Otto Andreae

Otto Gustav Andreae (born June 24, 1833 in Mülheim am Rhein ; † February 12, 1910 in Cologne ) was a German entrepreneur and art patron .

Life

Otto Gustav Andreae was born as the fifth and youngest child of the Protestant velvet manufacturer Karl Christian Andreae and Johanna Theresia Rhodius. His older brother was the art and church painter Karl Christian Andreae .

In 1841 the Mülheim family moved to Cologne. Otto Gustav Andreae attended the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium here . After graduating from school, he began an apprenticeship in the Mülheim family business, which his grandfather Christoph Andreae led to economic prosperity. In 1859, as a partner, he took over the velvet production in his parents' family business, which he continued to run extremely successfully until he left the company management in 1895. In the Eifel and the Siegtal he set up hundreds of mechanical looms , founded workshops and other manufacturing facilities, including in Mülheim.

Grave of the Schnitzler, Andreae and Bunge families at the Melaten cemetery

In 1871 he was significantly involved in the establishment of the Mülheim Chamber of Commerce , of which he was first president until 1892. He also campaigned for the establishment of the Association of Industrialists and for the Clarenberg Actien-Gesellschaft für Kohlen- und Tonindustrie and was one of its founding members. Otto Andreae assumed political responsibility as a city ​​councilor from Mülheim and a member of the district council. In 1884 he was appointed to the Council of Commerce and in 1897 to the Secret Commerce Council.

Andreae died on February 12, 1910 in Cologne and was buried in the Melaten cemetery in the Bunge-Andreae family grave on the so-called Million Allee (MA, between Lit P and Q). According to the publication Der Friedhof zu Köln-Melaten from 1898 by Johannes Ibach and HR Jung, the original grave complex is based on a design by Hermann Otto Pflaume . In the still existing form, it was probably only created after 1910, the year Otto Andreae died.

Otto Andreae was married to Johanna Steinkauler (1840–1917) since October 10, 1859. The couple had no children of their own. They adopted Ludowika von Borell du Vernay, called Wika Andreae (1865–1955), who married the lawyer Viktor Schnitzler in 1888 .

Foundations and Charitable Activities

Kunstgewerbemuseum am Hansaring, around 1910

Like his grandfather and father, Otto Andreae campaigned for the promotion of art and culture in Cologne and Mülheim. He was a member of numerous associations and generously donated funds for the procurement and construction of cultural institutions and monuments.

On December 24, 1895, he announced in a letter to the city council of Cologne that he would donate 400,000 marks for the construction of a new arts and crafts museum if he was given a say in the choice of the building site and the building was completed before 1900. Andreae - as well as Jakob Pallenberg , who wanted to donate the equipment of an exhibition hall ( Pallenberg-Saal ) to the new museum - was appointed to the jury of the architecture competition alongside Hermann Otto Pflaume , Friedrich Carl Heimann , August Thiersch and Otto von Falke . On July 2, 1896, the city received sovereign permission to accept Andreae's Foundation.

In May 1900 the Kunstgewerbemuseum at Hansaring was opened in the presence of Otto Andreae, despite exceeding the planned construction costs of 115,670 marks. To further upgrade the entrance area, he donated two electric candelabra on November 29, 1901 . The new open staircase with two eight-armed lanterns in neo-renaissance style was inaugurated in August 1902.

During his lifetime Otto Andreae was honored with a portrait bust of Ferdinand Seeboeck , which was placed in the foyer of the Kunstgewerbemuseum after his death in November 1910. On the occasion of the unveiling, Lord Mayor Max Wallraf praised Andreae as a "citizen of a rare, art-loving sense of sacrifice."

