Jean Paul Humbert

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Jean Paul Humbert

Jean Paul Humbert (born April 23, 1766 ; † April 12 or April 29, 1831 ) was a Berlin businessman and politician.

Life

Jean Paul Humbert was a son of the goldsmith Humbert, who founded the jewelry company Humbert und Sohn, which existed in the house Schloß Freiheit 2 in Berlin until 1889 . His grandfather was a member of the upper tribunal in Berlin. Following a trend of the times, Jean Paul Humbert devoted himself to the silk manufacture propagated by Frederick II . He quickly achieved not only business reputation, but also embarked on a career in politics. After he had already held several honorary posts within the French colony, in 1809 he also became city councilor for the Brüderstraße district and deputy of the city councilor of Gerlach . After this had become mayor, Humbert moved up and became head of the city council. He stayed in this position for ten years. After the Battle of Dennewitz , he traveled to Jean Baptiste Bernadotte's headquarters in Zerbst to free the residents of the digging work. His services were recognized in 1816 when he was awarded the Iron Cross on a white ribbon, and after his resignation in 1819 he was painted by Friedrich Georg Weitsch . The oil portrait was initially in the Alte Börse, then in the Cöllnisches Rathaus, and finally in Waesemann's monumental building, the Berlin Town Hall .

In 1812 Humbert lost his first wife, with whom he had eight children, six of whom were still alive at the time; In 1816 he got a second marriage, which resulted in four more children.

Humbert's Schinkel Hall

Before the second wedding, Humbert decided to remodel the house he had bought from Georg Jacob Decker in 1795 at Brüderstraße 29 , as he wanted a hall for social gatherings. Humbert bought this house together with Johann Franz Labry and moved into the first floor after Decker had died in 1799.

The morning

He now had the partition between the two rooms, which were along the north side of the house, removed, creating a room eleven meters long, although it only had two window axes in the front. There was also a hope window that gave only little light. The painterly design, especially the long north wall, was entrusted to Karl Friedrich Schinkel . In the years 1813 and 1814 Schinkel executed several landscape paintings for this hall. In addition, he also took on furnishing Humbert's hall. His six oil paintings on canvas were all about 2.60 meters high, but different widths, depending on the conditions of the room. They were titled morning , noon , afternoon , dusk , evening and night . According to the Schinkel biographer Waagen, assistants also worked on at least some of these paintings; Karl Gropius and perhaps also Karl Ferdinand Zimmermann may have been involved in the morning .

After Jean Paul Humbert's death, his eldest son Eduard and his wife Julie, a sister of the singer and composer Theodor Curschmann , moved into the floor previously occupied by their father. He took over the hall including the paintings. According to the art historian Johannes Sievers , these were later restored by the royal court carpenter Georg Sievers (Sievers: From my life, p. 5). In 1854 he dissolved the old company. The holdings were taken over by his nephew Louis Gärtner, who had been Labry's partner since 1816. In 1868 the house that Jean Paul Humbert had decorated was sold to Ernst Benjamin Koch , and twenty years later it was taken over by Rudolph Hertzog . At that time, the Schinkel paintings were no longer in Jean Paul Humbert's old room; Julie Humbert bequeathed them to King Wilhelm I and brought them to the National Gallery, which opened in 1876. However, Director Jordan only hung the two best, the afternoon and the evening , in the permanent display. Morning , noon and night hung for a long time in the Raczynskisches Palais on Königsplatz , which had to give way to the Reichstag building in 1884 . In 1902 all six paintings were moved to the official apartment of the Upper President in Breslau . They only returned to Berlin ten years later.

literature

  • Hans Mackowsky , Brüderstraße , in: Hans Mackowsky, Houses and people in old Berlin , Berlin 1923, Ndr. 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1803-5 , pp. 79–115
  • Johannes Sievers: From my life, Berlin 1966. (published as typescript)

Individual evidence

  1. The dates vary in different sources; Mackowsky only mentions the year of birth 1766 and the date of death April 12, 1831; Martin Engel, Das Knobelsdorffsche Freihaus in Leipziger Strasse , note 74 ( memento of the original from September 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.9 MB) states April 29, 1831 as the date of death. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / kunstgeschichte.univie.ac.at