Heinrich Friedrich Wedemeyer

Heinrich Friedrich Wedemeyer (born December 26, 1783 in Göttingen; † August 20, 1861 there ) was a Göttingen haberdashery , porcelain and glass painter.

Life

Wedemeyer took over his parents' gallantry and haberdashery shop in Göttingen from his father in 1814, and initially expanded its range of goods to include porcelain, glass and earthenware. In 1818 he founded Göttingen's first workshop for porcelain painting and in 1821 hired the first employees for this workshop to meet the demand of Göttingen students for color items such as tobacco pipe heads and cups with landscape motifs, their family coats of arms and the coats of arms of their student associations . These memorabilia from the student days, now traded as Studentica , were often dedicated to student friends and, along with portraits and family records, were among the most sought-after memorabilia of that time. After difficult early years with employees who came and some of them were looking to become self-employed in Göttingen when they left, he found in his son-in-law Philipp Petri an employee trained as a painter, with whom he succeeded in expanding this branch of the company into a family business and in the Kingdom of Hanover in area of the house painting great recognition found. Wedemeyer was able to withdraw from porcelain painting in favor of his son-in-law and took up glass painting as a further branch of his business, in which he was artistically absorbed. His son-in-law, Philipp Petri, built porcelain painting into a successful workshop based on the division of labor, which his father-in-law had set up as such, but then turned to the new technique of the daguerreotype and thus became one of the photography pioneers in Göttingen. His son Bernhard Petri (1837–1887) took over the management of porcelain painting, but gave it up after his father's death in order to continue his photo studio. The background was not least the increasing ruinous competition in the field of porcelain painting as a result of the introduction of the freedom of trade.

Works by Heinrich Friedrich Wedemeyer, his son-in-law Philipp Petri and his grandson Bernhard Petri are in the Göttingen Municipal Museum . Wedemeyer's glass windows have been preserved at Bodenstein Castle .

literature

• Pütter - Oesterley : History of the University of Göttingen , Part 4, Göttingen 1838, p. 506
• Otto Deneke : Wedemeyer, Heinrich Friedrich , in: Thieme-Becker : Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künste , Volume 35, Leipzig 1942, p. 240
• Jens-Uwe Brinkmann: ... in every respect completely as beautiful as such work is done anywhere ... - Porcelain painting in Göttingen. Göttingen Municipal Museum, Göttingen 2000