Hundeshagen, Helfrich Bernhard

Lawyer, librarian, art historian, architect

Born: 18.09.1784 in Hanau

died: 09.10.1858 in Endenich near Bonn

Hundeshagen, son of a Hessian-Hanau government and court councillor, studied law in Marburg and Göttingen from 1802-06 and also pursued philosophical, philological and scientific studies. From 1806 onwards, he was appointed court advocate in Hanau and now also devoted himself to art-historical subjects.

In December 1812 he moved to Wiesbaden, became librarian of the newly founded public library in June 1813 and at the same time taught topography and fortification at the military school.

In 1815, Hundeshagen, a talented draughtsman, was appointed a member of the building police office by Duke Friedrich August. In February 1817, he submitted a plan to the government for a topographical-architectural ground plan of the city of Wiesbaden to be published as an engraving at a scale of 1 : 2400. However, due to numerous conflicts with colleagues and subordinates, caused by his overconfidence and the resulting intolerance, he was dismissed from the Nassau ministry on December 4, 1817. Plans for the expansion of the squares in front of the Sonnenberger Tor and the Stumpfen Tor on Michelsberg, for a new Kochbrunnen fountain and for a whole series of residential buildings have been preserved in his hand, as well as drawings of various existing buildings in Wiesbaden, Mainz and the surrounding area.

In 1816, Hundeshagen discovered and acquired the almost complete manuscript of the Song of the Nibelungs, later known as the Hundeshagen Codex, which had been produced in Upper Swabia in the first half of the 15th century. With 37 colored pen and ink drawings, it is the only surviving fully illustrated manuscript of the saga and is now in the possession of the State Library in Berlin.

After his dismissal, Hundeshagen moved in 1818, supported financially by Duke Wilhelm zu Nassau until the end of 1824, first to Mainz and later to Bonn, where he tried to gain a foothold as a "private lecturer for theoretical and practical architecture" at the university and as a freelance master builder from 1820-24. He wrote works on architecture and architectural history, including an architectural survey of Mainz Cathedral from 1819, which was not published until 1943. The University of Heidelberg had already awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1820.

He spent the last decade of his life in a private sanatorium and nursing home in Endenich near Bonn due to morbid megalomania.