Max von Portheim

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Max von Portheim
The coat of arms of Juda Porges Edlen von Portheim (1785–1869) and his descendants, awarded in 1841.

Max von Portheim (actually Max Porges Edler von Portheim , born May 12, 1857 in Prague , † January 28, 1937 in Vienna ) was an Austrian private scholar who worked as a historical researcher and collector .

family

Max Porges Edler von Portheim came from a large Jewish family in Prague . Gabriel Porges (1738–1824) worked as a rabbi in Prague; his sons, the two industrialists Moses (1781–1870) and Juda Porges (1785–1869), were raised to the hereditary Austrian nobility in 1841 as "Noble von Portheim". Eduard Porges von Portheim (1826–1907), a son of Judah, who was ennobled in 1841 and thus also an uncle of Max von Portheim, was also knighted in 1879. Max von Portheim's parents were Judas' son, Wilhelm Porges Edler von Portheim (1819–1873), and Bertha Goldschmidt (1829–1894) from Frankfurt. He was born the youngest child after three sisters.

Life and collecting

Initially Max von Portheim studied chemistry and agriculture in Prague and Halle , later philosophy and history, but without completing a degree.

After extensive travels, he settled in Vienna in 1893. As soon as Max von Portheim settled down in Vienna, he started collecting. The focus of his interest were the epochs of Empress Maria Theresa , Joseph II and his successor Leopold II. In June 1912, Portheim acquired a villa in Gatterburggasse 7. Generous renovations on the first floor created enough space for the library and collections. In 1914 Max von Portheim was able to move into his new domicile.

Max von Portheim became a passionate collector of documents, copperplate engravings , portraits and occasionally also manuscripts and handicrafts from the time of Maria Theresa, Joseph II and Leopold II - and he collected information. One result of these decades of collecting activity is the “Portheim catalog” , which contains around 450,000 to 500,000 pieces of paper . His interest in prints from the 18th century soon led Max von Portheim to the "Society of Bibliophiles" founded in Weimar in 1899.

Since 1908, "a small, select group of ... bibliophiles" came together in Vienna - quite informally - "in order to adequately express the solidarity of his collecting activities through notices of acquisitions, presentation of them, discussions about them and the provision of information". They met at irregular intervals - "once or twice" a month in the Café Akademie (corner of Getreidemarkt / Gumpendorfer Strasse). Although this group was not organized as an association, it was from it that the impetus for the establishment of the “ Vienna Bibliophile Society ” came from in 1912, of which Max von Portheim was never a member.

Letters from Portheim, which are kept in the manuscript collection of the Vienna Library, show Max von Portheim as a central figure in the Austrian collector and bibliophile scene .

A special friendship, which continued to have an impact after Portheim's death, connected him to Gustav Gugitz . It was Gugitz who “probably cataloged as the appointed Portheims library for the Vienna City Library” from 1938 to 1945. The draft for his Vienna bibliography was created in the process.

Card catalog

Portheim's magnum opus was his card catalog. This card catalog was initially based on Portheim's own library, which he had looked through in full for this purpose, and later expanded it to include the relevant holdings of other libraries. His contemporaries considered him the best expert on the Josephian era. Paul von Mitrofanov, Joseph II's biographer, consulted Portheim, as did the musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch . The standard work “ Deutsches Anonymen-Lexikon ” (Weimar, 1902–1928) by Michael Holzmann and Hanns Bohatta owes Portheim's catalog numerous valuable references. The Neue Wiener Tagblatt wrote on October 25, 1930: “This card catalog is above all from which many scholars from all over the world, candidates from the various faculties, from foreign institutes and museums repeatedly obtained news and collected their material. Scholars from all countries were often only able to carry out their scientific work with the help of this peculiar educational institution ”. In view of the “decades of intensive and hard work” that Max von Portheim had devoted to the creation of his catalog, he also considered it to be more valuable than his entire library in material terms.

Portheim's printed oeuvre, on the other hand, was limited to two works: the Trenck bibliography (1912, together with Gustav Gugitz) and the “materials for a Sonnenfels biography”, a joint work with the librarian Michael Holzmann , which was published in 1931 after his death "Journal for the History of the Jews in Czechoslovakia" was published.

