Benno von Achenbach

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Benno von Achenbach (born  July 24, 1861 in Düsseldorf , † October 12, 1936 in Berlin ) was the founder of the driving system named after him and the only son of the landscape painter Oswald Achenbach . In 1906 he became head of the fleet of the Royal Marstall Berlin . In 1909 Wilhelm II gave him hereditary nobility for his services .

Life

Achenbach grew up on Schadowstrasse in Düsseldorf until 1864 , before moving with his family - his already famous father, who was then teaching landscape painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , mother Julie, née Arnz (1827-1896), and his four older sisters moved to upper-class Goltsteinstrasse at the Hofgarten . He attended the Royal High School in Düsseldorf . His father taught him the art of painting, which he made his profession. With his parents he traveled a lot in Europe from a young age.

The Baden officer and horse breeder August Wilhelm Julius Graf von Bismarck , who was in Prussian service with the 2nd Westphalian Hussar Regiment No. 11 , a third cousin of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , and since 1872 husband of Achenbach's second cousin Clara (1851 –1906), allowed him to drive a horse-drawn carriage and introduced him to horse and driving sports at the end of the 1860s, when he was still a courtier in the Achenbach family. To educate himself in it, Achenbach read all of the literature available at the time. At the same time he experienced the rise of carriage and tandem driving , which inspired him as a painter to paint corresponding genre and horse pictures. A series of around 30 sketches shows how much his passion for equestrian sport was encouraged by Count von Bismarck in the 1870s. As early as 1873 he drove his tandem. From the 1880s onwards, he practiced driving whenever the opportunity arose. In 1882 he won a gold medal in a competition in Baden-Baden. The English system of carriage driving learned in the 1890s from the English driving instructor Edwin Howlett in Paris, whom he visited three times during this period. In addition to the United States, he also traveled to England to study road coaching. In 1899 he won a four-in-hand tournament in Berlin with a team from Cologne's Julius Vorster . In the same year he published the brochure style and tension principles, a first document of his endeavors to "... make the work of the horses in front of the cart as easy as possible".

Building of the Royal Marstall Berlin , 1901

In the course of the renovation of the Berlin Marstall by the German Emperor Wilhelm II , his court marshal Hugo von Reischach , a childhood friend of Count August von Bismarck, appointed the painter Achenbach, who as a soldier of the 2nd Westphalian Hussar Regiment No. 11 only had the military rank of a lieutenant in the reserve, but was considered one of the leading German experts in driving four-in-hand vehicles, on January 1, 1906, he was head of the driving stable. Achenbach began to reorganize this sustainably, for example with the carriages and harnesses , but also artistically in the livery of the coachmen and lackeys , to the favor of the emperor . Through his position he also gained influence on the development of driving in the Prussian Army .

During the First World War, Achenbach dealt with matters of military supplies and transport and with the development of service regulations for driving. With the abdication of the emperor, he lost his position. The 45 imperial bodies were auctioned, one of them came into the possession of the Abyssinian emperor Haile Selassie . In the following years he held a position at a state Prussian institution for the breeding and testing of warm-blooded animals. In addition, he wrote his main work Tensioning and Driving by 1922 , the driving course of which was included in Army Service Regulation 465. He illustrated his publications, which also appeared in specialist journals, with his own pictures.

Benno and Martha von Achenbach's gravesite, Düsseldorf North Cemetery

In the 1920s Achenbach became a teacher at the cavalry school of the Reichswehr in Hanover. As such, he continued to participate in the development of field service-appropriate troop driving regulations. Every year during this time he accepted the invitation of the horse directing institute in Thun , Switzerland , to support her as a driving instructor in holding the annual driving courses. In Hanover, the Rittmeister and later Colonel Max Pape became his pupil, with whom he developed and supervised dressage tests and competitions for horses that became popular in the 1930s. After the Second World War, Pape tried to anchor driving as an Olympic discipline.

Achenbach died in Berlin in 1936 at the age of 75 after a brief, serious illness. He was married since 1906 to Martha, née Brügelmann, widowed Marcus (1868–1947), an enthusiastic tandem driver. The common grave of the childless couple is in the north cemetery of Düsseldorf . Achenbach bequeathed his collection of whips to his friend, the Hungarian driving instructor and horse breeder Tibor von Pettkó-Szandtner .

Achenbach driving system

Building on Howlett's driving style, he postulated the ultimate goal of driving as horse-friendly, functional and safe as possible and introduced a driving system with partially standardized equipment ( Achenbach leash ).

The seven principles of Achenbach can be found in this driving system. They are:

  1. Correct riding requires the right Achenbach line, whip and a fixed brace.
  2. Four-horse and multi-horse driving are based on correct single and double driving. You don't have to learn new things because you basically hold the lines in your left hand.
  3. The right hand must be free at all times to give directional signals (greetings), brake and use the whip.
  4. All turns are initiated by shortening the pace and yielding the outer line.
  5. The vertical position of the hands makes it possible to make turns just by turning the wrists.
  6. Right and left turns are fundamentally different from each other and must therefore be driven differently. (You usually sit on the right on the box.)
  7. Allowing one or more lines to slip makes correct driving impossible, is dangerous in traffic and is therefore prohibited.

The driving apprenticeship that was spread by Achenbach in 1922 has entered the tournament regulations in Germany and has been adopted by many countries. Today it is the most widely learned and practiced method of carriage driving in Europe and a quasi-standard in driving .

Works

  • Style and tension principles . Brochure, 1899.
  • Driving regulations . Berlin 1918.
  • Tense up and ride. Working with the double longe as well as guidelines for harnesses and covering for driving price applications . 1922, reprint of the 1925 edition, Fn-Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-8724-8042-1 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Military weekly paper . Volume 94 (1909), Part 1, p. 15
  2. ^ Adolf Bothe: Directory of contemporary visual artists . Self-published, year 1898, p. 1 ( digitized version )
  3. ↑ Tom Ryder: The Achenbach System . In: The Carriage Journal . Volume 21, No. 1 (Summer 1983), pp. 17-20 ( Google Books )
  4. ↑ According to the information on his tombstone, Achenbach died on October 12, 1936.
  5. ↑ Joseph Schrallhammer: To commemorate two major drivers: Tibor of Pettko-Szandtner and Benno von Achenbach . In: International Shagya Arab Society eV (ed.): Info . 3/2011, p. 33 ( PDF )
personal data
SURNAME Achenbach, Benno von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder of the German art of carriage driving
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1936
Place of death Berlin