Highlights from the cultural world of Rome
The art historian Dr Andreas Raub (* 1989 in Aachen), member and in 2014/15 research associate of the RIGG, has now been appointed museum director of the Roman splendid church of Santa Maria Maggiore (on the Esquiline Hill near Termini Central Station): Direttore del Polo Museale Liberiano.
For some time now, Edith Schaffer and Michèle Smits have been carrying out so-called cemetery actions at Campo Santo Teutonico, during which the participants turn their attention in a historical-spiritual way to personalities who are buried there or whose lives were in some way interwoven with Campo Santo. The next action will take place on Monday, 30 May, at 3 pm.
The Pontifical Institute for Christian Archaeology in Rome (via Napoleone III, 1) opens its doors to interested persons. Participation is possible on site or online. The various study programmes will be presented.
On 30 April, Wolf Biermann and his wife Pamela Rüsche visited the Campo Santo Teutonico cemetery, especially the graves of Ludwig Curtius and Hermine Speier. He gave his book Mensch Gott! with a dedication in mirror writing for the tour. Biermann wrote several poems about the Berlin Huguenot Cemetery, the Montmatre Cemetery and other cemeteries - perhaps also about the Campo Santo Teutonico one day?
On 30 April, the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Joachim Herrmann, gave the keynote speech at the 36th Foundation Festival of the Catholic Academic Association Capitolina in Rome in the library of the Anima. He made special mention of the Görres Society and its Roman Institute, as his father Johannes Herrmann, a law professor in Erlangen, was Secretary General of the Görres Society during the years from 1967 to 1979. At the same event, Stefan Heid received the Capitolina ribbon of honour from the philistine senior Franco Reale.
An article in Der Spiegel once again draws the public's attention to the threat posed to the German school, the German Archaeological Institute, the German Historical Institute and the Goethe-Institut in Rome by Italy's demands for compensation for crimes committed by the Wehrmacht against civilians at the end of June 1944. Italy had entered the war on the side of Hitler's Germany on 10 June 1940.
In the right side chapel of the church of the Campo Santo Teutonico stood a classicist Marian altar. It was a so-called privileged altar, which the rector Anton de Waal consecrated to the Regina Pacis, the Queen of Peace, on 2 July 1915, in the middle of the First World War. He had promised Pope Benedict XV to say Mass there every day until peace returned (Päpstlichkeit und Patriotimus, p. 790). It was at this altar that Hubert Jedin and the Irish hero Hugh O'Flaherty said Mass early every morning during the Second World War and then had breakfast to discuss war and peace..
The cathedral vicar of Münster, August Bahlmann, published his impressions of his trip to Rome in 1863 and has some astonishing things to say about the brotherhood at Campo Santo Teutonico (Eine Reise nach Rom, p. 391):
On Holy Saturday, 16 April, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI will be 95 years old. To mark the occasion, the Tagespost Foundation for Catholic Journalism has set up a congratulatory website where anyone can sign up.
This or similar were the headlines in the media. In truth, the former papal palace continues to be predominantly an ecclesiastical administrative building and, moreover, the endless rooms of the building erected by Pope Sixtus V have also been used as a museum since the 19th century. Now the existing museum has merely been redesigned. You can now only enter the rooms with a guided tour by religious sisters (Missionaries of Divine Revelation - green habit).
Römisches Institut der Görres-Gesellschaft
