Weser Renaissance

Weser Renaissance is a form of Renaissance architectural style that is found in the area around the River Weser in central Germany and which has been well preserved in the towns and cities of the region.

Between the start of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War the Weser region experienced a construction boom, in which the Weser, playing a significant role in the communication of both trade and ideas, merely defined the north-south extent of a cultural region that stretched westwards to the city of Osnabrück and eastwards as far as Wolfsburg. Castles, manor houses, town halls, residential dwellings and religious buildings of the Renaissance period have been preserved in unusually high density, because the economy of the region recovered only slowly from the consequences of the Thirty Years War and the means were not available for a baroque transformation such as that which occurred to a degree in South Germany.

The term, coined around 1912 by Richard Klapheck, suggested that the Renaissance along the Weser independently developed its own distinct style. Max Sonnen, who used the newly coined term in 1918 in his book Die Weserrenaissance, classified buildings, without regard for the circumstances of their historical background, but from a purely formal perspective in order to derive a history of the development of the style. The notion of a regional renaissance in the sense of an autonomous cultural phenomenon was based on a nationalistic mindset that had arisen since the end of the 19th century, in which things provincial also had their place in establishing identity (other examples include German Sondergotik, Rhenish or Saxon Romanesque architecture).

In 1964 Jürgen Soenke and the photographer, Herbert Kreft, presented an inventory of Renaissance buildings, which also went under the title of Die Weserrenaissance. In its closing remarks it said: This architecture is rooted in the landscape in which it stands. It is folksy because those who created it […] came from the people. The Weser Renaissance is, simply, folk art. For Soenke an (indigenous) evolution of architectural style lay hidden behind its common features. His work, that appeared in six editions up to 1986, helped to give this art-historical concept a level of popularity that went far beyond the realm of the specialist and became a kind of popular trademark.

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