Wolff brothers

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lili rere
Fritz Wollf
Louis Wolff
Tombstone of the Wolff brothers in the House of City History (Heilbronn)
Before it was displayed in a museum, the brothers' tombstones were in the Heilbronn Lapidarium until 2012

The Wolff brothers were a deaf couple from Heilbronn who set up a lithographic institute there, whose lithographs were among the most important pictorial representations of Württemberg cities during the Biedermeier period in the early 19th century .

history

Louis (Ludwig) Wolff (April 20, 1802 - March 3, 1868) and Fritz (Friedrich) Wolff (December 8, 1807 - October 25, 1850) were the sons of Heilbronn master baker Karl Ludwig Wolff (1761-1826) and his wife Maria Magdalena geb. Kenngott (1764-1840). The parents had a total of 15 children, but only eight of them reached adulthood. The brothers Louis and Fritz (and also their sister Louise) were deaf, but had an extraordinary talent for drawing that did not go unnoticed by the Heilbronn City Council, which may have contributed to the brothers being sent to the lithographic institute founded in Stuttgart in 1818 where they should learn the new technique of lithography . They could not have started their training in Stuttgart until 1821 at the earliest, as the royal lithography was initially only open to orphanage pupils and did not accept other students until 1821.

A pen-drawn and lithographed view of the Wilhelmskanal by Louis Wolff from 1822 has survived, but does not yet indicate that it was produced in the Wolff brothers' own lithography . This was apparently only founded later, around 1825, in Heilbronn. This year the Wolff brothers showed samples of their art for the first time at an art exhibition. The company was initially referred to as a lithographic printing company and from 1830 as a lithographic establishment.

The brothers initially published lithographic views of the city of Heilbronn in the style of the Stuttgart "Kleine Ebnerchen Blätter" , which, however, were uncolored and available both individually and in series. The memories of Heilbronn were first published in 1829 and 1830 in four booklets with six inserted pictures each. The series was actually supposed to be over, but later two more similar issues appeared, so that the cycle contained a total of 36 numbered cityscapes. In 1838, some motifs in this series were also replaced by others, and more than a dozen views were redrawn and lithographed, with new technical equipment such as the railroad and steamboat being incorporated into the updated images. In total, the series consists of over 50 views of the city of Heilbronn. Nos. 1 to 24 are signed neither in the first nor in later versions, Nos. 25 to 36 are monogrammed with FW; Overall, Fritz Wolff seems to have created the greater part of the drawings that the Wolff brothers published.

The Wolff brothers also created views of Ludwigsburg , Weinsberg , Wimpfen and other places in Hohenlohe and Upper Swabia. The sheets show in a detailed, realistic quality representative squares and buildings as well as scenes from urban life such as shooting, singing and gymnastics festivals. The Lithografische Anstalt in Heilbronn also took care of the printing of numerous business stationery as well as the production of book illustrations, for example on Heinrich Titot's description and history of the main Protestant church in Heilbronn from 1833. Various views of the place in the journal of the Historical Association for the Württemberg Franconia also come from the Wolff companies, but some only reproduced drawings by other artists. In 1841 the Wolff brothers created a picture showing the arrival of the first steamship in Heilbronn, followed in 1842 by a bird's-eye view of the Neckar from Heilbronn to Heidelberg , Fritz Wolff had drawn. The panorama of the railway from Heilbronn to Eßlingen , published in 1846, was designed in the same way , although the railway line did not go into operation until 1848. The Wolff brothers also created an event picture for the first gymnastics festival, which was held in Heilbronn in 1846. On the occasion of the fire in the farm building on the Wartberg in 1844, the only known multicolored Wolff lithograph was apparently created: A second stone tablet was used here to apply a flat red, while otherwise all the Wolff brothers' pictures were only lithographed in black and white and colored by hand were.

