Anton Gentil
Anton Kilian Gentil (born September 29, 1867 in Aschaffenburg ; † May 20, 1951 there ) was a German manufacturer and art collector.
Career
Gentil was born as the son of the confectioner August Gentil (1838–1895) and his second wife Elisabeth Breunig (1842–1872) in Aschaffenburg. His grandfather, the glazier Kilian Gentil (1805–1878), was his reference person with a role model character, he gave him a sense of artistic design.
After attending elementary and secondary school, he began an apprenticeship in the glazing trade, then a second as a machine fitter. After completing his military service, he learned to cast metal.
In 1890 he married Elisabeth Maria (Elise) Knecht. The first child died in childbirth. Otto Gentil was born in 1892 . Daughter Marie, * 1894, married Helfrich, died in childbed in 1928 after the birth of her third child. Elisabeth Rosina, known as Lies, * 1897, craftswoman, married the painter Erich Hake (1882–1944) after the First World War . The youngest child Richard, * 1905, became a mechanical engineer and took over the father's company in 1951; he died in 1972.
Entrepreneur
Before Anton Gentil started his own business, he worked for almost two years as a lathe operator in the Koloseus stove factory in Aschaffenburg. In 1892 he opened a repair workshop in Steingasse, in which three apprentices helped him. In 1894 he expanded his company and employed a blacksmith, a lathe operator and a foreman in the new workshop in Betgasse.
In 1900 he moved the business to Damm on Lange Straße between Behlenstraße and Schneidmühlweg. It was there that Gentil began with the industrial production and further development of centrifugal pumps . Around 1925 he produced high and low pressure centrifugal boiler feed pumps, pumps for salt water, mash and beer. At the end of the 1920s, special pumps were added for the paper, chemical and food industries at home and abroad. His main customers in Aschaffenburg were the Bayerische Aktien-Bierbrauerei Aschaffenburg BABA and the Aschaffenburger Zellstoffwerke . In 1944 the operation was recorded by the English Foreign Office and Ministry of Economic Warfare in the Economic Survey of Germany and was badly damaged, especially in the air raid on November 21.
After the reconstruction, the company specialized in the production of high-viscosity centrifugal and piston pumps as well as circulating propellers. After the death of Anton Gentil in 1951 (car accident), son Richard continued the business until his death in 1972. In the same year, his two sons Veit and Peter stopped the foundry and sold the A. Gentil Aschaffenburg machine factory in 1976 to Allweiler AG in Radolfzell on Lake Constance , which is now part of the Colfax Corporation . After being used for a grocery store, among other things, the property of the machine factory is currently being built with apartment buildings.
architect
I made my own designs for all my buildings and made a true-to-scale model before starting construction in order to be able to determine the effect and the propotions. In the summer of 1893, for example, he built his first house at Güterberg 21, which differs from his later buildings in its functional construction and cannot yet be assigned to the burgeoning “Art Nouveau”. In 1906 he planned his house in Lindenallee. Two years later the house was finished: an English country house with Art Nouveau influences , inside a large hall over two floors as a hallway. Arranged around it is a “living room with a round bay window”, a “picture room”, a “gentleman's room” whose bay window was intended as a breakfast area. The private rooms were on the upper floor. In 1912 the "Gentil House" was presented in the magazine " Blätter für Architektur und Kunsthandwerk ", Berlin . The interior fittings (lamps, panels, fittings and window grilles) were made in the foundry and joinery of his company, by Anton Gentil himself.
In 1922 he began building the house for his art collection, the Gentil House at Grünewaldstrasse 20, opposite his house. The ground floor is made of massive quarry stone masonry, the east facade is half-timbered, the west facade is bricked. The shell was completed in 1923, and a bronze plaque “House Gentil” was attached to the outer wall. In 1924 he had the outbuildings (laundry room and car shed) and the enclosure built. The second extension, the studio for son Otto, was built in 1929/30.
Anton Gentil's stylistic influence can also be seen in the residential building built between 1923 and 1925 with a commercial extension on the property at Taunusstrasse 1.
