Eye for the World

Amsterdam and the Gateway to the World

From 14 December 2019 until 1 August 2020, the Embassy of the Free Mind presented the exhibition Eye for the World: The Visionary Thinker Jacob Böhme. This travelling international exhibition was a collaboration between the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Embassy of the Free Mind, paying tribute to Jacob Böhme as one of Germany’s greatest philosophers.

The Shoemaker Who Did Not Stick to His Trade

Jacob Böhme was a shoemaker by profession, but a writer by vocation. In 1600 he had an intuition that granted him an all-encompassing insight into the secrets of nature and the cosmos. It took him more than ten years to express this vision in his first work, Aurora. When this manuscript began circulating and became immediately popular, it was confiscated by the local authorities in 1613 and its author placed under a writing ban. Yet, this did not stop him from writing over thirty works during his lifetime. Böhme was a champion of toleration: he was an outspoken opponent of war, violence and the persecution of minorities.

International Collaboration

This international project was launched by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD) in 2017 when it presented in the Palace Chapel in Dresden the exhibition ALL IN ALL: The Conceptual World of the Mystical Philosopher Jacob Böhme. The Embassy of the Free Mind contributed to the Dresden exhibition by loaning historical books and manuscripts. For the Amsterdam edition, EFM curators José Bouman and Cis van Heertum added a completely new facet to the exhibition and accompanying catalogue by presenting the results of decades of research by the Ritman Research Institute into the role of Amsterdam in the dissemination of Böhme’s thought.

What’s There to See?

The exhibition draws visitors inside Böhme’s conceptual world by posing some of the evocative questions he asked in his books, such as ‘Do you think God is only the God of Christians?’ and ‘What do you think the earth and stars are made of?’ The answers Böhme himself found are developed in the themes Nature, Opposition, Fall, Creation, Rebirth and Freedom.

The exhibition also invites visitors to explore Böhme’s ideas by immersing themselves in the beautiful and complex imagery in his books, made by artists who sought to visualise his abstract ideas. It offers interactive touchscreens, including a symbolic portrait of Jacob Böhme, his own manuscript of Aurora, the remarkable pop-up illustrations in the 18th-century English edition of his works, and a map of Amsterdam charting all the printers and booksellers associated with Böhme.

Which Stories Are Told?

The exhibition tells adventurous stories. One of them is about how Böhme’s manuscripts found their way to Amsterdam in a chest of books via a convoy that was robbed. Another deals with how Abraham Willemszoon van Beyerland, who translated Böhme’s manuscripts, had them printed at his own expense and distributed them himself, making Böhme’s works available after the latter’s death. There is also the remarkable coincidence that Aurora was not only the first book Böhme wrote, but also the first book (in Dutch translation) of the rich collection of the Embassy of the Free Mind. Amsterdam became Böhme’s gateway to the world.

The Next Stages

Thanks to the generous support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Free State of Saxony, the exhibition previously travelled to Coventry, England, and continued after the Amsterdam edition to Wrocław, Poland, in 2020, before being permanently displayed in Görlitz, Germany, where Böhme lived most of his life. The curators behind the exhibition and the accompanying catalogues and scholarly volumes are Claudia Brink, Lucinda Martin and Cecilia Muratori.

Publication

The Dutch-language exhibition catalogue OOG VOOR DE WERELD, published by Sandstein Verlag, is available from the EFM shop. Price €18.

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