What hasn't been written about the view of Uta von Naumburg.

He is cool and unapproachable, entrenched behind the high hem of the mantle of the stone donor figure in the west choir of Naumburg Cathedral.

For Walt Disney, as an enthusiastic follower of Romanesque art, it was clear: Uta had to be the evil queen in his Snow White film.

In any case, up until this weekend her Nefertian gaze was vacant, but now he has regained his focus.

Uta marvels at her young competitor in the middle of the choir polygonal, a Maria in oil on panel, just as the evil queen envied Snow White her beauty and youth.

Stefan Trinks

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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In the whitest white of all the figures on the new central panel of the cathedral high altar by the painter Michael Triegel, measuring 242 centimeters in height and 220 in width, she is enthroned on an antique plinth of statues of gods and yet is by no means static.

Under the deep glowing lapis lazuli blue of her coat, the young woman's blue eyes sparkle with the will to live.

Visitors to the World Heritage West Choir instinctively feel they are confronted with a contemporary woman, just as God's decree chose an ordinary woman from among the people two thousand years ago.

The Christ Child presented by her with the bloated belly of a real newborn in all his helplessness seems just as contemporary, but above all the saints and witnesses of faith behind the honorary brocade,

"Are these sacred?" one of the construction workers involved in inserting the central panel into the stone altar canteen spontaneously asked the artist, and the question is only too justified.

It is about the theologically most radical possible update, because in addition to Peter, actually a beggar from Trastevere in Rome, there are also portraits of donors and artist friends among those who open the cloth of honour.

But just as Bonhoeffer stood up for the faith and died in the Nazi era, there are still people today who join this tradition, illustrated by holding the cloth of salvation together.

In return, Mary, behind whose cloth one can also find security, becomes the protective cloak for everyone at the same time.