Ignaz Weinhart (collector)

Ignaz Weinhart (born February 12, 1617 in Innsbruck , † October 6, 1684 in Innsbruck) was an Austrian collector and founder of a cabinet of curiosities .

Life

Ignaz Weinhart was the son of the doctor Paul Weinhart and his wife Anna Burgkhlehner. He was baptized in February 1617 by Mr. Caspar Payr zu Caldiff in the St. Jakob parish church in Innsbruck. Like his name, his upbringing was strictly based on the Jesuit spirit, and he was accepted as a member of the Innsbruck Student Congregation BVA at the age of 12 - at that time his schooling seems to have started.

He stayed in this community until he went to the University of Siena in 1637 to study law . Four years later, on April 7, 1641, he received a doctorate in law from this university. In the same year, his father Paul Weinhart asked Archduke Ferdinand Karl to promote his son Ignaz according to his qualities. However, since there was no vacancy at the court at the time, this request was suspended.

On January 21, 1663, Ignaz Weinhart was appointed by Archduke Sigmund Franz as his top secretary. The certificate of appointment stated that Dr. Ignaz Weinhart in the future alone was responsible for the archduke's secret correspondence, as had to keep the minutes in the Secret Council.

As with Karl Joseph von Weinhart (1712–1788), with Ignaz Weinhart it was not his professional activity that made him important for intellectual history, but rather his private life and his interests. The latter found lasting expression in a not very large, but noteworthy collection . Although this no longer exists, one knows exactly about it. Ignaz Weinhart wrote an exact inventory in the last year of his life in 1684, in which he describes every single item in his collection.

The numerically largest part of the collection was taken up by everyday objects , toys or ornaments, which were of particular value either because of the material they were made of or because of their artistic design. They provide information about the economic prosperity of their owner and are therefore essentially timeless in their spiritual statement, as they only show that their owner wanted to be modern.

The collection proves that even the less well-to-do nobility, instructed by the princely role model in Innsbruck, created chambers of art and curiosities.

literature

• Franz-Heinz Hye : The Innsbruck family Weinhart in the Tyrolean intellectual life (1600-1833). University publishing house Wagner, Innsbruck / Munich 1970.