Sigismund Streit

Sigismund Streit (* April 13, 1687 in Berlin, † December 20, 1775 in Padua ) was a German merchant, collector and patron of the arts in Venice.

Dispute was the son of the hoof and weapons master blacksmith ( the citizen and brewer ) David armed and Eva Maria Melzow in Berlin. 1697 to 1701 he attended the Gymnasium to the Grey Monastery in Berlin because his father wanted him to study and pastor would. In 1701 he was an orphan, left school and went to a relatives to Altona in the business apprenticeship. About Leipzig in 1709 he went to Venice (the distance he put on foot ), where he was from a poor family ( he started as a merchant's clerk and recorder in the office ) to prosperity (with its own palazzo on the Grand Canal ) highly worked. With the small inheritance from his father, he made ​​his own in 1715. In 1754 he settled in Padua to rest. In Venice he was known as an art collector and authority as a painter, Canaletto alongside, among others, Antoine Pesne, Jacopo Amigoni, Giuseppe Nogari, Francesco Zuccarelli. By collecting began in relatively advanced age ( 1740s ).

In 1724 he visited Germany again ( with his hometown Berlin ), England and the Netherlands. He never married and had no children.

He bequeathed his fortune in 1752 and 1760 the high school to the Grey Monastery in Berlin. But the cash assets amounted to 60,000 dollars, were added, among other paintings by Canaletto, Amigoni, Nogari, Zuccarelli ( 49 paintings), engravings, music scores and books. He put the use of the heritage established accurately so that the estate still enlarged by interest. The collection survived the Second World War with a few losses and is still owned by the dispute 's Foundation.

He was buried in Venice on the former Protestant cemetery on the island of St. Christopher.

Other contemporary collectors in Venice were the Field Marshal Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg and the British Consul Joseph Smith.