Linel brothers

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Grave of Albert Linel in the old Jewish cemetery Frankfurt-Nordend

The Linel brothers , Michael Linel ( August 11, 1830 - March 26, 1892 ) and Albert Linel ( January 1, 1833 - February 17, 1916 ), originally Michael and Aaron Levy, were Frankfurt art collectors, patrons and donors of the museum's important book art collection Applied arts in Frankfurt am Main . This was founded in 1877 as the "Museum of Applied Arts" and was called from 1936 to 1999 "Museum of Applied Arts". The book art collections of the two brothers were combined in the Linel collection of the museum and form the basis of today's department “Book Art and Graphics”.

Life

Michael and Albert Linel came from Blieskastel in the Bavarian Palatinate and were sons of the Jewish merchant Sinai (also Simon) Levy, who had been married to Agatha Loeb since 1829. Michael Levy was a successful businessman and moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1861. He was followed two years later by Aaron Levy, who embarked on a legal career. In 1863 the brothers changed their names without giving up their Jewish religion. Michael Levy became Michael Linel and Aaron Levy became Albert Linel. Michael Linel was so successful as a businessman that he retired at the end of the 1860s or pursued his passion for collecting as a privateer . He remained unmarried. On December 23, 1863, Albert Linel married the Frankfurt bourgeois daughter Bertha Maas (born July 4, 1837), whose father, Amschel (Adolph) Samuel Maas, was a wealthy textile merchant, and her mother, Augusta Maas, belonged to the Frankfurt Flesch family. The marriage certificate shows Albert Linel as a privateer, from which it can be concluded that his doctorate as Dr. jur. must have taken place later. In addition to his legal work, he was, like his brother, a passionate collector.

The brothers lived on Eschersheimer Landstrasse ; Michael Linel in number 11, Albert Linel in number 34.

With their collecting activities, they actively participated in the social and cultural life of Frankfurt and shaped the city's art buying and collection policy. When Michael Linel died on March 26, 1892, the mayor Franz Adickes and the city councilor and social reformer Karl Flesch attended his funeral. Albert Linel died on February 17, 1916. He was unable to realize his dream of uniting his and his brother's collections in his own museum. Both brothers were buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt. Their graves still exist today.

In 1940 the name Linel was deleted from the collection and reintroduced in 1946. The Albert Linel Street has survived as the only Jewish street name the Hitler era and is still on the western edge of Kuhwaldsiedlung .

Act

Both brothers were intensive collectors, with Albert Linel's passion for collecting outstripping that of his brother, both in terms of spectrum and scope. “He collected everything he liked. In his dining room you could barely see the wallpaper for all the pictures. He also owned a precious bishop's ring and collected silver candlesticks and old cupboards. The main thing, however, were objects of the art of writing and printing. Here, the core of his collection was a special collection of family books from the Biedermeier period. ” Dr. Flesch Michael Linels 791 exhibits comprehensive collection of furniture , cassettes , clocks , porcelain , glass , bronzes , rock crystals , tin , enamel , cans , jewelry , pocket watches , iron , wood , stone , silver , tapestries , majolica and 42 books, treating them particularly appreciated for their bindings . There was also a collection of family records . In 1891, Michael Linel formulated an offer to the city of Frankfurt am Main to buy his handicraft collection for an annuity of 10,000 marks. The pension was intended as the city's contribution to the expansion of public art collections and thus also to continuously supplement the collection it had created. On March 8, 1892, the city council's assembly approved the purchase. A few days later, however, Michael Linel dies. The first and only installment for further expansion of the collection was donated by Albert Linel. The rate was 5000 marks. In return, the city of Frankfurt am Main approved 10,000 marks from the fund provided for the annuity for purchases. The Michael Linel collection was then handed over to the Kunstgewerbemuseum at Neue Mainzer Straße 49/51 as a closed collection .

The handover was accompanied by disputes. Because the Kunstgewerbemuseum of the Kunstgewerbeverein as a branch of the Polytechnic Society was a private and not a municipal organization. In contrast, the Michael Linel collection acquired with municipal funds was municipal property. The arguments on the part of the association for the historical museum as the bearer of the city's art collection against remaining in the privately run arts and crafts museum were, on the one hand, that city art property should not be entrusted to a privately run institution, and on the other hand, such a procedure would have the fragmentation of public funds Hand in the sense of the principle of “two halves instead of one whole” and thirdly, not least, the future of the Kunstgewerbemuseum is also uncertain due to its dependence on private hands.

If the municipal collections argued formally and institutionally, the board of the arts and crafts association preferred, in a written reply, to aesthetically legitimize their whereabouts in a collection-oriented manner. From his point of view, the Michael Linel collection corresponds to the character of the collection of the Kunstgewerbemuseum. The Historical Museum, on the other hand, does not have a collection mandate appropriate to the Michael Linel Collection, as it focuses primarily on the history of Frankfurt. Not only that the special aesthetic and supraregional exemplary collection claim would not be fulfilled. In contrast to the Kunstgewerbemuseum, the historical museum does not have a close spatial connection with the arts and crafts school that is relevant to mediation. Furthermore, if the museum remained in the Historical Museum, the Michael Linel collection would be fragmented as an inevitable consequence. Above all, however, the lack of space in the city's historical museum, in contrast to the arts and crafts museum, would prevent the publicly accessible exhibition as stipulated in the will. This last argument was the decisive factor for the city council in deciding to keep the Michael Linel collection in the Museum of Decorative Arts.

