Karl Friedrich of Mecklenburg

Grave of Karl Friedrich von Mecklenburg in the Paris Père Lachaise cemetery

Karl Friedrich von Mecklenburg (born December 23, 1784 in Lübzin , † June 20, 1854 in Paris ) was a German officer , speculator and art collector .

Life

Karl Friedrich von Mecklenburg came from the Mecklenburg noble family of Mecklenburg . He had two sisters and two brothers, the Swedish major general Philipp von Mecklenburg († 1841) and Heinrich von Mecklenburg (1771–1862) on Pantlitz ( Ahrenshagen-Daskow ).

At a young age he embarked on an officer career and achieved the rank of captain in the Prussian army . From 1818 he lived continuously in Paris , but remained a Prussian citizen. In the 1830s he lived on Boulevard des Italiens No 24. Through clever investments in French railroad stocks and Belgian coal mines, he made a considerable fortune, most recently over 1 million francs. He found his final resting place in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris .

process

When he died unmarried and without any biological descendants in Paris, over a quarter of his inheritance resulted in a major and at the time famous legal battle. The main concern was the question of private international law , whether French or Prussian law should be used to determine the heirs, because the testator had not become a French citizen. According to French law, a minor grandniece Anna von Roeder (born May 30, 1844) was entitled to inheritance in Stuttgart , but not according to Prussian law. Because of its precedent in inheritance law, the case was published in 1856 by August Ludwig Reyscher , who affirmed the grandniece's right in his report.

The legal question was ultimately not decided by the French Cassation Court, but rather compared against a compensation payment of 230 thousand French francs to the ward.

Art collection

Over the years, Karl Friedrich von Mecklenburg had put together a high-quality collection of old masters , mainly of Dutch origin, which was one of the most famous private collections in Paris when he died. The Deutsches Kunstblatt wrote:

“Like many great gentlemen, the baron enjoyed pictures without having any special knowledge of them; indeed, one can even say, without going too close to his memory, that his enjoyment was largely limited to the feeling of ownership, since he had been where, since 1848 He trembled for a moment for his pictures and brought them to a secluded place, safely stored in boxes, but later took them back to himself, by no means put them up again and hardly allowed himself, let alone anyone else, to see them. This fearful keeping of his treasures, whether calculated or not, was a very clever measure, and in the highest degree conducive to the reputation of the collection; for what became known about it came from only two or three initiates, who from time to time dropped sparse but heavy hints, expressed in figures more than in words, as for one or the other picture of this or that Brilliant offers made at court, etc. It was impossible to speak of what no one knew from personal experience, and thus also not to be contradicted, and so gradually a nimbus developed around the collection held behind the curtain, which gained all the more endurance than was known that two of the most excellent pictures that have come to light in the last 20 years, the horse market by Phil. Wouwerman, from the collection of the Elysée, in 1837, and the landscape by Jan Both, from the Perrégaux auction, in the J. Were transferred to the Mecklenburg collection in 1841. "

The 30 paintings were publicly exhibited over four days and auctioned on December 11, 1854 in the Hotel des Commissaires' Priseurs in Paris for the benefit of the estate. The auction brought in 356,230 francs. Works with this provenance can be found in numerous important collections. This includes:

• No. 3 Meindest Hobbema : Watermill , Louvre
• No. 4: Pieter de Hooch : Mother with her children ( A Woman with a Baby in Her Lap, and a Small Child ), Aurora Art Fund, New York
• Peter Paul Rubens : Philipp Rubens, the artist's brother , today at the Detroit Institute of Arts
• No. 14: Rembrandt circle: Portrait of a Young Man in a Broad-brimmed Hat , Shelburne Museum , Shelburne (Vermont)
• Philips Wouwerman : Horse Market , Wallace Collection , London

• 

  Hobbema: mill

• 

  Wouwerman: Horse Market

literature

• August Ludwig Reyscher : The legal dispute between the relatives of Karl Friedrich v. Mecklenburg: Right of succession, initially concerning jurisdiction. Stuttgart: JB Metzler 1856 ( digitized version )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Without having been admitted to the baron, he, like other members of the knighthood, bore the (courtesy) title baron , also on his gravestone
2. ^ Joseph Euler: Handbuch des Notariats in Preußen: in addition to the voluntary jurisdiction of the courts and with consideration for the rest of Germany, France and other countries. Volume 1, Düsseldorf: Schaub (Schöpping) 1858, p. 264
3. ↑ Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the baronial houses 19 (1869), p. 729
4. ↑ August Ludwig Reyscher: The legal dispute between the relatives of Karl Friedrich v. Mecklenburg: Right of succession, initially concerning jurisdiction. Stuttgart: JB Metzler 1856 ( digitized version )
5. ↑ Joseph Euler : Handbuch des Notariats in Preußen: In addition to the voluntary jurisdiction of the courts and with consideration for the rest of Germany, France and other countries. General Part, Volume 1 , p. 265, footnote 8
6. ^ Art in continental states , in: Art Journal 1855, p. 32
7. ^ Deutsches Kunstblatt 6 (1855), pp. 5-7
8. ↑ Figure
9. ↑ Description ( Memento of the original from April 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ Figure