Gustav Speckhart

Gustav Speckhart in front of the St. Sebald clock; now Germanisches Nationalmuseum

Gustav Speckhart (born June 7, 1852 in Schweinau , † June 10, 1919 in Allersberg ) was a German court watchmaker , inventor and watch collector.

Life

Gustav Speckhart was born as the first son of master baker Johann Speckhart and Anna Margarethe Wolf on June 7, 1852 in Schweinau near Nuremberg . Here he also attended elementary school. In 1861 the whole family moved to Nuremberg. In 1866 his father acquired civil rights in Nuremberg. In the same year, at the age of fourteen, Gustav began the watchmaker's apprenticeship with the Nuremberg clockmaker Albert Müller , which he completed in 1868 with the journeyman's examination.

This was followed by various employment relationships with well-known Nuremberg watchmakers. In 1871 he went on a roll across Germany . In 1872 he returned to Nuremberg and worked there alternately as a journeyman for various watchmakers.

As early as May 1874, Gustav Speckhart started his own business as a master and as he writes:

"Without a masterpiece, because in the meantime the freedom of trade with its good and bad properties had moved into the country."

In 1876 he married Margarethe Eißler, with whom he had four children.

In 1880 his parents bought a house in Mögeldorf near Nuremberg (incorporated since 1899).

In 1884 he sold his now very prosperous watch business, founded the watch factory Speckhart & Co. and started manufacturing pocket watches . He tried to compete with Roßkopf and other brands with the production of inexpensive, so-called "Nuremberg sack watches" . Unfortunately, his watches could not be sold sufficiently. In 1886 he gave up manufacturing and moved to Mögeldorf. Since then he has been collecting and restoring historical clocks. At the same time he worked as a specialist author. In 1891 his mother set up a workshop for him in Mögeldorf. He expanded this workshop, together with his friend Heinrich Blab , who was known as a sculptor , into a "studio for church art - with and without mechanical equipment" .

When Gustav Speckhart was about to retire, he died at the age of 67 of a stroke in his newly completed country house in Allersberg. His widow left the house in Mögeldorf and moved to Nuremberg.

Services

In 1889, Speckhart received an imperial patent (DRP No. 18835) for the "innovations in pocket watch cases " .

Around 1890 he received an order from the watch dealer and collector Carl Marfels to build a large automatic watch , the so-called "Passion watch" , which was ordered for the exhibition in Chicago . This almost 5 m high clock was created by several artists and craftsmen under the direction of Gustav Speckhart over a period of three years. The work, rightly valued by all experts of the time, which caused such a sensation at the world exhibition in Chicago in 1893 , fell victim to the flames on July 20, 1897 at the exhibition in Arnhem . Speckhart was able to make a reconstruction on behalf of Arthur Junghans , which was to be seen as an advertising object for the Junghans company at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 . Today this clock is exhibited as the "Junghans'sche Kunstuhr" in the Schramberg City Museum. In the period from 1895 to 1905, he organized several clock exhibitions in various German cities, each on a commission basis.

Around 1910, Speckhart commissioned the Rothenburg clockmaker Friedrich Holzöder to manufacture a mechanism for the new art clock in the Rothenburg Council Drinking Room on the market square. The mechanism of the artificial clock had to be connected to the work of the existing mechanical clock from the 17th century. Gustav Speckhart took over the construction and construction management himself. The donor was Carl Marfels from Berlin. On June 12, 1910, the art clock was ceremoniously handed over to the city of Rothenburg.

Awards

• 1885 title of Bavarian clockmaker from Alfons of Bavaria
• 1885 title of Ducal Saxon court watchmaker
• 1893 World's Fair in Chicago; several awards
• 1900 World Exhibition in Paris; medal
• 1900 Jubilee medal in silver on the ribbon of the Frederick Order of King Karl von Württemberg
• around 1909 the dignity of a royal court watchmaker by Alfons of Bavaria

Publications

• The clocks in the Ducal Museum in Gotha . General Journal of Watchmaking, Leipzig, 1886
• Peter Henlein, the inventor of the pocket watch. Specialized historical treatise. JL Stich, Nuremberg 1890
• Was the Nuremberg locksmith Peter Hele the inventor of the pocket watch? In: Antiques Newspaper. Central organ for collecting, auctions and antiquity. Volume 4, Issue 1–23, 1896, pp. 10, 17, 25 f., 41 f., 146, 154, 162, 170 and 178.
• Artful pocket watches from the Marfels collection. Hempel & Co GmbH, Berlin 1906
• Johann Baptist Homann's recently invented geographic universal pointer and strike clock by the Roman Imperial Majesty geographer. Made in 1705 by Zacharias Landeck, city clockmaker in Nuremberg. Found again in 1905 and restored . JL Stich, Nuremberg 1907

Around 1902 he translated and revised Claudius Saunier's work “Histoire de la mesure du Temps” from 1880. This work was then published in 1903 under the title “The History of Watchmaking” in three volumes at the Emil Huebner publishing house in Bautzen.

literature

• Klaus Pöhlmann: Gustav Speckhart. In: Classic watches. 5-2011, Ebner Verlag, Ulm, p. 32f.

Web links

Commons : Astronomical clock, Ratstrinkstube, Rothenburg ob der Tauber  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Search for Gustav Speckhart in the German Digital Library
• Search for Gustav Speckhart in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
• Gustav Speckhart In: watch-wiki

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Gustav Speckhardt In: Curt Dietzschold : The Cornelius Nepos the clockmaker. Krems 1910, p. 59f.
2. ↑ Fritz von Osterhausen: Callweys lexicon. Munich 1999, ISBN 3-7667-1353-1 , p. 310.
3. ↑ Lukas Stolberg: Lexicon of the pocket watch. Carinthia Verlag, Klagenfurt 1995, ISBN 3-85378-423-2 , p. 212.
4. ↑ DRP No. 18835: Innovations to pocket watch cases in the registration information of the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA)
5. ^ Fritz von Osterhausen: The watch dealer and collector Carl Marfels In: Classic watches. 3-2003, Ebner Verlag Ulm, p. 14f. PDF 1.7 MB  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ The Junghans'sche Kunstuhr combines craft and industrialization.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Stadtwerke Schramberg  
7. ^ Art clock. City of Schramberg
8. ↑ Art clock with the legendary master drink scene turns 100 years old.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Fränkischer Anzeiger Rothenburg. June 5, 2010.  
9. ^ Inauguration of the "Meistertrunk" art clock in Rothenburg. Report on the inauguration and the festivities. From: Deutsche Uhrmacher-Zeitung. 1910, p. 212f. PDF 5.9 MB ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.