In an interview years ago, Umberto Eco emphasised that he would have loved to spend an evening with the most beautiful woman of the Middle Ages - in his eyes, Uta von Naumburg. Uta von Naumburg gazes proudly and mysteriously through the west choir of Naumburg Cathedral. For centuries, she has fascinated and mesmerised visitors to the cathedral. So did Walter Hege, who staged and photographed her like UFA stars in the 1920s. One of these photos fell into the hands of Walt Disney in 1935, who then used Uta as the model for the evil stepmother in his film Snow White. This character also appears beautiful, vain but also deceitful and mean and, like Uta, she still fascinates people today and also plays a leading role in the remake of Snow White. The film will be released in German cinemas on 20 March 2025. However, Uta von Naumburg does not have to answer the question of who is the fairest of them all.
The connection between Uta and Walt Disney is often unknown to many visitors to the cathedral. In the special guided tour „Uta meets the Naumburg Master“ on 2 May 2025 at 6 pm, guests can learn more about Uta, about her life as a margravine alongside her husband Ekkehard, about the construction of Naumburg Cathedral and, of course, about the Naumburg Master, who made her immortal 200 years after her death with the donor figure.
BACKGROUND
As one of 12 Naumburg benefactor figures, Uta von Ballenstedt has been deeply embedded in German and European visual memory since the 1920s thanks to her extraordinary charisma and constant media presence, and has enjoyed uninterrupted popularity to this day. Historically, not much is known about her. She was born in Ballenstedt, near Quedlinburg in the Harz Mountains. Her marriage to Margrave Ekkehard II remained without an heir. Everything else is lost in the darkness of history.
Its nameless creator was given the name „Naumburg Master“ by art historians after his surviving masterpiece, the Naumburg West Choir. His work can be traced across Europe from northern France via Mainz to Naumburg and Meissen on the basis of the surviving works.
The architecture, sculpture, glass and wall paintings of the Naumburg west choir, which was completed around 1250, are characterised by their outstanding artistic quality and are so interrelated in terms of iconography and construction that this can only be explained by the overall direction of a responsible sculptor-architect, namely the „Naumburg“ master from Mainz. The design of the crucifixion group and the Passion reliefs on the west rood screen as well as the donor figures in the west choir or the deacon and the bishop's tomb slab in the east choir are of unrivalled mastery.
Faces, gestures and movements are rendered in an extremely lively, realistic and expressive way. The figures seem animated. Firmly anchored in the architectural framework, the donor figures, crucifixion group and Passion reliefs, together with the world judge depicted in the quatrefoil and the images of the Naumburg bishops, the virtues triumphing over vice and the saints in the stained glass windows, refer to the central messages of faith of high medieval theology.
Naumburg Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul is one of the most important sacred cultural monuments from the European High Middle Ages, and not just because of its west choir. Together with the cloister, the Chapel of the Epiphany, St Mary's Church, the surrounding curia buildings and the cathedral garden, it forms an outstanding architectural ensemble. The two choirs, including the rood screens from the 13th century, the preserved choir stalls, the stained glass and the works of art gathered in the cathedral treasury vault give visitors an experience of medieval liturgy that is otherwise almost impossible to replicate. Naumburg Cathedral has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2018.
