2025 marks the 500th anniversary of the uprising of the Salzburg tradesmen, miners and peasants - commonly referred to as the Salzburg Peasants' War - against their sovereign, Prince Archbishop Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg.
The guest exhibition planned to mark this anniversary in the cathedral's north oratory is intended to illustrate the historical events, shed light on the living conditions of farmers, miners and lansquenets in the 16th century and focus on the art-historical examination of the subject from the perspective of its instrumentalization by political ideologies in the 20th century.
The Salzburg Peasants' War of 1525/26 is embedded in an uprising of broad sections of the population against the authorities, which spread across large parts of Central Europe from 1524. This uprising, which has gone down in history as the great German Peasants' War, forms the starting point for a history of artistic reception that looks beyond geographical borders and historical epochs to examine the motif of armed revolt by the rural population in European art history. The arc spans from the abstraction of historical events to the anachronistic symbol of the suffering, oppression and difficult living conditions of the lower social classes in Europe around 1900 to the instrumentalization of the same for propagandistic purposes in the art of the Nazi era and communism.
November 8, 2025 to April 27, 2026
