Ernst Christian August Behrens

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Ernst Christian August Behrens (* around 1754 in Tripkau ; † June 1, 1817 in Arfrade, now part of Stockelsdorf ) was a German builder , engineer and cartographer .

Life

Little is known about Ernst Christian August Behren's origins. He learned the building trade in Berlin . From 1776 to 1783 he worked as a construction manager in the Electorate of Hanover .

In 1783 he came to Mecklenburg-Schwerin and worked as a building inspector until 1799, first in Schwerin, from 1787 in Hagenow and from 1793 to 1799 as a chamber clerk. His Mecklenburg Landbau-Kunst , published in 1796, is an important source of rural architecture with its calculations, plans and illustrations. Karl Baumgarten has proven that the design actually took place. In 1826 Johann Heinrich von Thünen still used Behrens' calculations in The Isolated State in relation to agriculture and economics . From 1800 to 1802 Behrens was a master builder in Mecklenburg-Strelitz .

In 1802 the Lübeck council appointed him city ​​architect . In Lübeck he planned the expansion of the Stecknitz Canal on the basis of the work of the Hanoverian engineer officer Johann Ludewig Hogrewe . From 1804 he led the demolition of the bastionary fortifications around Lübeck's old town and, after the city's takeover of the Johanniskloster in 1804, its partial demolition and new construction. He carried out restoration work on the town hall .

Former cathedral mechanic, converted into an orphanage by Behrens in 1810 (photo before 1919)

In 1810 he converted the Domdechanei ( Domkirchhof 7), which had become urban as a result of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, for the orphanage . He also built teachers' apartments from the cathedral school in another cathedral curia.

Behrens gained a great reputation for his elaboration of a topographical map of the Lübeck state area, which formed the basis for all Lübeck maps before 1877. To do this, he measured a 400- rod base between the Lübeck village of Wesloe and the Hohewarte farm on the Wakenitz in 1807 and, with the assistance of his two sons Heinrich Ludwig Behrens and Carl Georg Behrens, carried out a triangulation and detailed recording until 1811 , from which the base map in scale 1 : 25,000 was created.

With the incorporation of Lübeck into the French Empire on January 1, 1811, Behrens was appointed engineer des Pontes & Chaussées . From 1811 he was mainly involved in an ambitious project for the French occupiers, namely to plan the expansion of the Stecknitz Canal as part of a waterway from the Seine to the Baltic Sea , the Canal de la Seine à la Baltique . In 1813 the French commissioned him to build a permanent supply and retreat connection to Hamburg , for which many Lübeckers had to do forced labor.

In 1813 he was replaced by the mayor Friedrich Adolf von Heinze by the Danish architect Joseph Christian Lillie as Lübeck city architect, but remained in the service of the city as an engineer. Both were dismissed after the re-establishment of the Lübeck council in 1815, Ilsabe von Bülow suspects for economic reasons and sees no political motives of the council, at least with Lillie. Behrens moved to the Arfrade farm leased by his son Heinrich Ludwig.

It was not until 1820 that Heinrich Nikolaus Börm (1780–1830) was appointed a new city architect.

Works

ECA Behrens: rejuvenated map of Gut Strecknitz
  • The practical mill building art or thorough and complete instructions for the mill and mill basic work building with the main and special plans: worked out for non-profit use for building enthusiasts, millers and carpenters. Schwerin: Bear jump 1789
Digital copy , Bavarian State Library
  • (Maps in :) August Georg von Brandenstein : Something else about making the Elde navigable: Dedicated to Mecklenburg's true patriots and submitted for impartial examination. Schwerin: Bear jump 1792
Digitized , SLUB
Digitized , Rostock University Library
  • Mecklenburgische Land-Baukunst or a collection of original drawings that have been built on and are still being built for use by estate owners, civil servants, forest and economy servants and tenants. Schwerin; Wismar: Bödner 1796
Digital copy , Bavarian State Library
  • Description of a tried and tested instrument by which a thief, whether he can get in through a window or break through a wall, is always discovered, or at least sure to be scared away. 1797
Digitized , Berlin State Library
Digitized , SLUB

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The entry in Curau's death register says: He died suddenly of flux river, 63 years old , accessed via ancestry.com on May 15, 2017
  2. ^ Karl Baumgarten: The farmhouse designs of Ernst Christian August Behrens. In: Ethnologia Europaea 2/3 (1968/69), pp. 49-54.
  3. ^ Lübeckische Blätter 43 (1901), p. 56
  4. ↑ Reinhard Woltman : Contributions to making the rivers navigable. In Commission der Heroldschen Buchhandlung, Hamburg 1826, p. 178
personal data
SURNAME Behrens, Ernst Christian August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German builder, engineer and cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1750
PLACE OF BIRTH Tripkau (Neuhaus Office)
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1817
Place of death Arfrade, now part of Stockelsdorf