Nikolaus Seeländer

Nicolaus Seeländer , also: Nikolaus Seeländer or Nicolai , Seelander or Seelaender (* December 15, 1682 in Erfurt ; † 1744 there ) was a German court engraver in Hanover since 1718, as well as a medalist and numismatist . He was best known as a forger of medieval coins ( bracteates ).

Life

Seeländer had to drop out of school at the age of 12 due to the death of his father, a kit smith . He was actually supposed to learn his father's trade too, but after falling from a tree, he could no longer do any heavy physical work. So he first learned drawing and painting from the Erfurt painter Adam Wilhelm Hildebrand , but then switched to copperplate engraving and medalling. For example, he made various seal stamps for the authorities in his hometown and, early on, a medal with the bust of the Erfurt governor, Count Philipp Wilhelm von Boineburg . In 1713, Seeländer dedicated two medals to Duke Friedrich II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg .

In 1714 he wanted to personally hand over his medal to George I of Great Britain . He obtained a letter of recommendation from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and traveled to London in 1715 , but was not received by the king. Seeländer reached Hanover in the spring of 1716, completely impoverished .

Six medals signed by him are known from Seeländer's time in Erfurt between 1709 and 1716 .

Seeländer as an engraver at the library in Hanover

After Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz had made the proposal in Hanover as early as 1698 to employ a copperplate engraver to make drawings of historical coins and seals, Leibniz wrote a letter to Minister Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff in London on December 20, 1715 , proposing Nikolaus Hire Zealanders for this task. In 1716 Leibniz was able to employ Nicolaus Seeländer for the Royal Court Library . In the years that followed, Seeländer produced hundreds of copper plates for illustrations on the history of the Welfenhaus for the Origines Guelficae planned by Leibniz .

During Leibniz's lifetime, Seeländer made a portrait of the universal genius, and between 1716 and 1727 he made fossil finds such as fossilized fish for him and the Royal Library of Hanover , which later appeared in Leibniz's Protogaea or treatise on the first form of the earth and the traces of history in monuments of the Nature appeared.

Meanwhile, on November 2, 1723, Seeländer married the maiden Ilse Elisabetha Schärs .

When Leibniz invented a second calculating machine shortly before his death , with which large calculations were to be carried out, Nicolaus Seeländer was supposed to produce the invented calculating instrument.

Bust of the librarian Johann Daniel Gruber ;
Engraving by Nikolaus Seeländer, 1742.

In 2005, more than 850 engraved plates were rediscovered in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library - Lower Saxony State Library , the majority of which came from Seeländer. Around the turn of the year 2005/06, parts of the collection were shown in the exhibition "Copper - Red and Black" in the foyer of the Lower Saxony State Library, including prints. A catalog accompanying the exhibition was also published.

Zealanders as numismatist and coin forger

“Without actually studying”, Seeländer is said to have acquired a skill and knowledge of artefacts from antiquity, especially old German coins , of which he often made copperplate engravings. Zealander studied the German coins of the Middle Ages, the bracteates, made many engravings and became a connoisseur of this area. He wrote a total of 10 writings on this subject, which he summarized in 1743 under the title “German Coins in the Middle Ages”. The work was printed in Hanover and provided with historical explanations and 13 copper engravings. Each of these writings was written as an attribution and after the same short preface "Vino vendibili non opus est suspenda hedera" contained among other things the names of those patrons who had made the coins available to Zealanders for description and / or illustration.

Works

Fonts (selection)

• The Müntz treasure of the middle ages treatise of the high-prince Abbey of Fulda of their bracteates. 1725.
• A treatise on the Hessian bracteates of the Müntz treasure of the middle ages. 1725.
• The heavy hand of blessing on monuments seals and coins of the Middle Ages. Dedicated to Abbot Gottfried Bessel , 1730.
• Toe writings from German Müntzen of middle ages. Förster, Hanover 1743 ( digitized version ).

Medals

• 1709: Medal for the governor Philipp Wilhelm von Boineburg, Kurmainzischer governor of Erfurt
• 1712: Medal for the foundation of the Münzkabinett in Gotha , with Duke Friedrich II as Apollo , owned by the Münzkabinett Gotha
• 1712: Medal for the establishment of the Münzkabinett in Gotha, bearded naked man, supported by a soldier, presents a medal to Duke Friedrich II
• 1714: Medal for the coronation of King George I of Great Britain
• 1715: Medal for the birthday of Duke Ludwig Rudolf of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
• 1716: Medal for the birth of Crown Prince Leopold, son of Emperor Charles VI.

