Interesting choice for the cover of first issue. The statue of Laocoön[1] and His Sons (Gruppo del Laocoonte), also called the Laocoön Group, has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures ever since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and placed on public display in the Vatican, where it remains. The style of the work is agreed to be that of the Hellenistic "Pergamene baroque" which arose in Greek Asia Minor around 200 BC, and whose best known undoubtedly original work is the Pergamon Altar (dated ca 180-160 BC, now Berlin)
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Heinrich Böll[1] Stiftung Turkey Team /HBSD Türkiye Bürosu
Heinrich Böll Foundation
[1] Heinrich Theodor Böll ( 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.
Böll's memory lives on, among other places, at the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
A special Heinrich Böll Archive was set up in the Cologne Library to house his personal papers, bought from his family, but much of the material was damaged, possibly irreparably, when the building collapsed in March 2009.
[1] The story of Laocoön, a Trojan priest, came from the Greek Epic Cycle on the Trojan Wars, though it is not mentioned by Homer. It had been the subject of a tragedy, now lost, by Sophocles and was mentioned by other Greek writers, though the events around the attack by the serpents vary considerably.
The most famous account of these is now in Virgil's Aeneid (see the Aeneid quotation at the entry Laocoön), but this dates from between 29 and 19 BC, which is possibly later than the sculpture. However, some scholars see the group as a depiction of the scene as described by Virgil. In Virgil Laocoön was a priest of Poseidon who was killed with both his sons after attempting to expose the ruse of the Trojan Horse by striking it with a spear. In Sophocles, on the other hand, he was a priest of Apollo, who should have been celibate but had married. The serpents killed only the two sons, leaving Laocoön himself alive to suffer. In other versions he was killed for having had sex with his wife in the temple of Poseidon, or simply making a sacrifice in the temple with his wife present. In this second group of versions, the snakes were sent by Poseidon and in the first by Poseidon and Athena, or Apollo, and the deaths were interpreted by the Trojans as proof that the horse was a sacred object.
The two versions have rather different morals: Laocoön was either punished for doing wrong, or for being right.The snakes are depicted as both biting and constricting, and are probably intended as venomous, as in Virgil.
Pietro Aretino thought so, praising the group in 1537: ...the two serpents, in attacking the three figures, produce the most striking semblances of fear, suffering and death. The youth embraced in the coils is fearful; the old man struck by the fangs is in torment; the child who has received the poison, dies. In at least one Greek telling of the story the oldest son is able to escape, and the composition seems to allow for that possibility..
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