---there's a beautiful park ringed by statues of dwarfs.
Here's a comment from a travel site about this bizarre place: "The Zwerglgarten (Dwarves' Garden) is a small place in a corner of Mirabell Garden and very popular with children, but also with other visitors. There are about fifteen dwarves, they are about 1,20m - 1,40m tall and depict professions of daily life: A gardener, a salesman, a tradesman...
"There had originally been 28 dwarves, made for Ludwig I, king of Bayern, but he found them so disagreeable [emphasis mine] that he wanted them to be destroyed. They were scattered to the four winds, but fortunately about half of them could be found again and are now on dislay here. They are made of marble and look very funny and quaint. A nice photo opportunity!"
It took me a few minutes to steel myself to cross the little bridge to the garden but once I convinced myself "they're just statutes...just statues..." I calmed down enough to take these pics:
But you know, such creatures exist in the wild, and they are crafty. Dangerous. Powerful.
Especially if they have palindromic names, like Bob, Otto, Anna, or Ada.
Beware the Smalls. You've been warned.
7 comments:
No, that's not quite correct.
They were made between the late 17th and early 18th century and they depict midgets who were either part of the Salzburg Archishop's court or pure imagination. The 19th century did not imitate Baroque, that was too close for comfort. One always finds the style immediately preceding one's own horribly old-fashioned. The 19th century like to imitate everything as far as Renaissance.
Note the Turkish dwarf - probably a comment on the pushing back of the Turks (they had been about to conquer central Europe at the time).
The Bavarian angle comes in because when during Napoleonic wars Salzburg was secularized and for 6 years became part of neighbouring Bavaria, the Bavarians didn't like the statues and the originally 28 were sold and scattered. It took a while to get back those 15 that are now on display in that garden.
B
This was what I was going to say, if I wasn't so fucking ignorant.
I find it amusing and totally weird that John X has the opportunity to emerge himself in the 15 statue environment when we know of his phobia about the subject matter. I find it bizarre that so many dwarves were carved out of stone, then not appreciated and scattered. The whole thing is strange enough to be the truth. If I still wrote fiction, I couldn't make this shit up. Miss you both,
Soartstar
So, did you happen to toss any?
:)
Mod, I didn't toss any because that would require Herculean strength, whereas I possess more of a Don Knotts kind of strength.
Soartstar, it's good to know that I'm not the only guy with a phobia of midgets. Evidently they also gave Mad King Ludwig the heebie-jeebies, too. It's nice to be in the company of known pyschos like Ludwig.
We miss you, too...
Ahem...except that it wasn't "mad" Ludwig II, it was his grandfather, the later King Ludwig I, who as Crown Prince and as a child of the Age of Enlightenment was disgusted by the fact that the statues showed crippled munchkins who had been kept as entertainment at the court.
As far as highly educated art lovers and aesthetes like Ludwig I were concerned, the era of pygmy court jesters was the dark ages.
Only in 1920 did Salzburg decide to try to locate the missing dwarfs.
B
Son Of The Return Of this is what I was going to say, if I wasn't so fucking ignorant.
I keep getting my Ludwigs mixed up.
Fuckin' GERMANS....
Post a Comment