Towards the end of January 1937, Beckett made a stop in Naumburg to see its cathedral and came away with his interest in ecclesiastical architecture and sculpture front and centre. Travelling on, he devoted most of his attention to churches and their statuary, though the great sculptors of the 15th and 16th centuries did not always convince him. In Bamberg and Würzburg, it was the work of the Wolfskehlmeister that he preferred – and appears to have related to: “Master of senile & collapsed. Another man for me” (25/02/37).
In Nuremberg, Adam Kraft’s work impressed Beckett the most. A visit to the Heilig-Geist-Spital and Kraft’s Kreuzigungsgruppe became one of the few occasions during his journey that drew some lines of poetry from him and the motif of the two thieves, whose statues are placed to both sides of the crucified Christ in the shadowed corners of the courtyard, will appear once more, over ten years later, in Waiting for Godot.
![[Translate to English:] 02/03/37
I wish I were an old man
or an old woman
half & half
or an old hermaphrodite
if hermaphrodites live to be old
only old old as a crutch
with a room off the big yard
of the Holy Ghost Spital in Nürnberg
When the sun shines at midday on Adam Kraft’s
Big black stone Christ Crucified
But not on the repentant thief
Nor the unrepentant](/fileadmin/sub-websites/bibliothek/user_upload/bilder/ausstellungen/beckett/02-03-37.png)
