2023-06-05 15:15:23
Why antiquity in Pompeii is closest to us
Pornographic Pompeii: Wall Painting
Quelle: picture-alliance / akg-images / Tristan Lafranchis
Erotic frescoes and daily discoveries: If you are traveling to Italy this summer, you should pack the Pompeii book by Gabriel Fichtenmeister. The German director of the excavation site talks about his fascinating workplace.
SEven the title of Gabriel breeding bar’s “Vom Zauber des Untergangs” (The Magic of Downfall) shows why Pompeii is perhaps the most spectacular archaeological site of antiquity: on October 25, 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the city at its foot with ash and stones. As a result, the buildings were preserved, numerous frescoes and mosaics are preserved in them. The shapes of things made of organic material, and even of people, can be reconstructed by filling the cavities in the ground they create with plaster. The finds are particularly valuable because, unlike many other relics from antiquity, they are still in their original context. Pompeii offers the modern visitor a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the ancient world of life – its current magic is the result of its abrupt decline in antiquity.
“What Pompeii says about us”: The special character of the book is hinted at in the subtitle. Breeding bar, who was appointed director of the archaeological park in 2021 at the age of just 40, gives the reader a very personal tour of his excavation site. Again and again he speaks of his own “motor”, of his interest in the non-classical in antiquity and his longing for a different, authentic world. He links ancient life, as can be reconstructed in Pompeii, with his own experiences and questions of the present, without updating it in a trivial way. Breeding bar, for example, comes from a hermaphrodite on a Pompeian fresco from his student days, in which he had already dealt with hermaphrodites. The ancients, we learn, had a very different understanding of sexuality than we do today: violence was often considered normal, and it wasn’t sexual orientation that was decisive, but the hierarchy of activity and passivity. Foucault is the inspiration here, but breeding bar passes on the insights of discourse analysis with great ease.
Eroticism in Pompeii
While the first chapter focuses primarily on erotic depictions in Pompeii, the second chapter turns to religion; art in antiquity was closely intertwined with it. The focus is on one of the most famous buildings of Pompeii, the Villa of Mysteries and its fresco cycle. The images have been interpreted as representations of secret rites, but also of a wedding. Was the villa the site of a forbidden mystery cult or just a house with “welcoming decorations for the newly married lady of the house”? Breeding bar shows how the different interpretations are shaped by the respective perspectives of the scientists. He also introduces us to Margarete Bieber, the first woman archaeologist to qualify as a professor, and takes a critical look at the history of his subject on the basis of her difficulties in gaining a foothold in science.
The value of Pompeii for social and economic history, the subject of the third chapter, is particularly great. It wasn’t until 2017 that archaeologists found an inscription that upended previous estimates of the size of the population. Previously it was assumed that 8,000 to 15,000 people lived in Pompeii, now it is assumed that there were around 45,000. So Pompeii was cramped and dependent on grain imports. If these failed to materialize, parts of the population would have to starve, and there would have been unrest again and again.
Can a German do that?
In the last chapter, breeding bar vividly describes the resistance that his appointment as director of Pompeii initially triggered in Italy. But breeding bar weathered the storm and started work. It is particularly important to him to anchor the excavation site in the region and also to make it accessible to young people from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. (The description of a theater project in which schoolchildren from the area performed Aristophanes’s “The Birds” in the old theater is somewhat sentimental.)
On the way in Pompeii: Italy’s Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano (middle) and the German director Gabriel Fichtenmeister (r.)
Quelle: Getty Images
Overall, the plea for the fruitfulness of dealing with antiquity on the basis of its material relics is highly successful. The breadth of the book, which transcends the boundaries between non-fiction, essay and memoir, is impressive. In a less elegant but catchy conversational tone, breeding bar slides from ancient social and cultural history to the importance of intuition for scientific knowledge and knows how to report just as interestingly on today’s challenges of scientific communication as on the bombing of Pompeii in the Second World War.
Above all, “The Magic of Downfall” shows how invigorating an archaeologist’s openness about his “engine” can be. As a rule, scientists avoid expressing their personal enthusiasm in order not to call into question the supposed objectivity of their research. Breeding bars consciously focus on his personal view. The French ancient historian Paul Veyne, who also appealed to non-experts with his books, he attests: “The man can drive, and as a reader you like to go for a ride”. People also like to climb into the breeding bar and listen intently to the rattling of the engine.
Gabriel breeding bar: “The magic of the downfall”. Propylaea, 240 pages, 29 euros
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