Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff

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Gable of the Aachen City Theater
Eagle of the old Elberfeld town hall
The Bergische Löwe on Willy-Brandt-Platz in Wuppertal-Elberfeld
Lion statue on the outside staircase of the Reichsbahndirektion Elberfeld
Calvary at the Catholic parish church of St. Clemens in Süchteln

Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff (born March 23, 1791 in Cologne , † February 27, 1858 in Cologne) was a German sculptor .

life and work

Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff came from an important family of sculptors in Cologne. He was the son of Franz Xaver Bernhard Imhoff (1766-1824) and a cousin of Johann Joseph Imhoff (1796-1880).

Imhoff received his sculptural training from Christian Daniel Rauch in Berlin . In 1822, Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff exhibited an anatomical study made of plaster of paris and a seated Venus in a bath made of alabaster at the Royal Prussian Academy of the Arts . In 1823 he settled back in Cologne. From 1823 to 1825 he created the allegorical figures for the pediment of the Aachen City Theater based on designs by the painter Johann Baptist Joseph Bastiné , which Bastiné made based on a design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel . Imhoff first made a model 1.02 meters high and 2.45 meters wide, which he presented in Aachen in August 1824. Based on this model, he created the gable relief on the theater within four months from soft marl stone . The model adorned the wall of Theaterstrasse (Hindenburgstrasse) 19, which architect Johann Peter Cremer had built and lived in, until the Second World War .

On behalf of the city of Cologne, Imhoff created a "crassly realistic bust" of Daniels by Heinrich Gottfried Wilhelm Daniels in 1826 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of service , which is now kept in the depot of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne .

In 1828 Imhoff made the eagle console for the marble bust of Crown Princess Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria , which was created by Christian Friedrich Tieck as jewelry for the Elisenbrunnen in Aachen .

In 1831 Imhoff created four bronze eagles for the roof of the old Elberfeld town hall , based on a model by Christian Friedrich Tieck. In the war years 1940/41 the bronze eagles were replaced by artificial stone statues, which were partially destroyed by bombing in 1943. Three of the artificial stone eagles could be restored after the war and received a bronze surround at the end of the 1980s. Since September 1, 1988, the three remaining eagles have been back on the roof of today's Von der Heydt Museum .

For the staircase of the old Elberfeld town hall , Imhoff made two bronze lion statues from 1831 to 1834, based on a model design by Christian Daniel Rauch. The statues were cast in the Gutehoffnungshütte in Oberhausen . As a special feature, the lions could even spit fire through an installed gas pipe. In 1877, for reasons of transport policy, the lions were removed from there and stored. It was not until 1887 that the lions were put up again at the entrance to the new bathing establishment in Brausenwerth . During the Second World War, one of the lions was destroyed and the other damaged. The damaged lion was restored using fragments of the destroyed lion and, although still owned by the city of Wuppertal , remained with a local vehicle construction company. In 1965 the city of Wuppertal commissioned the sculptor Joachim Wolf-Müller to take impressions of the lion that had been preserved and the remains of the destroyed lion and to restore the lions. On June 8, 1967, the newly created lions were placed in front of the Elberfeld Railway Directorate . The heirs of the vehicle construction company C. Blumhardt Fahrzeugwerke returned the originally preserved lion to the city of Wuppertal in 1993. After extensive restoration, the Bergische Löwe was erected in a ceremony on October 22, 1994 on Willy-Brandt-Platz behind the town hall. The two lions in front of the Reichsbahndirektion Elberfeld were removed and stored at the beginning of 2015 due to construction work.

From 1834 to 1838, Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff created the twelve angelic statues making music on the buttresses of the outer choir of Cologne Cathedral based on designs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel . In the Kunstverein Imhoff presented in 1840 two busts and 1843, the model to a Beethoven from -Denkmal.

In 1849 Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff completed his work of a Carrara marble Venus lying on a bed , to which he had devoted all his energy for years.

In 1851, Pastor Hutmacher von St. Peter in Cologne commissioned Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff to design the Calvary at the Catholic parish church of St. Clemens in Süchteln . Imhoff designed the appearance of the station mountain and manufactured the clay crucifixion group. The Calvary had to be relocated through church renovation and expansion and was re-erected at its current location. Over the years, some minor characters have been lost and have been replaced by very similar casts of contemporary characters.

Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff was buried in the Melatenfriedhof in Cologne (hall 6 in Q). The original canopy tomb, which was probably designed by his son Franz August Bernhard Imhoff, showed an unfinished woman's head, accompanied by a hammer and chisel on the side. The grave inscription read: The chisel broke off on this head and the artist sank down into the grave . The tomb, which was damaged in World War II, was cleared in the 1970s and replaced with a simple tombstone. The grave slab for his wife was moved to the Kurth grave site (hall B).

Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff was married to Friederike Mehmel (1796–1862) and had several children, two of whom were sons, Ferdinand Franz Anton and Franz August Bernhard , who also worked as sculptors.

The sculptor Melchior zur Strasse was one of Imhoff's students .

literature

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Joseph Imhoff  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Imhoff (family of sculptors) . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 18 : Hubatsch – Ingouf . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1925, p. 578 .
  2. ↑ 1859 with Ulrich S. Soénius , Jürgen Wilhelm (Ed.): Kölner Personenlexikon . Greven Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , p. 260 . is due to a misprint
  3. ↑ denkmalplatz.de: Briefly - VITA Johann Joseph Imhoff d. J. Retrieved July 23, 2015.
  4. ↑ a b c Peter Bloch :  Imhoff. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 154 f. ( Digitized version ).
  5. ^ Karl Faymonville , Joseph Laurent, Richard Pick, Max Schmid-Burgk: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Aachen . Volume 3, 2 The secular monuments and the collections of the city of Aachen. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1924, p. 814.
  6. ↑ rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de: Heinrich Gottfried Wilhelm Daniels accessed on July 23, 2015
  7. ↑ Karl Faymonville , Joseph Laurent, Richard Pick, Max Schmid-Burgk: The art monuments of the city of Aachen Volume 3, 2 The profane monuments and the collections of the city of Aachen. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1924, p. 811.
  8. ↑ denkmal-wuppertal.de: The eagles of the old Elberfeld town hall, accessed on July 24, 2015.
  9. ↑ denkmal-wuppertal.de: Die Elberfelder Löwen accessed on July 23, 2015.
  10. ^ Johann Jakob Merlo :  Imhoff . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1881, p. 56.
  11. ↑ soetele.de: The Kalvarienberg am Kirchhof accessed on July 24, 2015.
  12. ^ Josef Abt, Johann Ralf Beines, Celia Körber-Leupold: Melaten - Cologne graves and history. Greven, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7743-0305-3 , p. 168.
personal data
SURNAME Imhoff, Wilhelm Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Imhoff, Wilhelm Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1858
Place of death Cologne