Alexander Oppenheim (lawyer)

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Felix Alexander Oppenheim (born October 7, 1819 in Königsberg , † February 2, 1898 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer and photographer .

Life

Alexander Oppenheim was the youngest son of the banker Martin Wilhelm Oppenheim and Rosa, née Alexander (1792–1849) from Königsberg. After he had completed his Abitur at the Altstädtisches Gymnasium zu Königsberg in 1836, like his older brother Otto Georg a year earlier , he studied law . As a young trainee lawyer he came to Berlin and did his Assessor jur. However, he could not practice the profession he had learned and became a photographer in private activities. Until his father's death in 1863 he lived without a job - the family was wealthy - in the two villas in Dresden built by Gottfried Semper . Then he moved to Berlin and took over the so-called Schadowhaus in today's Schadowstrasse 10/11. The cause and background of this résumé was involvement in the “ cassette theft”.

Cassette theft

Alexander Oppenheim belonged to Ferdinand Lassalle's circle of friends , as did his friend and relative, the doctor Arnold Mendelssohn (1817–1854). Alexander Oppenheim was the brother-in-law of a cousin of Arnold Mendelssohn.

Alexander Oppenheim was legal counsel for Countess Sophie von Hatzfeld , who was involved in disputes with her husband Edmund Fürst von Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg zu Trachenberg (1796–1874). Arnold Mendelssohn was also at her side in an advisory capacity. Oppenheim interested his friend Lassalle in the matter of the Hatzfeld disputes, who in turn prompted Mendelssohn to get involved in this case. Ferdinand Lassalle had accepted the Countess von Hatzfeld and represented her for nine years from 1846 to 1854 in courts. In the spring of 1846, Lassalle prepared a prodigality suit against the Countess's husband.

In the summer of 1846, Oppenheim and Mendelssohn observed the mistress of Prince Edmund von Hatzfeld-Wildenburg, Baroness Meyendorf , and stayed with her at the Mainzer Hof inn in Aachen . When the baroness left, Alexander Oppenheim discovered a cassette in the hallway of the inn, in which he suspected important papers for the Hatzfeld trial. He took the cassette and took it to Arnold Mendelssohn's room. Since the theft was discovered quickly, the friends fled. It turned out that the contents of the cassette were quite insignificant. Oppenheim and Mendelssohn were now a warrant searched. The former surrendered to the police and was acquitted on November 24, 1846 by the Cologne jury of the charge of theft . Mendelssohn found out about the acquittal and returned in June 1847 from Paris , where he had fled to, was arrested and sentenced on February 11, 1848 to a prison sentence of five years for aiding and abetting theft , the license to practice as a doctor was forfeited declared and placed under police supervision for life after serving the sentence. Thus, a lawsuit against Lassalle for inducement to theft could be initiated, which ended on August 11, 1848, like Alexander Oppenheim, with an acquittal.

Even if the Oppenheim family had obtained an acquittal in court proceedings, according to Alexander Oppenheim's ideas at the time, the civil profession of lawyer was blocked for the subsequent period.

photography

Oppenheim left the country at his own request, albeit under public or family pressure, and instead went on long journeys and devoted himself to photography. Around 1851 he trained as a photographer with Gustave Le Gray in Paris. He worked using the wax paper process (paper as a substrate); in addition, he made experiments with milk serum and albumin paper . After traveling to Spain in 1852 , he went to Athens in 1853 and turned to antiquity in Greece . His recordings from the autumn of 1853 appeared in two albums under the title “Athenian Antiquities”. The photographs on salt paper, sheet size 42.5 × 61 cm, were commented on in detail by Oppenheim. Further trips took him to the Orient . Returning to Dresden in 1857, he had a booth built with a photo laboratory and darkroom in the courtyard of his ground floor apartment in Villa Oppenheim and then began to take pictures of his family members. The images were of a quality that none of them had at that time, as the daguerreotype was still in vogue. Around 1860 he developed an improved positive copying process and took pictures of architectural monuments in Germany. Some of Oppenheim's photographs from German cities are in the "Dietmar Siegert Collection". He also kept in touch with his family friend Gottfried Semper in Zurich and photographed his buildings in Dresden. “I would be very pleased if you would grant you these sheets of paper as a substitute, however insignificant, for viewing the work you have conceived, which unfortunately you are not allowed to. [...] "( Felix Alexander Oppenheim : Letter to Gottfried Semper in Zurich, September 1, 1856)

