Carl Theodor Reiffenstein
Carl Theodor Reiff Stein ( born January 12, 1820 Frankfurt am Main, † December 6, 1893 ) was a German architecture and landscape painter of the Romantic period. His records and images are by far the most valuable source of life in the old town of Frankfurt in the 19th century and the changes that have occurred since then.
Life
Reiffenstein came from a since 1582 in Frankfurt am Main detectable family. His parents were the brewer Johann Georg Reiff Stein (1774-1845) and his second wife Anne Maria, née Hoffmann ( 1772-1847 ). His parents' house was the house Graubengasse 18, called Kommelbecher, which thus almost exactly in the middle of 1719 destroyed the Grand Christians fire and was rebuilt shortly afterwards area of Frankfurt's Old Town. His childhood and youth - he himself claimed to have lived to the age of 23 at his parents' house - spent Reiffenstein almost exclusively in this time still predominantly medieval part of the city.
His father, who ran a tavern to his son wished his successor. However, this showed an early interest in art education and had first drawing lessons at an early age in the decoration and decorator Falk from Lübeck, who lived for a time in his parents' house. In 1828 he undertook with the young Reiffenstein its first trip ever, which eventually led to Eppstein on the Main to peak, from here via Hofheim and Lorsbach, and him " more than anything else perhaps the impetus for the painting" were, according to his memoirs.
After two years of primary school enrollment in the house Zeil 25, he came at the age of about seven years in the " White Women's School ", which was then housed in the premises of the former, in 1912 demolished White convent, which was followed on the " St. Catherine School" in the "Old Rothofstraße ". His Malkenntnisse were claimed autobiographical records at that time, about 1830, already sufficiently advanced that he could handkolorieren against money for graphic prints and lithographs dealer. In addition, he trained in both self-taught from books and the theater painter Meiler. After his death, he was taught by his successor " Hoffmann ", a pupil of the Munich Academy, of which he wrote that he had him a "big part " of his " practical training ", especially in geometry, perspective and optics owe.
At thirteen left Reiffenstein with his father's permission to leave the school and enrolled in the Städel School under Frederick Maximilian Hessemer, initially with the aim of wanting to be an architect. Hessemer was officially active in Frankfurt as professor of architecture, but created in the three decades of his teaching career ( 1830-60 ) also countless architectural drawings what Reiff Stein's later tendencies may have strongly influenced. Only under persuasion of his former teacher Hoffmann and the active also at the Städel Heinrich von Rustige he joined 1843/44 but then in the subject of painting. Under James Becker, in anatomy under Eduard Schmidt of Launitz, he has now classmates, among others, Anton Burger and Philipp hull.
During his years of apprenticeship collected Reiffenstein outward motives, 1839 in the Odenwald and in 1843 in the Taunus and on the Lahn. When he left in 1846, the Institute closed, as was customary, more extensive study trips, which initially led him to Brussels and Paris. 1848-52 followed by visits in the Harz Mountains, the Giant Mountains, Bohemia, Switzerland and Italy.
Soon he was able to celebrate successes, which enabled him to earn a living as a painter. 1845 was awarded to him at the World Exhibition in Brussels a medal in 1858, he was made " Cercle artistique " in Ghent to its corresponding member. In 1873 he was awarded at the World Exhibition in Vienna again the medal for art. Evocative landscapes earned him the nickname of " painting poet " a. Orders received Reiffenstein especially of art lovers from across the Rhine -Main region, but also from abroad: in 1857 he created a series of 17 watercolors from the exterior and interior of the castle Waldleiningen and from Amorbach for Queen Victoria in memory of her stepbrother, Prince Charles of Leiningen.
Over long years was Reiffenstein board member of the "Association for the History and Archaeology " in his native town. These is his commitment to the Goethe House: he designed not only to this day unchanged mark of the Free German Bishopric, which was able to purchase the house in 1863, he also volunteered as treasurer for donations and contributions to its restoration available. Contemporaries characterized Reiffenstein as friendly, always helpful, educated, but conservative in every respect people. As a practicing violinist, he always preferred the " old masters ", Wagner and Chopin he leaned Strongly object.
