Samuel Rösel

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Samuel Rösel

Johann Gottlob Samuel Rösel (born October 9, 1768 or 1769 in Breslau ; † July 8, 1843 in Potsdam ) was a landscape painter and professor at the Academy of Arts and a well-known figure in Berlin's art and social life in the first third of the 19th century. Very soon after his death, he was forgotten. A chapter in Theodor Fontane's (1819–1898) Wanderings through the Mark Brandenburg brought him renewed attention and a certain lasting significance as a (marginal) figure in German cultural history .

Fontane and Samuel Rösel

Fontane described in Volume III ( Havelland ) of his walks published in 1872 a visit to the Bornstädt cemetery (today: Bornstedt ). Because of the proximity to Sanssouci and Potsdam, many historically significant people were buried here. In the face of some unknown names, Fontane wondered: Who was he (or she)? So also in front of the grave plaque of Professor Samuel Rösel . A purely rhetorical question , as he believed until his text was published. The unexpectedly large number of reactions caused him, however, to let the Bornstädt chapter be followed by a new chapter headed by the question: Who was he? In the introduction the author writes: This question, however unsuitable it may be, especially for the sake of the tone in which I asked it, had at least one good effect: it was able to bring me a wealth of letters from which I am now able to to put together a picture of Rösel's life. In addition to the letters he received, Fontane interviewed several of the painter's contemporaries, either orally or in writing.

Biographical fragments

Nothing is communicated about Rösel's parents and youth. In 1787 he entered the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin as a student. An article in the liberal Berliner National-Zeitung reported posthumously about Rösel: At the beginning of the 1840s, he was a very well-known Berlin personality and was one of the most capable artists in his field. Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), music professor in Berlin and Goethe's close friend, had praised three of the landscapes he exhibited in a letter to Goethe. Rösel was small, somewhat overgrown, witty and sarcastic. There was hardly an evening in the year that he wasn't in company. He was also a member of the Berlin Masonic Lodge Zum Pilgrim . Relations with the Mendelssohn family were particularly friendly . He was a permanent member of the circle around Zelter, was friends with Hegel (1770–1831) and a great admirer of Goethe, to whom he sent several drawings of his own to Weimar on his birthday with reference to the life and work of the poet. Goethe did not react at first; Only when Zelter asked him about it did the recipient thank his admirer in brief verses: Rösel's brush, Rösel's keel, should one wreath with laurel , etc.

Rösel was a drawing teacher for the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm (IV.) . In addition, he gave members of various respected Berlin families lessons in landscape drawing, his specialty. He was popular everywhere because of his wit, his cheerfulness, and because he was always ready to do others a favor - such as making casual poems or painting backdrops for amateur shows. In January 1839 he received the Order of the Red Eagle, fourth class. In Berlin he lived for many years on Friedrichstrasse / corner of Mohrenstrasse in a very simply furnished apartment. Fontane quotes from a letter of a contemporary about Rösel's situation in old age: The last years of his life were not the happiest. He was always gruff, his external situation deteriorated, and he spent last the bottle, even to the liquor bottle ... 1842 Finally, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The old, living alone, something has become imbecile Rösel from Berlin to Charlottenhof Palace at Bring Sanssouci and care for them in the family of a servant until his death in 1843.

In the following year, the Chronicle of the Royal Academy of the Arts published a brief necrology : Johann Gottlob Samuel Rösel, born in Breslau on October 9, 1768 (the epitaph says 1769), was elected a full member of the Academy on February 14, 1824. Before that he was a royal professor and drawing teacher at the building school. Appreciated as an ingenious landscape draftsman, until old age of indestructible cheerfulness and with limited means tireless in charity, he is followed by the honorable memory of numerous friends. Tended to its end by royal grace in the garden palaces near Potsdam, he died there .

The text on the back of his iron grave plaque in the Bornstedter Friedhof in Potsdam reads: COME SOON TO HIS TOMB / YOUR MEN OF A NOBLE HEART / BECAUSE HE WAS CLOSE RELATIVES TO YOU!

  • Mountain Landscape , 1822

  • Goethe's house in Weimar , 1828

  • Einsiedeley , around 1830

literature

  • Theodor Fontane: Walks through the Mark Brandenburg / Volume III (Havelland) / Potsdam and surroundings / Bornstädt and Who was he?
  • Alfred Schröder: The "painter professor" Samuel Rösel, an old Berlin original. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin, year 26, Berlin 1904.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Theodor Fontane: Who was he? Compilation of contemporary sources
  2. ↑ Goethe and Rösel
personal data
SURNAME Rösel, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German landscape painter and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1768 or 1769
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1843
Place of death Potsdam