Albert Linel was offered membership in the commission for urban art and antiquity in the year his brother died. This commission has been administering the city-owned holdings of the Historical Museum since 1877. Since January 4, 1893, Albert Linel has been jointly responsible for the Frankfurt art collections on a voluntary basis.

In order to regulate his estate, he wrote several wills. In the last of October 16, 1914, probably due to the outbreak of World War I, he waived the condition that the two collections should be made accessible to the public in a specially built “Linel Museum”. Instead, he has a list of the two collections as the "Linel Collection" in the Historical Museum. “As determined in our testament of January 7, 1901, its purpose is to promote the arts and crafts in Frankfurt am Main, as well as to preserve our name and memory at all times, as a sign of Frankfurt citizenship, to honor our city and to imitate our fellow citizens. “ After Albert Linel died at the age of 83, the Frankfurt magistrate accepted the inheritance on April 6, 1916 . The collection was estimated at 170,000 marks. For comparison, it should be noted that the Museum of Applied Arts made available a total of only 45,000 marks for museum purchases from 1877 to 1892.

Due to a lack of space and the regionally defined collection mandate, the Historical Museum was unable to meet the requirements associated with the inheritance. The then director of the Historical Museum, Bernhard Müller , reacted to the fact that he had the city magistrate approve additional rooms for the collection of the two brothers and founded a "Linel Commission". This then looked for suitable rooms. In 1918 the Linel collection was transferred to the “Großer Engel” house on the Römerberg . However, this turned out to be inadequate in the long run due to the lack of heating, storage and presentation devices, as well as lighting and safety precautions, so that from 1921 the Linel Foundation was assigned to the Kunstgewerbemuseum after it had become municipal. The Linel collection was transformed into a collection for book and script art and exhibited in rooms that had been specially prepared for it.

The concept and beginning of the Linel collection

The first concept for the Linel collection goes back to the director of the Historical Museum Bernhard Müller in 1920. His goal was to design a uniform collection character and to define criteria for future collection activities. The basis was to form the most important sections of the brothers' collections: family books, illuminated manuscripts , early prints and book covers. The commission for the collection was drafted with the intention of closing a gap in Frankfurt am Main, namely to present "the history of book printing and its various branches clearly" . He saw the solution in the transformation of the Linel collection into a “general book art and ornament engraving collection ” . Since 1923, a large special exhibition of the Frankfurt Bibliophile Society has been held annually in the rooms of the Linel Collection . Her topics were:

Exhibitions from the holdings of the Linel collection showed:

The Linel collection was looked after by the art historian and archaeologist Viktoria von Lieres and Wilkau .

In December 1939 the National Socialist regime decreed that all Jewish foundations should be "restructured". This meant aryanization of their name or designation to obscure their origin. The name Linel was deleted in 1940 and it was now called the "Foundation for Book and Writing Art", which was reversed in 1946.

It seems that there are no more descendants of the Linel family in Frankfurt and the surrounding area.

literature

  • Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz: ornament and design. Ornamental engravings and preliminary drawings for handicrafts from the 16th to the 19th century from the Linel collection for book and script art. Museum für Kunsthandwerk Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-88270-021-1 , pp. 179–192.
  • Margrit Bauer: History of the museum and its collection. In: Museum of Arts and Crafts Frankfurt am Main. Braunschweig 1985, ISSN  0341-8634 , pp. 12-17.
  • Stefan Soltek : Michael and Albert Linel - Considering book. In: Exquisite donated. The Linel brothers' foundation in the book art and graphics collection of the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Exhibition catalog of the Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-87654-322-1 , pp. 8-17.
  • Arnulf Herbst: Foreword. In: Exquisite donated. The Linel brothers' foundation in the book art and graphics collection of the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Exhibition catalog of the Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-87654-322-1 , p. 8f.
  • Eva Linhart: From the studbook to the souvenir d'amitié. German Schichsalsfaden. In: The souvenir. Remembrance in things from relic to memento. Wienand Verlag, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-87909-892-1 , pp. 201–242.
  • Eva Linhart: Book Art in the Museum. In: Imprimatur. New episode 14, 2015, edited by Ute Schneider on behalf of the Society of Bibliophiles, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-447-10336-7 , pp. 147–160.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert-Linel-Strasse
  2. ↑ Quoted from Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz: “Ornament and design. Ornamental engravings and preliminary drawings for handicrafts from the 16th to the 19th century from the Linel collection for book and script art. ”Museum für Kunsthandwerk Frankfurt am Main, 1983, ISBN 3-88270-021-1 , p. 180.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz: “Ornament and design. Ornamental engravings and preliminary drawings for handicrafts from the 16th to the 19th century from the Linel collection for book and script art. ”Museum für Kunsthandwerk Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-88270-021-1 , p. 185 .
  4. ↑ a b Quoted from Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz: “Ornament and design. Ornamental engravings and preliminary drawings for handicrafts from the 16th to the 19th century from the Linel collection for book and script art. ”Museum für Kunsthandwerk Frankfurt am Main, 1983, ISBN 3-88270-021-1 , p. 188.
  5. ↑ Quoted from Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz: “Ornament and design. Ornamental engravings and preliminary drawings for handicrafts from the 16th to the 19th century from the Linel collection for book and script art. ”Museum für Kunsthandwerk Frankfurt am Main, 1983, ISBN 3-88270-021-1 , p. 191.
  6. ↑ Quoted from Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz: “Ornament and design. Ornamental engravings and preliminary drawings for handicrafts from the 16th to the 19th century from the Linel collection for book and script art. ”Museum für Kunsthandwerk Frankfurt am Main, 1983, ISBN 3-88270-021-1 , p. 192.