gerd Lindner, director of the Panorama Museum, interpreted the painting in 2004: 'I believe the work is timeless. To put it succinctly, one could say it shows the eternal return of the same, the basic social problems remain the same, that is the basic message of the picture, presented in a total form, i.e., in a circular form without beginning or end, so that history appears as a continuum, without linear upward development, which was in blatant contradiction to the official historical view of East Germany.'
Tübke was considered quite controversial during East German times and afterward. Was he a commissioned painter for the SED? Was the painting of the Early Bourgeois Revolution created to illustrate that only with East Germany's land reform of 1946 were the goals of the rebellious peasants of yesteryear finally redeemed through real existing socialism? After reunification, voices were raised demanding the closure of the Panorama Museum and calling Tübke a state painter.
The artist did not see reunification as a major upheaval. Physically exhausted, Tübke consequently worked on only two major commissions: a stage design for a new production of Weber's 'Der Freischütz' in Bonn (1990-1993) and a winged altar for St. Salvatoris Church in Clausthal-Zellerfeld (1993-1996). He also created independent, small-format paintings. When asked if he complained about his pictures appearing in the controversial East German art exhibition in Weimar in 1999, the artist countered in his dry manner: 'No, I don't really register such things... I don't count myself as East German art.'
In his diaries, discovered many years after his death, the artist mystified the creation of the painting in Bad Frankenhausen as higher inspiration. Full of pathos, he wrote: 'That wasn't me! I didn't paint that picture! Instead of me, there must have been something spiritual, a focus of cultural history, but with soul and love.' Nevertheless, everything was created 'with God's help and the blessing of the party.' The artist, who had to have a leg amputated due to severe circulation problems, died on May 27, 2004, after a long, serious illness in Leipzig. He was 74 years old.
