Paul de Wit
Paul de Wit (born January 4, 1852 in Maastricht , † December 10, 1925 in Leipzig ) was a Dutch publisher and collector of musical instruments who worked in Leipzig .
Live and act
Paul de Wit was born in a Maastricht patrician house . Since Paul showed an early musical talent, his father let him teach with the Belgian cellist Adrien-François Servais until his death in 1866. He then continued his education and expanded his interest to play the viola da gamba , which he soon mastered. He received his education in the grammar school at the spiritual college in Sittard , about 20 km from Maastricht. Although a career as a professional musician was open to him, his father made him a businessman. At the age of twenty he took over a wine shop in Aachen . The company failed, but he learned the basics of doing business in the process.
Title page of the first issue of the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau
The Leipzig publishing office
(today Bosehaus ) with decorative elements from old organ brochures
Title page of the World Address Book of the Musical Instrument Industry , 1906 edition
publisher
Armed in this way, he went to Leipzig in 1879 at the age of 27 and began a traineeship with the music publisher and editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , Christian Friedrich Kahnt, founded by Robert Schumann in 1834 . Here he came into contact with the greats of Leipzig's musical life and also with the flourishing musical instrument making. He immediately noticed the lack of a special magazine in this field and founded the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau in the autumn of 1880 , the first issue of which was published on October 1, 1880 in its 63-year history and of which he remained editor and publisher until his death. The magazine was very successful and soon became the official organ of numerous professional associations in the field of musical instrument making . In March 1887, the company moved into offices at Thomaskirchhof 16 (today's Bose House ) in Leipzig, which remained the home of the magazine until 1935.
1883 de Wit began a second large project in its publisher: an international address for the musical instrument industry, which until 1925 constantly expanding in more than ten editions under a slightly different name appeared, mostly for the title of most runs with world address book of the musical instruments industry is called. The 1912 edition had 1482 pages with advertisements, registers and appendices. With this tremendous hard work he promoted the musical instrument industry and trade in an invaluable way.
Musical instrument collector
Paul de Wit had a great passion, he collected historical musical instruments. But not only their possessions were important to him, they should also be playable. For this purpose, he maintained a special workshop in which the skilled piano maker Hermann Seyffarth was available to him.
Entrance ticket to the Museum of Music History
Paul de Wit in his collection
de Wit on a clavichord from his collection
Paul de Wit with a
viola da gamba
He was also interested in making his treasures available to the public. He therefore sold large parts of his collection to the Royal University of Music in Berlin in 1888 and 1890 , in 1888 alone 240 instruments. De Wit's instruments thus became the basis of today's Musical Instrument Museum of the State Institute for Music Research - Prussian Cultural Heritage . The instruments included Johann Sebastian Bach's keel wing and a spinet from Queen Marie Antoinette .
He continued collecting and as early as 1892 successfully participated in the Vienna Music and Theater Exhibition with a large collection of historically and handcrafted instruments. On March 7, 1893, in the presence of King Albert of Saxony , he opened his private museum of music history in the house of his publishing house at Thomaskirchhof in Leipzig . In addition to musical instruments, the facility also showed instrument parts, paintings, lithographs and curiosities from musicians' bequests, according to the 1904 catalog, 1181 museum objects.
When the collection rooms became too cramped, he offered the collection to the city of Leipzig. When they refused, they acquired the Cologne paper manufacturer and art collector Wilhelm Heyer (1849-1913) in 1905 and built it and for further acquisitions in Cologne the Music History Museum Wilhelm Heyer . His descendants decided to sell it, and so the de Wit'sche collection, which had been considerably expanded , could be acquired for the University of Leipzig in 1926 with funds from the Free State of Saxony and Henri Hinrichsen , the owner of the music publisher CF Peters , where the basic stock was acquired in 1929 Grassimuseum , which still exists today, formed a musical instrument museum .
Paul de Wit was also committed to current issues in musical life. In 1884 he published a “call for the introduction of a general normal mood ( concert pitch ) for Germany” in his magazine and turned to Reich Chancellor Bismarck with a petition to form a corresponding commission . With the establishment of an international tuning tone at the Vienna Tuning Tone Conference of 1885, however, these efforts became pointless.
In 1886 Paul de Wit had married his wife Friederike Henriette Emma Gießler (1859-1915), with whom he moved in 1889 to Gohlis in the north of Leipzig, which was not yet incorporated . On December 10, 1925, a heart attack ended his life.
Awards
literature
- Enrico Weller: Paul de Wit - founder of the magazine for instrument making and his services to the musical instrument industry , in: Instrumentenbau-Zeitschrift 59. 9/10 (2005), 1–6 (digitized part 1 and part 2 )
- Paul Daehne: Paul de Wit's Leben und Wirken , Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau, Volume 46, Issue No. 7, 1926, pp. 321-325 ( digitized )
- Hubert Henkel: The Music History Museum by Paul de Wit . In Armin Schneiderheinze (ed.): Das Bosehaus am Thomaskirchhof , Edition Peters, Leipzig 1989, ISBN 3-369-00040-7 , pp. 175-200
Web links
- Literature by and about Paul de Wit in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Paul Daehne: Paul de Wit's life and work
- ^ Klaus Schreiber: European music directory
- ↑ a b Enrico Weller: Paul de Wit - founder of the magazine ...
- ↑ Call for the introduction of a general normal mood for Germany
- ↑ Petition regarding normal mood
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wit, Paul de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German publisher and collector of musical instruments |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 4, 1852 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Maastricht |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 10, 1925 |
| Place of death | Leipzig |