A complete history of this style, worthy of its importance, is still a desideratum which it is to be hoped the zeal and industry of German architects will ere long supply, and vindicate their national art from the neglect it now lies under, by illustrating as it deserves one of the most interesting chapters in the history of architecture.[1] Already German writers seem to be aware that the age of the Hohenstaufens was not only the most exclusively national, but also the most brilliant period of their history. Its annals have engaged the pens of their best historians, and its poetry has been rescued from obscurity and commented upon with characteristic fulness. Every phase of their civilization has been fully illustrated, except one—that one being their architecture, which is, however, the noblest and the most living record of what they did or aspired to do that could be left for their posterity to study. So distinctly is it their own, that, were it necessary to find for it a separate name, the style of the Hohenstaufens would be that which would most correctly describe it.
The leading characteristics of the German style are the double apsidal arrangement of plan, the multiplication of small circular or octangular towers, combined with polygonal domes, at the intersections of the transepts with the nave, and the extended use of galleries under the eaves of the roofs both of the apses and of the straiglit sides. The most ornamental parts are the doorways and the capitals of the columns. The latter surpass in beauty and in richness anything of their kind executed during the Middle Ages, and, though sometimes rude in execution, they equal in design any capitals ever invented. These only required the experience and refinement of another century of labor to qualify them to compete successfully with any parts of the pointed style of architecture which they borrowed from the French, and which in the course of time entirely superseded their own native style.
- ↑ The work of F. Osten on the architecture of Lombardy, and that of Geier and Görtz on the style in the Rhine country, combined with the works of Boisserée, have already furnished considerable materials for such a history. Both these first-named works were left incomplete, the former from the death of the author, the latter owing to the late troubles of the country.