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring: Father Rhine fountain by Adolf von Hildebrand

In his will , he decreed that another 200,000 marks should be spent on a well. The Vater-Rhein-Brunnen on the Kaiser-Friedrich-Ring was not realized until 1922 based on a design by Adolf von Hildebrand. The last work by the sculptor was originally supposed to be erected in front of the Museum of Applied Arts at Andreae's request. Due to the poor lighting conditions, the decision was made - after a further donation from Wilhelm Dederich - to locate it in a park on the Kaiser Wilhelm-Ring . The fountain system was completed one year after the death of the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand by the artists Carl Sattler & Theodor Georgii . On July 4, 1939, the fountain was dismantled by the National Socialists because they no longer wanted to tolerate the work of the Jewish artist von Hildebrand in the public cityscape. Only a model of the fountain has survived today, which is in the town house. He also decreed that after the death of his wife, another 50,000 marks should be donated for the purchase of art objects.

Otto Andreae was also involved in the financial support of urban development projects. Together with Paul von Andreae , he participated in 1905 in the business capital for the development of the colony for small country houses in Weiden near Cologne, which on the initiative of the Cologne architects Emil Wilhelm Schreiterer and Bernhard Traugott Below ( Schreiterer & Below ) and Louis Schreiber between the Aacheners until 1914 Street and the Lövenich train station was partially realized.

Fonts

• Otto Andreae, Otto von Falke : Cölnischer Kunstgewerbe-Verein. XIII. Annual report of the Kunstgewerbe-Museum der Stadt Cöln for 1903. DuMont, Cologne 1904.
• Otto Andreae, Max Creutz : Cölnischer Kunstgewerbe-Verein. XVIII. Annual report of the Kunstgewerbe-Museum der Stadt Cöln for 1908. DuMont, Cologne 1909.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Familienbuch-euregio.eu: Otto Andreae birth certificate , accessed on August 14, 2015.
2. ^ Heinz Hermanns: The Chamber of Commerce for the district of Mülheim am Rhein (1871-1914) and the economy of the Cologne-Mülheim area . (= Writings on Rhenish-Westphalian economic history. Volume 21). Cologne 1969, p. 187.
3. ↑ ihk-koeln.de: Findbuch 1862 to 1910 , accessed on August 14, 2015.
4. ↑ Ulrich S. Soénius, Jürgen Wilhelm (Ed.): Kölner Personen-Lexikon . Greven, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , p. 28.
5. ↑ Werner Schmidt: The sculptor Wilhelm Albermann. Life and work. Cologne 2001, (= publications of the Cologne City Museum, Volume 3.) ISBN 3-927396-85-0 , p. 189 f.
6. ^ Josef Abt, Johann Ralf Beines, Celia Körber-Leupold: Melaten - Cologne graves and history . Greven, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7743-0305-3 , p. 161.
7. ↑ Familienbuch-euregio.eu: Ludowika von Borell , accessed on August 14, 2015.
8. ^ Gerhard Dietrich: Museum of Applied Arts Cologne - Chronicle 1888–1988 . City of Cologne (ed.), Cologne 1988, p. 36.
9. ^ Gerhard Dietrich: Museum of Applied Arts Cologne - Chronicle 1888–1988 . City of Cologne (ed.), Cologne 1988, p. 38.
10. ^ Gerhard Dietrich: Museum of Applied Arts Cologne - Chronicle 1888–1988 . City of Cologne (ed.), Cologne 1988, p. 46ff.
11. ↑ Iris Brenner: Cologne Monuments 1871–1918. Aspects of bourgeois culture between art and politics. (= Publications of the Cologne City Museum. Volume 5). Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-927396-92-3 , p. 123.
12. ^ Sigrid Braunfels: Sculpture and architecture of the water feature. The fountain of Adolf von Hildebrand. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-422-06509-1 .
13. ^ Hiltrud Kier , Werner Schäfke : The Cologne rings - history and shine of a street . Vista Point, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-88973-066-3 , pp. 35-37.
14. ↑ Sabine Simon: Schreiterer & Below. A Cologne architecture office between historicism and modernity. Dissertation . Aachen 1999, p. 54ff.

literature

• Robert Steimel: Versippt with Cologne I. Cologne 1955, plate 2
• Ulrich S. Soénius , Jürgen Wilhelm (Ed.): Kölner Personen-Lexikon . Greven, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , pp. 27f.