Joseph Gautier

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Gautier (* 1794 in Lützen , † September 18, 1846 in Tabán , Hungary ) was a tightrope walker, art rider and circus director. The Gautier family originally came from France and worked in the circus business for several generations.

Life

Joseph Gautier was the third child of Jean Baptiste Gautier (* 1758 in Faucon , † 1822 in Hungary) and Rose Louise Lefèvre. The Gautier family had left France in the course of the French Revolution . Jean Baptiste Gautier owned a menagerie and a circus; whose father André, in turn, was still Landwird in Faucon.

Joseph Gautier's older siblings were Victoire and Didier Gautier, and his younger brother's name was Jean Léonard Gautier. Numerous members of the Gautier family worked as horse riders, animal dressers and tightrope walkers; z. Sometimes they cannot be clearly identified. In 1812, for example, the Nördlingischer Intellektivenblatt wrote: “With the most gracious hereditary permission, next Sunday, if the weather permits, the art riders will be producing for the last time in the armory, with one of them being put in a sack, changing as a woman and coming out. The birds and monkeys can also be seen until Sunday evening in the Gasthof zum Schwarzen Ochsen; whereupon the last usual performance is given at 7 o'clock. Demoiselle Gautier will also dance on a rope. "

In Joseph Gautier's generation, the family seems to have been spread over different countries. According to the birthplaces of his children, as far as these have been handed down, Joseph Gautier may have stayed temporarily in Hungary, where he died at a relatively young age. His successor was apparently the son Alexander Gautier.

His brother Didier Gautier, born in Chaumont in 1792, used to perform like Joseph Gautier with a tightrope walker and equestrian society and was a circus owner. He died in Gävle in Sweden in 1872 . The younger brother, Jean Léonard Gautier, born in Berlin in 1787 , died in Altona in 1866. He owned a menagerie.

Joseph Gautier initially worked as a tightrope walker and after the death of his father in Hungary in 1822 he probably took over his company or part of it. In 1820 he entered into his first marriage, from which the children Alexander, Anton and Maria Magdalena Gautier emerged; the latter was born in Tirgu Mures in Transylvania in 1830 and died in Hungary. Joseph Gautier later married Johanna Félicité Baunier, with whom he had a daughter Theresia and a son Heinrich. The daughter Theresia Caroline from this connection was born in Debrecen in Hungary in 1836 and the last child, son Heinrich, was born in Landau in the Palatinate in 1841 .

In 1823 an art rider Gautier, possibly Joseph Gautier, resided in the Vienna Prater and presented animal training and vaulting pieces that were touted as Scottish. However, in the newspaper for the elegant world one could read that the attribute “Scottish” probably didn't mean much: The art rider Gautier set up his quarters in the Prater, “not only for deer, dogs and monkey productions, but also trying to entertain the spectators through Scottish vaulting pieces ”. The feats, the writer of the correspondence from Vienna speculated, were given this nickname , probably in honor of Walter Scott and because Gautier hoped to attract Scott readers. His demonstrations are visited on Sundays, but the visitors are more interested in the four-legged artists than in the two-legged artists - which is not surprising for a showman who also relies on animal training.

For the same year Joseph Gautier's appearances with Jacques Tourniaire's equestrian company in Breslau are documented; Among other things, it was announced: “The young Tourniaire and Mr. Joseph Gautier will produce on two unsaddled horses in full Carriere Le Pas de Incas, in analog costume.” About two weeks later, something else was on the program: “Mr. Joseph Gautier will do various exercises and make jumps on the rope with the balance bar, and then perform the extraordinary jump through a barrel on the rope and at the same time do the great somersault. "

In 1825 Joseph Gautier was on the road with the Johann Hinnés Art Equestrian Society ; it was announced: “Mr. Gautier will quite unexpectedly produce himself on a very fast horse and end with the Saltomortal backwards in the largest run of his horse. [...] - Mr. Gautier will excel in big grotesque jumps and jump over tapes, canvas and ladders. - […] The society consists of 21 people of both sexes, with 20 horses and 1 stag. ”Later Joseph Gautier led his own tightrope walker and art equestrian society. In 1839 he gave a charity performance with his horse riding society in favor of the English Fräuleinstift in Brixen, which had been damaged by fire, as well as communities in the Lower Inn Valley damaged by hail.

The designation of some feats as Scottish remained in use at Gautier. Numerous newspaper advertisements and program leaflets in German have been preserved from around 1840/42. In 1842 Joseph Gautier announced, among other things, that he would "also perform a Scottish dance on the taut rope, playing the violin in different ways, then, while" blowing the trumpet, "doing a somersault."

Gautier often referred to himself in advertisements and on notice boards as a citizen of the Hungarian town of Esseg ( Osijek ) and of Nagy-Károly .

literature

  • Julius Markschiess-van Trix and Bernhard Nowak, artists and circus posters. An international historical overview , Atlantis Verlag 1972, ISBN 978-3761104521 , p. 92

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gautier circus families on www.gautier.dk
  2. ↑ Nördlingisches Intellölkerblatt No. 3, January 17, 1812, supplement o. P.
  3. ↑ A. Heinrich (ed.), Almanach for Friends of Drama , Berlin 1848, p. 58
  4. ^ Der bayerische Volksfreund 128, August 8, 1828, p. 551
  5. ↑ Family tree of the Gautier family
  6. ↑ Newspaper for the Elegant World , July 31, 1823, column 1183
  7. ↑ Advertising slip for a performance on March 16, 1823 , Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
  8. ↑ Advertising slip for a performance on April 1, 1823 , Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
  9. ↑ Advertising slip for performances on October 23 and 24, 1825 , Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
  10. ↑ Bothe for Tyrol and Vorarlberg 64, August 12, 1839, p. 1
  11. ^ Regensburger Zeitung , April 30, 1842, p. 472
  12. ↑ Short biography on www.vialibri.net
personal data
SURNAME Gautier, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Tightrope walker, art rider and circus director
DATE OF BIRTH 1794
PLACE OF BIRTH Lützen
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 1846
Place of death Taban , Hungary