RKD STUDIES

At the end of the 17th century the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a backward state fraught with dynastical and political problems. No art collections were extant even though a few important works were to be found in Schwerin castle, foremost a series of ten large animals by Maerten de Vos painted for the library of Duke Johann Albrecht I (1525-1576) in 1572 of which six are extant [1-6].¹

Christian Ludwig was born the youngest of three brothers of the reigning family [7]. His later fame as the founder of the Schwerin art collections was not to be expected, as his chances of becoming the reigning duke were very slight indeed. The two older brothers who preceded him as rulers of the country are not known for any enlargement of the number of art works in the country at all. Christian Ludwig, on the other hand, had already adorned the little palace of Grabow where he lived with a considerable number of paintings and other works. There were no expensive works among them and they perished with the castle and the whole town in 1725.² Therefore, the forceful and decisive way in which Christian Ludwig at a certain moment of his career started to collect art, an endeavour he pursued on a considerable scale until the last months of his life, ask for an explanation. It shall be sketched here in a few words.

The older brother Carl Leopold, ruling since the death of the oldest in 1713, was of a difficult and unruly character [8]. In 1718 he had made himself and his quarrels with the nobility so intolerable to Emperor Charles VI in Vienna that the duchy was put under Imperial Execution (Reichsexekution). The Execution was enforced by the neighbouring powers of Brunswick and Hanover, the Elector of Hanover since 1714 also being the king of Great Britain. In the end, it took half a century for Mecklenburg to regain its full sovereignty.³ To give the stark measure of an Imperial Execution a touch of legality, the third brother of the deceased and the reigning dukes, Christian Ludwig, was installed as administrator in 1728. His power was extremely limited, since neither the foreign troops were under his control, nor the finances. In fact, he received a fixed appanage and had to report his expenditures to Vienna. This set-up did not prove very beneficial, as the opposing brothers, the reigning duke and the Imperial administrator mutually nullified each other’s rulings, threatening the unhappy subjects that followed the other’s commands with harsh punishments. The country was paralysed.⁴

It was certainly due to the careful and insistent diplomacy of Christian Ludwig that led to his installation as Imperial Commissioner over Mecklenburg in the fall of 1732.⁵ From this moment on it was he who could decide about the finances of the dominion, so far as it was not pawned to the powers carrying out the Imperial Execution. Christian Ludwig won some measure of political control although the conflict with his brother, the nominally reigning duke, did not cease. Carl Leopold left no chance unused to impede Christian Ludwig's relations with the nobility, the cities and subjects as well as the foreign powers. The conflicts sometimes resulted in military violence leading in 1735 to Christian Ludwig's capture of Schwerin castle. Carl Leopold fled to Wismar, then under Swedish rule, and subsequently installed himself in the fortress at Dömitz without being able to do much damage anymore. Nevertheless, his unrelenting wrath was cumbersome for the family as were his constant petitions to the Emperor. They only ceased with his death in 1747 and only from then on could Christian Ludwig officially claim to be the Ruling Duke, after having steered the fortunes of the country for more than 15 years already.

It was only in 1732, at the precise moment that Christian Ludwig was installed as Imperial Commissioner, that he decided to underscore his claim to ruling the country with art collections that were worthy of a high-ranking prince of the Holy Roman Empire. It is very clear that at this point in time a new era had begun for him. Only from the beginning of the Commission in November 1732 on his zeal to enlarge the collections is to be noticed. Therefore, the Schwerin collection of Dutch and Flemish as well as some French paintings is a show-case example for the intentions and the mechanisms of 18th-century collecting. It is a classic case of 'conspicuous consumption' which, together with concerted building efforts in strategic places of the dukedom, had to show off princely magnificence and splendour that was lacking in terms of genealogy. The building projects are not the subject of this article, but they should be treated in the same context. Compared to projects by other monarchs in Europe, they hardly seem impressive. However, seen in the context of the means available and the current situation in the duchy, they too are significant. In the light of a recent finding of a number of architectural drawings from the period in Schwerin, these projects now have also received due attention.⁶

7
Dominicus van der Smissen or Georg Weissmann
Portrait of Christian Ludwig II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1683-1756), dated 1731
Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin, inv./cat.nr. G 3757

8
Anonymous (German)
Portrait of Carl Leopold of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1678-1747), c. 1740
canvas, oil paint 76 x 62 cm
Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin, inv./cat.nr. G 1956