Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky
Berlin memorial plaque in Berlin-Mitte , Brüderstraße 13, with wrong year of birth and wrong year of the occupation of Berlin.

Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky (also Gotzkowski or Gotskowski; born November 21, 1710 in Konitz , †  August 9, 1775 in Berlin ) was a Berlin entrepreneur . Gotzkowsky traded in haberdashery , founded the later Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin and was an important art dealer and collector.

Life

Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky came from an impoverished evangelical family of the small Polish nobility in Polish Prussia at the beginning of the Northern War . His father Adam died in 1711, his mother Anna Magdalena, née Abelin, in 1717. After his mother's death, relatives in Dresden took him to live with them. At the age of fourteen, Gotzkowsky came to see his brother Ludwig (1697–1761), who lived in Berlin and who sent him from 1724–1730 to an apprenticeship in the “Sprögelschen Materialhandlung” shop. Gotzkowsky came into contact with the Prussian court through delivery contracts and met Frederick the Great before his accession to the throne.

Art dealer and purveyor to the court

When he took over the government, he gave Gotzkowsky the order to attract skilled artists and craftsmen to the country in order to improve the local industry. To this end, he should also found new factories . At first Gotzkowsky acted with his jewelery and haberdashery trade as a court supplier for jewelry boxes, watches, stick handles, rings etc.

In 1744 Gotzkowsky took over a velvet factory - and in 1753 also a silk factory , both of which soon employed over 1,500 people. In 1747 he acquired the building on Brüderstraße, later called Nicolaihaus .

From 1750 Gotzkowsky also dealt with the art trade: In 1755 he was commissioned by Friedrich II to buy paintings for the recently completed gallery of Sanssouci Palace . Of decisive importance for Gotzkowsky's work as a collector and intermediary was his connection to the artistic director of the Dresden art collections, Karl Heinrich von Heineken . However, the Seven Years' War forced the king to spend his financial resources elsewhere, so that Gotzkowsky had to sell the 108 paintings he had already bought elsewhere. However, 92 of the 108 pictures in the possession of Gotzkowsky can still be found in a later catalog. These included pieces by Rubens , van Dyck , Rembrandt and numerous contemporary Germans: Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich , Roos , Balthasar Denner , Christian Seybold .

After the battle of Kunersdorf in 1759, Gotzkowsky traveled to the king's quarters on behalf of the Berlin magistrate and brought his orders of conduct back to Berlin. During the siege of Berlin in October 1760 by a Russian corps under General Gottlob Heinrich von Tottleben , Gotzkowsky provided food for the Prussian garrison and the auxiliary corps brought in by the Prince of Württemberg in forced marches. When the capitulation of the city and the Russian-Austrian occupation could no longer be avoided, he caused the contribution to be reduced from the initially stated 4 million thalers to 1.5 million, of which only 500,000 thalers were paid . Of this he paid 50,000 thalers out of his own fortune. At that time he was at the height of his economic and social influence and reputation.

War profiteer and speculator

Despite his later transfiguration as a "patriotic merchant", Gotzkowsky acted neither exclusively patriotic nor altruistic. As a merchant, he primarily sought to make profits from the Seven Years' War , both by doing business with Prussia and with its war opponents, but above all at the expense of occupied Saxony. When Friedrich II occupied Leipzig again in November 1760 and demanded a contribution of 1.1 million thalers from the city, Gotzkowsky interfered and achieved a reduction of the contribution to 800,000 thalers, which he advanced to the intimidated council of the city of Leipzig. He paid the sum in remelted coins with a deteriorated precious metal content (which had already triggered inflation in Prussia and Saxony in the winter of 1756/57), but had the bond issued in old, high-quality coins and thus achieved a profit of up to 40 percent.

At the beginning of 1761, at the request of the king, Gotzkowsky acquired and expanded a porcelain factory, which was a small successor to the first Berlin porcelain factory founded by Wilhelm Kaspar Wegely . However, it was an expensive company that was draining its finances.

