Christian Heinrich von Watzdorf
Christian Heinrich von Watzdorf , from 1719 Count von Watzdorf , (born August 11, 1698 in Crostau ; † July 12, 1747 at the Königstein Fortress ) was a Saxon court official and music patron from the von Watzdorf family .
Life
Watzdorf was the second of nine children of the Saxon chamberlain and Christoph Heinrich von Watzdorf (1670–1729) and his wife Wilhelmine Friederike, born in 1719, to the rank of count. von Bock-Blosheim († 1744).
Watzdorf studied at the University of Leipzig from 1718 to 1720 and then became chamberlain at the court of August the Strong in Dresden . In 1722 he undertook a grand tour that took him a. a. led to Venice and Rome ; in Venice he probably attended a performance of Tomaso Albinoni's opera Gli eccessi della gelosia and got to know the composer personally. Back in Dresden, he was promoted to court and judiciary in 1724 . In July of the same year he was sent to Parma to initiate a marital relationship between Johanna Magdalena, a daughter of Duke Johann Georg von Sachsen-Weißenfels , and Antonio Farnese , the younger brother of the Duke of Parma . When this mission failed, Watzdorf went to Florence , where in September 1725 he insulted Princess Violante Beatrix of Bavaria so grossly that she complained about him to both the Tuscan and Saxon courts. Despite repeated requests to return to Dresden, Watzdorf did not arrive again until August 1726.
After his father's death in 1729 he inherited the estates Wiesa , Birkenheide and Crostau whose church he one of three years later Gottfried Silbermann organ built with a value of 1700 Reichstalern donated. In 1730, Watzdorf, who repeatedly entered into relationships with peasant and bourgeois girls and fathered several illegitimate children, was accused of raping his daughter by a tenant . The proceedings ended with an acquittal, but in April 1731 it resulted in Watzdorf's release from the Saxon state government.
When Friedrich August II became Elector of Saxony in 1733 , Watzdorf finally fell out of favor; in addition to a personal conflict with Privy Councilor Heinrich von Brühl doing Watzdorfs played claim that canon (he was himself since the death of his father canon of the pins to provide outside the sovereign jurisdiction of Meissen and Naumburg and provost of the Abbey of St. Petri Bautzen ), a Role. Watzdorf was arrested for high treason in April 1733, taken to the Königstein Fortress and sentenced to life imprisonment without trial in November 1735 (his constant conflicts with the fortress commanders and the guards exacerbated the sentence). In 1734 he was deprived of his position as chamberlain, in 1737 as provost of Bautzen and canon of Meißen and in 1742 as canon of Naumburg. Several attempts to appeal the judgment to the Kaiser in Vienna failed. When Watzdorf died in 1747 after 14 years imprisonment at the age of almost 49, his fortune fell to the state; In addition to the estates, this also included a library with more than 8,000 volumes and numerous musical instruments.
Patronage
Johann Mattheson mentioned in his magazine Critica Musica in 1722 that Watzdorf “should be a great connoisseur of music”. Today his name is mainly associated with Gottfried Silbermann's very well preserved organ in Crostau . Watzdorf was also the dedicatee of Tomaso Albinoni's 12 Balletti e sonate a tre op. 8 (Amsterdam 1722) and of Ernst Wilhelm Herzog's biography of the composer Johann Kuhnau (Leipzig 1722).
literature
- "Recovered strange deaths". In: New Genealogical-Historical News from the most noble incidents, which happened at the European courts, where at the same time descriptions of life of many class persons occur. The 34th part. Johann Samuel Heinsii sel. Erben, Leipzig 1753. pp. 940–960, here 955f. ( Digitized version )
- Karl von Weber : Christian Heinrich Graf von Watzdorff † 1747 . In: ders .: From four centuries. Communications from the main state archive in Dresden. Second volume. Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1858. pp. 209-262.
- Ferdinand Nitze: Christian Heinrich von Watzdorf's on Reudnitz, count. reuss.-plauensch. Rath, Hof- und Forstmeister zu Untern-Greiz historical-genealogical description of the ancient noble and count. Family Derer von Watzdorf 1740 on behalf of and with the assistance of Chamberlain Rudolph von Watzdorf-Stoermthal the Elder. Z. Senior Gender Revised, continued and published . Petzold, Dresden 1872. pp. 137 ?? - 141.
- Nicola Schneider: “Christian Heinrich von Watzdorf as a music patron. New knowledge about Albinoni and a Saxon sheet music library of the 18th century ”. In: Die Musikforschung 63 (2010), pp. 20–34.
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Watzdorf, Christian Heinrich von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Watzdorf, Christian Heinrich Graf von (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Saxon court official, canon and patron |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 11, 1698 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Crostau |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 12, 1747 |
| Place of death | Königstein (Saxon Switzerland) |