Adolf Gnauth

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Adolf Gnauth.

Adolf Gnauth (born July 1, 1840 in Stuttgart , † November 19, 1884 Nuremberg ) was a German architect, architectural draftsman and painter, craftsman and writer. Gnauth was a teacher at the Stuttgart building trade school, professor at the Stuttgart Polytechnic and director of the Nuremberg School of Applied Arts.

Gnauth is one of the most important representatives of the Neo-Renaissance in southern Germany. His work is of rare versatility and made him very famous in his lifetime. Since his creative period was short-lived and his buildings were almost completely destroyed in the Second World War, he has largely been forgotten today.

Life

Gustav Adolf Gnauth was the son of the lithographer and copper engraver Adolf Gnauth sen. (1812–1876) and his wife Marie Kasten (1818–1868). Gnauth's younger brother Feodor von Gnauth (1854–1916) was Minister of Finance in the Grand Duchy of Hesse .

Adolf Gnauth attended high school and then studied at the Stuttgart Polytechnic under Christian von Leins . From 1860 to 1861 he was employed in the Württemberg railway construction department. From 1861 to 1863 he went on a study trip to Italy, sometimes together with Leins, then went to Vienna and from 1864 to 1866 again to Italy. In 1866 Gnauth was offered a professorship at the Stuttgart building trade school . From 1867 to 1869 he stayed in northern Italy to record medieval grave monuments. In 1870 he was given a professorship at the Stuttgart Polytechnic, from which he resigned in 1872 because of important private assignments. From 1875 to 1876 he traveled through Greece and Egypt. In 1877 he became director of the Nuremberg School of Applied Arts. In 1882 he took a trip to Spain to research the oriental evidence of architecture.

Gnauth died at the age of only 44 on November 19, 1884 in Nuremberg, where he was buried in the Johannisfriedhof . The tomb consisted of a lying granite stone and a bronze epitaph donated by the Stuttgart art foundryman Paul Stotz .

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Gnauth's work found the following appreciation in Meyer's Konversations-Lexikon at the end of the 19th century:

“Gnauth possessed a rich artistic imagination and extensive knowledge, which enabled him to do important creations in the ornamental and decorative field. His architecture shows an original application of the Renaissance forms, with a preference for the motifs from the palace architecture of Florence, Verona and Genoa. His creations are characterized by a bold composition and imaginative expression of the details; on the other hand, he did not always adhere to the line of classical measure, but sometimes wandered over to the baroque. "

As an architect, Gnauth created buildings, interiors, monuments and fountains. He worked as an illustrator and magazine publisher and created craft designs for carpentry, gold and silver work.

architecture

Württembergische Vereinsbank, Stuttgart, 1872.

In the 1870s Gnauth built villas, residential and commercial buildings in the style of the Renaissance and Baroque, mainly in Stuttgart and Nuremberg. His first and most beautiful building was the Villa Siegle in Stuttgart, which he built for his school friend Gustav Siegle in 1871 , after having visited models with him in Italy for the construction and furnishing of the villa.

More villas followed in Stuttgart:

  • the Villa Salem
  • the Villa Conradi
  • and eight buildings in a villa colony on Goethestrasse, some of which Gnauth made use of the sgraffito technique.

At the same time he created the palace-like building of the Württembergische Vereinsbank. None of the buildings have stood the test of time.

  • Villa Siegle, Stuttgart, 1871.

  • Villa Conradi, Stuttgart, 1873.

  • Villa Salem, Stuttgart, 1873.

Towards the end of the 1870s, Gnauth turned to interior work. He designed the interiors for the Palais Engelhorn in Mannheim, the Palais Cramer-Klett in Munich and the Pellerhaus in Nuremberg. Like the buildings created by Gnauth, these interior designs have not survived.

Monuments and fountains

In addition to buildings and interiors, Gnauth created several grave monuments and a war memorial in Stuttgart as well as a fountain in Leipzig. These structures are the only evidence of Gnauth's architecture that has survived.

  • 1872: Mausoleum of the Sauters and Entress-Fürsteneck families, Stuttgart, Pragfriedhof .
  • 1874: War memorial for the soldiers who died in the Franco-German War in 1870/1871, Stuttgart, Fangelsbach cemetery .
  • 1876: Mausoleum of the Hallberger family , Stuttgart, Pragfriedhof.
  • 1886: Mendebrunnen , Leipzig.

  • Mausoleum of the Hallberger family, Pragfriedhof Stuttgart, 1876.

  • War memorial, Fangelsbachfriedhof Stuttgart, 1889.

  • Mendebrunnen Leipzig, 1886.

Illustrations

Adolf Gnauth (top right) with friends in Egypt, 1875/1876.

