Friedrich Kurd von Alten

Friedrich Kurd von Alten

Friedrich Kurd von Alten (born January 6, 1822 in Großgoltern near Hanover , † October 6, 1894 in Trier ) was an Oldenburg Lord Chamberlain , archaeologist and head of the Grand Ducal Collections .

Life

origin

Friedrich came from the noble family von Alten . He was the son of the Hanoverian captain and landowner Karl Edmund Georg von Alten (1758–1841) and his second wife Sophie, née von Korff (1783–1846).

Career

Alten was tutored by private tutors and initially pursued an officer career . From 1836 he attended the military school in Hanover, was promoted to secondary lieutenant in September 1838 and served as a hussar officer in the Hanover army until 1846 . On January 1, 1847, he joined the Oldenburg court service as a chamberlain .

Right at the beginning of his activity in Oldenburg, Alten was given the management of the Grand Ducal Private Library, where he received suggestions for his own writing. In addition, he was entrusted with purchases for the picture gallery and in 1851 appointed chamberlain. From 1856 to 1873 he was chairman of the art association, and played a key role in the construction of the Augusteum and the museum building on the dam . From 1861 Alten was entrusted with courtly diplomatic missions that took him to Athens that same year . In 1862 he was appointed castle captain and that year joined the board of directors of the Grand Ducal Art and Scientific Collections , which he directed and expanded until 1894. In 1865 he was appointed Vice Lord Chamberlain. In 1866 he traveled to Hanover, where he warned King Georg and the government in vain of an alliance with Austria in the impending German war . In 1867 he became a member of the Literary Society. In the same year he reorganized the grand ducal collections, combined the antiquities collection previously kept in the Oldenburg Palace with the natural history cabinet and set up an ethnological department. In 1869, Alten was finally appointed Lord Chamberlain. He promoted the regionally oriented natural history work of the later museum director Friedrich Wiepken (1815–1897) and gave a new impetus to antiquity research within the Grand Duchy.

Alten's numerous publications with a focus on art history , regional history as well as prehistory and early history show his diverse interests and wide-ranging fields of work. Since 1869 he has dealt in detail with the prehistoric remains of the country and, after Carl Heinrich Nieberding, was the first to carry out extensive investigations of the plank paths discovered at the beginning of the 19th century , which, however, he wrongly subordinated to the Roman theory. Due to his excavations, he was one of the founders of German moorland research and also played a leading role on the board of the Oldenburg Regional Association for Archeology, which was founded in 1875 . From 1877 the Grand Duke awarded him the title of excellence .

meaning

Alten's importance is primarily based on the role he played in Oldenburg's cultural life in the second half of the 19th century. As a court official in the immediate vicinity of the Grand Duke and as a museum director, he secured a key position and acted as a stimulator and initiator in many areas. In particular, he advised the Grand Duke on the purchase of works of art and served as an intermediary for contemporary artists as well as for art dealers. In the second place, Alten was significant because of his research and publications.

family

Alten was married twice. A few months after entering the Oldenburg court service, he married Ida Schorcht (1823-1856) on April 14, 1847. After her untimely death, on September 21, 1857, he married Marie Freiin von Gayl (1827–1908), the daughter of Lieutenant General Ludwig Dietrich Eugen von Gayl (1785–1853). His first marriage had four children, of whom Georg (1848–1904) became a Prussian major general , Paul (1853–1907) a Prussian forester and Viktor (1854–1917) a Prussian district administrator. In the second marriage, two children were born, including Kurt von Alten .

Works

• The war in Schleswig in 1848 . Oldenburg. 1850.
• The Sachsenspiegel, land law and feudal law .
• Count Christoff von Oldenburg and the Count Feud (1534-1536): a contribution to the history of the Danish Interregnum . Hamburg. 1853.
• In memory of Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Braunschweig, and his train from the borders of Bohemia to Elsfleth in 1809 . Oldenburg. 1859.
• List of portraits in the Grand Ducal Palace in Eutin . Oldenburg. 1860.
• Questions and answers from a German to his brothers in Schleswig-Holstein . Without location information. Without year (around 1864).
• Cornelius Ploos van Amstel, art lover and engraver . Leipzig. 1864.
• The painter Asmus Jacob Carstens . Schleswig. 1865.
• Attempt to list the works and designs by Asmus Jacob Carstens with details of the reproductions . Oldenburg. 1866
• Georg Ludwig, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp . Oldenburg. 1867.
• Directory of paintings and plaster casts in the Grand Ducal Collection in Oldenburg . Oldenburg. 1868.
• From Tischbein's life and correspondence . As publisher Leipzig. 1872.
• The Bohlwege (Roman paths) in the Duchy of Oldenburg . Oldenburg. 1879.
• The Renaissance ceiling in Jever Castle . Leipzig 1883.
• The boardwalk in the river area of ​​the Ems and Weser . Oldenburg. 1888.
• Goethe's Harz Reisen . Oldenburg. 1884.
• The witches oak. A devil and dazzling story. o. O.

Furthermore, Alten published several manuscripts in the State Museum for Natural History and Prehistory, Oldenburg. Alten's correspondence was archived in the files of the State Association for Classical Studies, StAO.

literature

• Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 31-32.
• Franz Bucholtz : On Friedrich von Alten's memory. In: Report on the activities of the Oldenburger Landesverein für Altertumskunde. Issue 8, 1895.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sebastian Dohe: The Grand Ducal Picture Gallery 1804-1918 . In: Sebastian Dohe / Malve Anna Falk / Rainer Stamm (eds.): Die Gemäldegalerie Oldenburg. A European collection of old masters . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-7319-0447-2 , p. 8-47 .