Johann Jacobi (ore caster)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Johann Jacobi, 1709

Johann Jacobi (born September 13, 1661 in Homburg before the height , † August 29, 1726 in Berlin ) was a German ore caster and close colleague of Andreas Schlueter . His best known work is the famous equestrian statue of the Great Elector from 1700; the model comes from Schlueter.

Live and act

The Great Elector in front of Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin
Friedrich III. in front of Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin

Jacobi was born as the eldest of 13 children of the Wagner , lay judge and bell ringer Johann Rupert Jacobi and his wife Susanna. Röder was born in what was then Homburg vor der Höhe. Jacobi is the Latinized form of the surname Jackel or Jaeckel.

The statement that Jacobi grew up in the household of the Echzell pastor Bernhard Hagenbruch cannot be verified. What is certain is that Johann Rupert Jacobi and Bernhard Hagenbruch were friends and that young Jacobi was in Echzell when his father died. Hagenbruch took on the task of taking care of the vocational training of the half- orphan and gave Jacobi an apprenticeship as a blacksmith . A bill from 1684, which his descendant Heinrich Jacobi found, shows that a journeyman blacksmith Jacobi was employed in the construction of Homburg Castle .

In 1693 we find Johann Jacobi in Paris in the service of the brothers Johann Jakob (1635–1700) and Johann Balthasar Keller (vom Steinbock) (1638–1702). In the late 1680s, Johann Balthasar Keller began the casting preparations for the equestrian statue of Louis XIV , intended for the Place Vendôme in Paris (then Place Louis le Grand) , which visualized the king as a Roman emperor. The concept came from the French sculptor François Girardon . In a specially built foundry house, the almost seven-meter-high statue was first cast in a single casting process on December 31, 1692 (unveiling in 1699, destruction in 1792).

In 1695 Jacobi went to Berlin. It is not clear whether this happened at the instigation of his friend Schlueter; on September 24, 1697 Jacobi received from Elector Friedrich III. a contract as a "court and artillery founder". Jacobi undertook to deliver ten cannons or mortars per month and received an annual salary of 1000 guilders . After the rank of elector Friedrich III. for King Friedrich I in Prussia, Jacobi was commissioned to cast the pompous cannon Asia . The Asia weighed 370 Prussian hundredweight (19.04 metric tons). The weight of her bullets made her a 100 pounder, though she never actually fired projectiles. The production costs amounted to 17,828 thalers.

Friedrich III. had already considered the erection of a monument to the Great Elector when he took office in 1688. It was one of the first projects Schlüter and Jacobi tackled together. Already in Jacobi's contract of 1697 there was talk of a "big horse and picture on the bridge". While Schlueter was designing the model of the equestrian statue of the Great Elector , Jacobi cast a statue of Elector Friedrich III, depicting him as a Roman ruler, but with the electoral emblems. A replica of this statue has been in the garden of Charlottenburg Palace since 1979 ; the original, which was last in Königsberg / East Prussia, has been lost since 1945.

At the end of 1697 Schlüter's plaster model of the equestrian statue was completed and on October 22nd, 1700 Jacobi cast the 2.90 meter high monument in one cast, just as he had learned from Johann Balthasar Keller in Paris. For the casting of the monument erected in 1703 on the Langen or Kurfürstenbrücke , an outstanding creation of the late Renaissance , Jacobi received 80,000 thalers, including the metal . The monument to the Great Elector was later expanded to include four slave figures , which Jacobi also made. The equestrian statue was relocated during the Second World War and was later found in Lake Tegel . In 1952 it was erected in front of Charlottenburg Palace. As early as 1904, a galvanoplastic copy in original size was installed in the domed hall of the Bode Museum .

Bronze bust of Friedrich II of Hessen-Homburg

Queen Sophie Charlotte died in 1705 while working on the slave figures of the equestrian monument . The now deeply grieving King Friedrich I commissioned Schlüter to design a magnificent sarcophagus that Jacobi cast. The counterpart, cast when the king died in 1713, was also created in cooperation between Schlüter and Jacobi. The sarcophagi are seen as manifestations of the baroque view of life.

Another joint work by Schlüters and Jacobi is the bronze bust of the Landgrave Friedrich II of Hessen-Homburg in the vestibule of Bad Homburg Castle . The bust was created around 1704; Friedrich II often stayed at the Berlin court and knew Schlueter and certainly also his “compatriot” Jacobi. According to art historians, the 1.15 m high bust is considered the "most important bust of the German Baroque".

The rigorous austerity measures at court after Friedrich Wilhelm I came to power also fell victim to Schlüter and Jacobi's posts. While Schlüter found a new job in St. Petersburg , Jacobi turned to the casting of church bells and fire engines .

In 1702 Jacobi married Anna Sophia Damerow; the couple had ten children (six daughters and four sons), of whom son Heinrich Julius (1705–1755) was also a caster. Jacobi was buried on September 1, 1726 in the Friedrichswerder cemetery . The two Bad Homburg architects Louis Jacobi and his son Heinrich are direct descendants of Johann Jacobi.

literature

Web links

Commons : Johann Jacobi  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz Ladendorf (ed.), Helmut Börsch-Supran: Andreas Schlueter . Builder and sculptor of the Prussian Baroque. EA Seemann, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-363-00676-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Jacobi, Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ore caster
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1661
PLACE OF BIRTH Homburg vor der Höhe
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 1726
Place of death Berlin