Nikolaus Elscheidt

Nikolaus Elscheidt (born February 2, 1835 in Niederscheidweiler ; † 1874 ) was a German sculptor.

Life

He came from a Rhenish god-carver family from Manderscheid and was the son of Richard Elscheidt, who later worked as a shoemaker in Cologne. After years of wandering, Elscheidt settled in Cologne on the Ahr, the Moselle and the Rhine , where he was supported by the Cologne Cathedral Chapter Alexander Schnütgen . He probably worked closely with a brother who worked as a plasterer, probably with Peter Elscheidt, born in 1841.

plant

He created carvings a. a. for Great St. Martin and St. Maria in the Capitol in Cologne. For St. Maria im Kapitol a. a. the life-size painful Mother of God in the crypt and a triumphal cross group (1871/72), which later came to the parish church of Bonn-Poppelsdorf . Other works by Elscheidt include a. found its way into museums in Berlin, Florence and Antwerp as well as into private collections. A stone Pietà (1873) created by Elscheidt is in the Fuchshardt Chapel in Bad Honnef .

Its wood carvings are in the neo-Gothic style. He only signed his works occasionally and also carved various old figures from the Gothic period (including the Hubertus figure in the parish church of St. Hubertus in Niederscheidweiler). His work corresponds so perfectly to that historical style that some of his pieces in museums and collections have been mistaken for real Gothic carvings.

In his autobiography, Alexander Schnütgen praised the artist's “peculiar appearance” and “peculiar talent”. Around 1910, Fritz Witte described him as "perhaps the most talented of the Rhenish neo-Gothic", but also regretted the oblivion that Elscheidt had meanwhile fallen victim to.

literature

• Erich Dunkel: Nikolaus Elscheidt, a sculptor from Niederscheidweiler , in: Nieder- und Oberscheidweiler, history of two villages in the Vulkaneifel , Wittlich 1993, pp. 255–260.
• Peter Bloch, in: Festschrift for Otto Simon on the occasion of his 65th birthday , Propylaea 1977 (in it a lengthy tribute to Nikolaus Elscheidt)

Web links

Commons : Nikolaus Elscheidt  - Collection of Images