Portrait of the Tuchers: donors, diplomats and collectors

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Nuremberg’s "heyday", the Tucher family attained high offices in the imperial city both in trade and in the area of secular and ecclesiastical rule. Since their rise, they have also had a presence as charitable benefactors and patrons of high-profile works of art.

This chapter focuses on some important personalities and the traces they left in the collections.

Anton I (died 1476), his son Anton II (died 1524) – the "pater patriae" – and his grandson Linhart II (died 1568) emerged from the elder line, each of whom held the most important office of "Vorderster Losunger" in the imperial city. The ecclesiastical lawyers Dr Lorenz I (died 1503) and Dr Sixtus I (died 1507) became provosts at St. Lorenz one after the other and therefore held one of the highest ecclesiastical offices in the city. The family foundation established by Lorenz Tucher still exists today.

Important members of the younger line, the Jerusalem pilgrim Hans VI (died 1491) and his brother, the master builder Endres II (died 1507), are the subject of a separate virtual exhibition.

The family history is only incompletely researched for the time after the completion of the "Großes Tucherbuch" in the 17th century. More insights only become available again from the 19th century onwards, when some Tuchers attained high governmental and honorary offices after Nuremberg’s transfer to Bavaria.

Theodor von Tucher (1838-1916), royal chamberlain, led the "Freiherrlich von Tucher’sche Brauerei" to international success as one of the largest breweries in Bavaria. Christoph (1841-1922) made a name for himself as a government councillor in Munich, his younger brother Heinrich (1853-1925) as the kingdom’s envoy in Europe’s major cities in the period before the First World War. Christoph’s grandson, the lawyer Dr Hans Christoph von Tucher (1904-1968), a member of the board of the Bayerische Vereinsbank, continued both of their accomplishments for the cultural-historical heritage of their ancestors with the reconstruction of Tucherschloss after the Second World War.

Antonia Landois, Claudia Däubler-Hauschke