Peter Bohr
Peter Ritter von Bohr (born June 30, 1773 in Stadtbredimus , Luxembourg ; † October 15, 1846 in Vienna ; also Chevalier de Bor ) was an Austrian , entrepreneur, painter , inventor and counterfeiter .
Life
In 1772 the sculptor and schoolmaster Johann Bohr married Marie Cathérine Vesque, who was a few years his junior. Peter Bohr was the first of the couple's five children. Later, his wealthy uncle Charles Ferdinand Vesque found an apprenticeship in the Cistercian monastery of Orval in the Ardennes. Brother Abraham (real name Jean Louis Gilson) maintained a kind of painting academy here, in which 14-year-old Bohr was also likely to have received his first artistic training. Bohr claims to have completed his further artistic training as a draftsman and painter in Paris, where the revolution had broken out shortly before. Even the sketchbook created at that time testifies to artistic talent, meticulousness and love of detail - qualities that, combined with his technical interest, later also distinguished him as a forger. In the course of the French Revolution , he joined one of the voluntary artists' corps, and then switched to the artillery of the regular French army . According to his own statements, he was elected lieutenant there and took part in the first campaigns of the coalition wars. After three years of service, Bohr resigned to travel to Austria via Luxembourg and Germany. Here he entered the service of Feldzeugmeister Beaulieu , with whom Bohr's uncle was well known through the ultimately unsuccessful defense of the Luxembourg fortress. On October 28, 1798 in Linz he married Clara Poestion, the daughter of a drawing teacher, and quickly gained a certain wealth through skillful business and as a draftsman. Painting opened up further contacts to influential circles for him, for example. B. to Ernst Fürst Öttingen-Wallerstein and Karl Eugen Fürst Lamberg, who promoted him. The trade in army goods, in particular, but also discount and exchange transactions, gave him a considerable fortune at that time. In 1814 he moved to Vienna. After the death of his first wife, he married Countess Mathilde von Christallnik in 1821.
Bohr was a skilled businessman who was open to new ideas and had excellent social contacts. He participated in various economic and industrial enterprises, for example he was a co-founder of the Danube Steamship Company (DDSG). He also constructed a guilloché machine and helped found the Vienna Polytechnic Institute . Bohr was one of the 53 investors who raised the share capital of Erste Österreichische Spar-Casse , the forerunner of today's Erste Bank, in the amount of 10,000 guilders in 5% metal bonds in 1819. He is in the first place in the alphabetical list of shareholders and brought a capital share of 1,000 guilders into the company. From 1819 to 1831 Bohr was a member of the 25-person committee and from 1822 to 1831 a curator, i.e. a member of the four-person control body.
Bohr was just as familiar with Prince Metternich as he was with Emperor Franz I and acted as the publisher of an Austrian mirror of honor. In 1822 he took over the administration of the property of Franz Seraphicus Reichsfürst von Orsini-Rosenberg in Carinthia, the bankruptcy of Rosenberg also brought Bohr into financial difficulties, so that in 1839 he also had to file for bankruptcy. A short time later he again had considerable sums, the origin of which is somewhat unclear.
At the end of August 1845, high-quality counterfeits of the 10 and 100 guilder notes were discovered, which sounded the alarm bells at the privileged Austrian national bank. Only a few years earlier, the Oldham steel engraving process, a new counterfeit-proof method for banknote printing, had been imported from England. For the first time, it was now possible to produce more elaborate image motifs of consistent quality. The drafts of the banknote series from 1841, which were the first to be produced with the new process, came from the well-known Biedermeier painter Peter Fendi . Interestingly enough, Bohr's nephews took drawing lessons from Fendi. From this series of banknotes, of all things, almost perfect forgeries emerged and the central bank put its first considerations into withdrawing the series early. For the time being, it was decided to exchange the falsified documents that had come into circulation for real notes and to keep the “existence of these two dangerous falsifications” secret. In order to avoid too much attention, obvious counterfeits were also exchanged by the National Bank in order to allow conclusions to be drawn about the forger. A total of 102 pieces of 10 guilders and 208 pieces of 100 guilders as well as an unspecified number of 500 guilders, which could later be clearly allocated to Bohr, were received by the National Bank - as far as it became known, the damage totaled around 28,000 guilders.
The Viennese police commissioner Rudolph Köpp von Felsenthal was entrusted with the investigation into this case. He was Austria's leading and internationally recognized experts in counterfeit money investigations. In 1845 he managed to expose Bohr as a counterfeiter after Bohr's wife had bought a conspicuous watch with false notes. On March 23, 1846, the 73-year-old Bohr and his second wife were sentenced to death by hanging. However, the sentences were converted into long prison sentences by Emperor Ferdinand I. The process has been declared classified and a 70-year news blackout has been imposed. In 1853, however, Commissioner Felsenthal received a special permit to publish his investigation report in a defused form. Bohr died in October 1846 in the prison in Vienna-Leopoldstadt and was buried in Kottingbrunn , where he had acquired the palace and the estate in 1819.
literature
- Rudolph Edler von Felsenthal: From the practice of a Viennese detective. The banknote forger Peter von B [ohr] , Vienna, 1853.
- Constantin von Wurzbach : Boor also Bor and Bohr, Peter Ritter von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 2nd part. Publishing house of the typographic-literary-artistic establishment (L. C. Zamarski, C. Dittmarsch & Comp.), Vienna 1857, p. 60 f. ( Digitized version ).
- R. Mehlstaub: Peter Ritter von Bohr, Lord of Kottingbrunn 1819–1840 , Museum Schloss Kottingbrunn , information brochure.
- Willibald Kranister: The money makers. From Gulden to Schilling , Vienna 1985.
- RM Gall: Frontier Fate. The history of the Bohr family 1475 to 2003 , self-published, Trier 2003.
- Peter Bohr: Austria's most ingenious counterfeiter and his time , S. Roderer Verlag, Regensburg 2005.
reception
novel
- GK Bienek: The mysterious gentleman of B., 1955
- CC Bergius : The Forger , Bertelsmann Verlag 1961
- N. Urban: forger of the emperor, Klagenfurt 1972
Movie
- The Bohr case , ORF 1966, directed by Walter Davy , with Ernst Deutsch as Peter von Bohr, Aglaja Schmid as his wife and Helmut Qualtinger , Rudolf Lenz and others. v. a.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ according to the death entry of the parish of Vienna St. Leopold ; literature is sometimes wrongly called 1847
- ↑ Austria's most ingenious counterfeiter, p. 30f.
- ↑ Felsenthal, p. 54.
- ↑ Austria's most ingenious counterfeiter, pp. 106f.
- ↑ Austria's most ingenious counterfeiter, pp. 116–117.
- ↑ Blasius Höfel, Peter Ritter von Bohr, Alois Reitze (ed.): Austria's mirror of honor. Vienna 1836.
- ^ Report on the introduction of Oldham's method at the Bank of England and the Bank of Ireland's experience with it, November 16, 1835. OeNB's banking history archive.
- ↑ Geldmacher, p. 82.
- ↑ Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, August 28, 1845, OeNB's bank history archive.
- ↑ Appearance and being. On the trail of counterfeiters! Exhibition catalog. Published by the Austrian National Bank 2013, no ISBN, p. 31.
- ↑ Geldmacher, p. 38.
- ^ Wiener Zeitung. October 18, 1846, p. 5.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bohr, Peter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bohr, Peter Ritter von (full name); Bor, Chevalier de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian, entrepreneur, painter, inventor and counterfeiter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 30, 1773 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stadtbredimus |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 15, 1846 |
| Place of death | Vienna |