Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn

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Christian Ludwig Hagedorn; Portrait by Anton Graff 1772.

Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn (born February 14, 1712 in Hamburg ; † January 24, 1780 in Dresden ) was a German art theorist and collector, as well as an amateur engraver and diplomat in the Saxon service. His art theoretical considerations prepared the aesthetics of romanticism . His older brother Friedrich (1708–1754) was a poet, his father Hans Statius was a diplomat and councilor in the Danish service.

Diplomatic activity

Hagedorn studied law in Altdorf , but letters testify that he was already interested in art at that time. In 1732 he moved to the University of Jena and - like his brother - heard legal lectures from Burkhard Gotthelf Struve and Christian Gottlieb Buder (1693–1763).

In 1737 Hagedorn entered the diplomatic service as legation secretary and eventually advanced to legation councilor. His diplomatic activities took him to various German courts, where he was able to study works of art in the collections there and developed into an art connoisseur. On his numerous travels he met such well-known art theorists as Johann Joachim Winckelmann , Johann Georg Sulzer and Salomon Gessner , with whom he stayed in contact. During his fifteen years of service he also built up his own art collection, which mainly contained German and Dutch works from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Art critical activity

Portrait of Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn by Johann Friedrich Bause.

After leaving the service in 1752, he established himself as an art critic and theorist: in 1755 he anonymously published a catalog of his own collection ( Lettre à un amateur ... ), thereby attempting to initiate a profitable sale. In addition to the inventory list, it contained many artist's works, comments on art criticism and above all a sketch on a history of German art. With the work, Hagedorn intended a continuation of Joachim von Sandrart's Teutsche Academie .

Hagedorn did not succeed in selling the collection, but he gained a lot of attention as an art connoisseur. Friedrich Nicolai invited him to work on the newly founded library of fine sciences and the free arts .

In 1762 Hagedorn published his reflections on the Mahlerey under his own name . This reflected the reading of French and English art literature as well as his own previous art experience. In this work and in numerous essays for the library , he takes the side of feeling rather than reason as the criterion for judging works of art. With this he prepared the Sturm und Drang and the romantic. Hagedorn held fast to the role model character of antiquity and the old masters , but gave Northern European art a place on a par with Italians.

In 1763, one year after the publication of the "Observations", Hagedorn was commissioned to design the concept for a Saxon academy and drawing school. For this purpose he corresponded with Johann Georg Wille in Paris. In 1764 he became general director of the Saxon art collections and the art academy in Dresden. The branches in Leipzig and Meißen were also subordinate to him.

In 1766 he was elected a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

Activity as an art collector

During his diplomatic activities from 1737–1752, Hagedorn collected paintings, preferably landscape and genre paintings. Until his death in 1780, the collection was in his apartment on Frauengasse in Dresden. Waetzold described it as "one of the most valuable collections of material on German art history of the 18th century".

In his will of July 14, 1760, Hagedorn had bequeathed his collection of paintings and the associated library to the University of Wittenberg, but his porcelain to Christiane Tönsberg (Tønsberg), who lived in Denmark. However, the provost Andreas Tamdrup Rachlou, who was married to a cousin of Mrs. Tønsberg, succeeded in getting the entire estate handed over after a 14-year legal dispute in which not everything was right, after which the painting collection in his stately Nygaard courtyard was hung in Snoldelev south of Copenhagen.

On November 14, 1806, Nygaard burned down and with it the entire collection of paintings, and during World War II almost all court documents in the Dresden District Court were destroyed by fire. After this, any further research into this collection of paintings was made impossible until the Dane Rolf Wiecker managed to find important copies of the lost documents, including a complete list of all paintings.

This inventory showed that at least 54 paintings were not destroyed by the fire because they had been sold before the fire. The fire was an insurance fraud that actually succeeded because Rachlou was acquitted of arson in a trial in 1810 and the insurance company had to pay him 11,427 Rt. The 54 or so paintings were clearly identified in Danish and foreign catalogs of various art auctions and must now be in various public and private collections.

Activity as an engraver

A 1744 etching by Hagedorn (now in the Cleveland Museum of Art )

Hagedorn only worked occasionally as an engraver, as only works from the years 1743–1745 and 1764–1766 are known, some of which are kept in the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett .

Works

  • Lettre à un amateur de la peinture avec des eclaircissements historiques sur un cabinet et les auteurs des tableaux, qui le composent . Dresden 1755 ( digitized version ), (Reprint: Geneva 1972)
  • Reflections on Mahlerey 2 vols., Leipzig 1762
  • Letters about art from and to Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn Leipzig 1797

literature

Web links

Commons : Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

annotation

  1. ↑ On June 20, 1789, the Swiss portrait painter Anton Graff became professor for portraiture at the Dresden Art Academy . Graff kept this position in life until his death in 1813. It was Hagedorn who on January 17, 1766 recommended the prince administrator Franz Xaver of Saxony to appoint the young Swiss as court painter. The court had approved. The decisive factor was a sample work submitted by Graff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 101.
personal data
SURNAME Hagedorn, Christian Ludwig von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Diplomat in the Saxon service, art theorist and collector, also amateur engraver
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1712
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1780
Place of death Dresden