Copper engravings

• Portrait of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from 1726
• 1739: Hildesheim bracteates or hollow coins , depicted in Johann Friedrich Reimann's Catal. Biblioth. syst. crit. Hildesiae 1739. 8vo. Tom II , p. 849

literature

• Johann Joachim Eschenburg (Ed.): Nic. Seeländer , in: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's collection of literature , second volume, (= Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's complete works. 16th part), Voss, Berlin 1793, p. 353 f. ( books.google.de ).
• Edward Bodemann: Nicolaus Seeländer, Kurhannoverscher library copper engraver. In: Journal of the historical association for Lower Saxony. 1890, p. 169 ff. ( Digitized version )
• Zealander, Nikolaus . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 30 : Scheffel – Siemerding . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1936.
• Johann B. Oxfort: Nicolaus Seeländer (1682–1744), medalist, engraver and author of numismatic writings, a native of Erfurt. In: Numismatic notebooks. 37, 1987, pp. 35-46, 78-82.
• Rainer Thiel: The forgeries of bracteates by Nicolaus Seeländer (1683–1744) and his “Zehen Schriften” on medieval coinage. Associated with a full reprint. von Seeländer's work published in 1743. Verlag der Heidelberger Münzhandlung, Heidelberg 1990.
• Heinz Voigtlaender, Hermann Fahrig, Christoph Zülch: Famous coin forgers and counterfeiters: Carl Wilhelm Becker, 1772–1830; The Paduans; Nikolaus Seeländer, 1683–1744; Luigi Cigoi, 1811-1874; Constantin Christodoulos; Claude Augustin de St. Urbain, 1703–1761; Caprara; Czeslaw Bojarski, 1910-1966. In: Beware, fake! Coin forgeries from antiquity to today (= series of publications of the Numismatic Society. Volume 39). Numismatic Society, Speyer 1997, pp. 151-203.
• Reinhard Oberschelp : copperplate engravings from the 17th and 18th centuries (= small specialties from the Lower Saxony State Library. Issue 6). Niemeyer, Hameln 2002, ISBN 3-8271-8806-7 .
• Reinhard Oberschelp: copperplate engraving in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz library. Exhibition catalog with a foreword by Georg Ruppelt and a CD-ROM (= writings / Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library. Volume 1). Niemeyer, Hameln 2005, ISBN 3-8271-8901-2 , pp. 13–32 ( table of contents ).
• Niklot Klüßendorf : The alleged Elisabeth bracteate of Nikolaus Seeländer (1682–1744). In: Yearbook of the Society for Thuringian Coin and Medal Studies. Volume 17, 2006/07, pp. 131-135.

Web links

Commons : Nikolaus Seeländer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Seeländer forgery , on numispedia.de
• Daniel Schildger: Really wrong or deceptively real? Nikolaus Seeländer's counterfeit coins for collectors
• Works by Nikolaus Seeländer at the Munich Digitization Center
• Works by Nikolaus Seeländer  in the German Digital Library
• Copper plates from the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library Hanover

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Reinhard Oberschelp (arr.): Introduction. In: ders. Kupferstichplatten in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library (= writings. Volume 1). Niemeyer, Hameln 2005, ISBN 3-8271-8901-2 , pp. 13–32; especially p. 17.
2. ↑ see subtitles, for example, under this copper engraving with the portrait of Johann Daniel Gruber
3. ↑ Rainer Thiel: The bracteates forgeries of Nicolaus Seeländer (1683-1744) and his "Zehen Schriften" on medieval coinage. Verlag der Heidelberger Münzhandlung, Heidelberg 1990, p. 7.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Christoph Gottlieb von Murr : Journal for Art History and General Literature. Volume 7, Nuremberg: Johann Heinrich Zeh, 1779, p. 227 ( books.google.de ).
5. ↑ Horst Bredekamp: The window of the monad: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 'theater of nature and art. 2nd edition, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-05-004491-0 , p. 119 and others.
6. ^ Gabriel Christoph Benjamin Busch : Calculating machine. In: Handbook of Inventions. Volume 11, fourth and completely revised and much increased edition, Bärecke, Eisenach 1821, p. 33 ( books.google.de ).
7. ^ ^{A b} Johann Joachim Eschenburg (Ed.): Nic. Zealander. In: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's collection of literature. Second volume (= Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's complete works. Part 16) Voss, Berlin 1793, p. 353 f.
8. ↑ Wolfgang Steguweit : Coins and medals as a network in the baroque era - The example of Gotha / Christian Wermuth (December 16, 1661 Altenburg - December 3, 1739 Gotha) for the 350th birthday. (PDF, numismatik-gesellschaft-berlin.de ).
9. ↑ Plate 15: 30. Zealander 1726 . In: Treatises of the Royal Prussian Academy of Science, Philosophical-Historical Class . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1916, p. 73 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive , Textarchiv - Internet Archive - With illustration on plate 15).
10. ^ JD Gerstenberg: About the city of Hildesheim coins. In: Contributions to Hildesheim history: Containing the related essays of all Hildesheim weekly and some small occasional publications up to the year 1828. Volume 1, In der Gerstenbergschen Buchdruckerei, Hildesheim 1829, pp. 390-416, here: p. 393 ( books.google.de ).