Friedrich Cropp (historian)

Friedrich August Cropp (born June 20, 1805 in Hamburg ; † March 19, 1889 ibid) was a German businessman and private scholar .

Live and act

Friedrich Cropp was a son of Friedrich August Cropp (1747-1814), who worked as an actuary at the district court, and his wife Rebecca Regina, née Bollmeyer (1767-1824). He spent most of his childhood and youth from 1810 until his confirmation in April 1821, with interruptions, in the school of Johann Andreas Christoph Unbehagen, which was considered extremely modern at the time. For some time he lived as a pensioner with his sons and other students from overseas in an uncomfortable household. After graduating from high school, he completed a commercial apprenticeship at DC Kramer & Co. and stayed in touch with the family uneasiness. Pensioners from Cuba whom he had met while staying with the Uncomfortable family advised him to emigrate to Havana . There he founded a company with Rudolph Heinrich Ballauf from Altenwerder .

In 1838 Cropp came back to Hamburg as a wealthy man who no longer had to work. At first he traveled extensively, particularly to England and Italy. where he dealt with the art there. He then bought land in Mecklenburg, which he sold a little later and then concentrated on researching the history of Hamburg.

Friedrich August Cropp Dr. phil. hc , collective grave “Philanthropists”, Ohlsdorf cemetery

Shortly after founding the Association for Hamburg History , he joined the association and devoted himself to genealogy and literary history. He dealt in particular with aesthetic German-language literature of the 18th century. Without him, the lexicon of Hamburg writers would probably not have been created. Carl Rudolph Wilhelm Klose wrote in the preface to the seventh volume, published in 1870, that "Mr. Cropp with his tireless diligence [...] had given some articles their complete completeness".

Cropp wrote articles on Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock that were often received by literary historians of his time . He also played a decisive role in naming friends of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing who lived in Hamburg and whom the latter had only noted with their first letters. Cropp himself wrote little of his own works, most of which can be found as short texts in the "Mitteilungen des Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte". On June 20, 1875 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Kiel . Since he died suddenly, the Association for Hamburg History only made him an honorary member after his death.

In the Ohlsdorf cemetery , the collective grave slab " Philanthropists " in the Althamburg Memorial Cemetery commemorates Friedrich Cropp, among others.

estate

Cropp's personal estate can now be found in the State Archives of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg . His writings, which consist of 39 numbers in capsules, volumes and booklets, are held by the Hamburg State Library . He also had 54 boxes of hamburgers , which the Association for Hamburg History took over and which were destroyed during the Second World War.

literature

• Renate Hauschild-Thiessen: Cropp, Friedrich . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 85-86 .