ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the twentieth- and twenty-first-century display in Germany of the thirteenth-century equestrian statue known as the Magdeburg Rider; it concentrates on the sculpture’s presence in museum exhibitions. In the modern history of German Gothic sculpture, the Magdeburg Rider has almost always been part of a triumvirate with the Bamberg Rider and the donor figures from Naumburg. Like modern cultural–historical exhibitions, Deutsche Größe (DG) displayed a range of objects from the past: works of art, documents, other kinds of artifacts. DG put great emphasis on the Magdeburg Rider. It was the centerpiece of the gallery in which it stood and one of only sixteen objects illustrated in the exhibition’s catalogue. The effect of the Magdeburg Rider in DG was significantly affected by two museological innovations of the exhibition. Each gallery of DG was designed to echo, but not to copy fully, an architectural monument from the era displayed in that room.
