Rudolph Ackermann

Biography

Rudolph Ackermann attended the Latin school in Stollberg but could not afford university, so he became a saddler like his father. He worked as a saddler and coach-builder in several German cities, moving from Dresden to Basel and Paris before settling in London at age 23. He set up in Long Acre, the centre of London's coach-making trade near Covent Garden. His business instinct, design flair, and self-promotion won him a £200 contract to design the ceremonial coach for John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare, Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

He then designed The Royal Sailor, an 8-wheel omnibus running between Charing Cross, Greenwich and Woolwich. Ackermann moved to Little Russell Street and published Imitations of Drawings of Fashionable Carriages in 1791 to promote his coach-making. In 1795 he established a print-shop and drawing-school at 96 Strand, set up a lithographic press, and began trading in prints. He also manufactured colours and thick carton paper for landscape and miniature painters.

Within three years the premises were too small, so he moved to 101 Strand, "four doors nearer to Somerset House," the Royal Academy of Arts. Between 1797 and 1800, Ackermann rapidly grew his print and book publishing business, bringing together artists and printmakers including Thomas Rowlandson, Isaac Cruikshank, John Bluck, Theodore Lane, Henry Singleton, Maria Cosway, F. J. Manskirchten, J. C. Stadler, J. H. Schultz, Henri Merke, Thomas Sutherland, Nicholas Heidelhoff, Augustus Charles Pugin, and G. M. Woodward.

They produced individual prints and book illustrations in genres like topography, caricature, portraits, transparencies, and decorative prints. In 1809 he began illustrating Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, a monthly that ran until 1829, producing forty volumes. It documented changing classicising fashions in dress and furniture of the Regency, with regular contributions from Thomas Rowlandson and others. William Combe and Rowlandson's parody Dr Syntax in search of the Picturesque first appeared in parts in Ackermann's Poetical Magazine and was later reissued as a bestselling book.

Ackermann also published Rowlandson's The English Dance of Death (2 volumes, 1816). He introduced from Germany the fashion of Literary Annuals, starting in 1823 with Forget-Me-Not, and published many illustrated topography and travel volumes, including The Microcosm of London (3 volumes, 1808–1811), Westminster Abbey (2 volumes, 1812), The Rhine (1820), The Seine (1821), and The World in Miniature (43 volumes, 1821–1826). An inventor and innovator, Ackermann was also a patent agent.

In 1816 he patented in England what became known as Ackermann steering geometry, on behalf of Georg Lankensperger. In 1801 he patented a method for rendering paper and cloth waterproof and built a factory in Chelsea to produce it. He was one of the first to illuminate his own premises with gas and contributed significantly to the introduction of gas lighting. During the Napoleonic Wars, Ackermann energetically supported the Allied cause, contributing to British propaganda through anti-Napoleonic prints and military manuals.

After the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, he collected nearly a quarter of a million pounds sterling for German relief. He developed an international distribution network and had significant commercial interests in South America. The business he founded flourished through the 19th century under his descendants. He was buried at St Clement Danes in the Strand, London.