Polling

ART AND MONASTIC TRADITIONS

The monastic village of Polling is situated in the heart of the upper Bavarian region of Pfaffenwinkel, south of Munich and not far away from the district seat of Weilheim. The tranquil locality, with its 3.300 inhabitants, has its roots in a 1.250-year history characterised by a monastic and agricultural, as well as artistic, lifestyle. A multitude of sightseeing attractions point to artists of many an epoch, for whom Polling was a place of inspiration and retreat. Polling was already known as an artist’s village in the 19th century: initially seen as a summer residence for various painters of the Munich School, it later became a place of pilgrimage for American artists, who found in the landscape along the banks of the Ammer a motif for their paintings. The Polling Museum has many works in its collection that were created here by artists such as Heinrich Zügel, Franz Defregger, Frank Duveneck and Crone.

Decades later, the area entered the history of literature under the name ‘Pfeiffering’ in Thomas Mann’s novel, Doktor Faustus, whose protagonist flees to this fictional perfect world. Doktor-Faustus-Weg, a trail opened in Polling in 2007, leads one past many of the book’s settings.

It is not, however, only the historical village centre that hints at the special role that tradition and culture continues to play in Polling: in the Regenbogenstadl, two American creatives, the composer La Monte Young and his wife, the light artist Marian Zazeela, bring together sound and light to create a collaborative work known as the Dream House.