The Thirty Years’ War and the Demise of Georg Petel and the Weilheim School of Sculptors

• In Event: Art and the Thirty Years' War I

Abstract

Weilheim, southwest of Munich, arguably produced more important sculptors during the late sixteenth and first third of the seventeenth centuries per capita than any other German town. Hans Krumper, Hans Degler, Bartholomäus Steinle, Christoph Angermair, Philipp Dirr, and Georg Petel enjoyed extensive regional and/or international fame. All died between 1628 and 1635. The talk will explore what impact, if any, the Thirty Years’ War had upon their careers. Petel (1601/02–35), the youngest, died in the famine and plague that decimated Augsburg’s population in the aftermath of the Swedish and Protestant army’s invasion of south Germany. Had the others already reached their peaks or did their opportunities disappear as the war intensified during the later 1620s?

Author

• Jeffrey Chipps Smith, University of Texas at Austin