Joseph Ramée
Joseph Jacques Ramée (born April 26, 1764 , Charlemont fortress near Givet , France ; † May 18, 1842 , Castle of Beaurains near Noyon ) was a French, internationally active architect, landscaper and interior decorator at the time of classicism .
General
Working in various related fields was not uncommon for architects of his time. This move was particularly pronounced at Ramée, because numerous changes of location forced him to adapt to very different clients and to accept any suitable type of work.
The predominant style in the architecture of his time was classicism - the return to the art of Greek and Roman antiquity and that of the Renaissance . In relation to the immediately preceding epochs - baroque and rococo - this led to a simplification of the buildings and the facades . A special aspect was the ongoing search for the basic elements of architecture, the forms of pure geometry - cube , pyramid and sphere - as practiced by the radical representatives of so-called revolutionary architecture . Ramée showed himself to be committed to actual classicism in the majority of his works, but had already adopted the ideas of revolutionary architecture as a student. His teacher Bélanger said that Ramée had respected the pure doctrine of classicism, but strived for “even further purification” . As a tributary to classicism, interest in non-classical forms, such as Gothic , from Egypt or China, which was mostly expressed in small buildings such as garden pavilions and the like, awoke at that time . Ramée has also provided examples for these special shapes.
In the 18th century, there was also a change in park and landscape design. The geometrically designed baroque park disappeared, irregular or picturesque and picturesque grounds emerged. This transition process was not yet complete when Ramée began devoting large parts of his working time to designing parks and gardens. In France he had got to know the gardening style of the Jardin anglo-chinois . In Germany he worked on designs that replicate nature, as they were contemporary in England. By combining his impressions, he developed his own style, which he then used in the Hamburg area, in Denmark and in the United States.
The sources of the life and work of Ramées are unsatisfactory. There are clear indications for many data and facts, but no clear evidence. Relatively few of the works he realized have survived, as well as a number of drawings that he himself published in the 1820s and 1830s. The private documents from his estate have been lost and there are hardly any official documents. No comprehensive publication had appeared on him by 1996.
life and work
In France
Ramée was born in Charlemont in the French Ardennes near the Belgian border in 1764 . In 1776 he was a draftsman in the building department of the French army in his place of birth. Around 1780 he began training in Paris in the studio of François-Joseph Bélanger , the house architect of the Comte d'Artois, a brother of King Louis XVI. Bélanger was a well-known representative of the French early classicism and the Directoire style. In his office, Ramée learned the current forms of architecture, interior design and horticulture by working on various projects. It is very likely that he also had personal contact with the outstanding representatives of revolutionary architecture, Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux . Bélanger mentioned him several times as an exemplary student and employee. From 1786 he worked for the architect Jacques Cellerier , who in 1790 directed the elaborate official celebrations (“Fête de la Fedération”) in honor of the French Revolution on the Marsfeld . Ramée probably designed the 25 m high triumphal arch for this, executed in canvas on a wooden frame.
In Belgium and Thuringia
In 1792 Ramée fled to Belgium because of the radicalization of the revolution and served there temporarily as an auxiliary officer in the army of the politically moderate General Dumouriez , who, on behalf of the revolutionary government, fought the troops of the enemy coalition in Belgium and the Netherlands until he clashed with the Jacobins in Paris threw over and switched sides. From 1794 to 1796 Ramée stayed in Thuringia , where he received orders from the courts of various small states. In Weimar he designed parts of the “English” park on the Ilm , in Meiningen and Gotha parts of the parks there. In Gotha he developed the main work of his stay in Thuringia, an extensive project for a classicist country house with a park, which, however, was never carried out.
