Harvest Festival on Borsig estate

The harvest festival scene set in front of the manor house in Groß-Behnitz near Nauen, painted by Paul Friedrich Meyerheim on a heavy copper plate, presents the Borsig family, the contemporary tycoons of Prussian metallurgy, owners of factories in Berlin, mines and steelworks in Upper Silesia, the last pre-war owners of the Przelewice Palace in Western Pomerania, heirs of the “king of locomotives”, Johann Friedrich August Borsig. During the extension of the family villa in Berlin’s Moabit, a loggia was erected in the garden, open on one side with three arcades supported on columns. At that time, a series of seven large format paintings were installed on the wall, presenting an apotheosis of industrialisation of the 4th quarter of the 19th century, known as “History of Life of a Locomotive.” It includes such scenes as “Ore Extraction”, “Work at the Blast Furnace”, “Machine Room in Front of the Oranjeburg Gate”, “Assembly of Steam Engine in the Borsig Factory in Moabit”, “Railway Overpass at the Rheine in the Vicinity of Ehrenbreitstein Near Coblence” and “Dispatch From the Szczecin Harbour” (currently in the collection of Stadtmuseum Berlin – Märkisches Museum and Technikmuseum Berlin). A group family portrait, forming a part of the genre scene, was positioned in the honorary place, in the centre. The painter assigned the dominant role to Albert Borsig, a gentleman wearing a straw hat and a grey frock suit. The woman in a long dress accompanying him is his wife Anna Marie, née Gutike, daughter of a Szczecin merchant. The girl accepting a wreath made of grains and poppy flowers from a peasant woman is their daughter Hedwig. The other children are portrayed in the foreground: Margarethe, Arnold, Ernst and Conrad.

Dariusz Kacprzak