Since the beginning of the war he had also invested in speculative economic activity, which also affected his financial situation. One such deal was the purchase of Russian grain stores in October 1760, the month of the occupation of Berlin by Russian troops. At first Gotzkowsky wanted to found a consortium of which he would only hold a fifth. However, he undertook to pay the Russian representative - Prince Dolgoruki (a nephew of Dolgoruki had taken part in the occupation of Berlin) - a bonus of 100,000 thalers. After the contract was signed, it turned out that the grain shortage that was being speculated on was not so severe and that the grain was of poor quality and difficult to sell. The bank de Neufville in Amsterdam had become insolvent and the other partners in the Russian business had withdrawn in time or were themselves bankrupt. Prince Dolgoruki insisted on the payment and complained to the Prussian ministers for foreign affairs. Thus, the entire debt burden to the Russians of a total of 221,000 thalers lay on Gotzkowsky's shoulders, plus further claims from other businesses, because with the Hubertusburg Peace in February 1763 the speculative market collapsed and an economic crisis set in. A comparison in April 1763 put the demands on Gotzkowsky at 2,400,000 thalers. On August 4th, Gotzkowsky went bankrupt for the first time. On August 24th, the king decided to buy the porcelain factory for 225,000 thaler. In September it was given the addition of the Royal Prussian name .

Frederick the Great agreed to buy some paintings that he had ordered from Gotzkowsky before the war. Gotzkowsky paid off his debt to the Russian government by selling 317 paintings from his own collection, which formed the basis of the Catherine the Great's collection and are (at least in part) kept in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg to this day . According to attributions at the time, there were 13 works by Rembrandt, 11 by Rubens, two by Raphael and one by Titian . Nina Simone Schepkowski claims on the basis of previously ignored sources that Gotzkowsky's unsuccessful grain deals with Russia threatened to escalate in a diplomatic dispute. Frederick II urged Gotzkowsky to sell pictures to the Russian tsarina so as not to jeopardize his own alliance plans with Russia.

The sacrifices that Gotzkowsky made in paying off his debts, the now badly damaged reputation as an entrepreneur and several other guarantees finally led to his second bankruptcy in 1766 .

Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky died in Berlin on August 9, 1775. The Gotzkowsky primary school in Berlin-Moabit (merged with the Miriam Makeba primary school in 2011), Gotzkowskystraße and Gotzkowskybrücke were named after him.

Fonts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ingrid Mittenzwei : Friedrich II. Von Preußen , pages 108 and 123. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1980
  2. ^ Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. Art agent and painting collector in the Frederician Berlim by Nina Simone Schepkowski
  3. ^ Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. Art agent and painting collector in the Frederician Berlim by Nina Simone Schepkowski
  4. ↑ Case file  in the German Digital Library

literature

  • Winfried Baer, ​​Ilse Baer, ​​Suzanne Grosskopf-Knaack (eds.): From Gotzkowsky to KPM. From the early days of Frederician porcelain . Arenhövel, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-922912-15-X , (exhibition catalog, Berlin, Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin, August 17 - November 2, 1986).
  • Christoph Frank: The Berlin painting collections Gotzkowsky, Eimbke and Stein . In: Michael North (Ed.): Art collecting and taste in the 18th century . Berlin-Verlag Spitz, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8305-0312-1 , ( Enlightenment and Europe 8), pp. 117–194.
  • Bodo Gotzkowsky: The Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky (1710–1775), his family and his descendants. For the 200th anniversary of his death. In: The Herald. Quarterly magazine for heraldry, genealogy and allied sciences. Volume 8, 1975-1977, pp. 45-72 (supplementary ibid. Pp. 73-77 the article: Gotzkowsky Bibliography up to 1973 ).
  • Otto Hintze : A Berlin merchant from the time of Frederick the Great (Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky) . In: Writings of the Association for the History of Berlin 30, 1893, ZDB -ID 513319-1 , pp. 1–18.
  • Theodor Hirsch :  Gotskowsky, Johann Ernst . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, pp. 448-449.
  • Hugo Rachel , Johannes Papritz , Paul Wallich : Berlin wholesalers and capitalists . Volume 2: The era of mercantilism 1648-1806 . Gsellius, Berlin 1938, pp. 209ff.
  • Nina Simone Schepkowski: Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. Art agent and painting collector in the Frederician Berlin . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-05-004437-8 , (also: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2007). [1] [2]
  • Fritz Springborn:  Gotzkowsky, Johann Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 689 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gotzkowsky, Johann Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian merchant and patriot
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1710
PLACE OF BIRTH Konitz , West Prussia
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1775
Place of death Berlin