Johann Gottfried Böker

Johann Gottfried Böker , as a US citizen John Godfrey Boeker , other spellings Böcker , Bocker or Boker (* 1794 or 1795 in Remscheid , Duchy of Berg ; † beginning of March 1860 in New York City ), was a German-American wine and spirits dealer , consular representative , Art collector and gallery owner . From 1822 to 1829 he served the United States as consul for the Rhine Province and Westphalia in Remscheid and Elberfeld, respectively . From 1830 to 1836 he resided in Basel as the US Consul General for Switzerland . From 1849 to 1857 he ran the Düsseldorf Gallery in New York City, and briefly in Boston in 1852 , where he publicly exhibited his collection of paintings from the Düsseldorf School of Painting .

Life

Böker, son of the Remscheid merchant Johann Bö (c) ker and his wife Marianne Petronella, née Died (e) richs (* 1775), married Maria Hilgers (1800–1888). He emigrated to the United States and became a US citizen as John Godfrey Boeker . From 1825, Böker appeared in the New York City register of residents. There he worked as a co-owner of the company JG & E. Böker successfully as a wine and spirits dealer until the end of his life. He became very prosperous and owned a country estate in Tarrytown, New York .

In addition, Boker acted as a representative of the interests of the Rheinisch-Westindische Kompagnie, founded in Elberfeld in March 1821 . In order to break through the British supremacy in the European-American sea trade and the dominance of the Hanseatic seaports of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck and to develop direct trade between the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States in order to reduce costs, he proposed to the US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in a letter of August 8, 1821 proposed to establish a US consulate in the new Prussian Rhine provinces , at that time still the province of the Grand Duchy of Lower Rhine and the province of Jülich-Kleve-Berg , to promote direct trade relations. In this context, Böker referred in particular to the economic potential of the early industrial up-and-coming cities of the Rhine Prussia, Aachen , Barmen , Cologne , Krefeld , Düsseldorf , Elberfeld, Mülheim an der Ruhr , Remscheid and Solingen as important sales markets for US products (raw cotton and tobacco) . In 1822 the United States sent Böker as the US consul for the Rhine Province and Westphalia. His office was initially Remscheid, later Elberfeld.

On November 30, 1829 Boker was appointed US Consul General for Switzerland. In October 1830 he took up his post in Basel as the first official representative of the United States in Switzerland , a position he held until 1836. His stepbrother Wilhelm Troost-Simons, the son of the merchant, commercial judge and co-founder of the Rheinisch-Westindische Kompagnie, Johann Abraham Troost (1762-1840), took over the post as US consul for the Rhine Province and Westphalia in 1829/1830, who in 1824 was his second marriage Boker's mother had married.

Clearing Up (Coast of Sicily) , painting by Andreas Achenbach , 1847 - Böker mainly collected pictures by the landscape and genre painters of the Düsseldorf School. He owned this picture, which was also exhibited in the Düsseldorf Gallery, until 1857. Today it belongs to the collection of the Walters Art Museum , Baltimore.

Little is known about Böker's activities between 1836 and 1846. Possibly he commuted between New York City and Düsseldorf, where he was particularly interested in the Düsseldorf School of Painting, which emerged from the Düsseldorf Art Academy . Since 1829 a member of the art association for the Rhineland and Westphalia , he built up a considerable collection of this painting school over many years. It is reported that he acquired, for example, the painting collection of the Düsseldorf art dealer and court gilders Anton Kraus . On August 8, 1846, the members of the Kunstverein elected him to its committee.

As an experienced businessman and representative of the art association's interests, he developed plans to open up the US market for Düsseldorf painters. At the center of these considerations was the idea of ​​a permanent exhibition on Broadway in New York City, the art center of North America. On April 18, 1849, he opened the Düsseldorf Gallery on the upper floor of a neo-Gothic church building . It comprised around 150 paintings from the Düsseldorf School of Painting, including some that were only brought there to safety in the course of the German Revolution of 1848/1849 . At first the exhibition was a great success. This was also expressed in the fact that the number of American subscribers to the art association increased considerably. The publicity of the coverage of the exhibition in the US media also contributed to the fact that a considerable number of young Americans decided to study painting in Düsseldorf during this time. Shortly after the opening of the Düsseldorf Gallery in 1849, during a stay in Düsseldorf, Böker promised the Düsseldorf artists the prospect of founding a German-American Art Union .

