Walther Adam

This article is about the industrialist and art collector Walther Adam. For other people, see Walter Adam .

Walther Adam (born April 12, 1881 in Leopoldshall ; † January 31, 1964 in Goslar ) was a German industrialist and art collector. He was an honorary citizen of the cities of Goslar and Staßfurt .

Life

Adam was born as the son of the leading potash and iron wholesaler in Central Germany, Carl Wilhelm Adam . After attending high schools in Zerbst and Magdeburg , he completed a commercial apprenticeship in Stettin . He then became a co-owner of his father's company, CWAdams & Sohn, in Leopoldshall, which today belongs to Staßfurt , and which he ran as sole owner from 1910. He belonged to several supervisory boards, partly as chairman, and was consul of Czechoslovakia .

Walther Adam not only took over the economic ventures from his father, but also the beginnings of a cultural history collection. He has expanded this considerably in the course of his life. When he left the GDR at the beginning of the 1950s, he brought most of the collection to Goslar with the help of his nephew, where it was displayed in 1962. In 1963 the city of Goslar published a 16-page catalog of the Adam family's cultural history collection; Books, manuscripts, documents, 5th to 20th century out. Among the most important exhibits included an original document of King Otto I . from the year 945, several papal documents beginning with a bull from Alexander IV from the year 1256, numerous letters of indulgence, private documents from 1183, a Schwabenspiegel manuscript from 1365 and a Sachsenspiegel cradle print from 1481. This Goslar collection was auctioned in 1980. The remainder of his collection that remained in Staßfurt is now administered in the Saxony-Anhalt State Archives .

The consul a. D. Walther Adam became an honorary citizen of the cities of Goslar and Staßfurt.

He was married to Henriette Stützer from Benneckenstein .

Honors

There is a Consul-Adam-Weg in Goslar. A street in Staßfurt is also named after him.

literature

• Karl G. Bruckmann: The collections of the consul retired Walther Adam. In: Der Archivar 18 (1965), Heft 1, Sp. 99-100.
• Ferdinand Kempe: The collection of the industrial family Adam in Staßfurt. In: Möllenberg-Festschrift, 1939, p. 166ff.
• Martin Wiehle : Adam, Walther. In: Bearing Personalities. Biographical lexicon of the Magdeburger Börde (= contributions to the cultural history of the Magdeburger Börde and its peripheral areas. Vol. 6). Dr. ziethen verlag, Oschersleben 2001, ISBN 3-935358-20-2 , p. 9.
• Reichs Handbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft - The handbook of personalities in words and pictures , first volume, Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, p. 7, ISBN 3-598-30664-4