Works

  • The preserved Greek temples on the Acropolis , album with 42 photographs from Athens 1853, Hofbuchdruckerei von CC Reinhold and Sons, Dresden 1854.
  • Details of the Acropolis: The Sculpture Fragments . Court book printer of CC Reinhold and Sons, Dresden 1854.

Exhibitions

literature

  • Julius Friedlaender: Gottfried Schadow: Essays and letters with a list of his works , reprint of the original from 1890, Salzwasser Verlag, Paderborn, 2013, ISBN 978-3-84604-460-5 , Schadowhaus p. 169
  • Traugott Rechtlieb: The Cölner cassette theft and the criminal procedure against the chamber court assessor FA Oppenheim. , W. Adolf, Berlin, 1847
  • Britta Stein: The divorce process Hatzfeldt: (1846-1851) , Lit Verlag, Münster, 1999, ISBN 3-8258-4262-2
  • Ulrich Pohlmann, Dietmar Siegert (ed.), Exhib.-cat. Between Biedermeier and Wilhelminian style - Germany in early photographs 1840–1890 from the Siegert Collection, Verlag Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-8296-0626-4
  • Search the land of the Greeks with the soul. Photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries. Exhibition catalog of the Agfa Foto-Historama , Cologne 1990, p. 76, p. 233
  • Agnes Matthias (Hrsg.): KunstFotografie: Catalog of photographs from 1839 to 1945 from the collection of the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, 2010, ISBN 978-3-422-07052-3
  • Ludger Derenthal: "... quite satisfactory for a dilettante. Felix Alexander Oppenheim. On the rediscovery of a photographer from the 1850s" in: "Photo History Heft 128", Jonas Verlag, Marburg, 2013, pp. 5 to 14
  • Karla Nieraad (Ed.): Felix Alexander Oppenheim and his Ulm photographs from 1856 with contributions by Ludger Derenthal and Raimund Kast. Stadthaus Ulm, edition stadthaus, volume 18. Ulm 2016, ISBN 978-3-934727-42-7

Web links to photographs

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1836 No. 285: Felix Alex. Oppenheim, Königsberg, Jura , in Heinrich Babucke: In memory of the relocation of the old town high school in Königsberg, Pr. To the new school building , Festschrift, Hartungsche Buchdr., 1889, p. 18
  2. ↑ After the death of Gottfried Schadow's son Felix in 1861, the Schadowhaus was taken over by Felix Alexander Oppenheim until 1898. , Berliner Morgenpost, Rainer L. Hein and Isabell Jürgens: New building in the old quarter , 23 June 2009, accessed on 14 July 2015
  3. ^ Walther G. Oschilewski: Lassalle in Berlin
  4. ^ Sebastian Panwitz: The cassette affair
  5. ↑ Bodo von Dewitz states in the exhibition catalog of Agfa Foto-Historama "Searching for the land of the Greeks with the soul," Cologne 1990, under "August F. Oppenheim" (life data unknown) that he was trained by Gustave Le Gray.
  6. ↑ Reports on it in “La Lumière” fondé à Paris by Benito R. de Monfort de la Société héliographique and other journals.
  7. ↑ Portfolio “Athenian Antiquities”, Agfa Foto-Historama Collection in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne
  8. ↑ Felix Alexander Oppenheim , on Fotografwiki, accessed July 13, 2015
  9. ↑ Germany in early photographs 1840-1890
  10. ^ Agnes Matthias: Catalog of the photographs from 1839 to 1945 from the collection of the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, 2010
  11. ↑ An outstanding German photographer from the 19th century is rediscovered
personal data
SURNAME Oppenheim, Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oppenheim, Felix Alexander (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH February 2, 1898
Place of death Berlin