August Erich

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August Erich (born July 26 . Jul / 5. August  1591 greg. In Eisenach , † May 12 jul. / 22. May  1670 greg. ) Was a German portrait painter and councilman of the city of Eisenach.

Life

Erich was born in Eisenach as the son of a lawyer and notary. His mother Anna (nee von Hoff ) was the daughter of the Saxon bailiff von Gerstungen and Creienberg, the paternal grandfather was Ambrosius Erich , a Saxon magistrate in Dresden . Godfather was the Princely Saxon administrative administrator Valentin Finck in Eisenach. After the early death of his mother Erich attended the Latin school of his hometown and went at the age of 15 years to Jena to start a study painting, which he at the universities in Nuremberg and Augsburg continued.

After completing his studies, he found his first job with Margrave Karl von Burgau in Günzburg, Bavaria . In 1613, following the margrave's entourage, he stayed at the Reichstag in Regensburg , where he was also presented to his sovereign, the Elector of Saxony. A messenger from his father, who was already dying, arrived during the conference. As the only heir to the considerable fortune, he was introduced to Elisabeth Runckel by a councilor friend and married the only daughter of a mayor of Eisenach.

Without financial worries and driven by a thirst for adventure, August went to the residences of several important Protestant princes of his time in the following years. At first he stayed as court painter to the Hessian Landgrave Moritz in Marburg , after his death he entered the service of his son Wilhelm V of Hessen-Kassel and during this time also took over the administration of the former Terminhof in Eisenach - called "the Hessenhof" - known today as the "Alte Posthalterei". The management activity was not his temperament and he asked to be dismissed from the landgrave administrative service, his successor was a patrician friend of the Cley family.

Via Güstrow and other stations he came to the court of the Danish King Christian IV in Copenhagen around 1633 . The Swedish diplomat Count Hoditz was one of his customers, he remembered Erich's origins and sent a messenger to him to help him manage the city of Eisenach, which was currently occupied by Swedish troops. He agreed and immediately returned to his hometown with his wife Elisabeth and their ten children, where he missed the already detached Count by a few days. The plague was raging in his hometown, and his wife Elisabeth and eight of his ten children died within a few weeks. After a year of mourning, Erich married Anna Purgold , a daughter from the highly respected Eisenach patrician family Purgold, at the age of 43 . This marriage was also blessed with eight children. The events of the war and the plague that had been brought in several times had decimated or expelled many of the city councilors, so Erich was asked to serve his hometown as councilor. He was elected councilor for the first time in 1639 and remained in the city's service after the end of the Thirty Years War : in 1649 and 1650 as city treasurer and second mayor and between 1654 and 1658 as city architect. In 1640 he traveled to parts of Saxony and Bohemia, where he can be traced back to Leitmeritz as a portrait painter.

At the age of 70 he became seriously ill and spent the last eight years of his life as a bedridden old man.

progeny

  • Christian Erich , a son from the first marriage, had survived the plague in Eisenach and became councilor of the Counts of Hohenlohe .
  • Joachim Peter Erich , the first son from his second marriage, studied at the universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg, Rome, Florence, Sienna, Bologna and Padua. He traveled all over Italy and settled in the Republic of Venice as ambassador.
  • Johann Melchior Ernst , the second son from his second marriage, studied painting in Italy (including Padua and Venice). He died of a typhus epidemic in a palazzo belonging to Zeno, Procurator di San Marco , where he had just started a series of portraits of Venetian grandees. His bones were later exhumed at the family's request and reburied in the Jakobskirche in Eisenach.
  • The third son Augustus Erich became court painter to the Duke of Saxony-Zeitz .
  • The fourth son, Constantin Erich , entered French military service with the Count of Vernède's regiment during the Thirty Years' War, where he learned the basics of military architecture. While visiting his brothers in Venice, he took the opportunity to work as an artillery or fortification engineer in the service of the Republic of Venice. His further fate is unknown.

Act

Portrait of the Gotha Rector Andreas Reyher with his family (1643)

Erich mainly painted oil paintings . He portrayed over 500 mostly aristocratic people, including the family of Landgrave Moritz and Johann Albrecht II of Mecklenburg and his second wife Elisabeth of Hessen-Kassel. Some of the sketches and engravings he made became the basis for Merian city views. The Duchess Anna Amalia Library owns the family book of August Erich with some sketches and autographs from his customers.

literature

  • Johann Heinrich Henning, Deacon zu Eisenach: Deß weyland Ehrvesten, Grand Eighth Barn and Well-Wise Mr. Augusti Erichs, mayor and well-known contrafactur Mahler zu Eisenach, who after surviving a painful eight-year illness on the day of Christ's Ascension - was May 12th Anno 1670. In the evening after 6 o'clock a blissful fall asleep in the Erkänenis of Jesus Christ, ... Hans Reinhard, Laidingen 1670, p. 46 (funeral sermon with biographical data of the Erich family; Eisenach city archive, archive library, sign .: 6-128 / 202).
  • Fritz Roth : Complete evaluations of funeral sermons and personal documents for genealogical purposes . Self-published, Wuppertal 1959, p. 264 .
  • Urania Culture and Education Association Gotha e. V. (Ed.): Eisenach personalities . A biographical lexicon. RhinoVerlag, Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-932081-45-5 , p. 40 .

Web links

Commons : August Erich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Erich, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German portrait painter and councilor
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1591
PLACE OF BIRTH Eisenach
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1670
Place of death Eisenach