‘Too Beautiful’: an exhibition about the English view of the Rhine
Lord Byron would have turned 200 in 2024. The Siebengebirgsmuseum Königswinter has taken this date as the occasion for an exhibition. Entitled ‘Too Beautiful – The English View of the Rhine’, it illustrates the beginnings and heyday of British Rhine tourism in the 19th century (until 9 March 2025). The importance of Byron in this context can hardly be overestimated. As a scandal-ridden influencer and pop star – at a time when these terms were not yet known – he shaped the behaviour and literary work of many intellectuals and some members of the English upper class. His poetry, ‘Childe Harold’, which, among other things, deals with the experiences of his 1816 trip to the Rhine, promoted the ‘romantic’ Middle Rhine Valley and, not least, the Drachenfels as attractive travel destinations. Added to this was the fact that after a 20-year interruption, travel on the continent was once again possible for the English with the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The Rhine Valley, which had been no more than a stopover on the ‘Grand Tour’ of 18th-century aristocrats on their way to Italy, now gained its own significance as a tourist attraction. The occasional trips of idle rich people and curious artists turned into a wave that soon brought many more affluent middle-class families to Bonn, the Siebengebirge, the Lorelei and the castle ruins of the Middle Rhine Valley – and from 1828, they could also travel by steamboat.
The small but exquisite exhibition at the Siebengebirgsmuseum focuses on the views with which British artists – led by William Turner and Clarkson Stanfield – fuelled the fashionable enthusiasm for the Rhine. It also includes caricatures that poke fun at the excesses of Rhine travel as it developed into a mass phenomenon. Obviously, even back then, there was something like ‘overtourism’ in the eyes of contemporaries. It is also interesting to see that most of the views were not so much the work of artistic self-realisation as commissioned works for publishers. They made money – even for those who did not have the time and means to travel to the Rhine. Enthusiasm for the Middle Ages and the romanticism of ruins could also be served in this way.
The publication accompanying the exhibition is more of a companion book than a catalogue. In 22 short articles by various authors, British travellers and artists are introduced and associated with their places of longing. This provides a picture of the developing tourist infrastructure and travel habits. Finally, it also becomes clear how the ‘celebrity factor’ kept the Rhine in the news. One section of the exhibition is dedicated to Queen Victoria’s journey along the Rhine – the title of the exhibition is a quote from her travel diary – and another is dedicated to the English crown prince’s stay in Königswinter in 1857; theoretically incognito, but in reality a public sensation of the first order.
Even if Bonn cannot be the focus of the exhibition, its role is clear enough. While the early travellers to the Rhine generally took Cologne as their starting point, this changed in the 1840s at the latest. That was when Bonn got its own railway connection. Furthermore, travellers’ reports gave Cologne an image problem: the city appeared to be interchangeable with other big cities, it didn’t smell good, it didn’t have a Rhine promenade, and the cathedral was (still) a ruin. Besides, the trip on the river from Cologne to Bonn was not attractive, as could now be read in travel guides. So you might as well board the Rhine steamer in Bonn. The city seized this opportunity: in the 1850s, the Rhine promenade was built and large hotels sprang up. One article in the accompanying book is dedicated to the ‘English colony’ that developed in Bonn in the 19th century. It certainly owed its existence not least to the university, but also to Rhine tourism and the associated boost in the city’s image.
A look back at the heyday of Rhine travel in the 19th century also evokes feelings of nostalgia. In my childhood around 1960, there were hardly any English tourists left, but the start of the shipping season on the Rhine was still a big deal. Every year on Holy Thursday, a brass band played at the ‘Köln-Düsseldorfer’ landing dock, and hundreds more stood on the banks to celebrate the occasion. A trip on the Rhine was often enough, what the flight to Mallorca would later become: the annual holiday. That’s how my parents’ honeymoon went from Bonn to Bacharach. And the Drachenfels (Dragon Rock) didn’t get its nickname ‘The highest mountain in Holland’ for nothing. All that happened a long time ago, but the Middle Rhine Valley and the Siebengebirge are still worth a visit.
On display at the Siebengebirgsmuseum, Kellerstraße 16, Königswinter, until 9 March:
The steps of Bonn’s old City Hall have seen similar scenes time and again, especially when Bonn was the capital city of Germany. The list of visitors ranged from Theodor Heuss, who addressed the German people from the steps immediately after his election as the first Federal President, to John F. Kennedy in 1963, the Queen Elizabeth of England in 1965, and as late as 1989 when Gorbachev visited. Not all occasions were as spectacular as in the 60s, and over time, state visits became routine. Nevertheless, the steps of the town hall remained something of a stage for the Bonn Republic. The reason for this was mundane: the government district was somewhat remote and, as a provisional arrangement, had no representative assembly area. The market square helped out.
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