Johannes von Diergardt

Johannes Freiherr von Diergardt (born September 13, 1859 in Bonn , † July 6, 1934 in Warnemünde ) was a Rhenish aristocrat and an important collector of art from the migration period .

Johannes von Diergardt was the son of the industrialist Friedrich Heinrich von Diergardt (1820–1887) and Bertha von der Heydt (1828–1902) and grandson of Friedrich von Diergardt (1795–1869). His father bought Bornheim Castle in 1872 as the family residence.

At first von Diergardt began collecting Roman coins. In 1885 Franconian graves were found in the park of Bornheim Castle , which he had excavated. In 1907 he bought from the French Merle de Massoneau, the administrator of the Tsar's vineyards in the Crimea, his collection of southern Russian excavations. As a result, von Diergardt acquired a large number of archaeological finds, mainly from the Migration Period , and thus brought together the world's largest private collection of artifacts from this period.

Von Diergardt has evidently dealt intensively with the origin and history of his collection items. However, he left very little written record of it, relying primarily on memory. In 1934 he suddenly fell ill and died shortly afterwards of pneumonia. The background information he knew was largely lost.

In a provisional will, von Diergardt had already ordered in 1917 that his collection should be kept closed in a museum in Berlin or the Rhineland. When he died, it was spread over four locations: some of it was in the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin, some in his private apartment in Berlin and the rest in Bornheim Castle, the family's ancestral home, and in the castle's gatehouse. In 1935 the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne managed to acquire the collection.

literature

• Bernd Päffgen : The Diergardt Collection and its fate from 1934 to 1939 . In: Sebastian Brather u. a. (Ed.): Historia archaeologica. Festschrift for Heiko Steuer on his 70th birthday . De Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-022337-8 , pp. 661-686.
• Friederike Naumann-Steckner , Marcus Trier : History of the Diergardt Collection . In: Friederike Naumann-Steckner, Marcus Trier (Hrsg.): Golden Age. 100 masterpieces from the migration period . Hirmer, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-7774-2782-9 , p. 7ff.
• Gabriele Oepen-Domschky: Johannes Freiherr von Diergardt - patron and collector . In: Friederike Naumann-Steckner, Marcus Trier (Hrsg.): Golden Age. 100 masterpieces from the migration period . Hirmer, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-7774-2782-9 , pp. 18ff.
• Matthias Wemhoff (ed.): Treasures from Europe's early days. The collector and patron Johannes Freiherr von Diergardt . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-7954-3293-5

Catalogs of the collection

• Fritz Fremersdorf : Gold jewelry from the time of the Great Migration. Diergardt Collection. Cologne 1953.
• Joachim Werner : Byzantine belt buckles of the 6th and 7th centuries from the Diergardt collection. In: Kölner Jahrbuch für Pre- und Frühgeschichte 1955, pp. 36–48.
• Joachim Werner: Catalog of the Diergardt Collection . Volume 1: The fibulae. Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1961.
• Inciser Gürçay Dam: Goldsmith work of the Migration Period from the northern Black Sea region. Catalog of the Diergardt Collection 2 . In: Kölner Jahrbuch für Vor und Frühgeschichte 21, 1988, pp. 65–210.
• Ellen Riemer: Byzantine belt buckles from the Diergardt collection in the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne . In: Kölner Jahrbuch 28, 1995, pp. 777–809
• Friederike Naumann-Steckner, Marcus Trier (Hrsg.): Golden Age. 100 masterpieces from the migration period . Hirmer, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-7774-2782-9 .

Web links

• Johannes Freiherr von Diergardt on his 150th birthday ( memento from October 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on museenkoeln.de
• Johannes von Diergardt: someone who never wanted to be famous. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . October 1, 2009, accessed February 22, 2013
• www.tagesspiegel.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ StA Rostock, 2.1.26. C Warnemünde No. 36/1934.