Although the brothers were artistically gifted and could read and write, they were not considered legally competent due to their disabilities and also had no citizenship. In business matters they were represented by the father until his death in 1826, after which the city appointed a nurse. Later the brother Heinrich Wolff (1799-1859) became managing director of the printing company. Heinrich, who, like his father, was a baker, also inherited the two family-owned houses from his mother, in which he had to grant the four unmarried siblings the right to live for life and the brothers Louis and Fritz, in addition, business premises for their printing works. These were houses no. 373 and 374 (later Kramstrasse 2) at the bridge gate. Heinrich Wolff also ran his bakery in house number 374.

The heyday of vedute was already over in the last years of Fritz Wolff's life and lithography found it difficult to assert itself against wood printing , which was more suitable for book illustrations for technical reasons, and steel engraving , which had appeared around 1820. The Wolff brothers apparently got into economic difficulties around 1840; According to information provided by the city council to the lithographer and competitor August Rostert, who later took over the business, they had “barely enough income”. Around 1842 they received approval from the City Council of Heilbronn to sell their company, but could not find a suitable buyer.

After this time, only a few works by the brothers have survived, the artistic quality of which lags behind earlier works. Fritz Wolff died in 1850 at the age of 43. Heinrich Wolff had to resign his role as managing director for health reasons in 1853, whereupon the engraver Gottlob Beitter took up this role. Shortly thereafter, in late 1853, the lithographic establishment was sold by the guardianship of Louis Wolff on April 1, 1854 to August Rostert (1813–1868) who, despite warnings from the city council, had founded his own company in 1847 and now united it with Wolffschen. He had to undertake to continue to employ Louis Wolff, who died in the same year as Rostert.

The Wolff brothers' grave stone was once in the Old Heilbronn Cemetery , then in the Heilbronn Lapidarium and has been in the Heilbronn House of City History since 2012 . Inscriptions for Fritz, Louis and Louise Wolf and for Louis Roth, who was friends with the Wolff siblings, can be read on the columnar stone.

Numerous lithographs by the brothers can be seen in the Heilbronn City Museum ; two portraits of the brothers presumably come from Fritz Wolf and were probably created towards the end of the 1840s. They are privately owned.

  • The two paper mills in Heilbronn, lithograph by the Wolff brothers (detail)

  • Weinsberg after 1835, lithograph by the Wolff brothers

  • Royal Hall Office in Heilbronn, lithograph by the Wolff brothers

  • Steamship reaches Heilbronn, lithograph by the Wolff brothers, 1841

literature

  • Hubert Weckbach: The "portraitists" of the Biedermeier cityscape . In: Heilbronn heads III. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 48), pp. 227–245
  • Werner Heim: Heilbronn. The city in the Biedermeier period. 36 lithographs by the Wolff brothers. Heilbronn printing and publishing company, Heilbronn 1970 ( series on Heilbronn. 4)

Web links

Commons : Gebrüder Wolff  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hubert Weckbach: The "portraitists" of the Biedermeier townscape . In: Heilbronn heads III. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 48), pp. 227–245, here p. 229
  2. ↑ Hubert Weckbach: The "portraitists" of the Biedermeier townscape . In: Heilbronn heads III. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 48), pp. 227–245, here pp. 230 f.
  3. ↑ Hubert Weckbach: The "portraitists" of the Biedermeier townscape . In: Heilbronn heads III. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 48), pp. 227–245, here p. 234
  4. ↑ Hubert Weckbach: The "portraitists" of the Biedermeier townscape . In: Heilbronn heads III. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 48), pp. 227–245, here pp. 234 f.
  5. ↑ Hubert Weckbach: The "portraitists" of the Biedermeier townscape . In: Heilbronn heads III. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 48), pp. 227–245, here pp. 236 ff.
  6. ↑ Hubert Weckbach: The "portraitists" of the Biedermeier townscape . In: Heilbronn heads III. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 48), pp. 227–245, here pp. 239 and 241
  7. ↑ quoted from: Hubert Weckbach: The "portraitists" of the Biedermeier townscape . In: Heilbronn heads III. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 48), pp. 227–245, here p. 242
  8. ↑ Hubert Weckbach: The "portraitists" of the Biedermeier townscape . In: Heilbronn heads III. Stadtarchiv Heilbronn, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications from the archive of the city of Heilbronn. Volume 48), pp. 227–245, here pp. 243 ff. And 256