In Hamburg
Ramée's stay in Hamburg from 1796 to 1810 was the longest continuous period of his life in one place and at the same time the most productive phase of his career. He worked for wealthy, long-established Hamburg citizens and became the most important garden designer in the region, primarily through the facilities for Georg Friedrich Baur in Blankenese ( Baurs Park ), his brother Johann Heinrich Baur in Nienstedten ( today Elbschlösschen ) and Georg Heinrich Sieveking in Neumühlen ( today Thunder Park ). “Baurs Park” is one of Ramées most important works. The wealthy wholesaler Baur was a friend of the most varied of park architectures and Ramée met him in this, for example by building a monoptero and a mirror grotto equipped with moss banks . In order to be able to plant the steep slopes of the Elbe, barges had to bring fertile soil from the Vierlanden to the southeast of the city . A forward viewing platform allowed a panoramic view , passing sailing ships could be greeted with gun salutes from there . In addition to these facilities in the suburbs of the Elbe, Ramée created large English parks in Eppendorf and Schleswig-Holstein . In the foreword to a collection of lithographs showing eight designs from the area around Hamburg, among other things, he explained in 1839: “The author hopes that he will be able to benefit garden lovers by offering a series of different motifs that are suitable for all areas [... ] Here you can find a suitable motif for every terrain that you want to redesign. ”.
In 1805 Ramée married Caroline Dreyer from Hamburg. On 16 May 1806 her son Daniel was born, later as an architectural historian made and editor of the works of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux a name.
Masson et Ramée
Little is known about André Masson. He had probably come to Hamburg in 1796. From here, the former adjutant and captain initially managed to get his former superior, the Marquis de La Fayette, released . He used his contacts to Madame de Staël , who had her ally in Charles Talleyrand .
In 1800 the company "Masson et Ramée" was founded to serve the interest in elegant home furnishings in the French style. On May 20, 1800, they acquired “Die Bost” on Elbchaussee as the company's headquarters. Ramée had the artistic responsibility, Masson the commercial one. The company supplied furniture, wallpaper, porcelain and stucco as well as ceiling and wall paintings based on Ramées' designs for buildings in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, but also in Copenhagen and the surrounding area. At the same time, “Masson et Ramée” could be found in the Hamburg address book in Herrengraben and from May 1803 it was housed in the Neustädter Fuhlentwiete 15 house that Masson had acquired. Friedrich Johann Lorenz Meyer wrote in his sketches for a painting of Hamburg : “Good choice of patterns and fine taste” distinguishes this camp, especially in comparison with others, “where overloaded with colorful, strange decorations and trimmings […] spoils taste Custom is ”. The company was active until October 1806. Masson probably left Hamburg in the same year. The bankruptcy of “Masson et Ramée” was only reported in early February 1810.
In 1804, the Hamburg Stock Exchange Hall was opened, Ramées most important building, a classicist building with clear references to French revolutionary architecture. The initiator was the wholesale merchant Gerhard von Hoßtrup . He commissioned Ramée because he believed that he was characterized by "his unusual taste and the scope and novelty of his ideas". All employees of the company "Masson & Ramée" were called in for the extensive interior decoration tasks. The new building was built a short distance from the headquarters of the actual stock exchange . Behind its narrow, sensationally modern facade, inserted between much older buildings, stretched a deeply staggered building. With a large hall, library and reading room, billiard room , concert hall, dining room and other rooms, the stock exchange hall was available to Hamburg merchants for business discussions, further training, culture and recreation. Around 1830 the old outbuildings were replaced by two stylistically aligned side wings. In 1842 the ensemble - meanwhile a highly regarded landmark of the city - fell victim to the Hamburg fire .
