- Person
- Marc Chagall
- Lived
- 1887–1985
- Field
- Painting
- From
- Russian-French
The story
Mainz in Germany had centuries earlier been one of the great centres of Jewish learning, called the capital of European Jewry. Its church of St Stephan, founded around 990 by Archbishop Willigis on the highest hill in the city and rebuilt from the late 13th century as a Gothic hall church, was heavily damaged by bombing in the Second World War, and parts of its old vaulting were never restored.
After the Holocaust, a German priest, Monsignor Klaus Mayer, the parish priest of St Stephan, wrote to Marc Chagall in 1973 and persuaded him to create a sign of Jewish-Christian attachment and international understanding for the church. The friendship that grew between the two men made the project possible.
Chagall, who had lost his home town of Vitebsk to the Nazi invasion and seen European Jewry nearly annihilated, agreed. In 1978, at the age of 91, he created the first window in his studio in the south of France, and it was installed in Mainz that year. Eight more followed between 1978 and 1985, the year of his death, six in the east choir and three in the transept. Filled with glowing blues, they depict figures and stories from the Hebrew Bible. Remarkably, Chagall never visited Mainz himself.
After his death his longtime collaborator Charles Marq, with whom he had worked for 28 years, added further windows in the nave in Chagall's colours, so that the whole church is now bathed in blue light.
St Stephan's is the only church in Germany with windows by Chagall. According to the city of Mainz and the parish, about 200,000 visitors a year climb St Stephan's hill to see them. For many, they stand as a powerful act of reconciliation by a Jewish artist towards the country that had tried to destroy his people, and a lasting symbol of friendship between Judaism and Christianity.
Why it matters
Chagall's windows in Mainz have become a widely visited symbol of reconciliation between Jews and Christians after the Holocaust.
About Marc Chagall
One of the 20th century's most beloved painters; pioneer of modernism rooted in Jewish folk life.
More about Marc Chagall
- Chagall's America Windows celebrate religious freedomMarc Chagall created the America Windows for the Art Institute of Chicago as a tribute to the US Bicentennial and America's commitment to cultural and religious freedom.
- Marc Chagall designed a cathedral window at the age of 90Marc Chagall designed a stained-glass window for Chichester Cathedral at the age of 90, inspired by Psalm 150, and it was unveiled by the Duchess of Kent in 1978.
- Marc Chagall's twelve windows for a Jerusalem hospitalMarc Chagall spent two years creating twelve stained-glass windows of the tribes of Israel for the synagogue of Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center, installed in February 1962.
- Marc Chagall gave France his Biblical Message paintingsMarc Chagall donated 17 large paintings and 38 gouaches of his Biblical Message series to France, which built a national museum for them in Nice, opened on his birthday in 1973.
- Marc Chagall painted the ceiling of the Paris OperaOn 23 September 1964 Marc Chagall's new ceiling for the Paris Opera was unveiled: nearly 2,400 square feet of canvas paying tribute to great composers, dancers and actors.
- Marc Chagall filled every window of a Kent village churchAll Saints Church in Tudeley, Kent, is the only church in the world with all twelve of its windows by Marc Chagall, installed between 1967 and 1985.
- Marc Chagall founded an art school in his home townIn 1918, as commissar of arts for Vitebsk, Marc Chagall founded the city's People's Art College and an art museum, opening art education to ordinary people.
- Marc Chagall made the Peace window at the United NationsIn 1964 Marc Chagall created Peace, a stained-glass window at the United Nations in New York honouring Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who died on a peace mission in 1961.
- Marc Chagall painted murals for Moscow's Jewish theatreFor the 1921 opening of Moscow's State Jewish Chamber Theatre, Marc Chagall painted huge murals of dancers, fiddlers and acrobats that became a landmark in theatre history.
- Marc Chagall preserved a vanished Jewish world in paintMarc Chagall's paintings of Vitebsk, its fiddlers, rabbis and wooden houses, became the most important visual record of East European Jewish life, and inspired Fiddler on the Roof.
Sources
- Marc Chagall Wikipedia
- St. Stephan, Mainz Wikipedia
- St. Stephen Rheinhessen Touristik
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.