Jacob Wiener

Jacob Wiener , also Jacques Wiener or Jakov Viner (born February 27, 1815 in Hoerstgen ; † November 3, 1899 in Brussels ), was an engraver of coins , medals and postage stamps who worked in Brussels from 1839 .

Life

Ancestors, family name and parental home

Jacob's parents were the Jewish trader Marcus Wiener (1794 -?) Alias ​​Marcus Mayer , who was also born in Hoerstgen, and his wife Hanna Baruch (1791 -?). The traces of Jewish life in the reformed imperial rule Hoerstgen can be traced back to 1741, but it is not known when exactly Jacobs' ancestors settled there as protective Jews . The great-grandfather is said to have been a rabbi in East Prussia .

Portrait of Jacob Wieners on a Belgian commemorative stamp from 1987

The family name "Wiener" was not adopted until 1808 in Hoerstgen. According to Jewish tradition, children were given their father's first name as their surname. By the imperial decree of July 20, 1808, however, the Jews in the areas on the left bank of the Rhine were given the acceptance of permanent family names. On December 8, 1808, Jacobs' grandfather Mayer Levy (1746 -?), Who was a butcher by trade and was listed in a list of Jewish tributaries in the Hoerstgen domain in 1790/91 , took his wife and three living members to the mayor of Hoerstgen Children Marcus, Abram and Reis Mayer are bound to use the hereditary surname "Wiener". Mayer Levy, who could not write, was henceforth Mathias Wiener. His wife, previously called Reis Israel, was now called Rosine Wiener, while the children were named Marcus, Abraham and Therese Wiener. The chosen name "Wiener" could indicate that the family came from Vienna .

1813 still underage merchant Marcus married in Vienna in Aachen three years older than Hanna Baruch, daughter of the engraver and Seal engraver Kivit Baruch and the seamstress Lotte Levy. The bride's family had moved to Aachen from Faulquemont . Hanna Baruch herself, born in Faulquemont in July 1791, was the oldest daughter and the second oldest child of a total of six children in the family. Hanna's brother Loeb, like his father, was an engraver by profession. Hanna Baruch worked as an embroiderer in Aachen . After the marriage, the Viennese couple took up their first joint residence in the municipality of Hoerstgen.

Jacob Wiener was the first of ten children in 1815, of three girls and seven boys. The civil birth certificate of his son signed Marcus Wiener - if somewhat inexperienced - Latin script.

From Hoerstgen to Venlo

As early as 1817, shortly after the birth of their second son Baruch (1816 -?), The family of Marcus and Hanna Wiener von Hoerstgen, where they had rented a house "in the Haupt-Strasse" (today's Dorfstrasse), moved to Venlo in the local Steenstraat. By this time the Jewish settlement in Hoerstgen had already passed its statistical peak; the proportion of Jews in the population had fallen within just a few years, mainly due to emigration, from 22% to 9%. Emigration to Dutch cities, driven by the hope of better living conditions, is quite common among the Jewish population at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

From Venlo to Aachen

Jacob Wiener left his parents' house in Venlo at the age of 13 to begin an apprenticeship as an engraver in Aachen with Loeb Baruch, his mother's eldest brother. In the maternal family, which is said to come from Hungary and finally got to Aachen via Bonn and Faulquemont in the course of religious persecution at home , there were, through the person of the grandfather Kivit and the uncle Loeb, who later worked as a haberdashery, the relevant investments for his further professional career.

From Aachen via Paris to Brussels

After a four-year stay in Paris in 1835 , where he deepened his knowledge as an engraver, he moved permanently to Brussels in 1839. There Jacques Wiener was granted Belgian citizenship in 1845 . Also in 1845 he married Annette Levy Newton (? - 1891) in Brussels. This marriage resulted in at least four children born in Brussels: Helene (1846 -?), Alexander (1848 -?), Edouard Samson (1850–1930), who married Anne Jesse Spielmann, and finally Samson (1852–1914) .

Because of the strain on the eyes when constantly working with the magnifying glass , Jacques Wiener's eyesight deteriorated from 1868 onwards; In 1872 he was almost blind. An operation only helped temporarily, so that in 1877 the eye disease put an early end to his work as an engraver. Jacques Wiener, who was decorated in 1854 with the Knight's Cross of the Portuguese Order of Christ , in 1860 with the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle and in 1866 with the Knight's Cross of the Belgian Order of the Leopold , died on November 3, 1899 at the age of almost 85 in Brussels.

The brothers Leopold and Charles Wiener

In addition to his eldest brother Baruch (1816 -?), Who was still born in Hoerstgen, Jacques had eight other siblings: Leopold (1823–1891) and Karel or Charles (1832–1888), Salomon, Henriette, Alexander Maurits, Rosette, Sophie and Meyer. Leopold, who was married to Sara Levy Newton, and Charles, however, were both very successful as engravers.

