Cherubs, angels and lots of gold: Upper Swabian baroque

By Claudia Bell Mar 30, 2010, 7:59 GMT

Warthausen, Germany - The plates contain red and yellow 'little buttons' and next to them are dumplings made green by spinach, amid a lot of gravy.

A meal as in the days of the Baroque era is served to guests in the town of Warthausen in south-western Germany's Upper Swabian region. It consists of a wedding soup, then filled breast of veal with the 'little buttons' which are a kind of noodle, and then for desert a creation typical of the region, called 'Nonnenfuerzle,' a choux pastry doughnut fried in hot oil.

'A Baroque-style meal must always be colourful and, like the decorations inside a church, speak to all the senses,' explains historian Michael Barczyk about the multicoloured combination of foods served up on the plate.

But as nice as it all sounds, such a sumptuous meal was not available to all levels of 18th-century society.

The simple folk had to nourish themselves with all kinds of grains, cabbage and carrots, while members of the clergy and the nobility sat down at richly laid-out tables. 'Gorging themselves and boozing was the main activity of these gentlemen,' was the way an Englishman in 1794 described the table manners of the times.

Bottom-line, says Barczyk, society was nourished thus: 'The Upper Swabian monk did not starve, the lower nobility often did, the higher nobility never, the farmer always, the common citizen, rarely.'

Overall, tastes which do not exactly tend toward the frugal are also reflected in the decorations of the Baroque houses of worship in Upper Swabia.

It is precisely here, in the region stretching from Ulm in the north, the Danube River and Swabian Alb mountains in the west, the Iller river to the east and Lake Constance to the south, that the typical Baroque style comes to full expression in sumptuous decorations with countless angels, saints and cherubs.

Because Upper Swabia only became part of the Wuerttemberg province in 1806, this Catholic patch of land in the former kingdom for a long time was an alien entity. Whereas in Wuerttemberg the powerful Pietists rejected any and all luxury and enjoyment, Upper Swabia with its sumptuous, gold-plated Baroque style proclaimed the joy of life.

And so today, more than 100 monasteries, castles and churches are to be found, stretched out like pearls on a string, along the Upper Swabian Baroque Road, founded more than 40 years ago as a tourist route.

Imposing monasteries such as those in Wiblingen, Ochsenhause and Inzighofen, or the castles in Salem, Meersburg and Tettnang are testimony to the way of thinking of the builders of that period. Indeed, Baroque architecture is regarded as a manifestation of the Counter-Reformation.

'The faithful were not only to be taught, but also moved by that which they saw,' historian Barczyk said.

One of the most famous buildings of Upper Swabian Baroque is the convent in Bad Schussenried. The Rococo library with its bookshelves, gallery and ceiling frescos are one of the most important convent library halls north of the Alps.