Johann Adam Richter

Johann Adam Richter (born May 11, 1733 in Gersfeld , † July 9, 1813 in Kiel ) was a German carpenter and master builder.

Live and act

There is evidence that Johann Adam Richter's ancestors worked as craftsmen in Gersfeld from the early 17th century. He himself was a son of the Gersfeld carpenter Nikolaus Richter (born October 21, 1703 in Sandberg ; September 8, 1770 in Gersfeld) and his wife Maria Catharina, née Drott (born February 25, 1710 in Gersfeld; June 7, 1779 ibid). Her father Hans Drott worked as an innkeeper. Richter had a brother named Peter Richter .

Richter himself said that as a young man he traveled to numerous cities and countries. It was probably the time when he was a journeyman carpenter. He visited Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Würzburg, Swabia, Lorraine, Alsace, the Rhineland and the Palatinate. At the age of twenty he went to Hamburg , where the St. Michaeliskirche was built. Richter participated in the work as a construction manager under Johann Leonhard Prey and Ernst Georg Sonnin .

In 1762 Richter switched to the Russian Grand Duke as a master builder in the grand ducal portion of Holstein in Kiel . In 1763 he became a building inspector here. In 1773 he switched to the Danish king due to the Russian-Danish exchange agreement. In 1779 he was appointed "Landbaumeister in Kielischen Landen". On December 29, 1804, he received 400 Taler Gage and retired.

Richter built his own house in Kiel, where he had lived since 1782. The two-story brick house was called " Seeburg ". He sold the property, probably in 1803, to Count Christian zu Rantzau , the curator of the university. He then acquired the so-called "Wilkens Hof", which was located at the Long Blessing in Brunswick and where he died.

Buildings

Richter worked consistently with bricks in baroque shapes, but also incorporated elements of classicism. In its design language, it was based on Johann Conrad Schlaun and Sonnin. From Schlaun he adopted the unorthodox solution of the rounded corners, which were clamped in by pilasters . Richter also used sandstone for structuring and decorating elements.

In Richter's late works the “German order” devised by Leonhard Christoph Sturm can often be found in the structure of walls. This included the ballroom of the Schierensee manor and the altars of the pulpits in Schönberg and Kappeln . For rural buildings in Holstein, which he created in the last years of his life, he established brick building, which replaced the clay frame building.

Richter was an important architect of Protestant churches. In 1771/72 he completed the church of Großenaspe , the construction of which Johann Gottfried Rosenberg had started. From 1780 to 1784 he created the new church in Schönberg . In 1787 he took over the reconstruction of the early Gothic church in Probsteierhagen and added a baroque side wing to it. However, the connection of the new tower to the nave was not entirely successful. He created his best building from 1789 to 1793 with the new church in Kappeln .

Richter not only built churches, but also manors and town houses. From 1774 to 1778 he built a mansion with an estate for Caspar von Saldern . Here he worked with an idiosyncratic but clever division of the rooms. The facade shows lively contrasts between warm red bricks and white pilasters.

In 1785 Richter redecorated the oval domed hall of the Rundhof manor house . The stucco work was done by FA Tadei. Here Richter showed himself to be a good interior designer. From 1772 to 1775 he built Gut Annenhof on behalf of Saldern, and in 1779 a water mill in Wellingdorf . There were also several, less significant residential and school buildings. He worked dignified, plastic and rustic.

family

Judge Margareta married Sophia Reinken on May 30, 1766, who died in Kiel on December 25, 1766 . On April 21, 1767, he married Auguste Dorothea Pfeffer, who died before 1813. Her father Johann Sebastian Pfeiffer worked as a court saddler in Kiel.

Both marriages had six children.

literature

• Ulrich Pietsch: Judge, Johann Adam . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 7. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1985, pp. 252-254.