Jean Joseph La Croix

Jean Joseph La Croix (* 1737 in Hanover ; † March 7, 1828 ibid) was a German fountain master and hydraulic engineer .

Life

Jean Joseph La Croix was a member of a Fontainier family from France who built and looked after the fountains , including the large fountain in the large garden of Herrenhausen Palace , for more than two centuries from 1700 to 1904 . He was the grandson of Pierre La Croix and the son of Georg Ludwig La Croix († January 23, 1773 in Herrenhausen) and his wife Johanna Juliana Guicetti , the daughter of the Berlin-born wax bleacher Francesco Guicetti .

Just like his father, who had been trained at the Paris Architecture Academy , Jean Joseph also received training as a Fontainier at the expense of his employer, George II , King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover , and was able to do so at the age of 18 Employees of his father worked in Herrenhausen before he was appointed maître fontainier himself from 1773 .

The following year, La Croix married in 1774 in the Church of St. Clement in Calenberger Neustadt the Maria Anna Francisca Vezin , daughter of Kapellmeister Jean Baptiste Vezin and his wife Elisabeth Caecilie Maillet de Fourton , in turn a subsidiary of the majors and hydraulic engineer Etienne Maillet de Fourton was .

Since La Croix's marriage remained childless, with the death of the Aquarium salentium director, the name La Croix disappeared from the Hanover state handbooks from 1828 .

Fragment of the Catholic cemetery of St. John the Old St. Nicholas Cemetery offset monumental tomb for La Croix

La Croix was buried in the Catholic cemetery St. Johannis on Hildesheimer Straße . A statue was reused, which had probably been made previously for his grandfather Pierre La Croix († 1729). When the cemetery in the southern part of the city ​​was leveled in favor of the Hanover City Library, which was built until 1929 , a large fragment of the gravestone was moved to the Old St. Nikolai Cemetery between the Nikolaikapelle and Nicolaistrasse .

After the death of Jean Joseph La Croix, the management of the Hanoverian fountain system remained “in the family”: La Croix's successor was court inspector Georg Heinrich Schuster , who married Eleonore Louise Elisabeth La Croix in 1828 , a niece of the late fountain master. Schuster's successor, in turn, was the Secret Building Councilor Eduard Schuster , who was also responsible for the manor houses - and who, as a historian in 1904, wrote about the work of his ancestors in the Hanoverian history sheets.

literature

• Eduard Schuster: Art and artists in the principalities of Calenberg and Lüneburg in the period from 1636 to 1727 1905; previously appeared in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , Jg. 1904, p.?.
• Wilhelm Rothert : Hanover under the Kurhut 1646–1815 , Hanover: Sponholtz, 1916, p. 505
• Helmut Zimmermann : Family history around Herrenhausen's fountains. In: Hanover portraits. Life pictures from seven centuries , Hanover: Harenberg, 1983, p. 50ff.
• Waldemar R. Röhrbein : La Croix. In: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen : Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 220; online through google books

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Waldemar R. Röhrbein: La Croix (see literature)
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Helmut Zimmermann: Family history ... (see literature)
3. ^ Arnold Nöldeke : St. Johannis Cemetery. In: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Hannover Vol. 1, H. 2, Teil 1, Hannover, Selbstverlag der Provinzialverwaltung, Theodor Schulzes Buchhandlung, 1932 (Neudruck Verlag Wenner, Osnabrück 1979, ISBN 3-87898-151-1 ), p. 257