Georg Jacob Decker

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Georg Jacob Decker the Elder (born February 12, 1732 in Basel , † November 17, 1799 in Berlin ) was a printer in Berlin.

Life

He was a descendant of the family of the Basel book printer Georg Decker , who founded the book printing company at Basel University there.

Georg Jacob Decker took over his father-in-law Jean Grynaeus (1685–1749 or –1754) printing press in Berlin , which was then badly performing, and soon brought it to bloom. In 1763 Decker was appointed court printer, two years later this right came into effect. Between 1782 and 1789, Decker produced 25 volumes of the works of Frederick the Great as well as works by August Wilhelm Iffland , Johann Caspar Lavater , Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi , Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling and Erasmus von Rotterdam in the printing works set up especially in the castle of the Prussian king (Praise of Foolishness, 1781). In 1787 he was given the hereditary title of a secret upper court printer.

Decker was a member of the Berlin Masonic Lodge Zur Eintracht and from 1785 to 1793 its master of the chair .

In 1792 Georg Jacob Decker handed the company over to his son of the same name . He died in Berlin in 1799 at the age of 67. He was buried in the Trinity Cemetery in front of the Potsdamer Tor . The grave was lost when the cemetery was leveled in 1922 at the latest.

Decker's descendants continued and expanded the Königlich Geheime Oberhof Buchdruckerei . For the company's centenary in 1863, his grandson Rudolf Ludwig Decker was given the hereditary title of nobility. After his death in 1877, the print shop was the German Reich bought and on the initiative of the then General Postmaster Heinrich von Stephan on April 1 in 1879 by merger with the 1852 founded the Royal Prussian State Printing House for the German empire printing today, from after the Second World War Bundesdruckerei was created.

family

Georg Jakob Decker and his wife had ten children, six of whom remained alive beyond toddler age. The family especially cultivated the house music, of which a India ink drawing by the painter Wachsmann attests. It is located in the Berlin State Library. Decker's oldest daughters married Christian Sigismund and Johann Karl Philipp Spener , the two youngest married the bookseller Heinrich August Rottmann and the printer Wilhelm Haas the Younger . The middle daughter, Luise Elisabeth, married Friedrich Philipp Rosenstiel , the daughter Henriette, who emerged from this connection, married Gottfried Schadow in 1817 . Decker lost his wife in 1784. On the advice of Salomon Gessner and Salomon Landolt , he brought his sister, the widow Schobinger, to Berlin, who was now in charge of the household at 29 Brüderstrasse .

source

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl H. Salzmann:  Decker, Georg Jakob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 547 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ^ Klaus Pfeifer: Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling and his publisher George Jacob Decker (1732–1799) . Slightly changed online version of an article from Michael Frost (Ed.): Views on Jung-Stilling. Festschrift for Gerhard Merk's 60th birthday . Kreuztal: Verlag die wielandschmiede, 1991, pp. 50–61. ( PDF )
  4. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , pp. 152–153.
  5. ↑ Hans Mackowsky, Brüderstraße 29 , in: Hans Mackowsky, Houses and people in old Berlin , Berlin 1923, reprint 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1803-5 , pp. 79–115
personal data
SURNAME Decker, Georg Jacob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Decker, Georg Jacob the Elder
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Book printer in Berlin
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1732
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH November 17, 1799
Place of death Berlin