August Wilhelm Buchholtz

August Buchholtz
(engraving after a painting by J. Siegmund)

August Wilhelm Buchholtz (born February 15, 1803 in Riga , Russian Empire ; † May 29, 1875 there ) was a collector and educator .

family

August Buchholtz was the fourth child of the merchant Alexander Johann Buchholtz from Friedrichstadt and Caroline Buchholtz, née Polchow. On November 9, 1845, he married Henriette Bärnhoff in Riga. From this marriage there were four sons who also made outstanding contributions to the culture of the Baltic Sea Governments :

• August Buchholtz (1847–1882), lawyer and librarian of the Society for the History and Archeology of the Baltic Sea Provinces of Russia , also librarian of the Livonian Knighthood
• Anton Buchholtz (1848–1901), lawyer and historian, honorary member of the Estonian Literary Society and the Estonian Scholarly Society , member of the Imperial Archaeological Society in Moscow
• Alexander Buchholtz (1851–1893), editor and editor-in-chief of the Rigaschen Zeitung, and editor of the Rigaschen Stadtblätter
• Arend Buchholtz (1857–1938), library assistant and editor at the Rigas City Gazette, corresponding member of the Society for History and Antiquity of the Baltic Sea Provinces of Russia, first director of the Berlin City Library

Life

He attended the cathedral school in Riga, then the grammar school and from 1821 studied theology at the University of Dorpat , where he was a founding member of the Fraternitas Rigensis .

In the years from 1818 to 1823 his father, two sisters and his six-year-old brother, who was a role model for him, died, which burdens him so much that he left the university in July 1824 and sought refuge with his mother and the remaining sister Pastor of his uncle Benjamin (fear god Balthasar) Bergmann (1772–1856) in Rujen , Livonia , pastor, historian and linguist, who was known for his historical writings and contributions to the history of Livonia. In the year of mourning he spent there, August Buchholtz taught Bergmann's younger children and, on behalf of General Superintendent Karl Gottlob Sonntag , prepared a directory of Bergmann's Latvian book collection, which his father Ernst von Bergmann had started in the 1780s. This work aroused August Buchholtz's interest in the Latvian language and literature.

From August 1825 to February 1828 he took a position as a teacher in the house of the parish judge of Engelhardt on Würken. In 1827 he became a member of the Latvian Literary Society , where he became secretary in 1838 and later took on the function of librarian and treasurer . Von Engelhardt made a long-awaited journey possible for him, which led him to Switzerland. In the winter semester 1828/19 he attended lectures by Carl Daub , Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus , Friedrich Christoph Schlosser and others at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . In September 1829 he was awarded the "venia concionandi" in Livonia and in February 1830 the Ministry of the Livonia Governorate awarded him the candidacy for a German and a Latvian preacher position. He bridged the waiting time as a teacher, initially as an assistant teacher at the private training institute founded by Carl Friedrich von Bornhaupt (1802-1889) in Riga, where he became an equal partner and co-director in 1834. In 1833 he was a co-founder of the Society for History and Archeology of the Baltic Sea Provinces, where he was a librarian from 1839 to 1860 and also president from 1860 to 1875.

On November 9, 1845, he married Henriette Bärnhoff in Riga. In 1848 he took over the private educational establishment from Eduard Friedrich Komprecht, who took up his position at the municipal orphanage school. For this educational institution with the associated boarding school, he bought or built a new building at Alexanderstraße 18 , which he also lived in with his family.

August Buchholtz also recorded and cataloged the holdings of the Livonian Knighthood Library, founded in 1853, from February 1855 to 1873 . In addition to the history of literature and the Bürcher's collections, he was also interested in coins, coats of arms and seals. Since 1842, among other things, he took care of the coin collection of the "Himselschen Museum", bequeathed by Nikolaus von Himsel (1729–1764), which was initially housed in the upper rooms of the city library and later became part of Himsel's collection as the basis for the Riga Stock Exchange Art Museum .

Memberships

• Founding member of the Fraternitas Rigensis
• Honorary member of the Latvian Literary Society
• Honorary Correspondent of the Imperial Public Library , St. Petersburg
• Honorary Member of the Estonian Scholarly Society , Dorpat (1873)
• Riga Natural Scientists Association
• Literary-practical citizen connection , Riga.

literature

• Dr. August Wilhelm Buchholtz. In: Rigascher Almanach for 1877, 20th year (1877), WF Häcker, Riga, p. 36 ff. ( Digitized in the Google book search).
• August Wilhelm Buchholtz (1803-1875). In: Klaus Garber : Treasure houses of the spirit. Old libraries and book collections in the Baltic States (= from archives, libraries and museums of Central and Eastern Europe. Volume 3). Böhlau, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-08106-5 , pp. 97 ff. ( Limited preview in the Google book search).

Web links

• Baltic Historical Commission (Ed.): Entry on August Wilhelm Buchholtz. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital