Adolf Glitza

Adolf Glitza

Adolf Glitza , also Adolph Glitza , completely Johann Friedrich Adolph Glitza , originally Johann Friedrich Adolph Glitz (* July 25, 1820 in Hamburg ; † March 3, 1894 ibid) was a German Evangelical Lutheran clergyman and art collector.

Life

Adolf Glitza was the son of a shoemaker . The pedagogues Wilhelm and Friedrich Glitza were his brothers. He attended the learned school of the Johanneum and from Easter 1842 studied Protestant theology at the universities of Jena , Leipzig and Berlin. In 1845, after passing the official examination, he became a candidate for the Hamburg Ministry of Spiritual Affairs . He initially worked as a teacher at the private high school run by his two brothers. In 1852 he was elected deacon (3rd pastor) at the main church of Saint Catherine .

In 1875 he became the successor of the late Otto Wolters senior pastor of the Katharinenkirche. Glitza was "leading on the side of liberal theology ". With him began the liberal main pastor tradition of the Katharinenkirche. Although politically rather liberal, Glitza fought tenaciously but in vain against the customs union agreement of 1881, which resulted in the free port and, with the construction of the Speicherstadt, the forced relocation of around 20,000 people and a massive downsizing of the parish of St. Katharinen. To compensate for this, the working-class district of Hammerbrook was re-parish to St. Katharinen in 1887. This in turn led to discussions about the preservation of the Katharinenkirche or a relocation, which only came to an end after Glitza's death with the construction of St. Anne's Church as an additional church for Hammerbrook in 1898. Shortly before the end of his life and his term of office, Hamburg experienced the cholera epidemic of 1892 .

Since 1855 he was married to Ida, geb. Sasse (1837-1918). The couple had a son, Adolf, and a daughter, Ida (1855–1943). In 1877 she married the wholesale merchant Eduard Meyer, who took the family name Meyer-Glitza .

Painting collection

Lukas Cranach the Elder El .: St. Christopher with the baby Jesus crosses a stream (around 1518–1520)

With the support of his brother Wilhelm, Adolph Glitza built up an important collection of paintings since the 1850s, the focus of which was on Dutch, German and Italian old masters . He was soon one of the most important private collectors in Hamburg. The collection was publicly accessible after registration in the main pastorate at Catharinenkirchhof 26. In 1893 Glitza co-founded the Society of Hamburgischer Kunstfreunde , a forerunner of the Friends of the Kunsthalle .

In September and October 1896 a first exhibition of the collection with 122 paintings took place in memory of Adolf Glitza in the Hamburger Kunsthalle . In the foreword to the exhibition catalog written by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot with the assistance of Max J. Friedländer , Alfred Lichtwark reports that by the end of the 19th century there had not yet been a complete exhibition of works by older masters from private collections in Hamburg. If you wanted to get to know what the Hamburg community center still had in this area, you had to visit it from house to house. The funds obtained from admission tickets and catalogs were used by the Gesellschaft Hamburgischer Kunstfreunde for their first graphic orders, the so-called Glitza-Blätter . In 1898, the family of the Kunsthalle donated a painting of the Hamburg painter Matthias Scheits company outdoors . However, there was no hoped-for takeover of the entire collection by the Kunsthalle.

Glitza's widow looked after the collection until the end of her life in 1918. She came to the house at Horner Landstrasse 47, where she could still be viewed after “registering at Comptoir Alsterdamm 16-17”; it was even mentioned in the Baedeker . A second catalog appeared in 1922. During this economically difficult time, there were individual sales, such as the crucifixion of the master of the Virgo inter Virgines in 1930 to the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection and of St. Christophorus by Lukas Cranach the Elder , who worked for Paul Graupe in 1932 Berlin was auctioned. Cranach's Annunciation to Joachim came to the Mór Lipót Herzog collection in Budapest in the early 1930s , is now in the Szépművészeti Múzeum and has been part of a restitution suit since 2010 .

The rest of the Meyer-Glitza collection was auctioned at Ernst Hauswedell's in November 1965 after the death of Adolf Glitza's grandson Constantin Meyer-Glitza (1884–1965) .

Works

• Inaugural sermon delivered when he was introduced to the post of senior pastor at St. Catharinen on March 23, 1876. Hamburg: Kümpel 1876

literature

• Glitza (Johann Friedrich Adolf) , in: Hans Schröder : Lexicon of Hamburg writers up to the present. Volume 2, Hamburg 1854, p. 506 No. 1243
• Wilhelm Jensen: The Hamburg Church and its clergy since the Reformation. Hamburg: JJ Augustin 1958, p. 104 No. 21
• Peter Stolt : Liberal Protestantism in Hamburg - in the mirror of the main church St. Katharinen. (Works on the church history of Hamburg 25) Verlag Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-935413-11-4 , esp. Pp. 119f

Collection catalogs

• Catalog of the German and Dutch masters of the Glitza collection: Memorial exhibition of the Society of Hamburg Art Friends, Kunsthalle zu Hamburg, September-October MDCCCLXXXXVI. Hamburg 1896

( Digitized version )

• AL Mayer: The Glitza painting collection in Hamburg: Descriptive directory. Munich 1922
• Doctor Ernst Hauswedell book and art antiquariat, book and art auctions: Painting collection Meyer-Glitza, Hamburg: Pictures from the 16th to 19th centuries; Auction: Saturday, November 27, 1965 - Hamburg

Digitized , Heidelberg University Library

Web links

Commons : Adolf Glitza  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jessen (lit.), p. 104
2. ↑ Stolt (lit.), p. 119
3. ↑ Profile , ETG Meyer-Glitza , accessed on July 24, 2020
4. ^ Carla Schmincke: Collectors in Hamburg. The merchant and art lover Consul Eduard Friedrich Weber (1830-1907) Diss. Hamburg, p. 28 ( full text )
5. ^ Alfred Lichtwark: Foreword. In: Cornelius Hofstede de Groot: Memorial exhibition of the Society of Hamburg Art Friends: Catalog of the German and Dutch masters of the Glitza collection. Hamburg 1896, p. 1.
6. ^ Alfred Lichtwark: Glitza leaves. In: JGHK (1897), pp. 37-38
7. ↑ Collection online , accessed July 24, 2020
8. ↑ See Deutsche Kunst 1 (1896), p. 39: "One hopes in Hamburg that Professor Lichtwarck may succeed in acquiring the Glitza Gallery, as well as the Amsinck-Wesselhöft Collection, for the Kunsthalle."
9. ↑ See, for example, Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 2 (1903), p. 123
10. ↑ Northeast Germany: from the Elbe and the western border of Saxony, along with Denmark; Guide for travelers. 1905, p. 38
11. ↑ Entry at Cranach Digital , accessed on July 24, 2020

predecessor	Office	successor
Otto Wolters	Senior pastor at St. Catherine to Hamburg 1876 - 1894	Albrecht Krause