Adolf Friedrich von Olthof (7 September 1718, Strelitz-Alt - 30 June 1793, Stralsund) was a Swedish Pomeranian councilor, and patron of the arts.
Adolf Friedrich von Olthof (7 September 1718, Strelitz-Alt - 30 June 1793, Stralsund) was a Swedish Pomeranian councilor, and patron of the arts.
He was the son of the Court Archivist, Lucas Anton Olthoff (d. 1752), who was raised to the nobility the year of his death. From 1728 to 1734, he attended the Gymnasium Stralsund . Later, he studied at the University of Halle and the University of Greifswald. In 1738, he became his father's assistant and, in 1742, a "Secretary of the Knighthood" for Pomerania. Two years later, he succeeded his father in his position of Syndic. From 1747 to 1756, he worked in Stockholm, on behalf of the Knighthood, and gained a knowledge of Swedish law.
In 1757, together with the merchant and banker, Joachim Ulrich Giese , he leased the newly established Stralsund Mint; resigning his various offices. Later that same year, Sweden entered the Seven Years' War, and he was named to the War Commission. In October 1759, he was taken prisoner in Demmin, and was held for a year. Upon his release, he acquired several estates along the North Sea. He also profited from efforts to ward off the effects of the devaluation of Prussian currency.
He was commissioned by King Adolf Friedrich to help negotiate peace with Prussia. In 1762, he concluded the Treaty of Hamburg with the Prussian Ambassador, Johann Julius von Hecht . He was also appointed a Councilor but, the following year, once again resigned all his positions to devote himself to his business activities.
Some of his wealth went into patronage. His estate near Parchtitz became a gathering place for friends and relatives who were interested in supporting the arts. Shortly after signing the Treaty, he invited the painters, Georg David Matthieu and Jakob Philipp Hackert, and the writer Johann Caspar Lavater, to come there as his guests. [1] The artists provided decorations for his townhouse, and six large scale landscapes were provided for the ballroom. Later, Hackert would accompany him and Giese on a trip to Sweden. Balthasar Anton Dunker, Olthof's nephew, became Hackert's student, and went to Paris with him to complete his training.
Their contract with the mint expired in 1763. Three years later, after checking their claims, the Swedish government paid them less than half the expenses he and Giese were claiming. This was not enough to cover their debts, due to their lavish lifestyles. When Olthof was reappointed as a Councilor in 1773, half his annual salary was seized by creditors. A settlement was reached in 1775. The terms gave him and Giese licenses to run a lottery and a pawn shop, secured with bonds. Despite this, the Royal Court in Greifswald opened bankruptcy proceedings against him in 1777. Only half of his debt was covered, and he resigned from the government.
In 1787, he was named Vice Chancellor at his alma mater, the University of Greifswald, and received a professorship. He sold the pawn shop concession in 1792, to help Giese's widow and provide himself with a small pension. He died impoverished and childless, having never married, and was interred at St. Jürgen's Cemetery in Stralsund. [2]
Swedish Pomerania was a dominion under the Swedish Crown from 1630 to 1815 on what is now the Baltic coast of Germany and Poland. Following the Polish War and the Thirty Years' War, Sweden held extensive control over the lands on the southern Baltic coast, including Pomerania and parts of Livonia and Prussia.
Heinrich Leopold Wagner was a German dramatist of the Sturm und Drang movement.
Friedrich Spielhagen was a German novelist, literary theorist and translator. He tried a number of careers in his early 20s, but at 25 began writing and translating. His best known novel is Sturmflut and his novel In Reih' und Glied was quite successful in Russia.
Jacob Philipp Hackert was a landscape painter from Brandenburg, who did most of his work in Italy.
Weimar Classicism was a German literary and cultural movement, whose practitioners established a new humanism from the synthesis of ideas from Romanticism, Classicism, and the Age of Enlightenment. It was named after the city of Weimar, Germany, because the leading authors of Weimar Classicism lived there.
Elisabeth "Elisa" Charlotte Constanzia von der Recke was a Baltic German writer and poet.
The Battle of Stralsund took place on 31 May 1809 during the Dano-Swedish War of 1808–1809 and the Franco-Swedish War, part of the Napoleonic Wars, between Ferdinand von Schill's freikorps and Napoleonic forces in Stralsund. In a "vicious street battle", the freikorps was defeated and Schill was killed in action.
The siege of Stralsund lasted from 24 July to 24 August, 1807, and saw troops from the First French Empire twice attempt to capture the port city from Lieutenant General Hans Henric von Essen's 15,000-man Swedish garrison. Early that year, Marshal Édouard Adolphe Casimir Joseph Mortier blockaded the city for two months before he was called elsewhere. In his absence, the Swedes drove back the inferior blockading force. After Mortier returned and pushed Essen's troops back in turn, the two sides quickly concluded an armistice. The truce was later repudiated by King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden, and Marshal Guillaume Marie Anne Brune then led 40,000 French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch soldiers against the fortress. Fearfully outnumbered, the Swedes abandoned the Baltic Sea port of Stralsund to the Franco-Allies in the action during the War of the Fourth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars. As a consequence, Sweden also lost the nearby island of Rügen.
Die Horen was a monthly German literary journal published from 1795 to 1797. It was printed by the Cotta publishing house in Tübingen and edited and run by Friedrich Schiller. Many and partially antagonistic prominent figures in German culture of the time contributed, among them Johann Jakob Engel, Fichte, Goethe, Herder, Alexander von Humboldt, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Johann Heinrich Meyer, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and Karl Ludwig von Woltmann. The journal formed the cornerstone of Weimar Classicism and exerted a great influence onto German intellectual history.
Balthasar Anton Dunker was a German landscape painter and etcher.
The Region of Stralsund belonged to the Prussian Province of Pomerania and existed from 1818 to 1932.
Wilhelm Malte IFürst und Herr zu Putbus was a German prince (Fürst) from the old Slavic-Rügen noble family of the lords of Putbus. He acted as a Swedish governor in Swedish Pomerania and later, under Prussian rule, as the chairman of the regional council (Kommunallandtag) of Pomerania and Rügen.
The Gesundbrunnen Sagard was a spa and bathing institution in Sagard on the German Baltic Sea island of Rügen. Opened in 1795, it made Sagard the first bathing resort on Rügen and founded a healing spring establishment, that lasted until about 1830.
Johann Friedrich Mayer was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of theology at Wittenberg University. He was an important champion of Lutheran orthodoxy and General Superintendent of Swedish Pomerania.
Georg David Matthieu was a German engraver and portrait painter in the Rococo style who worked as court painter for the Duke of Mecklenburg.
Charlotte Pistorius was a German poet and letter-writer. She belonged to the circle of friends around Ernst Moritz Arndt, and corresponded with him and other notable writers, including Friedrich Schleiermacher. She took care of family members, and supported education for the lower classes of the population.
Ehrenfried von Willich full name: Johann Ehrenfried Theodor von Willich) was a Protestant chaplain at the Swedish Queen's Regiment in Stralsund.
Wilhelm Titel was a German painter and academic drawing teacher at the University of Greifswald.
Gerd-Helge Vogel is a German art historian.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