In Mecklenburg
Before Ramée left Hamburg, there is evidence that Baron Johann Peter von Möller-Lilienstern commissioned him to draw up a plan for his new mansion in Rothspalk . The client was known to John Parish's family ; before his ennoblement in Vienna in 1804, as Peter Möller, he was a ten percent partner in Parish & Co. in Hamburg. The construction was carried out in the absence of Ramées and completed in 1814. The house has only undergone a few changes up to the present and is now in an almost unchanged environment in Mecklenburg Switzerland . A participation of Ramées in the design of the park in Rothspalk is very likely; this was therefore laid out during Ramée's second stay in Hamburg after 1830. Some evidence, such as the existence of an American ice cellar in the park, supports this assumption. The construction of the manor house in Gottin also fell during this period . Here the client was John Parish's son Richard (1776–1860), and it is assumed that Ramée was involved in the design of the park and manor house. The park in Varchentin was attributed to Peter Joseph Lenné; here, too, there are assumptions that Ramée was at least involved in the planning. The Varchentiner Park was laid out on behalf of the Hamburg banker Gottlieb Jenisch and bears the signature of Joseph Ramées. One last assumption was made by Felix Lüdemann and concerns the manor house in Benz near Lübenheen . This no longer exists today and can only be seen in old photographs. It was built in the "American Colonial" style around 1830 on behalf of Ernst-Friedrich von Treuenfels and was therefore extremely unusual for Mecklenburg manor houses, which indicates that Joseph Ramées was the author.
Prior to that, at the end of 1801, Ramée was commissioned by the Hereditary Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Mecklenburg to furnish the interior of the later Alexandrinenpalais in Schwerin and in 1804 to build the mausoleum of Helena Pawlowna in the Ludwigslust Palace Park , which was completed in 1808. In the opinion of the American architectural historian Paul V. Turner, the execution took over planning elements from Joseph Christian Lillie , who had also been commissioned to draft a plan.
In the USA
After a stopover in France from 1810 to 1812, Ramée traveled to the northeast of the United States of America in June 1812, also to avoid the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe . There he got into the initial phase of the British-American War (1812-1814) and was immediately commissioned to build fortifications in the small town of Ogdensburg. He had actually followed the call of an acquaintance, the Hamburg and Antwerp businessman David Parish , who had settled in Philadelphia ( Pennsylvania ) in 1805 , got very rich very quickly, had acquired large estates and now wanted to cultivate or design them. Ramée also settled in Philadelphia. For Parish and other clients, he designed all kinds of functional buildings as well as several extensive gardens with country houses in the states of New York and Maryland . His competition entry for a monument to George Washington in Baltimore , the most important project of this kind in America at the time, was not carried out.
In 1813 he received the contract for the largest project of his career, the new building of Union College in Schenectady (New York). The third largest college in the USA, alongside Harvard and Yale, was to be built on a green area of 28 hectares outside the city . Ramée designed a complex campus facility , an ensemble of living and working places for teachers and students, surrounded by a landscaped garden - at that time the most demanding university building and later the model for many such facilities in the USA. For financial reasons, the Ramées plans were never fully implemented.
Back in Europe
Country house, view and site plan, 1796
Country house, garden facade and basement, 1796
Bathroom in the townhouse for Constantin Brun , Copenhagen
Union College at Schenectady, site plan, around 1813
When the order situation became unsatisfactory, Ramée left the USA in 1816 and settled in the industrial landscape in the south of Belgium, where the conditions for profitable orders existed. Here he designed a number of gardens. From about 1823 he lived in Paris again. He provided designs for two Parisian squares and for the Champs-Elysées and laid out gardens in Verneuil near Reims and Carlepont near Noyon . He also published a table with illustrations of his most important works: "Jardins irréguliers, maisons de campagne, de tous genres et de toutes dimensions ..." ("Extraordinary gardens and country houses of all types and sizes ...").
Around 1830 he came to Hamburg for his second long stay. Contacts with his wife's relatives and with old friends and clients were maintained and made it easier to start again. For the duration of this stay in the city, five orders for gardens have been proven. Compared to the earlier work by Ramées in Hamburg, the gardens showed a different appearance. In line with general developments over the past decades, the landscape was less open and extensive, the network of paths more dense, and the overall impression more fragmented.
