Christian Adam Fries

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Christian Adam Fries (born September 10, 1766 , † March 27, 1847 in Heidelberg ) was a Heidelberg-based banker, manufacturer and collector of paintings.

Fries and his family had achieved prosperity through the Fries banking house founded by ancestors in 1784 , but also through the manufacture of madder , a red textile dye of great economic importance at the time, which was also used as a raw material for varnishes and paints (Rembrandt lacquer, Rubens red, Turkish red, Van -Dyck-Rot) was used. The Krappfabrik was originally founded by the Electoral Palatinate clerical administrator Johann Ludwig Harscher with Basel merchants and taken over in 1778 by Fries' father-in-law, clerical administrator Philipp Christian Heddaeus . From 1788 to 1808 Fries had the monopoly for the production of madder in the area of ​​the Heidelberg Oberamt through the electoral privilege. From 1819 to 1820 Fries was a member of the Second Chamber of the Baden Estates Assembly .

Fries was an art connoisseur and owned a valuable collection of paintings, which included works by various Dutch people of the 17th century, the French Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin , the British George Augustus Wallis (1761–1847) and the Austrian Joseph Anton Koch .

Christian Adam Fries was also the father of three well-known landscape painters : Ernst Fries (1801–1833), Wilhelm Fries (1819–1878) and Bernhard Fries (1820–1879).

The bank and factory were passed on to his sons Heinrich and Hermann around 1840. In 1857 Heinrich lost the bank due to unsuccessful speculation; the business premises were rented to the Köster bank, which later merged into Deutsche and Disconto-Bank (DeDi-Bank), from 1937 onwards, Deutsche Bank . The Krappfabrik was converted to the synthetic production of ultramarine in 1854 by Hermann Fries . The bankruptcy of his brother Heinrich also forced the abandonment of the factory, which was operated until 1874 by a stock corporation founded in 1859. Then the buildings were demolished. A residential area was created on the site, today's Weststadt. Ernst Fries recorded the appearance of the old factory in an engraving in 1818 . The Fries family was then one of the important pioneers for the newly emerging paint and chemical industry, among other things as a co-founder of the chemical factory in Wohlhotels , as a shareholder in the chemical factories association in Mannheim and as a co-founder of BASF .

Fries' brother-in-law, Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner, was a professor of chemistry and Justus Liebig's teacher .

literature

  • Ursula Keller: The development of industry in Heidelberg within the framework of its geographical and industrial policy requirements. Basel political science dissertation, Heidelberg 1961, p. 91
  • Werner Abelshauser : The BASF: A company history , CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-49526-5
  • Carl Caesar von Leonhard : Tourist book for Heidelberg and the surrounding area: with woodcuts, imprinted lithographs and a chart , Groos, Heidelberg 1834

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Hans-Peter Becht: The Baden Second Chamber and its Members, 1819 to 1841/42. Investigations into the structure and functioning of an early German parliament. Dissertation University of Mannheim, Heidelberg 1985, p. 468
personal data
SURNAME Frieze, Christian Adam
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Banker, manufacturer and collector of paintings
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1766
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1847
Place of death Heidelberg