Late in 1867 he married Caroline Natalie head man, who came from an important family of wine merchants old Frankfurt. His wife helped him in those over 25 years of marriage, always at work, especially the cataloging of his very fertile creation, the marriage remained childless. After his wife's death on March 11, 1892 Reiffenstein hit a minor stroke that paralyzed the right side of the body. After slight improvement, he contracted a kidney shrinkage to which the then came near influenza. He died on December 6, 1893 and was buried at Frankfurt 's main cemetery, the grave is located in Won G 372 To commemorate him a place in the Frankfurt city center is named after him.
Work
The oeuvre Reiff stone is almost unmanageable, mainly due to the wide dispersion in private ownership, with security, he created more than 2,000 watercolors, drawings and some oil paintings; a school friend Reiff Stein, who later became Councillor Gottfried Beck, said the study sheets and sketches as abundant obtained in the calculation, even of 10,000 works. You are now among countless private owners, especially in the Frankfurt Historical Museum and the Städel Art Institute (for the latter in addition to numerous works alone 43 volumes of studies). In addition to some landscape and nature scenes with a focus on Hesse, a few also inspired by his travels abroad or enriched with elements of genre painting, his work had mainly a central motif: the documentation of a risk of change in the world.
At the beginning of Reiff Stein's artistic creation to Frankfurt was just on the threshold of a new era. The city stretched out in the new, located outside the medieval walls district, while in the old town disappeared many traditional monuments. Reiffenstein regretted not only the loss of the " true beauty ," but also observed how much thereby transformed the customs and habits of the inhabitants: in 1830 received the houses of the old water pipes, and it was banned for reasons of hygiene, cattle in the narrow old to hold and slaughter. These changes he perceived as a loss of simplicity and naturalness of city life.
Similar to the active from about the mid-1850s photographer Carl Friedrich Mylius he was tirelessly the old streets, squares, fountains, gates and town houses, often only days before they were replaced by new buildings and street openings. In later works reveals that he likes to reproduced the street scenes of his ideal, so especially in the condition of the years of his childhood in the 1820s and 1830s. Where conversions of historic buildings had been destroyed, he fell back on all the sources available to him, to reconstruct this figuratively in their part already centuries ago "original state". This was from today's perspective, often, but not always, however, is part of a high documentary value, as it probably could not rarely based on eyewitness accounts of senior citizens or no longer existing pictures themselves.
It is noteworthy that he did not leave any representations of the great places in Frankfurt or the acclaimed new buildings, such as the reconstructed Cathedral or the Opera House. Former he showed - consistently his aforementioned ideals following - even in his late work always in the state in which it the Middle Ages had left with unfinished dome, such as on one of his recent oil paintings from 1881, where the view from the city forest on the is directed in the distance towering church.
One of his primary creative Sprung, topographically structured work of seven volumes, with Only 1,692 images and 2,600 pages of extensive notes on details, owners, suspected age and changes of buildings throughout the old town, bequeathed " collection views of Frankfurt " Reiffenstein against the payment of a lifelong annuity in 1876 the Historical Museum Frankfurt. It has not undergone full publication until today, but since then already served dozens of publications on Frankfurt as a basis. In addition, he also left historicizing illustrations, for example, in the images to Goethe's Poetry and Truth.
Stylistically seen in Reiff Stein's early work independently of the influence of the Düsseldorf school of painting romantic, especially by Carl Friedrich Lessing and Alfred Rethel, who both worked in the 1830s in Frankfurt ( among other paintings of the Imperial Hall of the Roman ). Also that his teachers were trained either at Städel there ( Jacob Becker, Heinrich von Rustige ) or even were parallel active as educators ( Eduard Schmidt of Launitz ), is likely to have contributed a significant share. Moreover belonged Reiffenstein, also because of its academic character and the career of his fellow students, a lifetime 's friends, Kronberger painter colony.
His completed in the 1840s style of painting, on the other hand joined the typical time for the academic realism on the one hand, the romantic influences together, he has not abandoned in the four decades of his writing have evolved significantly. His depictions are characterized with a few exceptions are highly accurate in detail from, especially as scale and lighting concerns.
On the other hand, his paintings, although the architecture was the most consistently dominant object of his work, never cold and documentary, but almost always bathed in the light of a rising or setting sun, and of great initially but often slightly heavier color. It was only in later works, especially after contact and the travel to the French -speaking countries, it comes in the latter respect to a certain whitening. The cityscapes are always met by rich decoration with staffage of life.