Jacob Lyversberg

Jacob Joannes Nepomuk Lyversberg (born May 24, 1761 in Cologne ; † August 5, 1834 there ) was a Cologne wholesale merchant and art collector .

Life

Jacob Lyversberg came from an old tobacco and wine merchant family, mentioned before 1664 . His father Henric Lieversberg was one of the most important tobacco wholesalers in Cologne around 1750, his mother Johanna Catharina Pelpissen came from a family of tobacco traders who had immigrated to Cologne from Holland . In 1765 the family bought house no. 10, called "Starkenberg", with additional buildings on Heumarkt . Around 1770 she bought the house at Heumarkt 76, later No. 52, which was built from the medieval houses "Zum Drachen" and "Zur Schere". It was a rich town house from the end of the 18th century, in which extensive parts of previous buildings from the Middle Ages (vaulted cellar, late Gothic ceiling paintings) and Renaissance (terracottas, tendril carvings) as well as parts of a baroque stucco ceiling had been preserved. Above the door to the Heumarkt there was a coat of arms held by lions, which contained the Lyversberg coat of arms. Jacob grew up in such wealthy circumstances as the fourth of nine children and entered his father's business.

Panel of the Lyversberg Altar

On February 2, 1793, he married Anna Elisabeth Bennerscheid and in 1784 they moved into the house at Heumarkt 10, which his father had bought and which he had previously expanded in the Rococo style . He also owned three packing houses at Heumarkt, at the Domkloster and at Rheingasse 10. By 1800 he was one of the 100 most important taxpayers in Cologne. He was also a school and administrative board member and church master of St. Maria im Kapitol .

Haan-Lyversberg-Virnich family grave at the Melaten cemetery in Cologne (HWG)

After the occupation of Cologne by Napoleon in 1796 and the secularization as a result of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss 1803, he participated in the acquisition of art treasures that came on the market through the dissolution of the monasteries. Among other things, he acquired the " Lyversberger Altar ", later named after him , an altar donated in 1464 from the church of the Carthusian monastery in Cologne . It is believed that around 1812 Lyversberg also had the altar divided and the panel pictures split in order to be able to market them better. In this way he founded an extensive collection of paintings , the works of Jan van Eyck , Lucas van Leyden , Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä. , Leonardo da Vinci , Andrea Mantegna , Peter Paul Rubens , Anthonis van Dyck , Rembrandt van Rijn and other important artists and made him known throughout Europe. The collection was described by Friedrich Schlegel and visited by Johann Wolfgang Goethe , Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Arthur Schopenhauer , among others . In 1817 Sulpiz Boisserée reported in a letter to Goethe that Lyversberg was negotiating with Crown Prince Wilhelm II of the Netherlands about the sale of his collection, for which he was demanding 100,000 Dutch guilders .

Lyversberg had six daughters and two sons with his wife Anna. However, since the sons died early, he left no male heirs. In 1837 the daughters had the collection of paintings auctioned by the Kunsthaus Heberle-Lempertz . The business was taken over by his nephew Wilhelm Bartman in 1840 and relocated to Heumarkt 76. There it was continued under the name Bartman-Lyversberg until Wilhelm's death in 1885.

The graves of Jacob Lyversberg and his wife are in the neighborhood of the Bartman family grave on the Melatenfriedhof (HWG).

Aftermath

In 1864 eight panel paintings of the Lyversberg Altar were acquired by the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne . The artist, who was not known by name and who worked in Cologne from 1460 to 1490, was given the emergency name “ Master of the Lyversberg Passion ”.

Literature and Sources

• W. Feldkirchen: The trade of Cologne in the 18th century . Dissertation, Bonn 1974
• H. Rottländer: Clear representation of the trade of Cologne in the last 50 years . Boisserée, Cologne 1867
• August Boerner: Cologne tobacco trade and tobacco industry 1628–1910 . Baedeker, Essen 1912
• Ingrid Nicolini: The political leadership in the city of Cologne towards the end of the imperial city period . Böhlau, Cologne-Vienna, 1979