Christian Alexander Fellner

Christian Alexander Fellner (* 1800 in Frankfurt am Main ; † 1883 ibid) was a German businessman , botanist , gun collector and patron . His important weapon collection came to the Frankfurt Historical Museum in 1883 . It is exhibited there today.

Fellner family

The family belonged to the top of Frankfurt society. Christian Alexander Fellner was the second eldest son of the banker and councilor Johann Christian Fellner (1764-1836). Although he had inherited a large fortune from his father Michael Fellner (1724–1798), he had to liquidate his business in 1826 as a result of bad speculation. Years of litigation followed within the family. Hofrat Fellner had nine children. Only two of them were married, the son and later mayor Karl Konstanz Viktor Fellner (1807–1866) and the daughter Anna Catharina (1813–1864), who married the merchant Conrad Eduard Eyssen in 1835.

Christian Alexander Fellner remained unmarried. He lived with his siblings Constantin and Margarethe Friederike in the house Hermesweg 9. There was a large garden in which the siblings devoted themselves to botanical studies. In 1821 he worked “with Michael Fellner”, in other words in his father's banking business. In 1825 he applied for the position of a forest accountant, where he is available as a “citizen's son” alongside two businessmen. He did not get a chance in the drawing of lots. After the business was liquidated in 1826, he fought legally to save part of the family's assets and the professional honor of his father.

In 1867 the brother Constantin died. In 1868 the siblings made a joint will. Her assets consisted of the house, the garden, the furniture and securities. In the classified income tax roll of 1870, it is accounted for with a tax amount of 49 guilders annually. Christian Alexander Fellner died in 1883. He was buried in the new main cemetery in the family grave site in the "An der Mauer" area.

The collector's house

Christian Alexander Fellner's parental home was at Friedberger Anlage 14 in Frankfurt. The mother Susanne Dorothea died here in 1854. The banking business of Constantin and Johann Christian Fellner was in Hasengasse. The corner houses No. 9 and No. 23 of the Fellner family. They were surrounded by gardens. When his brother Constantin died in 1867, house no. 9 also Christian Alexander and Friederike. Then the two of them moved into the house at Hermesweg 23, where Friederike died on November 9, 1868. In the 1868/69 address book there is an entry in the name of Christian Alexander Fellner as “Privatier” at Hermesweg 23. In 1879, Hermesweg 9 was again his address, where he also died. Four houses belonging to the Fellner family are located close together. First Councilor Fellner should have acquired and built on the beautiful corner property at Friedberger Anlage. To the north of this are the two properties on Hermesweg, not far to the west are the house and garden at Seilerstraße 8, where mayor Karl Constanz Viktor Fellner committed suicide.

The gun collector

Christian Alexander Fellner was not a gun fanatic. The young man's early interest in weapons is documented in 1822. When the younger brother Carl Constanz Victor attended the pedagogue in Idstein as a pupil , Christian Alexander asked him to buy an old pistol for himself and a rifle for Constantin. He gave him the following instructions: “What you wrote me about the can almost made me buy it. But first see whether the barrel is the lock and if the set should be made of iron are not rusty, that the lock fires well and is well made, that the shaft is not damaged and the set is well made, whether the barrel is clean and inside If it is blue and whether it has no outside criterion, then everything has to be there like a ramrod, spherical shape and scratches. If that's all like that [...] buy it for at most  4 florins , but if something breaks in it or should be different at all [...] don't buy it [...]. ”Christian Alexander Fellner's weapon collection was only found again in the will of Mentioned April 20, 1868. There is also a directory of books on weapons, armor, tournaments, coats of arms and botany. The weapons collection was initially intended for the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg. When the Historisches Museum Frankfurt was founded , Fellner changed the donation in favor of his hometown.

Collector friends

The merchant Carl Friedrich Kahlo was a neighbor of the Fellners in Hermesweg 8. Kahlo came from a Frankfurt gingerbread family and was - by the way - the great-uncle of the well-known Mexican painter Frida Kahlo .

Carl Kahlo owned a collection of 81 rifles, which he bequeathed to the Historical Museum in 1883, as did the specialist literature. Because of the neighborhood, it can be considered certain that Fellner and Kahlo were in friendly professional contact. They even shared their preferences among themselves. Fellner's focus was on edged weapons, while Kahlo specialized in firearms. The same is quite common among collector friends.

In the Frankfurt area there was a third collection of rifles, pistols and powder horns, perhaps also of edged weapons. It was located at Schloss Höchst an der Nidder with the von Günderrode family , who lived there until 1900. Smaller parts of this collection came to the Frankfurt Historical Museum.

Christian Alexander Fellner was also interested in botany, but his brother Constantin, who was five years younger than him, was even more interested. Constantin Fellner owned a microscope , 73 boxes with microscopic specimens, two botanical boxes and a herbarium . The brother also had ten oil paintings, a pair of pistols with powder horns, a deer catcher and a saber his own.

literature

• Jan Gerchow (Ed.): Frankfurt collectors and donors. Writings of the Historisches Museum Frankfurt . Volume 32, Frankfurt 2012, ISBN 978-3-921606-94-0 , pp. 169-180.

Web links

• “Arms for Frankfurt” - The Fellner Collection on historisches-museum-frankfurt.de
• Militaria on historisches-museum-frankfurt.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} “Arms for Frankfurt” - The Fellner Collection at historisches-museum-frankfurt.de, accessed May 22, 2013.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} The weapons collection of the businessman Christian Alexander Fellner (1800-1883) ( Memento of the original from September 12, 2011 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. on historisches-museum.frankfurt.de, accessed on May 23, 2013 (PDF; 2.1 MB) 
3. ^ Rudolf Jung :  Fellner, Karl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 48, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1904, p. 516.
4. ↑ FELLNER, Constantin (1805–1867) botanist, microscopist, trader, privateer (PDF; 1.6 MB) on senckenberg.de, accessed May 22, 2013. (p. 38)