Joachim Wasserschlebe

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Portrait of Joachim Wasserschlebe c. 1745, attributed to Louis Tocqué
Johann Martin Preissler (based on the bust of Saly): Joachim Wasserschlebe

Joachim Wasserschlebe also Wasserschleben (born April 29, 1709 in Salzwedel , † March 13, 1787 in Wassersleben ) was a German administrative lawyer in the Danish service and art collector.

Life

Wasserschlebe came from a family in Salzwedel that had risen to become a councilor. He attended the Latin school in his hometown and studied law in Halle (Saale) . After a time as court master in Hamburg , he became private secretary of the Danish ambassador at the French court in Paris in 1731 Werner von der Schulenburg . He was accepted into the Danish civil service in 1738 and was promoted to legation secretary and repeated Charge d'Affaires in Paris. In 1741 he acquired on behalf of the Danish King Christian VI. 140 paintings in the Parisian art trade for the decoration of Christiansborg Palace , where they burned in 1794. In 1750 he made it possible for the young sculptor Johannes Wiedewelt to study in Paris.

With the support of Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff , he was transferred to the foreign department of the German Chancellery in Copenhagen in 1752 . Due to his excellent relations with the art market, he was significantly involved in the appointment of Jacques-François-Joseph Saly as director of the new art academy in Copenhagen in 1754 and was immediately made an honorary member. He also played a decisive role in calling other artists recognized in Europe to Copenhagen. He became a budget councilor in 1760 and a conference councilor in 1768.

With the overthrow of Bernstorff by Johann Friedrich Struensee in 1770, Wasserschlebe also lost positions and influence; but he stayed in Copenhagen and took care of Bernstorff's property affairs. After the fall of Struensee in 1772, he did not return to civil service. In 1778 he moved to Flensburg to live with his widowed sister and her children and built a small country house on the Flensburg Fjord . To finance the construction costs he sold around 90% of his collection of copperplate engravings to the Danish Royal Library in 1783 . The remaining 10% and his library were bought by Daniel Gotthilf Moldenhawer for the Royal Library in 1789 . The other written estate of Wasserschlebe did not come to the Royal Library until 1824 as a gift from Moldenhawers. Wasserschlebe was buried in the nearby building ( Bov ). The small Flensburg suburb, in which the country house he built has been preserved to this day, is reminiscent of him with the name “ Water Life ”.

Johann Paul Höpp was his great-nephew.

Collector

Wasserschlebe had started to build up a collection of contemporary French graphics in Paris and later expanded it to a collection of 10,000 sheets in Copenhagen. It is now in the Copper Engraving Cabinet of the Royal Danish Library.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eighteenth-century French Drawings in New York Collection , New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art 1999 ISBN 9780870998928 , p. 68
  2. Flensburg street names . Society for Flensburg City History, Flensburg 2005, ISBN 3-925856-50-1 , Article: Water life