However, as early as 1850, the public's interest in the Düsseldorf Gallery waned considerably. In 1850 and 1854 rumors circulated that Boker wanted to close the exhibition. In 1857 the Cosmopolitan Art Association of the art dealer Chauncey L. Derby from Sandusky (Ohio) acquired the pictures. His brother Henry W. Derby, who ran the company's New York branch, changed the exhibition concept and relocated the collection and gallery several times to Broadway. In 1861, the outbreak of the Civil War ended the last exhibition in the Düsseldorf collection. In December 1862 it was sold at auction in New York.

Due to his death in early March 1860, which he suffered as a result of a heart attack, Böker did not live to see the exhibition closed and his former art collection dissolved. His widow moved to Bonn in 1882 , where she died in 1888.

literature

• The Böker company - objectives and organization . In: Sabine Morgen: The Effects of the Düsseldorf School of Painting on America in the 19th Century. Düsseldorf paintings in America and American painters in Düsseldorf . Göttingen Contributions to Art History, Volume 2, Edition Ruprecht, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-7675-3059-1 , p. 266 ff.
• William H. Gerdts : The "Düsseldorf Gallery". “The Düsseldorf painting collection formed an era of American art” . In: Katharina Bott, Gerhard Bott (ed.): ViceVersa. German painters in America, American painters in Germany 1813–1913 . Exhibition catalog, Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin, Munich 1996, p. 44 ff.
• Walter Lorenz : Johann Gottfried Böker . In: The homeland speaks to you . Monthly supplement of the Remscheider General-Anzeiger , 43rd volume, No. 6 (June 1976).
• Raymond L. Stehle: The Düsseldorf Gallery of New York . In: The New-York Historical Society Quarterly , 58 (October 1974), pp. 306 ff. ( Digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nekrolog in: The [New York] Evening Post , March 3, 1860
2. ↑ Bernhard Koerner : German Gender Book , CA Starke Verlag, Görlitz, Volume 24, p. 217
3. ↑ Horst Heidermann : We have the pictures! Heinrich Christoph Kolbe in Wuppertal . In: Geschichte im Wuppertal , Volume 16 (2007), p. 47 ( PDF ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) 
4. ↑ General organ for trade and commerce at home and abroad and related items . Second volume, Cologne, issue No. 4 from January 14, 1853, p. 17 ( Google Books )
5. ^ Donat Grünberger: The North American consular system in Prussia in the first half of the 19th century, with special consideration of the cities of Elberfeld and Düsseldorf . University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, diploma thesis 1976, p. 66 ff. Quoted from: Michael Zeuske: Prussia and West India: Trade and Consular Relations . In: Sandra Carreras, Günther Maihold (Ed.): Prussia and Latin America. In the field of tension between commerce, power and culture . Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-6306-9 , p. 154 f. ( Google Books )
6. ^ Peter Force: The National Calendar and Annals of the United States of MDCCCXXII . Washington 1822, Volume 3, p. 19 ( Google Books )
7. ↑ Jonathan Elliot: Diplomatic Code of the United States of America: Embracing a Collection of Treaties and Conventions Between the United States and Foreign Powers, From the Year 1778 to 1827 . Washington 1827 ( Google Books )
8. ↑ History of the US and Switzerland , website in the portal ch.usembassy.gov , accessed on May 21, 2018
9. ↑ Debra J. Allen: Historical Dictionary of US Diplomacy from the Revolution to Secession . Scarecrow Press, Lanham / Maryland 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-6186-2 , p. 335 ( Google Books )
10. ^ Samuel Bell: Journal of The Senate of the United States of America . Washington 1829, p. 52 ( Google Books )
11. ↑ Michael Zeuske, p. 155
12. ↑ Official Journal for the Düsseldorf administrative region , year 1830, p. 252 ( Google Books )
13. ^ Rheinisch-Westindische Kompagnie, donated to Elberfeld in March 1821, its creation - form - purpose and consequences . Elberfeld 1821 ( digitized version )
14. ↑ Horst Heidermann: Unter Linden on the Rhine - the resting places of the Wuppertal in Bonn and Bad Godesberg . In: Geschichte im Wuppertal , Volume 17 (2008), p. 89 ( PDF ( Memento of the original from 23 September 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. )