"How Am I Worthy to Hold You?"

Antique Ring With Shell Cameo of Schiller, Late 19th Century

€ 790.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

Unit price €790.00 / piece

Antique Ring With Shell Cameo of Schiller, Late 19th Century

Description

This description was automatically translated from German. If you have any questions about this piece of jewellery, we will be happy to help!

Set in reddish gold, this ring bears a relief cut in shell. White standing out from its darker ground is the portrait of Friedrich von Schiller (* 10 November 1759 in Marbach; † 9 May 1805 in Weimar). After the poet's untimely death, a cult around his person began, culminating in a search for his bones. Did you know that Schiller's (supposed) skull was in Goethe's possession for some time from 1826? "Secret vessel! Giving oracular spells, / How am I worthy to hold you in my hand?" poet Goethe wrote eye to eye with this skull, but how did it come to be? Friedrich Schiller died in 1805, and his body was buried in the vault of the Jakobskirchhof in Weimar. At the end of 1825, the city administration reported that the vault urgently needed to be "tidied up" because "it was almost impossible to place a coffin in it." On March 13, 1826, the mayor of Weimar, Carl Leberecht Schwabe, the chief building director, Clemens Wenzeslaus Coudray, the surrogate medical officer, Dr. Schwabe, and the town clerk and court advocate, Aulhorn, climbed into the crypt. But there was "a chaos of must and rot" and when the examination of the name plates did not lead to "certainty and truth as to which were Schiller's earthly remains here", the undertaking was abandoned. In a clandestine night action, Carl Leberecht Schwabe ordered a gravedigger and three day laborers to the cemetery at midnight, obligated them to absolute silence, and had them search for Schiller's bones. This action lasted three nights, and then Schwabe had gathered twenty-three skulls, which he had brought to his home in a sack. There Schwabe, who had still known Schiller personally, also called in the still-living coffin carpenter and Schiller's servant Rudolf to find out which was the right skull by comparing the skulls by measurement with Schiller's death mask. In the end, Schwabe chose the largest skull, which stood out from the others due to its size and noble, regular design. When the mayor's actions became known in Weimar, families whose relatives were buried in the treasury vault were particularly outraged. But the Grand Duke and Goethe paid "most grateful tribute" to Mayor Schwabe. Schwabe now suggested a prominent place as the new burial place for Schiller: On September 17, 1826, "Schiller's skull" was deposited in a ceremony in the Princely Library in the pedestal of the life-size marble bust by the sculptor Johann Heinrich Dannecker. On the occasion of this ceremony Goethe composed the tercets "Bei Betrachtung von Schillers Schädel". The key to "Schiller's Skull" was in the hands of Goethe himself. As early as the night of September 25-26, 1826, the night he wrote this poem, Goethe housed the skull in the garden house of his estate on Frauenplan. Towards the end of the year Goethe kept the skull, on blue velvet under a glass lintel in his house. On 29 December 1826 Wilhelm von Humboldt reported in a letter to his wife: "This afternoon I saw Schiller's skull at Goethe's. Goethe and I - Riemer was still with us - sat in front of it for a long time, and the sight moves one in a whimsical way. What one saw before one so large, so participating, so moved in thought and feeling, now lies there so rigid and dead like a stone image. Goethe has the head in his custody; he shows it to no one. I am the only one who has seen it so far, and he has asked me not to tell." In the wake of this rather long-lasting cult of Schiller is also this ring, which was probably created in the last decades of the 19th century. The cameo is set in a plain frame and can be worn as a ring. An exciting piece of jewellery for the educated citizen, every lover of Schiller's dramas and friend of good stone cutting. We discovered this piece of jewellery here in Berlin and purchased it in awe.

Size & Details

"How Am I Worthy to Hold You?"

€ 790.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

Unit price €790.00 / piece

Incl. VAT, Shipping

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