Fritz Heckert (glass manufacturer)

Glassworks in Petersdorf

Friedrich (Fritz) Wilhelm Heckert (born April 17, 1837 in Halle (Saale) ; † February 22, 1887 in Munich ) was a glass manufacturer who founded the Petersdorf / Silesia glass refinery and then successfully, multiple awards, internationally recognized decorative glasses in the style of historicism and art nouveau .

Life

Fritz Heckert was born in 1837 as the eighth son of the glazier Johann Andreas Heckert (1789-1852) in Halle an der Saale. Of the nine siblings, seven worked in the glass industry. After his father's death, at the age of 15, he went to Berlin to see his brother Carl Ferdinand. There he learned the trade of a businessman and described himself as a manufacturer from 1863. In 1862 he acquired a glass grinding shop, the so-called Felsenmühle am Zacken near Petersdorf on the edge of the Giant Mountains ; In 1866 he founded his glass refinery in Petersdorf, which he was able to expand into a major glass processing company with at times 200 employees, which from 1889 also had a glassworks. Fritz Heckert died in 1887.

Glass production

His widow, then a son-in-law and, from 1905, his son Bruno Heckert continued the company. In 1910 Heinrich von Loesch, chamberlain and manor owner on Kammerswaldau, acquired the Heckert company. From 1911 it traded as Fritz Heckert - Petersdorfer Glashütte KG. In 1918 the Josephinenhütte of the Reich Count Schaffgotsch bought the Heckert company from the neighboring Schreiberhau. In addition, there was a merger with the glass company Neumann and Staebe from Hermsdorf / Kynast. Until 1925 they existed under the name Jo-He-Ky as a limited partnership and then the Heckert company was merged into Josephinenhütte AG Petersdorf, which existed until 1945. After the end of the Second World War, production was continued in the Szklarska Poręba (Schreiberhau) and Piechowice (Petersdorf) factories . The initially remaining German masters trained a new trunk of Polish skilled workers. In 1958 the Josephinenhütte was renamed “Huta Julia”. The glassworks in Szklarska Poreba was closed in 2000. Thus, the glassworks in Piechowice (Petersdorf) is the only surviving monument of the Josephinenhütte including the Heckert glass refinery and the old, famous glass tradition of the Silesian Giant Mountains.

Glasses

Glass design by Sütterlin 1900–1910

Some glasses from the Heckert refinery are signed with the abbreviation "FH" and marked with numbers or letters, but with a different degree of preservation. These are vases, tankards, goblets, Romans, drinking glasses, mugs, carafes, bowls, service, jugs and decorative bottles.

The decors arose from historical Pan-German models, resulted from oriental patterns, inspired by the world exhibitions, were decorated with enamel paint and the transfer printing process, as well as glass grinding and surface processing (e.g. Cyprus glasses), could be produced as overlaid glasses and in bulk colored glasses (e.g. uranium glasses ).

A contemporary quote from the commemorative publication on the 50th anniversary of the F. Heckert company in 1916 describes and underlines all of this in an excellent way:

Fritz Heckert's “Successors have understood how to consolidate and expand the good reputation more and more, and were already at a time when the collaboration between artists and manufacturers was nowhere near as general as it is today (1916) they are always open to suggestions from circles of technicians and artists. Such employees are Prof. Dr. Franz Reuleaux - engineer - Berlin, once one of the leaders of German technology, Ludwig Sütterlin - graphic designer - Berlin, one of the innovators of the German arts and crafts and Prof. Max Rade - arts and crafts teacher - called Dresden.

After the Petersdorfer Glashütte preferred strict patterns in its paintings in the 1970s, it had to participate in the repetition of the historical styles that dominated our arts and crafts in the 1980s and up to the mid-1990s. Light gold decorations originate from those years, mostly in the delicate and irregular shapes of the Rococo and with floral decorations, which were then replaced in the 90s by heavy decorations in relief gold. The types of decoration were also subject to contemporary tastes. Paintings in colors and gold alternated with engraved decorations.

Then came a time when the charming effects that ancient glasses had gained from being stored in the earth, that shimmering, iridescent sheen of the butterfly's wings, were artificially imitated by light metal deposits. The Petersdorfer Glashütte, which marketed it under the collective name of 'Cyprus', set the tone in these iridescent, shiny metallic glasses.

