Ludwig von Lilienthal

Ludwig Theodor Balduin von Lilienthal , also Louis von Lilienthal (born January 23, 1828 in Arnsberg , † June 1, 1893 in Elberfeld ) was a German merchant and art patron .

Life

family

Ludwig von Lilienthal was the son of the lieutenant and court court registry assistant Johannes von Lilienthal, the mother's name was Anna Maria Blume. His grandfather from Lilienthal came from Copenhagen and was "Royal Swedish Navy Captain". Lilienthal's eldest son, named after his maternal grandfather Carl (* 1853), was a professor of criminal law in Halle and Zurich and later succeeded the legal scholar Franz von Liszt in Marburg . Ludwig von Lilienthal's eldest daughter married the marine mechanical engineer Carl Busley .

Commercial career

Lilienthal came to Elberfeld in 1847 and at the age of 19 became an apprentice in the Carl Seyd fashion store, which sells English, French and Swiss manufactured goods on the corner of Wall and Schlössersgasse. In August 1852 he married the 20-year-old Henriette Seyd (1832–1886), the only daughter of his employer. After the death of his father-in-law, he successfully continued the company until his death.

The department store was taken over by Otto Klischan in 1910 and destroyed in the air raid on Elberfeld in 1943 .

Patronage

Lilienthal, himself “a poet and painter for domestic use”, had a “pretty tenor voice” and was educated in art history. His collections consisted of pictures, engravings, weapons and other things. In his office building on Schlössersgasse he had set up a studio called “Sanssouci”, which he was happy to leave to friends of the Muses, especially Johann Richard Seel . Merchants and artists from the Wuppertal circle of poets such as Carl Siebel , Adolf Schults , Emil Rittershaus , Friedrich Roeber , Karl Stelter and the assessor Albert Roffhack were frequent guests here.

Villa Lilienthal, destroyed in 1943.

Later Lilienthal built a studio for his friend Seel, a "hospitable house" at the Wolkenburg , from which the park of his house, the Villa Lilienthal , extends up to the Kluser Höhe . The sculptor Paul Disselhoff also worked here.

For many years, the villa was the social and spiritual center of cultural life in the Wupper valley . Lilienthal's guests included Hoffmann von Fallersleben , Ferdinand Freiligrath , Robert Prutz , Emil Devrient , Wilhelm Jordan, Friedrich von Bodenstedt , Bernhard Afinger and others.

Engagement in German colonies

Lilienthal was a supporter of the German colonial efforts in Southwest Africa . Together with the Bremen-based merchant Adolf Lüderitz , he equipped several expeditions, concluded contracts with tribal chiefs for Germany and was involved in the purchase of Lüderitz Bay in Namibia with large sums of money. He lobbied generously for the African mission and in the 1880s gave his friend, the director of the Rhenish Mission Society , Friedrich Gotthardt Fabri , financial support for missionary work in Africa.

estate

Lilienthal died in 1893 and was laid to rest on June 5th at the Lutheran cemetery in Hochstrasse .

From his extensive art estate, the heirs bequeathed the Elberfeld Beautification Association a statue made of cast zinc of the muse of lyrical poetry and song, Euterpe ( Greek : the joy-donor ). The statue was set up near the Böhler Hof residential area in the complex on Friedenshöhe , but is now considered lost. Other fountains and sculptures from Lilienthal's garden are now in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal , including Bernhard Afinger's Penelope from 1870.

After Lilienthal's death, his villa served as the summer residence of the freight forwarder Klophaus. Today's Klophaus-Park emerged from part of the villa's private garden . The building no longer exists today.

When the Elberfeld city center was cleared of rubble in 1945, windows opening into Gothic pointed arches with rose windows and buttresses were found on the property of the former Carl Seyd department store, which at first suggested that the remains of an old monastery had been found. However, this was a storage room that Ludwig von Lilienthal had hidden on the courtyard side of his office building around 1871 and that was not accessible to the public.

Honors

In Wuppertal, Lilienthal-Straße in the southern part of the Elberfeld is named after Ludwig von Lilienthal.

reception

The journalist Paul Lindau said in 1868: “You have the wrong idea of ​​my life on the Turkish-red colored Wupper. In my life I have never found a nicer group of fun-loving and clever people than the round table that the lord of the castle on the Döppersberg, the finely educated industrialist and talented art lover Ludwig von Lilienthal, gathered around him. The popular Muckertal is really better than its reputation! "

literature

• Marie-Luise Baum: Ludwig von Lilienthal. In: Wuppertal biographies. Contributions to the history and local history of the Wuppertal. Episode 6, Volume 14, Born Verlag, Wuppertal 1966, pp. 105-112.
• Ruth Meyer-Kahrweg : Monuments, fountains and sculptures in Wuppertal (biographies of the participating artists) . Born, Wuppertal 1991, ISBN 3-87093-058-6 , pp. 6, 38, 86.

Web links

• Manuel Praest: Park is awakening to new life . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . December 11, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Marie-Luise Baum: Ludwig von Lilienthal. 1966, pp. 105-112.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Albert Herzog: Your happy eyes. A journalist from Karlsruhe talks about his life. (= Small Karlsruhe Library. Volume 3). Karlsruhe 2008, ISBN 978-3-88190-500-8 , pp. 50, 51. (books.google.com.au)
3. ↑ Horst Heidermann : Seel. Johann Richard Seel, painter in Wuppertal and draftsman for the German Michel . Thales, Wuppertal 2003, ISBN 3-88908-492-3 , p. 200.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} statue of Euterpe . In: denkmal-wuppertal.de
5. ↑ Ruth Meyer-Kahrweg: Monuments, fountains and sculptures in Wuppertal. 1991, p. 6.
6. ↑ Klophaus Park . In: wuppertals-gruene-anlagen.de
7. ^ Paul Lindau : Only memories. Volume 1, 1917, p. 320.