Johann Adam Breysig

Johann Adam Breysig (born April 1, 1766 in Leudesdorf ; † August 29, 1831 in Danzig ) was a German architect, painter and art teacher.

Life

Breysig was initially trained by the theater painter Peter Beckenkamp in Koblenz and then traveled with a theater troupe whose stage sets he designed. In 1791 he settled in Bernburg as a master builder and theater painter and then in 1796 became the building commissioner for the Princes of Anhalt-Bernburg in Ballenstedt . The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. appointed him in 1799 as a professor to be the first teacher at the Provincial Art School in Magdeburg . In 1804 he opened the Danzig Art School, of which he was director from 1809 to 1831; his successor was Johann Karl Schultz .

Panoramas

The Irishman Robert Barker is considered to be the inventor of the panorama based on a patent from 1787 . Breysig claimed in a pamphlet published in 1799 that he himself had developed the idea for a complete circular painting a year before Barker, namely in 1788 [!], And assumed that his ideas had somehow found their way to England and had been published there by Barker have been. Even if he stuck to this statement, the fact that Barker had already patented his invention a year before Breysing's idea proved that Breysing's claim was not valid. Nevertheless he managed to at least find someone to finance his own panorama. The painters Johann Carl Enslen and his son Karl Georg Enslen , a pupil of Breysig from 1808 to 1811, introduced panoramas on a large scale at annual fairs in Germany, with the father probably more responsible for technology and the son after attending the Berlin Academy until 1815 collaborated as an academic painter.

Fonts

• Attempt to explain the relief perspective, also set up for Mahler. 1798
• New sketches ... relating to the visual arts and building trade: first volume in 2 booklets. Danzig 1805
• Symbolism through wreaths and crowns: Remnants of the dictionary of images and language that was burned in Königsberg as a manuscript with the new theater; from an artist portfolio; useful and entertaining for everyone, indispensable for visual artists; published on the occasion of the opening of the Gdańsk School of Arts and Crafts. Danzig: White 1809
• Dictionary of imagery or brief and instructive details of symbolic and allegorical images and often mixed up conventional signs. At the same time an attempt at an ornamental dictionary. With 3119 lithographed monograms on 54 pages and a chart. Leipzig: Vogel 1830

Digital copy , Bavarian State Library

literature

• Theodor Hirsch:  Breysig, Adam . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 326.
• Ingeborg Krengel-Strudthoff, Bärbel Rudin (ed.): In a blue distance: from the stage set to the Königsberg panoramic theater: writings on stage reform by Johann Adam Breysig (1766–1831). (Studies by the Research Center for East Central Europe at the University of Dortmund 12, ISSN  0179-6356 ) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1993 ISBN 9783447033862

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