His third property, the Gentilburg on Würzburger Strasse , was built between 1933 and 1935 . Enthroned like a castle on a hill above the country ..., in the property garden sculptures, several outbuildings and a defensive tower in front under a hipped roof. Adjacent is the multi-part structure with a steep, slated gable roof (similar to House 2). Medieval echoes also through quarry stone-reinforced enclosing wall with “castle gate” in the southeast of the complex. The large property with the house and ancillary buildings was sold from the family property to a developer in autumn 2015 and an aparthotel was built along Würzburger Straße in 2019.
Around 1939 Anton Gentil acquired the beech mill in Sulzbach a. Main and converted it into a residential building that reveals architectural details typical of Gentil.
Art collector
Anton Gentil used his first business trips to get in touch with art dealers and young artists; he visited art exhibitions every year. They later increasingly developed into educational trips to the art cities of the world. He collected little-known pictures and sketches of the " Munich School ", Romanesque and Gothic sculptures, medieval altars, old German and Dutch panel paintings, paintings from the 16th to 20th centuries, graphics, folk art, including rural art from the Spessart (ceramics), casts and replicas that he made himself in his workshop. He also owned a nativity scene collection , the highlight is the " Lienz nativity scene" from East Tyrol with almost 500 figures, 12 cm high, carved from Swiss stone pine and linden wood and painted in color. With the associated buildings and backdrops, the scenes, the birth of Christ, circumcision, the three wise men, the wedding at Cana , Jesus in the temple and the temple cleansing could be recreated.
The Welte Mignon Philharmonic Organ is also unique , a self-playing salon organ that he had installed in 1929.
The friendship with the sculptor Ludwig Eberle (1883–1956) and the Munich artist circle as well as the encounters with Adolf von Hildebrand and Franz von Stuck had a lasting impact on Anton Gentil.
In 1949 he bequeathed his " Haus Gentil " and all of its collections to his home town of Aschaffenburg.
His local nickname was Pumpen-Anton , he liked to call himself "Schandel" (French ancestors). On May 19, 1951, the sports car driver had a car accident with his two-seater: he collided with a truck at the intersection of the Chausseehaus, where Großostheimer Strasse crosses the so-called Lange Handtuch. He suffered serious internal injuries to which he succumbed the next day in the Aschaffenburg hospital. His urn was sunk into the wall of the gentile house and closed with a bronze plate.
Others
Anton Gentil got involved in the federal Oberland in the 1920s . In the Schlaraffia association , which is dedicated to cultivating friendship, art and humor, it is said to have been run under the name "Ritter Öhm der Kurzgewichste".
literature
- Ernst Schneider: The Anton Gentil Collection . Exhibition catalog of the Museum of the City of Aschaffenburg, 1950.
- Günter Christ: Gentil, Anton Kilian. In: Karl Bosl (ed.): Bosls Bavarian biography. Pustet, Regensburg 1983, ISBN 3-7917-0792-2 , p. 248 ( digitized version ). (Wrong date of birth)
- Kati Wolf: The gentile house . Museums of the City of Aschaffenburg 1989, ISBN 3-924436-01-0
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Formerly Würzburger Strasse 168, today Gentilstrasse 2
- ↑ http://www.main-echo.de/regional/stadt-kreis-aschaffenburg/art11846,3889758
- ↑ Gentile House
- ^ Aegidius (Julius), * Normandie, † 1651 Stockstadt, appears for the first time in the upper cellar bill of 1635 as "Julius der Welsche" among the electoral hunters (StA Wü, R 27294; Friederichs, no. 561). On July 14, 1636, he was accepted as "Julius Schandill auß Normandj" as a citizen of Aschaffenburg (StaAB, Council Protocol of July 14, 1636, p. 51), oo around 1636 Maria geb. Rodenbücher († November 23, 1691 Stockstadt).
- ↑ Kati Wolf: The Gentile House. Museums of the City of Aschaffenburg 1989 (biography p. 11)
- ↑ Carsten Pollnick: The Development of National Socialism and Anti-Semitism in Aschaffenburg 1919-1933 (= series of publications Volume 23). History and Art Association Aschaffenburg e. V., Aschaffenburg 1984, p. 67 and 242.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gentil, Anton |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gentil, Anton Kilian (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German manufacturer and art collector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 29, 1867 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Aschaffenburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 20, 1951 |
| Place of death | Aschaffenburg |