Remember me!
Mourning Portraits in the Catholic Areas of Switzerland
When I am laid in earth my wrongs create
No trouble in thy breast
Remember me! Remember me! But ah! Forget my fate.
Nahum Tate, libretto for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas
At the very beginning of my research the biggest predicamentwas how to call the little portrait photographs of departed relatives, visible in most catholic households in Central Switzerland - the area I come from. Based on the fact, that there is no written Swiss German and therefore no standardised grammar, then nomenclature of the little mourning portraits are as varied as the Swiss German dialects and the outcome of my early research was rather slim. After a while I assembled different names and spellings with the help of a local historian and a printer. Finally, I compiled a varied list of how the pictures are called in other regions and dialects e.g. Leidhelgeli, Truurböldli, Totenzettel, Trauerandenken etc. All of a sudden, I came across various smaller publications of predominately local historians, who write about death, dying and mourning traditions.
The custom of mourning portraits had its origins in the Netherlands in the second half of the 17th Century. The precursors just consisted of handwritten texts and religious imagery, to invoke to pray for the deaths. The first mourning portraits were annotated with a name and a date are in the collection of the Katharinenkonvent-Museum in Utrecht and date back to 1634 and 1640. In the following centuries, the custom spread from the Netherlands to the catholic parts of Germany down to the Northern parts of Italy. The practice arrived in Switzerland and Lichtenstein in the middle of the 19th Century, where the earliest artefacts date back to the 1850s.
Over the years to the present day the Leidhelgeli have changed, less in their seize, but with a stronger focus on portraiture, away from the biblical texts and indulgence to an iconic representation of the deceased. When at the end of the 19thCentury photography became more accessible to the broader public, little cut out portraits were stuck on the memorial cards, often oval, framed by ornamental borders. Then developments in the letterpress-printing techniques allowed the portraits to be printed directly onto the paper and also the depictions of the departed became bigger, taking up one side of the Leidhelgeli to borderless portraits.
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Full version can be read in the soon to be released catalogue
