FREE_IT – AR Monuments for Diversity in Weimar
Title: DUCHESS ANNA AMALIA IN AR
Student: Alexandra Herberger
Location: Weimar City Palace
Description of the project:
Alexandra Herberger: My AR project represents Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, originally Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who was born in 1739. Located in front of her former residence, the city palace of Weimar, this monument is intended to encourage people to get to know Anna Amalia better. Both through the abstract floating cultural objects and the placement of the monument between the old town and the Ilm Park, I am trying to depict her historical and cultural influence on the city of Weimar.
As a woman who placed great value on art, music, literature and theatre and brought great poets such as Wieland, Herder and Goethe to Weimar, I believe she deserves a monument just as much as all these men and more, whose statues and busts we see every day in the city.
About Anna Amalia
A. H.: Born in Wolfenbüttel in 1739, Anna Amalia grew up as a Brunswick princess, the fifth of thirteen children. She and her sisters enjoyed an equally varied and thorough education in, for example, geography and history, but also in languages, art, music and dance. The distinctive and strongly supported cultural life at the court in Wolfenbüttel greatly characterised her as a person and her later politics as regent of Weimar [1].
In 1756, the 16-year-old Anna Amalia was married to the then 18-year-old and already ailing Duke Ernst August II. Constantin of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, who was already ill at the time. In 1757, one year after the wedding, the Duchess gave birth to hereditary prince Carl August, followed a year later by her second son, Constantin, before whose birth her husband Ernst August Constantin died in May 1758. As stipulated in his will, Anna Amalia assumed sole guardianship of both sons and ruled over the duchy from July 1759 until Carl August came of age. She later wrote about this time: "In my 18th year, the greatest epoch of my life began: I became a mother for the second time, became a widow, chief guardian and regent." [2]
During her regency, she confronted the consequences of the previous Duke Ernst August I's mismanagement and the Seven Years' War that began in 1756. She countered these with cost-cutting measures as well as the establishment of a free school and a midwifery school in an attempt to improve the living conditions of the poorer population and reduce the high maternal and infant mortality rates. She also paid particular attention to promoting cultural life, which is why she had a former princely residence, the "Grüne Schlösschen", remodelled as a public library building, to which the library holdings of the City Palace were transferred in 1766. Theatre was also very close to Anna Amalia's heart, which is why she set up a theatre hall in the palace from 1771, where she invited the nobility and bourgeoisie to enjoy the theatre groups she organised [3].
Above all, however, the education of her sons was important to the Duchess, for which she brought the philosophy professor and poet Christoph Martin Wieland to Weimar in 1772, who in turn attracted other poets such as Goethe and Herder to the culturally flourishing city.
After handing over the now relatively debt-free and well-managed duchy to her son Carl August in 1775, Anna Amalia was able to devote herself all the more intensively to her musical, artistic and literary interests. She began inviting guests to dinner parties and amateur theatre performances in the Wittumspalais [4]. She was finally able to give in to her love of Italy in 1788 and, at the age of almost fifty, embarked on a long-awaited two-year trip to Italy, which was quite unusual for a widowed Protestant princess of the time. Anna Amalia died on 10 April 1807 after a short illness and was buried in the town church at her own request; Goethe wrote an obituary on her death [5].
The City Palace
A. H.: As Anna Amalia lived in the city palace after her marriage to Duke Ernst August II until it burnt down in 1774, I decided to place my AR monument in front of the entrance to her palace. It is located in the historic city centre and at the same time directly adjoins the Ilm Park, offering both a historical and natural ambience. These two components thus ideally reflect Anna Amalia's closeness to nature as well as her historically important role for the cultural city of Weimar. Furthermore, the Duchess Anna Amalia Library is located directly opposite the palace entrance. Anna Amalia's visual axis in my AR project connects her directly with her library and emphasises her love of literature. As her original residence, the city palace is ideal for a memorial to Anna Amalia. In addition, it also offers the advantage of many passers-by, be they people who want to take a walk in the park, tourists on a guided tour or on their own. In this way, her influence on the city is emphasised and many people are reminded of it or made aware of it.
The AR Monument
A. H.: Ultimately, my AR monument to Duchess Anna Amalia is intended to emphasise her personality. I want to express her love of music, literature, art and theatre and highlight her immense influence on the cultural city of Weimar. In order to be able to really imagine the Duchess, I would like to try to recreate her actual height of approx. 1.50 metres with my AR project. She stands directly on the floor without a plinth to make her more approachable and human for users. To imitate her actual face, I used a 3D mask in the Blender programme, which I first modified slightly to match the approximate shape of Anna Amalia's face and then "sprayed" with an image of her face. It is very difficult to achieve an exact overlap between the image and the mask, but it does give a rough impression of her face. I moulded the Duchess's hair as a 3D model in Blender to do justice to the shape of the hairstyles of the time and then also painted it with a picture template. The objects floating above and next to her head - the guitar, the flute, the mask and the sheet of paper with a feather - are intended to abstractly reflect her interests and preferences. I downloaded these and her dress from the online platform Sketchfab and added them to Styly.
Overall, I hope that my AR memorial will encourage people to get to know Anna Amalia and her contribution to the cultural centre of Weimar in the 18th and 19th centuries. In my opinion, her person deserves more attention, especially in comparison to all the men whose monuments adorn this city.
[1] Online unter: www.mdr.de/geschichte/weitere-epochen/neuzeit/anna-amalia-herzogin-von-sachsen-weimar-eisenach100.html
[2] Ebd.
[3] Ebd.
[4] Ebd.
[5] Ebd.