Dr August Reichensperger

In May 1848 Scott was in Frankfurt for his second visit and met August Reichensperger, one of his ‘friends of this period’, whom he had first met two years earlier in England. Reichensperger was another nineteenth century polymath; a lawyer, politician, traveller, writer on architectural matters and an ardent Roman Catholic. He was the editor of the Kolner Domblatt from 1842-44 and from 1849 onwards, and after the dissolution of the Frankfurt Assembly, was a member of the Prussian Parliament from 1850-63, and of the Reichstag from 1867-84. He had travelled in France, Belgium and Italy before 1840, and in 1846 was invited to England to attend the consecration of Pugin's St. Giles, Cheadle, by its benefactor, the Earl of Shrewsbury. He was a great admirer of Pugin and his book, Die christlich-germanische Baunkunst, which came out in the year before his visit to England, depends on Pugin for many of his arguments favouring a return to the architecture of the Middle Ages. The friendship with Scott flourished, inspite of Reichensperger’s Catholicism, and they met again in London in 1851 when he visited the Great Exhibition with Scott as guide. He also saw Scott in England in 1857 and also, perhaps, in 1866 when Reichensperger was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 1854 he published Scott's report on his design for Hamburg Town Hall in the Kolner Domblatt, but he does not seem to have been involved with St. Nicholas although he would have approved of its style.