Blue Wittelsbacher

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The Blue Wittelsbacher , 2009

The Blue Wittelsbachs is a large natural blue diamond of type IIb with a purity of VS2 . When it was first cut , it weighed 35.56  carats (7.11 g). It was part of the Austrian and until 1918 of the Bavarian Crown Jewels. In 2008 it was acquired by the British jeweler and gemstone dealer Laurence Graff, who had it regrinded in 2009 and renamed it The Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond . Today it weighs only 31.06 carats (6.21 g). The rounding is critically assessed by experts.

Because of its size, color and clarity, the Blue Wittelsbacher has often been compared to the Hope diamond . Until it was re-sharpened in 2009, it measured 24.40 mm in diameter and 8.29 mm in depth. It had 82 facets that were arranged atypically. The star-shaped facets in the crown of the diamond were split vertically and the base had 16 needle-like facets, arranged in pairs, pointing outward from the culet . It is considered the oldest known diamond .

history

Inventory of Maria Amalia's jewels, 1722; No. 1: A large blue brilliant, umb and umb with small brilliant garnish
Joseph Karl Stieler : King Ludwig I in royal robe , 1826 (detail). New Pinakothek , Munich. The blue Wittelsbacher adorns the top of the crown under the cross
Crown of the Kingdom of Bavaria - today's version without the Blue Wittelsbacher in the treasury of the Munich residence

The acquisition history of the diamond is in the dark. It is also unclear where it got its cut. When Margarita Theresa came to Vienna from Spain in December 1666 , she brought a dowry made of jewels from her father, King Philip IV of Spain, including probably the jewel , which probably came from an Indian mine in Kollur near Golkonda . She bequeathed the stone, which at that time was set as the center piece of a breast jewel , to her husband Emperor Leopold I , who in turn gave it as a dowry to their daughter Maria Antonia . In 1722, through the marriage of her niece Maria Amalia to Karl Albrecht von Bayern , the diamond came to the House of Wittelsbach as part of their dowry and was first inventoried as a blue diamond . After the imperial coronation of Charles VII, Maria Amalia had the diamond worked into her imperial crown.

In 1761, five years after Maria Amalia's death, Elector Maximilian III. Joseph , perhaps inspired by the setting of the Dresden Green Diamond , the incorporation of the Blue Wittelsbach into a medal of the Order of the Golden Fleece . When Elector Max Joseph was made the first King of Bavaria in 1806, he had a royal crown made according to a design by Charles Percier , which contained the Blue Wittelsbacher as a guiding stone . In an inventory from 1807, the stone was estimated to be worth 300,000 guilders , as much as all other royal jewelry put together. Until 1918, the diamond at the top of the crown of the Kingdom of Bavaria remained the house and state symbol . He was last seen in public in this version in 1921 at the funeral of King Ludwig III.

The diamond went into the Wittelsbach compensation fund . In 1931, in order to solve liquidity problems as a result of the global economic crisis, the Wittelsbach company wanted to auction the Blue Wittelsbacher at Christie's and received permission from the Bavarian state government under Heinrich Held ; at the auction on December 21, 1931, however, no buyer was found. It was not sold until 1951 in Antwerp ; In 1958 the stone was shown at the Brussels World's Fair without a name or any reference to its historical significance . In August 1961, the jeweler Jozef Komkommer in Antwerp acquired the diamond from a community of heirs of the gemstone dealer Romi Goldmuntz and, after the compensation fund had refused to buy it back, sold it in 1964 via the Hamburg jeweler Renatus Wilm to an initially unknown person, who later became known that it was the department store magnate Helmut Horten who bought it for his then partner and later wife Heidi Jelinek .

On December 10, 2008, the Blue Wittelsbacher was auctioned off at Christie's auction in London for 16.4 million pounds sterling , i.e. 23.4 million US dollars or 18.4 million euros . The buyer was the London jeweler and gem dealer Laurence Graff . Until November 16, 2010, the price was the highest ever achieved at auction for a diamond.

Regrinding and hike

On January 7, 2010, the New York Times reported that Graff had the stone re-sharpened by three gem cutters to remove chipping and better bring out purity and brilliance, causing the stone to lose four carats. Experts, including Hans Ottomeyer , consistently criticized the new grinding , as the stone lost its historical character as a result. According to a report by the FAZ, Ottomeyer described the new grinding as vandalism ; Graff made the stone the "Royal Lolly" .

The diamond, now known as The Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond , was on display next to the Hope Diamond in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC , from January 29th to September 1st, 2010 . Subsequently, from late October 2010 to January 2011 it was on view in the Harry Frank Guggenheim Hall of Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City . In June 2011, the New York Times reported that the stone had recently been sold by Graff for an undisclosed sum. Presumably the current owner is Sheikh Hamad bin Chalifa Al Thani with a purchase price of at least 80 million US dollars .

