Old cities, new archives: Frankfurt

For the sake of being thorough in my tracking down of leper hospitals possibly "reformed" by the Mainz archbishops, I decided to spend a day in Frankfurt's municipal archives. A number of relevant charters have been published (thanks, 19th-century Germans!) but there are also several legal cases and, tantalizingly, letters concerning leprosy diagnosis that haven't been. As I discovered, Frankfurt's institute for city history is located in the former Carmelite cloister (makes a change from the castles preferred by Bavarians.) Fortunately, given my terrible sense of direction, it's very close to the metropolis's opera house… to which, obviously, I know the way. Typically for central Frankfurt, it's sandwiched incongruously between office buildings. The institute holds a museum space as well as the archives, so I approached the main entrance in some uncertainty, more than half expecting to be shown around to a side door. However, I was welcomed warmly by the woman on the desk, shown where to sign in, given a locker key, and told where to put my things: "second door on the left in the cloister walk, and then the reading room is up in the dormitorium." I thanked her, and went through into the cloister walk… and my jaw actually dropped.

Flight into Egypt, Jörg Ratgeb

The walls of the cloister are painted, from eye-height to the vaulting, with an enormous depiction of the history of salvation. As art history aficionados will have already determined based on the hat of the Blessed Virgin, the cycle was commissioned in the early 16th century. The names of commissioners--nuns, priests, council members and their wives--are conscientiously lettered in gold around the base, the shields of the secular donors providing a marginal decoration of sorts. The enormous cycle is two tiered, with stories from the Old and New Testaments arranged typologically, with prophets holding enormous Latin scrolls, a circle of gloria-trumpeting angels surprising the shepherds and linen-shirted fishermen, with richly appareled kings (a silver-set ruby dangling from Balthazar's ear,) bespectacled professional doctors officiating at the Circumcision, elephants and camels and turtledoves depicted with a naturalist's passion, miracles flaming out in old-fashioned mandorlas of light, the body of the Christ permanently arched in all-too-human agony as the soldier's scourge descends. Perhaps due in part to the stunning surprise of it--not to mention the sheer scale of the thing in situ--I loved it. And I discovered two episodes new to me: Christ taking leave of his parents (lovely) and, later, speaking with a man who has a chessboard under his arm. Is this an unknown attribute of Nicodemus? I had time to absorb it, as (unannounced on the website) the archive only lifted out documents at set times of day. Fortunately, the museum space had a nice leather couch where I sat and worked on my current funding application. This met with some disapproval; a man bound on some official business passed me and said: "Always taking ease--one does that elsewhere." I looked up only belatedly, as I presumed this remark was part of a conversation, but he was still glaring at me as he briskly descended the stairwell. "One does that elsewhere!" he repeated. I'm still not sure what rule of German etiquette I offended against… but everyone else at the archive was remarkably friendly, and even told me where the nearest bakery with good coffee was.