GERMANIC MUSEUM TO RECEIVE PORPHYRY SEPULCHRAL FIGURE BY MASTER NICOLAUS

The following article was written for the Crimson by Professor Emeritus Kuno Francke Litt. D. '12, honorary curator of the Germanic Museum. Professor Francke is well known in this country and abroad as an authority on German literature, and fine arts.

He has been connected with the University since 1884 and from 1902 to 1917 was curator of the Germanic Museum. Besides his work in the University as professor of the history of German culture and curator of the museum, Professor Francke is the author of 15 books.

Word has just been received from the Austrian Government that the cast of the porphyry sepnlchral figure of Emperor Frederick III in Vienna Cathedral, ordered a year ago by the Germanic Museum, is now completed and will soon be shipped. This is one of the richest and most decorative pieces of flamboyant Gothic sculpture of the second half of the fifteenth century. The Emperor, in gorgeous vestment, with crown, imperial orb and sceptre, is standing under a vaulted canopy the front of which contains a relief of St. Christopher with the Christ child. Around the Emperor are grouped the emblems of his sovereignty and coats of arms of the Empire, the Hapsburg dynasty. Upper and Nether-Austria, Styria, and Lombardy, together with heraldic lions and an eagle, the latter holding in his beak a ribbon with the letters A. E. I. O. U. (Austria Erit in Orbe Ultima)--the Emperor's favorite motto. His long flowing hair and delicate, refined lines of his aristocratic face heighten the ornate, romantic aspect of the whole composition. When we remember that it was during the weak reign of Frederick III that the decay of the medaeval imperial power approached its climax, the tragic element in all this phantastic splendor becomes apparent.

Master Nicolaus, the sculptor of this announcement, who according to documentary evidence was called in 1467 from Strassburg to Vienna in order to execute. The Emperor's Tomb at St. Stephen's Cathedral, is probably identical with Nicolaus von Leyden, the sculptor of the two remarkable busts of a Prophet and a Sibyl in the former Chancellery at Strassburg, casts of which are in the Germanic Museum.