Constança Arouca & Madalena Parreira, “15. von Willebrand Collection Vault inset map”
Etching, Somerset (1/2 e 2 p.a.)
2022
71 x 40 cm
(unframed)
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“Following the outcome of the Berlin Conference, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck perceived a pressing need for a systematic sweep of cartographic archives to identify opportunities to fulfill German territorial ambitions – as well as documentation to refute spurious claims from the other Great Powers during the Scramble for Africa. The Iron Chancellor assigned a portion of this effort to his third cousin, Albrecht Ulrich Phillip Hartmut von Willebrand. Historians still speculate why the able statesman would commission anything from the notoriously incompetent von Willebrand, who insisted on being addressed as the Margrave of Hohnburg, even though the title had officially been declared extinct since the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Part of the answer surely lies in the specific task assigned to the Margrave: “to collect copies of all cartographic materials of apparent irrelevance to current territorial disputes”. In keeping with this, an entry in the diary of Graf von Moltke (the Elder) has the Chancellor remarking “let us inflict this buffoon on provincial librarians while we get on with the affairs of state.”
Oblivious to Bismarck’s motives, the Margrave threw himself into the task body and soul, ultimately accumulating over sixteen thousand maps, charts, and an assortment of unclassifiable prints which he believed “might one day show someone the way to something or somewhere.” In keeping with the original commission, a notable aspect of the von Willebrand collection was its total uselessness during the continental upheavals between 1875 and 1945.
The collection was housed in the von Willebrand family annex to the cloisters of Dresden’s Sophienkirche until the aging Margrave panicked at what he considered to be the imminent collapse of the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) in 1915. Still under the illusion that his collection would one day prove vital to German strategic interests, von Willebrand ordered an underground vault to be constructed for its concealment. After the Treaty of Versailles, the Margrave, ever the visionary, believed that Europe had had enough bloodshed and considered his mission concluded. Desperate to be fashionable, the Margrave took a decision that would have dire consequences for the collection: he commissioned an engraved map of the von Willebrand collection vault in a mishmash of contemporary styles, vaguely inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s plans for the Imperial Hotel (Map 12-15).
Von Willebrand lived to the age of 97, finally expiring at a spa outside of Kaiserslautern, an obscure minor nobleman who never escaped his internal exile to the provinces. He died in the same year as the Weimar Republic, in 1933. The Margrave’s ill-advised attempt to keep up with the times led to the von Willebrand vault map’s misidentification as Degenerate Art. As a result, almost all copies were destroyed by the newly established Reich Chamber of Culture. Only the original copper plate matrix of the vault map remained untouched in the Sophienkirche annex, together with a pair of printed copies. The church was comprehensively destroyed during the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945. Incredibly, a controlled detonation of unexploded ordinance in the immediate postwar period led to the unearthing of the vault map plate and a pair of prints in pristine condition, one of which you see here in this exhibition.
The von Willebrand vault map came to the attention of Arthur Robinson, the Office of Strategic Services’ cartographic wunderkind, who was able to locate the trove and transported all sixteen thousand maps (miraculously, all the works on paper had survived the Dresden firestorm) to the headquarters of547th Engineer Construction Battalion, garrisoned at Gelnhausen Kaserne. Robinson invested considerable energy to rescue the maps from the rapidly advancing Soviet Army. Robinson had believed the collection to be of strategic value, and for years lamented endangering his men to “recover some dilettante’s glorified stamp collection”.
The von Willebrand collection returned to Dresden three years after the collapse of the DDR. It is currently housed in a custom-built facility near its originalSophienkirche location. Almost all the works, spanning four centuries, are prints. A unique feature of the collection was its matched sets of prints and copper plates. Copper, however, was a precious commodity in postwar Germany, and scavengers made off with all but one of the plates.
The maps are made available to scholars by appointment, and von Willebrand residencies in Dresden are highly coveted by cartographers, but this exhibition marks the first loan of maps from the von Willebrand Collection.
Prof. Horst Manfredsenjense, Ph.D.
Head of Collections, von Willebrand Trust”
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