See also

Movie

  • The Blue Wittelsbacher. A diamond for Bavaria . A historical documentation by Bernhard Graf , BR 2011.

literature

  • Rudolf Dröschel, Jürgen Evers, Hans Ottomeyer: The Wittelsbach Blue , in: Gems and Gemology ISSN  0016-626X , 44 (2008), pp. 348-363
  • Johannes Erichsen (Ed.): Bavaria's Crown 1806: 200 Years of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Hirmer, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7774-3055-2
  • Jürgen Evers, Leonhard Möckl, Heinrich Nöth: The Wittelsbacher and the Hope Diamond , in: Chemie in Unserer Zeit ISSN  0009-2851 , 46 (2012), pp. 356–364
  • Bernhard Graf: The Blue Wittelsbacher. A star diamond for Bavaria . In: The Munich Show: Mineralientage München . (Exhibition catalog) Munich 2011, pp. 186–203.
  • K. de Smet: De grote blauwe diamant, alias "De Wittelsbacher", kroongetuige van three eeuwen Europese divorced. Uitgeversmij Standaard-Boekhandel, Antwerp / Amsterdam 1963
(German edition) The big blue diamond: the Wittelsbacher: key witness to three hundred years of European history. Standaard-Boekhandel 1963

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fancy Deep Grayish Blue , Christie's website with the Wittelsbach's auction lot
  2. ↑ a b c Christie's Press Release. November 3, 2008 (PDF; 156 kB) Retrieved December 11, 2008.
  3. ^ A b Out of the Blue, Prestige and Riches In: New York Times , January 7, 2010, accessed January 8, 2010; Quote: "By recutting it, some critics suggest, Mr. Graff has not so much improved it as altered it out of all recognition."
  4. ↑ Dröschel / Evers / Ottommeyer (lit.), p. 360
  5. ↑ According to Dröschel / Evers / Ottommeyer (Lit.), p. 352. Earlier descriptions (by de Smet) about the acquisition of the stone and its earlier history could not be verified, see also grinding stone of shame . In: Spiegel Online Wissenschaft , January 25, 2010
  6. ↑ Dröschel / Evers / Ottommeyer (Lit.), p 355
  7. ↑ Austrian State Archives
  8. ↑ Bavaria considers bid to bring mysterious Wittelsbach diamond home . In: The Times , November 7, 2008.
  9. ↑ a b Diamond sells for recession-busting $ 24.3 M . In: CNN , 2008. Retrieved December 11, 2008. “The diamond has a royal lineage. Christie's traces it thus: King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665) selected the diamond in 1664 as part of a dowry for his daughter, the Infanta Margarita Teresa (1651-1673). She had become engaged to Leopold I of Austria (1640–1705), who later became Holy Roman Emperor. When she died in 1673, her husband retained the diamond, which was passed on to his heirs. In 1722, the diamond entered the Wittelsbach family when the Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria (1701–1756) married the Bavarian Crown Prince, Charles Albert (1697–1745). It was worn by successive rulers until the abdication of King Ludwig III (1845-1921) in 1918. " 
  10. ↑ Shine is his business . In: Die Zeit , No. 48/1966
  11. ↑ Hannes Hintermeier : The "Blue Wittelsbacher" - A bargain compared to the Landesbank . In: FAZ , December 10, 2008
  12. ↑ "Blauer Wittelsbacher" - Diamond auctioned for more than 18 million euros . In: Die Welt , December 11, 2008
  13. ↑ NZZ executive: The jeweler of the rich and beautiful ( Memento from March 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Financial Times Deutschland of November 17, 2010 ( memento of November 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 17, 2010
  15. ^ The Earth Times - Historic diamond fetches 16 million pounds at London auction. December 10, 2008. Retrieved December 10, 2008
  16. ↑ Hannes Hintermeier: The Abolition of Eternity Frankfurter Allgemeine Faz.Net. January 16, 2010
  17. ^ 3sat broadcast on August 10, 2013 "A Diamond for Bavaria - The Blue Wittelsbacher", film by Bernhard Graf. Quote: "" Royal Lolly "," Whetstone of Shame "," The paint is off! " - Experts around the world were outraged about the auction and the resection of the Blue Wittelsbacher, the second largest blue diamond in the world. "
  18. ↑ The stone in its current, re-ground condition, and (2) in its historical
  19. ^ A Rare Encounter. Exhibition website (English) Accessed August 3, 2010
  20. ↑ According to Graff London ( memento of the original dated November 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.graffdiamonds.com
  21. ↑ The King of Really Big Diamonds Heads to China , June 19, 2011 article, accessed June 19, 2011
  22. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 26, 2013 , accessed on January 26, 2013
  23. ↑ Evers / Möckl / Nöth (Lit.), p. 363.