‘I write to you today with a number of requests’ – transcribing Johann Rudolf Rahn

To be transcribed
Letter from Rahn to Robert Durrer, 19.1.1898

To be transcribed
Letter from Rahn to Heinrich Angst, 25 March 1893

To be transcribed
Letter from Rahn to Robert Durrer, 5 August 1893

To be transcribed
Letter from Rahn to Karl Bossard, 8.3.1897

Karl Bossard, 122 letters

The goldsmith Karl Bossard (1846–1914) ran an internationally renowned goldsmith’s workshop in Lucerne. He made art objects for European royal courts, private collectors overseas and museums in Switzerland and abroad. Bossard was awarded the Médaille d’Or at the Paris World Exhibition in 1889. Rahn’s letters show that he ordered mugs, bowls, platters, plates and spoons from Bossard for decades as gifts for his relatives and friends in clubs and societies.

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• Letters Rahn to Karl Bossard

Robert Breitinger-Wyder, 3 letters

Like Rahn, Robert Breitinger-Wyder was born in 1841. He died a year later than Rahn, in 1913. Breitinger was a heating engineer and stove manufacturer in Zurich. At the age of 45 he began to take photographs, as did many of Zurich’s bourgeoisie at that time. Between 1886 and 1910, he produced works in a detached, matter-of-fact style. They document a phase of active urban development in Zurich. The Zentralbibliothek’s photo archive preserves his estate, including about 4,000 glass negative plates and original photographic prints.

Heinrich Angst, 86 letters

Heinrich Angst (1847–1922), the first director of the Swiss National Museum, and the merchant Heinrich Zeller-Werdmüller (1844–1903) actively pursued the project of establishing a Swiss National Museum in Zurich. A major step in this direction was the National Exhibition in Zurich in 1883. Rahn served as an expert for the ‘Ancient Art’ group, for which Angst provided a series of glass paintings. Angst, Zeller-Werdmüller and Rahn tried to buy back Swiss glass paintings from abroad for the museum or to acquire them to prevent their sale abroad. This endeavour manifests itself in many different ways in their correspondence.

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• Letters Rahn to Heinrich Angst

Robert Durrer, 57 letters

Rahn consulted Robert Durrer (1867–1934), who later became the Nidwalden cantonal archivist, at an early stage in his efforts to compile the ‘Statistics of Swiss Art Heritage’ for cantons Solothurn and Thurgau. This led to Rahn entrusting Durrer with the inventory for canton Unterwalden. Their correspondence documents this professional exchange between Rahn and Durrer. Durrer’s life’s work spanned three decades and comprised an extensive book that ultimately became the prototype for Switzerland’s volumes of art monuments and for which Rahn wrote the foreword in 1899.

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• Letters Rahn to Robert Durrer

Username

Number of pages

Rüegger, Martin

Hinrichsen

Hunziker, Edith

Nuttli, Manuela

Foletti, Benedetta

Abegg, Regine

Hausheer, Yvonne

MR

Zweifel, Thomas

BS

NS

CB

CE

Koch-Wiegart, Annemarie

Rüdiger, Tim

sybik

Segieth-Wuelfert, Floria

Vogler, Vanessa

Wehrli-Johns, Martina