Since 1924, Max von Portheim, with the help of his confidante Dr. Ernst Weizmann to sell his entire collections "due to the unfavorable time conditions and his advanced age", which, however, could not be realized during his lifetime.

End and inheritance

Simmering fire hall - Max von Portheim's urn grave

On January 28, 1937, Max von Portheim died of a stroke in his villa. As he had requested in his will, his body was cremated in the Simmering fire hall and the urn buried there (Linke Arkaden, grave 101). His grave is one of the honorary dedicated or honorary custody grave sites of the City of Vienna.

Portheim died a wealthy man. He was unmarried and had no children. The main inheritors were therefore the daughters and granddaughters of his three deceased sisters living in Frankfurt. His niece Alice Feis and his great-niece Frieda Strauss each inherited a quarter, his niece Leonie Mayer half of the "pure estate". In 1937, Ernst Weizmann still managed to bring the negotiations with the City of Vienna to a successful conclusion regarding the takeover of the Portheim collections and the Vienna City Hall Library can be proud, not least because of the catalogs and Max von Portheim's library, one of the first Addresses to be related to the Josephine era.

In 1959 the Portheimgasse in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district) was named after him.

Unprinted sources

  • Gerda Barth: The Portheim catalog of the Vienna City and State Library. Lecture given to the Austrian Society for Research in the 18th Century, revised. - Vienna, around 1995
  • Municipal Department 37 - Building Police: Reconstruction plan or submission plan, Gatterburggasse, EZ 866 from 1912
  • Vienna library in the town hall, manuscript collection / part of Gustav Gugitz's estate
  • Gustav Gugitz: CV for his 80th birthday, WBR / HIN 203119:
  • WienMuseum, Municipal Collections, Prot. No. 1381/27
  • Vienna library in the town hall, house archive: StS 1147/38, MA 9-811 / 52
  • Wiener Stadt und Landesarchiv, bequest of Max von Portheim

literature

  • Eveline Brugger among others: History of the Jews in Austria . C. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-8000-7159-3 , (Herwig Wolfram (Hrsg.): Austrian history topic volume), p. 441.
  • Reinhard Buchberger et al. (Hrsg.): Portheim - collect & get lost. The library and card catalog of the collector Max von Portheim in the Vienna Library . Special number, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-85449-277-1 , content .
  • Peter R. Frank: Max von Portheim - private scholar, bibliographer, bibliophile . In: Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich 2004, 1, ISSN  1999-5660 , pp. 42–45, digital version (PDF; 600 kB) .
  • Gustav Gugitz : Mozartiana. Collected essays on Mozart. Ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the Vienna Bibliophile Society and in honor of the old master of Viennese cultural history Prof. Gustav Gugitz on the occasion of his 90th birthday . Ueberreuter, Vienna, 1963, ( annual edition of the Vienna Bibliophile Society ).
  • Wolfgang Häusler : Tolerance, Emancipation and Anti-Semitism. The Austrian Judaism of the bourgeois era (1782–1918) . In: Anna Drabek, Nikolaus Vielmetti (ed.): The Austrian Judaism. Requirements and history . Youth and Volk, Wien et al. 1974, ISBN 3-7141-7434-6 , ( J&V answer ) pp. 83–140.
  • Yearbook of the Society of Bibliophiles , annual report and list of members . Society of Bibliophiles, Weimar 1900–1927, ZDB -ID 542526-8 .
  • Helga Peterson: Gustav Gugitz. Life and work . Vienna, Univ., Unprinted phil diss., 2003.
  • Silhouettes from old Austria . With an accompanying word from Gugitz. R. Ludwig, Vienna 1912, ( publications by a "Friends of Vienna Collectors" (1)).
  • K. Gladt:  Porges von Portheim Max. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 8, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-7001-0187-2 , p. 209 f. (Direct links on p. 209 , p. 210 ).

Web links

Commons : Max von Portheim  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.friedhoefewien.at/media/files/2010/feuerhalle%20simmering_24193.pdf
  2. ↑ www.friedhoefewien.at - Graves dedicated to honor in the fire hall Simmering cemetery (PDF 2016), accessed on March 7, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Portheim, Max von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian historian and collector
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 1937
Place of death Vienna