Two Temples To the Greats Of Germany
By JOHN DORNBERG; JOHN DORNBERG is a foreign correspondent and author who lives in West Germany.
Published: June 19, 1988
THE Wittelsbachs, who ruled Bavaria for more than 800 years, first as dukes and then as kings, were rather unusual by the standards of German nobility in that they preferred the fine arts to the art of war. Moreover, all of them were also avid and visionary builders.
The most energetic and farsighted Wittelsbach builder of them all was King Ludwig I, who reigned from 1825 to 1848, when, though only 62 and by no means tired of the job, he was forced to abdicate because of his scandalous love affair with Lola Montez.
Ludwig I, grandfather of the ''Dream King'' Ludwig II, was both a Germanophile (at a time when a united Germany was but a distant dream) and a Grecophile (at a time when Greece was still under the yoke of the Ottoman Turks). Even before his coronation in 1825, while still the heir apparent, he had vowed to make Bavaria a font of German power and Munich, its capital, not only a city that would ''do honor to all Germany'' but also a kind of ''new Athens.''
He created his vision largely through one of the greatest architects of the time, Leo von Klenze, who left his mark all over Munich and along stretches of the Bavarian Danube with a panoply of templelike Greco-Roman edifices. Two of the oddest and most perplexing are the Valhalla hall of fame, near the city of Regensburg, and the Befreiungshalle (Liberation Hall), perched on a mountain above the town of Kelheim, also on the Danube.
Valhalla is almost a perfect copy of the Parthenon and has virtually the same dimensions: 413 feet long, 165 feet wide, 66 feet high, with its roof supported by 52 Doric columns. But instead of the Acropolis, it rises from a nondescript mound called the Breuberg near the bucolic village of Donaustauf, six miles downstream from Regensburg. And there it has stood since its consecration in 1842 as a temple of Germanic greatness. It contains busts and memorial plaques of more than 200 German luminaries of literature, art, music, science and statesmanship. It is also a museum, open daily and visited by close to one million people annually.
That not all enshrined there were Germans in the strictest geopolitical sense of the word - like Peter Paul Rubens, Maria Theresa, Franz Schubert, Catherine the Great, Johann Gregor Mendel or William III of Orange - and that some defy the dogged efforts of historians and encyclopedists to attribute even a modicum of greatness to them, is only one reason why this monument is so odd and unique. Another is that the names of several are misspelled. Thus the composer Franz Joseph Haydn is chiseled in marble as ''Heyden'' and the medieval Nuremberg bronze sculptor Peter Vischer is identified as ''Fischer.''
Ludwig's idea for Valhalla began in 1807, shortly after Bavaria had risen in rank from a duchy to a kingdom, by dint of Napoleon's grace and the alliance with France that Ludwig's father, Maximilian, had forged.
Young Ludwig, though undoubtedly pleased that he would become a king and not just a duke, never did approve of that partnership with the French and was especially resentful that, as Bavaria's 21-year-old crown prince, he had been dispatched by his father to attend Napoleon's victory celebration at the tomb of Prussia's Frederick the Great in Berlin. On his return to Munich he decided that, once he did become king, he would avenge that act by building a hall of fame as a monument to Frederick and other great Germans.
His day was a while in coming: Papa Maximilian remained on the throne until his death at age 70 in 1825. But meanwhile Ludwig began ordering busts: 16 from the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow in Berlin, 24 from Christian Friedrich Tieck in Rome, another five from Christian Rauch, then working in Cararra. He also began looking for a site, finally persuading Regensburg's Prince von Thurn-und-Taxis to donate a vineyard on the hill overlooking the Danube at Donaustauf.
With his various other construction projects for turning Munich into a new Athens already underway, Ludwig commissioned his master architect and builder, Leo von Klenze, to start on the hall of fame, telling him: ''I want it to be great - not just colossal in size but great in concept and design.''
Klenze, no scrounger when it came to designing monuments, and caught up in the spirit of neo-classicism, drew up the plans and began ordering marble for the project: 6,000 huge blocks of the finest available from Italy. The ceiling would consist of gilded plates of bronze with stars of platinum. The iron portals to the hall itself would be 28 feet high and weigh two tons each.
The cornerstone was laid in 1830. That it would take 12 years to complete was due largely to financial obstacles. It cost Ludwig 8 million guldens, double his annual civil list. The name for the temple, Valhalla, was the idea of Swiss-born historian, Johannes von Muller, then enamored with Germanic legends and epics that were becoming popular in the early Romantic period. It was also von Muller who was charged with deciding who would be represented in the temple. That was a problem then and it remains one today, for the collection of ''great Germans'' continues to grow.