Today the workers working in these departments are mainly concerned with the reproduction of the most beautiful glasses in museums and private collections, with the production of all kinds of coat of arms glasses and with a special item from the glassworks, the so-called “ Jodhpur glasses”. This type of decoration goes back to a suggestion of the privy councilor Prof. F. Reulaux, who brought home enamel works on bronze ground made by natives there from a trip to India, the rich and yet finely coordinated color effect of these "Jodpur glasses" through colored glass flows be achieved. All Heckert glasses, from whom the designs might come and which techniques were also used for the decorations, had one thing in common: they were made with the greatest care. "

It should be noted that in all major glass exhibitions and collections, e.g. For example, in the Karkonoskie Museum in Jelenia Góra (Hirschberg) or in the Passau Glass Museum, there are Heckert glasses that exemplify the decors of Historicism and Art Nouveau.

See also

Szklarska Poreba

literature

• General apartment indicator with address and Business manual for Berlin, its surroundings and Charlottenburg to the year 1863. Compiled from official sources by JA Bünger. 7th year, AW Hagen publishing house, Berlin.
• GE Pazaurek: Modern glasses, monographs of the arts and crafts. Hermann Seemann's successor, Leipzig 1901.
• Fifty years of Fritz Heckert, 1866–1916. Festschrift. Petersdorf / Riesengebirge 1916.
• G. Grundmann: The history of glassmaking in the Hirschberger Tale . In: Journal of Physics. Vol. 8, No. 9 (1927), p. 42.
• S. Seeger: Silesian glass from the 2nd half of the 19th century. House of Silesia, German Culture and Education Center e. V., Königswinter 1992.
• H. Ricke: Glasses from the Fritz Heckert refinery and glass factory, Petersdorf. In: Georg Höltl (Ed.): Das Bömische Glas 1700 - 1950. Volume III, Passauer Glasmuseum, Tittling 1995, ISBN 3-927218-68-5 , p. 202.
• E. Gelfort: The Heckert glass family . In: Weltkunst. Jhrg 71, issue 12 (2001), p. 1868.
• E. Gelfort: uranium glasses from the Fritz Heckert refinery . In: Weltkunst. Jhrg 73, Issue 1 (2003), p. 42.
• E. Gelfort, S. Seeger: original or copy . In: Weltkunst. Jhrg 74, Issue 10 (2004), p. 38.
• E. Gelfort: Jodpur . In: Collector's Journal. September 2007, p. 38.
• E. Gelfort: Cyprus glasses . In: Collector's Journal. September 2011, p. 60.
• Refined variety, glasses by Fritz Heckert from Petersdorf / Silesia. Exhibition catalog. House of Silesia, Königswinter 2012.
• G. and P. Höltl (eds.); S. Żelasko: Fritz Heckert - Kunstglas Industrie 1866 - 1923. Glasmuseum Passau, 2012, ISBN 978-3-927218-76-5 .
• E. Gelfort: Heckert - History of a family of glassmakers . In: The glass friend. kolme k - Verlag, part 1: issue 42, February 2012, p. 9; Part 2: Issue 43, May 2012, p. 8.
• E. Gelfort: Labels of the Fritz Heckert glass refinery . In: The glass friend. Kolme k - Verlag, issue 45, November 2012, p. 20.
• V. Schorcht: Fritz Heckert - Art Nouveau glasses that are ready-made. In: Collector's Journal , February / March 2015.
• E. Gelfort, S. Seeger: Fritz Heckert Umdruckdekor. In: Collector's Journal , February 2016, p. 70

Web links

• Glasses from the Fritz Heckert glass refinery in the Karkonoskie Museum in Jelenia Góra (German: Hirschberg) [3]
• Stefania Żelasko: Fritz Heckert , Kunstglas Industrie 1866–1923. Glass Museum Passau 2012 [4]
• Haus Schlesien dedicates an exhibition to Fritz Heckert. [5] In: General-Anzeiger online, accessed on May 27, 2014
• "Julia" glass factory [6]
• TV report about iodine glass, Fritz Heckert glassworks and Josephinenhütte [7]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karkonoskie Museum [1]
2. ^ Passau Glass Museum [2]