Floor 3 / room 1

Zieseniss artists and family in France

The French Zieseniss family has two art collectors, father Otto Zieseniss (1865-1938) and his son Charles Otto Zieseniss (1915-2000), who was also an art historian and Napoleon expert, and two female artists, the painter France Zieseniss (1944-2015) and the sculptor Patricia Zieseniss (*1946). In the function of cultural attaché and patron, Jérôme Zieseniss (*1949) works in the field of monument protection in the field of art as well.

The French artists Zieseniss (20th/21st century)

In France two female artists Zieseniss are known, the painter France Zieseniss and the sculptor Patricia Zieseniss .

Quite unknown is the painter France Zieseniss who was the second wife the renowned art historian and collector Charles-Otto Zieseniss (1915-2000) and devoted herself to depicting fantastic symbolic figures after the year 1985. Around the year 2012 she lived in Béthemont-la-Forêt, near Paris. She started painting in her childhood and educated herself. She is said to have presented her paintings in France, Germany, Japan and the United States of America and to have won numerous awards.

The sculptor Patricia Zieseniss (*1946) is a daughter of Charles-Otto Zieseniss. She started her artistic education in 1964 and obtained the bookbinding and gilding diploma in 1969. After a family time, she started her carrier as a ceramic sculptor in the year 1997. She is still working and presenting her exiting sculptures.

Patricia Zieseniss (*1946) - sculptor

The French sculptor Patricia Zieseniss studied at the art school in Penninghen and the Paris Academy of Fine Arts. She also attended the Ateliers du Carrousel and the Atelier of Simone Couderc.

In her artistic work, Patricia Zieseniss concentrates on the production of ceramic sculptures made of pottery clay in black, white and red. Her works are on the border between figurative and abstract character with a dialogue of curves and edges. In addition to the original sculptures, she also makes plaster and bronze casts.

The French family Zieseniss (20th century)

The history of the well-known French Zieseniss family began when Johann Friedrich Ludwig Zieseniss (1829-1899) left his native village of Langreder near Hanover and became a border guard. He was the youngest son of the farmer Cord Heinrich Friedrich Christoph Zieseniss (1790-1847), whose ancestors in Langreder can be traced back to a certain Curdt Zieseniss (±1643-1712), who came from the near Lemmie and married in Langreder in 1673.

Border guard J.F.L. Zieseniss lived in Hanover in 1857, at the time of his marriage, and later moved to Varrelgraben on the border between what was then the Kingdom of Hanover and the city-state of Bremen. His son Christian Friedrich Otto (Otto) Zieseniss was born here in 1865 and emigrated to New York in 1880 at the age of just 15. Working for a New York company, he lived and worked in France, Germany and Switzerland.  His son Charles-Frederick Otto (Charles-Otto) Zieseniss became an art historian and collector, particularly in the field of the Napoleonic era.

Otto Zieseniss (1865-1938) - merchant and art collector

The banker and broker Otto Zieseniss was born in Germany, close to the city of Bremen. His paternal ancestors were farmers in the small village Langreder, south-west of the city of Hanover, since 1673. At the age of 15, Otto Zieseniss emigrated to New York, where he made career as broker.

From 1889 on he lived in Europe, mainly in France, but also in Germany and the Swiss city of Basel. At these places he worked for the interests of the New York company Henry Hentz & Co., the Mercantile Bank of the Americas, and also for the US War Trade Board (1918/19).

Otto Zieseniss became father of two sons, Christian Otto (1912-1962) and Charles-Otto (1915-2000). He was an admirer of French culture and had gathered a collection of Barye-bronze animal figures and  landscapes by little-known impressionist painters.

Dr. Charles-Otto Zieseniss (1915-2000) - art historian and collector

Born in Germany and raised in France, Charles-Otto Zieseniss practically spent all his life in Paris. He earned a doctorate in the Arts and was interested in historical research and dedicated his work life to the French monarchy of the 17th and 18th centuries. He became an expert in the Napoleonic era and was an experienced collector of antique furniture and paintings of that period, and of Sèvres porcelain.

Charles-Otto Zieseniss became foreign representative at the National Museum of Versailles and administrator of the Musée de la Malmaison. He was member of several  societies related with his profession and of the French Royal Order of St. Michael, and, besides other honors, was made Knight of the French Legion of Honor.

Ch.-O. Zieseniss was married two times and raised six children. He died in a suburb of Paris in April 2000.

Hubert Zieseniss (*1941) - business manager and consultant

The business economist and businessman Hubert Zieseniss was born in New York, where his parents Charles-Otto Zieseniss and Claude, née David had married a year before.

He graduated from the Higher Commercial School (HEC) in Paris and from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. From Paris and Luxembourg, Hubert Zieseniss is active as an insolvency administrator and management consultant as well as managing director of various companies, some of which are chaired by his second wife Aude de Thuin, née Le Roux (*1950).

Jérôme-François Zieseniss (*1949) - historian and cultural attaché

The political scientist and cultural attaché J.-F. Zieseniss was born near Paris and is the younger brother of Hubert and Patricia Zieseniss.

After studying political science and public law, he worked as a project manager first and spent a long time in direct marketing later. Since he is also interested in the history of the Napoleonic era, he also published with respect to Napoleonic nobility and general Berthier.

From the 1990s on, Jérôme Zieseniss fell in love with Venice, moved there and, in his function as member and president of the Comité Français pour la Sauvegarde de Venice, supports projects on the restoration of a Napoleonic palace etc..