{"id":2642,"date":"2020-02-13T20:55:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T19:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/merianin.de\/?page_id=2642"},"modified":"2023-10-27T13:18:19","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T11:18:19","slug":"merianin-im-interview","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/merianin.de\/en\/home\/merianin-im-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Merian"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \n In the year 2018 <\/span>\n \t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\tFICTIONAL MEETING WITH MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN (1647-1717)\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>
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Mrs Merian, you are from Frankfurt and lived in Amsterdam for the second half of your life. There you became world famous as an artist and entomologist. How was your childhood in Frankfurt?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t

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I grew up in what you now call a \"patchwork family\". My father, the famous draughtsman, etcher and publisher Matth\u00e4us Merian the Elder, unfortunately died when I was only three years old. My mother, as was customary at the time, soon married again. Jakob Marrell was also widowed and brought children into the marriage. He was a good father to all of us, even we girls were allowed to help in his workshop.<\/p>\n

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How did you come to be the wife of Johann Andreas Graff, a citizen of Nuremberg?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was six years old, a new apprentice came to us from Nuremberg. Johann Andreas Graff was orphaned early and for five years we became his family. He then went to Italy to learn everything that was new and trendy in art at the time. When he came back after six years, our workshop was far less busy, but now a new, active phase of my life began.<\/p>\n

In the printed (!) wedding poems by our relatives and friends, you can still read that everyone praised both of us for our artistic talents, and that it was clear from the start that I did not want to, and was not destined to, become a mere \"housewife\". I especially like the humorous sentence by a friend: \"Daub to outdo each other till you drop!\" (Drumb pinselt umb die Wett!)<\/em>\n

By the way, in these wedding poems I am called \"Merianin\" and after our wedding \"Frau Gr\u00e4ffin\". The female ending (-in) on the family name was normal at that time, and I am glad that this is now observed in Nuremberg again.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Title Page of a Brochure with Wedding Poems <\/em>(1)<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

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Dwelling House of the Graff Family in Bergstra\u00dfe 10 (Photo: Dieter L\u00f6lh\u00f6ffel)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

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Maria Sibylla Merian Garden since 2013 (Photo: Dieter L\u00f6lh\u00f6ffel)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

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In the literature about you, Nuremberg often appears only as a stopover in your life. \nDo you still have memories of our city?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The move to Nuremberg together with my husband and our first daughter, Johanna Helena, born only a few months previously, took several days and was a great experience for me. Girls and women with children travelled only rarely at that time. I saw unknown landscapes and cities and shall never forget the first view of Nuremberg with its strong city walls, high towers and the impressive Imperial Castle. The stately, half-timbered house \u201cAt the Golden Sun\u201d (Zur Goldenen Sonne), was a beautiful new home. It was located on the \"Old Milk Market\" (Alter Milchmarkt) between St. Sebaldus\u2019s Church and the Imperial Castle and my husband had inherited it from his parents.<\/p>\n

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Was this first impression confirmed in the course of your fourteen years in Nuremberg, or are some novelists right in drawing a dark, oppressive picture of Nuremberg and characterizing your husband as an incapable, aggressive drunkard?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It's really annoying how far some authors falsify reality for the sake of drama. Without the active support of my husband, my three flower books and two caterpillar books, that is, a total of five printed works, would never have been published in my Nuremberg years. I was even allowed to teach daughters of Nuremberg families how to paint and embroider. One of the directors of the Academy of Painting, which was founded as an important cultural institution at the end of the terrible Thirty Years' War, gave me lessons.<\/p>\n

The well-to-do citizens opened their gardens to me so that I could observe and collect the caterpillars on their host plants. An influential relative of one of my students let our family use a beautifully situated garden next to the Imperial Chapel at the Castle. All these favourable living conditions contributed to the fact that I was able to develop my skills in Nuremberg and that the life cycle of insects became the lifelong theme of my artistic and research work.<\/p>\n

You surely know that our family house survived, undamaged, the terrible destruction of Nuremberg during the (hopefully!) last European War, which you call the \"Second World War\", as did the two-storey garden house in our garden, which is made of sturdy timber framing. Today this garden is a place of remembrance named after me.<\/p>\n

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What fascinated you most?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was the surprising changes from eggs to caterpillars and pupae to a new living being, that is, their metamorphosis, the result of which was not always a magnificent butterfly. I loved the \"summer birds\", which you now call diurnal butterflies, but paid the same attention to my \"moths\", your nocturnal butterflies. I did not distinguish between so-called beneficial insects and pests. In my artistic work I wanted to use God's creation in all its diversity, including the life cycle of beneficial bees and silkworms, as well as beetles and flies, all of them portrayed with their own individual flora.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Why did you and your family leave Nuremberg again after fourteen successful years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the death of my foster father, we felt obliged to take particularly scrupulous care of my impoverished, aged mother in Frankfurt. But the living conditions there did not turn out as we had hoped, and four years later we moved to a strictly religious Labadist community in Friesland. However, Johann Andreas was not accepted into this religious community and I separated from him for good. I do not wish to make detailed public statements about the breakdown of our marriage and ask for your understanding.<\/p>\n

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Was the separation from your husband the complete end of your relations with Nuremberg?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No! Not at all! I became increasingly active as a businesswoman who sold her books and her prepared natural objects \u2012 like crocodiles, snakes and turtles \u2012 to Nuremberg. \nAfter my spectacular expedition to the Dutch colony of Surinam in South America, I even created a large-format work about the magnificent tropical insects and their plants, commissioned etchers and printers and took the considerable risk involved in publishing the book. The German National Museum owns a particularly precious and hand coloured copy.<\/p>\n

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What can the people of Nuremberg at the beginning of the 21st century learn from you and your time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

People in the centuries following my research praised my close examination of the insect world and my love of nature, which I shared with the people of Nuremberg. They were probably the greatest garden lovers in Europe at the time. Nowhere else was there such a green belt with hundreds of private gardens around the city wall, stretching up to the outer fortifications by the moat with its redoubts. Doctors, pharmacists, merchants, craftsmen, innkeepers, in short, many Nuremberg families, not only from the upper classes, liked to relax in their gardens in summer and take refuge from the heat and stench of the narrow city streets.<\/p>\n

In addition to fruit trees and bushes, vegetables, herbs and flowers as a habitat for birds, insects and the descendants of D\u00fcrer's rabbits, well-to-do Nuremberg citizens cultivated a special hobby: they imported expensive citrus plants from Italy and spared no effort to ensure these sensitive immigrants could survive the cold season in heated garden houses.<\/p>\n

I know that the city's residential area has now expanded far into the surrounding countryside, but everywhere you can find opportunities to return to this wonderful tradition of the Nuremberg gardens. All existing trees in the city need sustainable care. Attentive, thoughtful citizens should not be discouraged and should always suggest new locations for trees. Generous circular beds planted below and around the trees are also a habitat for my beloved insects. \n

But I don't want to give you a longwinded lecture. I like the way you can briefly and impressively sum up your wishes today, 350 years after I came to your city. I'd like to try that, too.<\/p><\/p>\n