Georg Otto Carl von Estorff

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Drawing of grave no.1 of the megalithic graves near Jastorf by Georg Otto Carl von Estorff, 1846

Georg Otto Carl von Estorff (born December 21, 1811 in Barnstedt ; † October 8, 1877 in Bern ) was a chamberlain , archaeologist and art collector.

Live and act

Detail from the archaeological map by Georg Otto Carl von Estorff with the large stone graves near Jastorf, 1846

Georg Otto Carl von Estorff came from the Lower Saxon noble family von Estorff . He was the tenth child from the second marriage of the Hanoverian Lieutenant General Albrecht von Estorff (1766-1840) with Agnese (1775-1852), born von Harling and spent his childhood and youth on the family estate in Veerßen . August von Estorff was his twin brother. It is reported that Georg Otto Carl unearthed prehistoric burial urns in the Uelzen city forest at the age of eight . Estorff first joined the Prussian army, where he retired as a second lieutenant in the Westphalian Uhlan Regiment No. 5 .

From October 1836 to 1840 he served as a chamberlain at the royal court in Hanover . From 1841 until his death in 1843 he was chamberlain at the in Berlin exiled former Dutch King William I. Since the 1840s he led the peerage Baron , which had allegedly been recognized by Dutch and Prussian diplomas.

At the age of 23 he was commissioned in 1835 by the Historical Association for Lower Saxony , which had just been founded at the time, to record and describe "pagan antiquities" in the area around Uelzen together with the city forester and drawing teacher at the trade school in Uelzen CH Hagen. After ten years of private research, Estorff and Hagen presented their results in 1846 in the publication Pagan Antiquities of the Uelzen area in the former Bardengaue with attached picture panels and an "Archaeological Chart". In it he described 6,000 barrows and 219 large stone graves , which is considered to be the first archaeological land survey in Germany. Even today, his inventory is an important source for the prehistory in the Uelzen district . The work contains drawings of prehistoric and early historical monuments, especially stone and barrows, which still existed at the time of its inclusion in the middle of the 19th century and which are largely no longer there today. They were destroyed because they got in the way of the farmers when they tilled their fields or were used as building material for road construction.

Of the 6000 burial mounds described by Estorff, 2609 are still preserved today and 29 of the 219 large stone graves were preserved in 1986. Only 12 were in good condition, including:

Lecture by the Lower Saxony state archaeologist Henning Haßmann on the drawings by Georg Otto Carl von Estorff, 2020

Restored barrows are:

In the following years Estorff lived as a private scholar, at times in Göttingen and at times at Jägersburg Castle near Forchheim . He made numerous trips, including to the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, France and Italy, and put together a large prehistoric collection. He donated part of it in 1855/56 to build the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg . The majority, 2,443 pieces, were acquired by King George V of Hanover in 1861 for the Fideikommiss gallery of the entire Braunschweig-Lüneburg house . With this, the Estorff Collection soon came to the then Provincial Museum in Hanover, today's Lower Saxony State Museum , from which it was also acquired in 1926. The locations of the Roman bronzes in his collection had to be corrected since then: "Most of it must have been brought back from several trips to Italy."

Von Estorff belonged to the archaeological section of the general association of German history and antiquity associations. From 1853 he was chairman of the archaeological commission. From 1855 to 1857 he was President of the 1st Section, but quickly came into conflict with Georg Christian Friedrich Lisch , his predecessor and successor in this office. In the early 1860s he withdrew completely.

From 1876 he lived in Bern.

family

One of the reasons for von Estorff's complete withdrawal was the scandal surrounding his divorce. On May 24, 1859 in Stuttgart he had Luise Henriette, b. Baron von Roeder (1831–1889), the wealthy daughter of a Württemberg colonel, married. The couple had a daughter Agnes (1860–1942). Soon family life was overshadowed by "disruptions of the darkest kind," said Carl von Prantl in his obituary. In 1863 von Estorff arranged for his wife to be admitted to the Werneck Castle institution , took away her daughter and divorced in 1864. Because of child abduction, von Estorff was then prosecuted by the royal Hanoverian, later Prussian public prosecutor's office in Lüneburg . The following legal disputes caused a sensation and were the subject of reports in the journal Die Gartenlaube several times . In 1870 von Estorff married Engeline Alida Kruseman from the Netherlands in Laibach , widowed Groote (1829-1916), owner of Ruckenstein Castle ( Sevnica municipality , Slovenia ). They separated in 1873. The daughter from his first marriage married the doctor and professor of surgery Wilhelm Müller in 1888 .

Honors and memberships

Works

  • Brief outline of the Estorff's family history. Haag: Schinkel 1843 ( digitized version )
  • Pagan antiquities from the Uelzen area in the former Bardengaue (Kingdom of Hanover) , Hahn'sche Hof bookstore , 1846 ( online )
  • Letter from Baron Karl von Estorff to Professor E. Desor . Zurich 1869

literature

  • Carl von Prantl : Karl Freiherr von Estorff . In: Session reports of the Philosophical-Philological and Historical Class of the KB Academy of Sciences in Munich. 1878, p. 192 f
  • Klaus Wedekind (ed.): Georg Otto Carl von Estorff, 1811–1877 in: 10 years of work group history. 10 years community archive. Bienenbüttel 2000–2010, tracks 10 , Bienenbüttel, 2010, pp. 10–11 ( online )
  • Alexandra Foghammar: The finds from the Nordic Bronze Age in the Germanic National Museum. The Estorff Collection and Other Acquisitions. (= The prehistoric and early historical antiquities in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum 5) Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum 1989 ISBN 978-3-926982-06-3
  • Reinhard Stupperich : Edendorf and Estorff: To a group of bronze statuettes in the Landesmuseum Hannover. In: Die Kunde NF 38 (1987), pp. 129–150 ( digitized version )

Web links

Commons : Georg Otto Carl von Estorff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of noble houses 1900, p. 294
  2. ↑ Cornelia Roolfs: The Hanoverian court from 1814 to 1866: Hofstaat and court society. (= Sources and representations on the history of Lower Saxony 124) Göttingen: Hahn 2005 ISBN 9783775259248 , p. 389f
  3. ^ Jan Albert Bakker: Megalithic Research in the Netherlands, 1547-1911: From "giant's Beds" and "pillars of Hercules" to Accurate Investigations. Leiden: Sidestone press 2011 ISBN 9789088900341 , p. 126
  4. ↑ Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the baronial houses. 10 (1860), pp. 188f.
  5. ↑ Stupperich (Lit,), p. 129
  6. ↑ Reinhard Stupperich : Find - Forgery - Phantom of Research? On the problem of information about the location of Roman bronzes from so-called free Germania. In: Reinhard Stupperich; M. Kunze (ed.): Between original and fake: On the ambivalence of imitation in the reception of antiquities. Stendal 2006, pp. 37–45 ( digitized version )
  7. ↑ A mother is looking for her child: Agnes von Estorff , Die Gartenlaube 1872, p. 300 ( Wikisource ); 1875, pp. 472-474 ( Wikisource ); Mother and child. Mrs. von Estorff and her daughter Agnes. 1876, p. 376 ( Wikisource )
  8. ↑ Prantl (lit.)
  9. ↑ Annual report of the Patriotic Museum Carolino-Augusteum of the state capital Salzburg: for the year 1865 , p. 42
personal data
SURNAME Estorff, Georg Otto Carl von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German archaeologist and court official
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Barnstedt
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1877
Place of death Bern