After his study trip to Italy in 1861/1862, Gnauth began, together with Emil von Förster, in 1867 with the publication of the table work "The Buildings of the Renaissance in Toscana", to which he and Förster provided the building recordings and the Stuttgart art historian Eduard Paulus contributed the text. However, there was only one delivery with 16 panels about Florentine churches.

In the summers of 1867 and 1868, Gnauth created 13 large watercolors of medieval funerary monuments in Venice and Verona on behalf of the Arundel Society London.

In the winter of 1875/1876 Gnauth undertook a journey through Egypt with the Egyptologist Georg Ebers and the painters Carl Rudolf Huber , Franz von Lenbach , Hans Makart and Leopold Carl Müller . Gnauth and the other painters contributed a large number of illustrations to Georg Ebers' book of Egypt, which Georg Ebers published in 1879.

  • St. Lorenzo in Florence,
    illustration from #Gnauth 1867 .

  • Memorial to the Cavalli family,
    watercolor for the Arundel Society, 1867/1868.

  • Kayt Bey's grave mosque, illustration from #Ebers 1879 .

  • 1867: Adolf Gnauth; Emil von Förster; Eduard Paulus: The buildings of the Renaissance in Toscana. Based on photos and drawings by the architects Adolf Gnauth and Emil Ritter von Förster and explanatory texts by Eduard Paulus. Vienna 1867, pdf .
  • 1879: Georg Ebers: Egypt in pictures and words . 2 volumes. Stuttgart: Hallberger, 1879/1880, [1] , [2] . → images .

Magazines

From 1874 to 1876 Gnauth and the art historian Bruno Bucher published the magazine “Das Kunsthandwerk. Collection of exemplary handicraft objects of all times ”. From 1876 he published the magazine“ Deutsches Maler-Journal ”together with the decorative painter Ludwig Lesker (1840–1890), which continued to appear until 1894 after his death.

  • 1874: Adolf Gnauth (editor); Bruno Bucher (ed.): The arts and crafts, collection of exemplary arts and crafts objects of all time. Year 1–3. Stuttgart: Spemann, 1874–1876.
  • 1876: Adolf Gnauth (editor); Ludwig Lesker (ed.): German painter journal. Ceilings, vestibules, stairwells, wall decorations, sgraffits, wood and marble painting, flowers, alphabets, signs, emblems, posters etc. For practical use by interior and decoration painters, painters, architects, drawing schools etc. Years 1–17. Stuttgart: Spemann, 1876-1894.

literature

Life

  • Max Bach:  Gnauth, Adolf . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 49, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1904, pp. 401-403.
  • C. by F. Adolf Gnauth. Obituary. In: Kunstchronik: Wochenschrift für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, Volume 20, 1885, pages 172–173.
  • Gnauth . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 7, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 456.
  • Gnauth, Gustav Adolf. In: Hermann Alexander Müller: Biographical artist lexicon of the present: the most famous contemporaries in the entire field of the visual arts of all countries with details of their works. Leipzig: Verlag des Biographisches Institut, 1882, page 211, pdf .
  • Eduard Paulus: Adolf Gnauth. In: Über Land und Meer, Volume 53, 1885, Pages 239–240.
  • Susanna Partsch : Gnauth, Adolf . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 56, Saur, Munich a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-22796-7 , p. 293 f.

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  • Goethestrasse villa colony. In: Gebhard Blank: Stuttgart villas in the 19th century. A leaflet to accompany the exhibition in the Wilhelms-Palais from March 18 to March 16. August 1987. Stuttgart 1987, page 10.
  • Tanya Harrod-Ledger: A study of the Arundel Society 1848-1897. University of Oxford 1979, pp. 111-114, pdf .
  • JF Krell: A. Gnauth. In: Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, Volume 10, 1875, pages 112–115.
  • Tobias Möllmer: The Palais Engelhorn in Mannheim: history and architecture of a Wilhelminian town house. Mannheim: Friedrich Engelhorn Archive, 2010, pages 114–134.
  • La Vereinsbank (Maison de Banque). In: Revue générale de l'architecture et des travaux publics, 1885, pages 114–115, plates 26–27, pdf .

Web links

Commons : Adolf Gnauth  - Collection of Images

Footnotes

  1. ↑ # Möllmer 2010 , page 114.
  2. ↑ Kunstchronik: Wochenschrift für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, Volume 20, 1885, column 657.
  3. ↑ #Meyers .
  4. ↑ #Blank 1987 .
  5. ↑ # Gnauth 1867 .
  6. ↑ # Harrod-Ledger 1979 .
  7. ↑ #Ebers 1879 .
  8. ↑ # Gnauth 1874 .
  9. ↑ # Gnauth 1876 .
personal data
SURNAME Gnauth, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1884
Place of death Nuremberg