Ramée returned to Paris around 1837. In 1837 and 1839 he again published pictures with views of his work. In 1839 he and a related family bought the Château de Beaurains near Noyon. In 1841, after some renovations, both families moved into the castle. Joseph Ramée died here on May 18, 1842. He was buried in the cemetery of the church of Beaurains.
literature
in alphabetical order
- Bärbel Hedinger and Julia Berger (eds.): Joseph Ramée, garden art, architecture, decoration, an international architect of classicism , Altonaer Museum, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, Berlin 2003 ISBN 3-422-06436-2 , (catalog for the exhibition in Jenisch -House June 15 to September 7, 2003), table of contents (PDF).
- Wilhelm Melhop : Old Hamburg construction . Brief historical development of the architectural styles in Hamburg (shown on the secular building up to the resurrection of the city after the great fire of 1842, along with information about the area and life history). Boysen & Maasch, Hamburg 1908, p. 177 ( archive.org ).
- Ingrid A. Schubert: English gardens of a French emigrant. Joseph-Jacques Ramée and his work in Northern Germany . In: Die Gartenkunst 7 (1/1995), pp. 49–67.
- Paul Venable Turner: Joseph Ramée. International Architect of the Revolutionary Era. Cambridge / New York / Melbourne 1996 ISBN 978-0521495523
Web links
- Works by Joseph Ramée at Zeno.org .
- Concept for an exhibition about Ramée (PDF) (202 kB)
- Rothspalk: Ramée
Individual evidence
- ^ Paul Venable Turner: Joseph Ramée. International Architect of the Revolutionary Era. Cambridge / New York / Melbourne 1996. Chapter 2, Note 4
- ↑ Bärbel Hedinger, p. 18
- ↑ Bärbel Hedinger , p. 38
- ↑ Birth announcement in the Hamburger Nachrichten of May 21, 1806, page 5.
- ↑ Other first name: "Auguste", to be found in the English-language literature of the memoirs of General de La Fayette.
- ↑ In the years 1797, 1798 and 1799 "Andrew Masson et Comp."
- ^ Paul S. Spalding: Hamburg as a worldwide communication center during Lafayette's captivity and exile (1792-1799) , in: Johann Anselm Steiger, Sandra Richter (ed.): Hamburg. A metropolitan region between early modern times and the Enlightenment (= Metropolis. Texts and studies on centers of culture in modern European times), Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2012, XII + 924 pp., ISBN 978-3-05-005784-2 , p. 355 .
- ^ In the Hamburg address book from 1800 there was already an entry for "Masson et Ramée".
- ↑ While Mrs. Hedinger writes that Masson & Ramée bought the house (Bärbel Hedinger, p. 175), Paul Th. Hoffmann only mentions Ramée as the buyer. ( The Elbchaussee: their country seats, people and fates , Broschek, Hamburg 1937, p. 229) This seems likely because Masson had bought a house in the city.
- ^ Bärbel Hedinger, p. 175, original: Friedrich Johann Lorenz Meyer: Sketches for a painting of Hamburg ; Volume 1, Issue 3., Frederik Hermann Nestler, Hamburg 1801, p. 311.
- ↑ The business was given up. Advertisement in the state and learned newspaper of the Hamburg impartial correspondent of August 26, 1806 (No. 136): “Advertisement of an extraordinary auction of modern furniture and luxury goods, which took place on October 13th. J. and the following days in the Neustädter Fuhlentwiete No. 15 by the broker ... are to be sold. ”, (Including listing of the goods to be sold), digitized
- ↑ Bärbel Hedinger, p. 64
- ↑ Ilsabe von Bülow: Joseph Christian Lillie , p. 69 with reference to Paul V. Turner: Joseph Ramée , Cambridge 1996, p. 148–152.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ramée, Joseph |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ramée, Joseph Jacques (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French architect, landscaper and decorator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 26, 1764 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Charlemont fortress near Givet (Ardennes) |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 18, 1842 |
| Place of death | Beaurains Castle near Noyon |