Leopold first learned from his brother Jacques, then from 1840 at the Academy in Brussels and from David d'Angers in France, before he accepted a job at the Paris Mint with JJ Barre in 1845 . Back in Brussels in 1847 he became chief engraver of the Belgian mint, for which he cut around 150 coins and medals. Leopold was awarded the Belgian Leopold Order.

After completing his apprenticeship, Charles first went to the Paris Academy (1852/56), then to The Hague (1856/60), London (1860/64) and finally to Lisbon , where he was promoted to chief engraver of the Portuguese mint.

power

Jacques Wiener's life's work, which was systematically documented in a Belgian journal as early as 1883, includes coins, medals and postage stamps. In 1840, one year after settling in Brussels, Jacques Wiener emerged with his first own coin on the return of the city of Venlo under Dutch rule. It has a diameter of 27 mm. In the front field, two knights each hold a banner and carry the coat of arms of the city of Venlo. On the reverse: "THE XXII JUNY MDCCCXXXIX WILL DE STAD VENLO ONDER HET WETTIG GEZAG AAN ZM THE KONING DER NEDERLANDEN TERUGGEBRACHT. THE XVIII AFD. INF. NAM DEZE STAD IN BEZIT".

King Leopold I on the first Belgian postage stamp (1848)

The first Belgian postage stamp appeared on November 17, 1848, with a major contribution from Jacques Wiener, who worked with his brother Leopold. The 10 centimes stamp, brown on white paper and 22 × 18.5 mm in size, shows King Leopold I in uniform. In the same year a 20 and a 30 centimes stamp was issued. Jacques Wiener, who had found out about the local stamp production system in England, was in charge of production until 1864. He also played a major role in the issuance of the first Dutch postage stamp, which appeared on January 1, 1851 and depicts King William I.

Jacques Wiener is considered a master of perspective representation. His medals with architectural representations show u. a. Interior and exterior views of sacred buildings, such as St. Paul's Cathedral in London (1849), Cologne Cathedral (1849, 1851, 1855, 1861), York Cathedral (1854), Notre Dame in Paris (1855), the Metropolitan Church of St. Isaac in Petersburg (1858) and the Hagia Sofia in Constantinople (1864) as well as the synagogues in Cologne (1861) and Maastricht (1851). The secular buildings depicted on medals include town halls, but prisons. The medal of St. Martin in Liège (1847), which was published on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the feast of Corpus Christi and has a diameter of 75 mm, is regarded as Viennese masterpiece.

In 1987 - on the occasion of "Postage Stamp Day" - the Belgian Post paid tribute to the life's work of the native Hoerstgen and creator of the first Belgian postage stamp with the issue of a 13 francs special stamp . Two years later, around 200 coins and medals engraved by Viennese and the first postage stamps from Belgium and the Netherlands were issued in Kamp-Lintfort. A special chapter is dedicated to Jacob Wiener in the local postal history, which was created in 2005 in circles of the Kamp-Lintfort stamp collecting association from 1964 eV.

literature

• Astrea. Maandschrift voor Schone Kunst, Wetenschap en Letteren. 5th year 1855, JD Doorman, Utrecht 1856, p. 405 f. ( books.google.de ), accessed on January 6, 2012
• V. Bouhy: Jaques Wiener, engraver en médailles et son oeuvre. In: Revue belge de numismatique 39 (1883), pp. 5 ff. ( Numisbel.be ; PDF; 7.3 MB), accessed on January 6, 2012
• Hans von Hoerner: Jacques, Leopold and Charles Wiener - Three Brothers and Medalists in the 19th Century. In: Münzen-Revue 1982, p. 870 ff.
• Jacob Wiener - Europe in coins, medals, stamps (exhibition catalog), Kamp-Lintfort 1989
• Bernhard Keuck / Albert Spitzner-Jahn: "There are also quite a few Jews living in it, who make a lot of entries" - On the history of the Hoerstgen Jews from the 18th to the 20th century. In: Gerd Halmanns / Bernhard Keuck (ed.): Jews in the history of the Gelderland, publishing house of the historical association for Geldern and the surrounding area, Geldern 2002, pp. 133 ff., ISBN 3-921760-32-1
• Werner Kröger / Gert WF Murmann / Albert Spitzner-Jahn: 231 - 22 a - 4132 - 47475 - The town and postal history of Kamp-Lintfort. Geiger-Verlag, Horb / Neckar 2005, p. 10 ff., ISBN 978-3-86595-078-9
• Albert Spitzner-Jahn: About Jacob Wiener (1815 - 1899). In: Briefmarkensammlerverein Kamp-Lintfort from 1964 (ed.), Kamper Postillion, No. 3/2005, p. 3 ff.

Remarks

1. ↑ see Astrea. Maandschrift voor Schone Kunst, Wetenschap en Letteren (literature, online at books.google.de)