Regional networks and supraregional ambitions. Medieval Ecclesiastical Architecture in the Middle Rhine Valley (1250 to 1450)

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The Middle Rhine Valley is distinguished by a great density of high ranging, yet remarkably heterogeneous ecclesiastical buildings of the 13th to 15th centuries, stretching between Oppenheim in the South and Koblenz in the North. This cultural landscape is marked by the river valley and, throughout the Middle Ages, by a multitude of politically, economically and culturally powerful, intersecting territories. The patrons who emerged from the ecclesiastical, aristocratic and patrician sphere, were interested in a high quality status of the art and architecture which they donated for and which they could use for their own representational purposes. Patrons as well as masons and the lodges active in the Middle Rhine Valley during the Middle Ages were equally linked by regional networks and the dynamics of competition and exchange. Moreover, the exceptional geographical situation of the river Rhine and its tributaries resulted in an infrastructure which furthered the transregional transfer of materials and people and, in this way, the artistic exchange with the dominating city centres and great masons´ lodges at Cologne and Strasbourg, Trier and Metz.The Middle Rhine Valley has up to now basically been treated with the art historically notion of a Kunstlandschaft constituted by primarily stylistically defined consistencies. This project will lead a different way and concentrate on the questions of regional networks and supraregional ambitions of patrons and masons alike active along the Middle Rhine during the Middle Ages. Three time spans will be differentiated and compared to this purpose: c. 1250, c. 1300 and post-1400. Exemplary ecclesiastical monuments of these three time spans will be evaluated by the three categories of their geographical-topographical positioning in city and river landscape, the political territories they belonged to, and their subordination to diocesan structures. In this way, the specifically complex historical, political and geographical conditions in the Middle Rhine Valley will be accounted for and the questions asked whether and how these conditions might have influenced the architectural production in this area. The criteria of dynamics and referential systems which constitute the projects combined in this proposal will be evaluated especially in this project on the ecclesiastical architecture of the Middle Ages and concern the competitive relationship between four of the seven imperial electors, the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne and the count Palatinate, all of which were present with major building projects in the Middle Rhine Valley. The potential of Mainz as an artistic centre at the Middle Rhine, and the history of its decline when facing the increasing economic and political importance of Frankfurt am Main in the Later Middle Ages, will equally play a major role.