Gottfried Winckler

Gottfried Winckler

Gottfried Winckler (born February 16, 1731 in Leipzig ; † November 23, 1795 there ) was a Leipzig merchant and art collector .

Life

Gottfried Winckler was a member of the Winckler family, which began at the beginning of the 17th century by Georg Winckler in Leipzig and was ennobled in 1650. However, the family merchants did not hold the title of nobility. Winckler's father, Gottfried Winckler the Elder (1700–1771), ran a banking business in Leipzig, which the son later joined. But this was all his life devoted to the fine arts and sciences.

First, however, he graduated from the Princely School in Schulpforte . Then he went on a cavalier tour with two friends . It led via Hamburg to England , Holland and Switzerland . They visited numerous collections of paintings and engravings and made connections with artists and art collectors. Collecting works of art was to become Winckler's great passion.

In Leipzig in 1758 he married Johanna Henriette Schmidt (1738–1829). The marriage produced five sons, the first and the youngest of whom died early. The middle ones carried on the name and business. In addition to banking and exchange business, the Wincklers company included a spice trade and was located in Katharinenstrasse 22, which had belonged to the Winckler family since 1654 and also served as a residential building. It was destroyed in World War II.

In 1758 Gottfried Winckler was elected to the Leipzig council. Here he was appointed city governor. In 1792 he became the town's master builder and thus had to organize the town's construction activities and manage the funds earmarked for it.

In 1781 he was one of the founders of the Gewandhaus Concerts and was a member of their honorary management until 1784. In 1776 he was one of the founders of the “Harmonie” society in Leipzig . He was also an honorary member of the Dresden Art Academy .

The collection

Gottfried Winckler began collecting copperplate engravings . Paintings were soon added and the collection grew rapidly. From 1765 the collection rooms were open to the public, every Wednesday afternoon for two hours. About 450 paintings were hung in the house on Katharinenstrasse and in the Winckler garden house near the swan pond . It was the most important Leipzig art collection of the 18th century and soon became one of the city's attractions.

Part of the Winckler collection - watercolor by CF Wiegand

Johann Gottlob Schulz enthused in his description of the city of Leipzig in 1784: “How many princes would wish for luck to own such a wonderful and precious collection of paintings. It is one of the greatest adornments of our city, and a proof of its riches and extensive activities. And how much applause and thanks doesn't the man who provides Leipzig with this ornament ” .

The young Goethe also visited the exhibition and was urged by his drawing teacher Adam Friedrich Oeser to copy a few engravings for training.

A printed catalog was published in 1768, listing 628 paintings, including works by Albrecht Dürer , Hans Holbein , Tizian and Rembrandt . Eight watercolors by Christian Friedrich Wiegand, which represent the picture walls, provide information about the hanging of the 218 paintings in the garden house.

When Gottfried Winckler died, the collection comprised over 1,300 paintings, 2,469 hand drawings, 80,000 copperplate engravings and a library of 6,842 volumes. His sons inherited the collection in equal parts and after a few years began to auction their shares. The precious collection was soon lost. Some valuable pieces are preserved today in the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig through the Maximilian Speck von Sternburg Foundation . In 2009 the museum organized the exhibition “Traces. The Gottfried Winckler Collection ”and traced the whereabouts of the collection.

swell

• Doris Mundus: Gottfried Winckler - and also director of the Gewandhaus. In: Gewandhausmagazin. No. 70, 2011, p. 49
• Traces. The Gottfried Winckler Collection (in the 2009 news archive on the City of Leipzig website)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Johann Gottlob Schulz: Description of the City of Leipzig , Adam Friedrich Böhm, Leipzig 1784, p. 322
2. ↑ Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A - Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 645