Karl Friedrich Schäffer the Younger

Karl (Carl) Friedrich Schaffer (Schaeffer) (* 28. March 1779 in Dresden , † 24. September 1837 in Dusseldorf ) was a German architect of classicism and a professor of architecture and perspective at the Dusseldorf Art Academy .

Life

Schäffer was born as the son of the Berlin- born Dresden court sculptor Karl Friedrich Schäffer and his wife Eleonore, a daughter of the Dresden court architect Christoph Gotthard Schwarze . In 1783 Schäffer's father died on a trip to Italy in Rome . At the age of 14, Karl Friedrich Schäffer the Younger became a student of the Dresden Art and Painting Academy . From the age of 17 he took lessons from the architects Christian Friedrich Schuricht and Gottlob August Hölzer and from the landscape painter Heinrich Theodor Wehle . In 1797 he was a student of the architect Christian Traugott Weinlig . During a trip through Saxony and parts of Prussia , he met Friedrich Becherer and Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff . He was patronized by Christian Ludwig Stieglitz in Leipzig , and in Dresden he managed to get by with smaller commissions from Baron Joseph Friedrich von Racknitz and Prince Nikolai Abramowitsch Putjatin , "mostly in interior furnishings and taste and decoration work". In 1801 Schäffer opened a "Sunday drawing school for mechanical artists and craftsmen". He also gave private lessons in architecture.

In publications by the art writer Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker , Schäffer was able to present his ambitious designs for country houses and pavilions, some of which were based on revolutionary architecture, since the end of the 1790s . Such objects were designed back then as fantastic focal points and staffages of landscape gardens . The publicity acquired in this way earned him a professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1805 , where he worked until his death in the architecture department founded in 1774. He received an annual salary of 400 thalers and a free apartment in the academy building . Because of the departure of the Gemäldegalerie Düsseldorf in 1805, because of the change of rule in the Duchy of Berg and the establishment of the Napoleonic Grand Duchy of Berg in 1806 as well as as a result of the coalition wars and the economic hardships that plagued the country after the continental barrier imposed in 1806 , the Art Academy Düsseldorf experienced a decline. In addition to the engraver Ernst Carl Thelott and Lambert Cornelius , a brother of the painter Peter Cornelius , Schäffer was one of the three remaining professors at the Düsseldorf Academy during the “ French era ”. On May 17, 1806, in addition to his teaching post as successor to Kaspar Huschberger , he took over the Bergisch court and domain building management with the assurance that he would be appointed building director there. So he turned down Johann Wilhelm von Hompesch's offer to follow him to Munich , whereupon Johann Peter Langer accepted Hompesch's offer and became director of the Munich Academy . As head of the Bergische Hof- und Domainbaudirektion, in which Schäffer carried out tasks of the state building administration, he became a member of the construction and razing commission of Düsseldorf. From 1807 to 1808 he worked as a police construction superintendent. The tasks of the state building construction in the Grand Duchy of Berg, which he had to fulfill as the only architect of this institution from 1806 to 1808, led to an overload and problems with the superiors, especially with the Minister-State Secretary Jean Antoine Michel Agar and with the Minister of Finance Jacques Claude Beugnot . On January 20, 1809, Schäffer returned to his previous position at the art academy after building director Lehmann from Münster had been transferred to the Bergische court and domain building management in Düsseldorf. In 1811 Schäffer opened a private polytechnic drawing school. In addition to literary work, he was engaged in private construction contracts in Cologne , Elberfeld and Aachen . In 1817, Schäffer was asked to develop plans for a higher education institution in Düsseldorf, on the basis of which Prussia wanted to re-establish the Düsseldorf Art Academy, alongside government building officer Adolf von Vagedes and government councilor Johann Friedrich Ferdinand Delbrück . To this end, he submitted - apparently in the spirit of the baroque and mercantilism - to the government a plan for a combination of collection, art and polytechnic school:

“ The example of our neighboring countries; the greatness of the Prussian monarchy, the serious will often expressed; and the excellent wisdom of the Royal Prussian Ministries and Governments; the populous Rhine provinces; many rights of the Bergisches Land that are not statute-barred significant, as yet untouched funds, which made the abolition of the monasteries suitable for the state for the formation of the nation; Finally, excellent, the frugality that Düsseldorf especially suits with its buildings and art treasures; and still infinite motives, some of which I am thinking of in the project, suffice to bring such a wise and happy thought into reality and to remedy needs that we owe to ourselves and our descendants after a 20-year disturbance ... My endeavors went there to adapt this school to our zeitgeist in order to train skilled craftsmen, artists and the military. From this institution, young men must be able to step fully into the active big life. It will therefore be found quite appropriate that I based a polytechnic school (1811), from which the pupils can rise to the arts of peace and war ... "

In 1820 the government appointed him a member of the Military Examination Commission. Schäffer's successor as professor for architecture and perspective at the Düsseldorf Art Academy was the architect and painter Rudolf Wiegmann in 1839 .

Work (selection)

• Landhaus (Plate 6a). In: Becker: New garden and landscape buildings , Voss, Leipzig 1798/1799
• Gothic pavilion (panel 10a). In: Becker, s. O.
• Splendid country house (panels 13a and 13b). In: Becker, s. O.
• Mausoleum (panels 26 and 27). In: Becker, s. O.
• Idea for Luther's memorial , own publication, 1805
• Ideas from the sketches of an architect , own publication, 1806
• Autobiography in: Johann Georg Meusel : Archive for Artists and Art Friends , Dresden 1806
• Curriculum for the production and improvement of the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf, along with the necessary museums , draft of February 27, 1817 on behalf of the Kgl. Government in Düsseldorf under Philipp von Pestel
• Somnia. Art life and artistic creation, unpublished manuscript on architecture with numerous coppers and cracks found in the estate

literature

• Hans Heinrich Füssli : General artist lexicon . Zweyter Theil, Seventh Section (Sa – Sc), Orell, Füßli and Compagnie, Zurich 1813, p. 1466 f. ( online in Google Book Search)
• Georg Kaspar Nagler : New general artist lexicon . Fifteenth volume, published by EA Fleischmann, Munich 1845, p. 100 ( online in the Google book search)
• Jan Klaus Philipp: Around 1800. Architectural theory and architecture criticism in Germany between 1790 and 1810 . Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart / London 1997, ISBN 3-930698-76-5 , pp. 20, 34, 127 f. ( online )
• Friedrich August Schmidt, Bernhard Friedrich Voigt: New Nekrolog der Deutschen . Fifteenth year, 1837, second part, Verlag Bernhard Friedrich Voigt, Weimar 1839, p. 856, No. 292 ( online in the Google book search)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Leopold Strauven : About artistic life and work in Düsseldorf to the Düsseldorf painter school under director Schadow . Hofdruckerei H. Voss, Düsseldorf 1862, pp. 44, 50 ( digitized in the Google book search).
2. ^ Ekkehard Mai : The Düsseldorf Art Academy in the 19th Century - Cornelius, Schadow and the consequences . In: Gerhard Kurz (Hrsg.): Düsseldorf in the German intellectual history . Schwann Verlag, Düsseldorf 1984, ISBN 3-590-30244-5 , p. 204 and footnote 32, p. 235, as well as files in the HStA Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf-Kalkum, Reg. Düsseldorf Pres. Office No. 1524, script by Schäffer am February 23, 1817
3. ↑ 1802 also published in French: Collection de nouveaux batiments Decoration des grands jardins .