SCHMIDTING Wilhelm

Wilhelm SCHMIDTING was born in Cologne in 1866.
In 1891 he resided in Amsterdam, but must have gone back to Cologne, where his two sons were born around 1888 and 1890. He came to Luxembourg-city in August 1894 with Sybille MIELITZ. The two sons stayed behind in Cologne and grew up with his mother.
In March 1895 he married fellow artist Sybille MIELITZ in Luxembourg. Was she the mother of his two sons? The latter were not mentioned in the Marriage Register.
In 1897 he created a collective of artists under the name of “The Uessems”. Following the death of his mother, his boys joined him and he trained them to become acrobats.
The collective became known worldwide as a group of artists staging acrobatic performances.
The couple SCHMIDTING-MIELITZ moved to Remich in the early 1900s.
The four artists of the “The Uessems” group separated from SCHMIDTING in 1917 and took on a new manager, but kept using the name of “4 Uessems”. This choice of artistic name prompted SCHMIDTING to take the 4 artists to court in Berlin claiming infringement of his rights to the commercial name of “Uessems”. (The court decision does not reveal whether SCHMIDTING’s sons were among the four artists involved in the dispute.)
At the same time (1918) SCHMIDTING put up his Remich villa for sale and probably left Luxembourg.
It would appear, however, that his sister Sybille (b. 1874 in Cologne) remained in the country until her death in 1945 in Bettembourg.
It is not known when and where Wilhelm SCHMIDTING died.

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