Johann Martin Waldschmidt

Johann Martin Waldschmidt (* 1650 ; † 1706 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German lawyer, scholar, art collector and librarian.

Life

Johann Martin Waldschmidt was the son of the Lutheran preacher Martin Bernhard Waldschmidt (1608–1665), who had been a pastor in Frankfurt since 1638. His son, however, was not a theologian. He studied in Strasbourg jurisprudence and was also formed out historically and scientifically. Johann Martin Waldschmidt was sworn in as the first full-time city librarian in Frankfurt in 1691. The establishment of this position has a history.

The library

The Frankfurt city library was created in 1529 by merging the council library and the barefoot library. The book collection of the learned monks consisted of Bibles, but also philological textbooks as well as works on beautiful literature, the arts, jurisprudence, medicine and above all history. The council, however, only owned books of legal and constitutional content. The city library also became a repository for museum objects. The oldest pieces were astronomical instruments, two equatoriums and two astrolabes . The English Monument, a goldsmith's work from 1558, is the first art chamber object that was officially donated to the city of Frankfurt. The beautiful terrestrial globe from 1515 and the celestial globe from Langgren from 1594 should also be mentioned. A large number of geometric instruments can be traced back to the Frankfurt fortress engineer Johann Wilhelm Dilich (1600–1657). The library has been located in a central room in the former barefoot monastery since 1572 . In 1690, the council decided to extend this room by 23 m, to have it painted and to put twelve new bookcases there.

The reason for the establishment of the librarianship was an extremely valuable addition of 5000 books by the famous alder Johann Maximilian zum Junge (1596–1649). In accordance with his official oath of 1691, Johann Martin Waldschmidt had to “… besides which books were brought to the library, other rare things and curiosities, diligently perceive and delete them. Scholarchat deliver a correct inventory of the same. “The visitors could read the books and look at the objects twice a week at fixed times. Waldschmidt created a book catalog for the city library, which is united in the Barefoot Monastery. In addition, he created an access directory under the title " Directory of books and other things, so venerated for the augmentation and ornamentation of the library ".

The librarian as a collector

Johann Martin Waldschmidt himself owned a natural history cabinet with shells and minerals and a coin collection. The preserved oil portrait shows him in a proud pose in the library in front of a bookcase. In front of him is a small coin cabinet with two open drawers. On top of the coin cabinet are shells, snails and corals. Waldschmidt holds a (false) sesterce of the emperor Otho in his hand . Waldschmidt induced wealthy citizens to have portraits of their learned ancestors made in order to leave them to the library. He himself donated numerous collection items, such as a portrait of his father in oil, 62 of his sermons and 12 writings. For the book hall and its decoration he donated 16 heads of Roman emperors in plaster to the library. The rulers were to serve as models of wisdom and justice for contemporaries. He also expanded the library's collection areas to include Artificialia (works of art), Antiquitas (evidence of prehistory) and Naturalia (fossils, minerals, plants, shells). Waldschmidt made a decisive contribution to the indexing and expansion of the city library. It is thanks to its fundamental activity that the library can be regarded as the nucleus of many cultural institutes in contemporary Frankfurt.

literature

• Friedrich Clemens Ebrard , The City Library in Frankfurt am Main , Frankfurt 1896.
• Frank Berger, the city librarian Johann Martin Waldschmidt (1650-1706) as collector and curator . In: Frankfurter Collector and Donors, Historisches Museum Frankfurt , Schriften Volume 32, Frankfurt 2012, pp. 21–38.