The Maffei family is of ancient German origin and, more precisely, in the eighth century. Derived from the Germanic tribe of the Franks. The surname von Maffei or De Maffei, Maffei or Mattei is a patronymic name, derived from the personal name Matthäus (German). They are the Lombards that today can be found in Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland.
Marcantonio Maffei – Christopher Maffei
One of the first written records of Christopher Maffei’s family starts in northern Italy in Verona. The Maffei family line starts most notably in Verona where Marcantonio Maffei resided. Marcantonio was a forefather to Christopher, Donald, Victor, and Desiderio Maffei. Marcantonio was born in Bergamo in 1521. The son of nobles Girolamo Maffei and Antonia Mattei. His older brother Bernardino Maffei was a cardinal and his nephews were Orazio Maffei and Marcello Lante.
During Marcantonio’s time, he was elected Archbishop of Chieti on July 14, 1553; he succeeded his brother Barnardino Maffei as archbishop. Around 1554, he became a Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura. He was the Governor of Viterbo from September 27, 1555 until 1557. From 1560 until January 1566, he was the vicegerent of the Vicar General of Rome; he later served as Vicar General of Rome. Pope Pius V made him his nuncio before the Kingdom of Poland. In 1566, he was appointed Datary of His Holiness, maintaining that position until 1570. Sometime before January 14, 1568, he resigned the administration of his archbishopric. Following the death of Maffei’s brother Achille, Maffei was given his canonry in St. Peter’s Basilica on July 29th, 1568. He became a Domestic Chaplain of His Holiness in October 1569.
Pope Pius V made him a cardinal priest in the consistory of May 17th, 1570. He received the red hat and the titular church of San Callisto. He attended the papal conclave of 1572 that elected Pope Gregory XIII. Under the new pope he was the Prefect of the Chancery of Apostolic Briefs.
Marcantonio Maffei died in Rome on August 22, 1583. He was buried in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.
During Marcantonio Maffei’s time he started the construction of Palazzo Maffei a historical palace in Verona, in Northern Italy, on the north-western side of Piazza delle Erbe.
The three-floor façade of the palace is in Baroque style. It starts at a slightly higher level than the square: underneath remains can be seen of the ancient Roman Capitoline Hill, where the Piazza delle Erbe later was settled.
The first floor has five arcades between tympani. Over each arcade a window with an elegant balcony is placed, separated by Ionic semicolumns decorated by large masks.
The third floor is in the same style as the second, but with smaller windows and fake framed columns. The top of the facade is designed as a balustrade with six statues of divinities: Hercules, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Apollo and Minerva. The latter are cut from local marble, with the exception of the Hercules, which is believed to have come from an ancient temple once located on the Roman Capitoline Hill.
The interior is home to a bizarre helicoidal stone staircase, that leads from the underground stores all the way up to the roof.
Marcantonio Maffei’s Palace in Roma was designed in 1580 by Giacomo Della Porta on behalf of the Cardinal – Marcantonio Maffei, which involved the demolition of some houses of noble families as well as the position of a Roman wall in the center of Rome. This affected the Piazza della Pigna in front of the building of the family of Stefano Porcari. After the death of the Cardinal Maffei in 1583 and the unfinished building began a long series of changes of ownership and different uses. The Count Marescotti in the 18th-century refurbished the palace using the services of the architect Ferdinando Fuga. It is now owned by the Vatican.
Giovanni Pietro Maffei
Giovanni Pietro Maffei, a noted Italian Jesuit, was born at Bergamo about 1536; was for a time professor at Genoa, became in 1564 secretary of the government. In 1565 joined the Jesuits, among whom he gained a great reputation. Brought to the notice of cardinal Henry, of Portugal, he was called to Lisbon. He died in Tivoli in 1603. Maffei wrote De vita et moribus Sancti Ignatii Loyole (Venet. 1685, and Berg. 1747): — Historiarumn indicationuns libri 16; rerum a Societate Jesu in Oriente gestarum volumen (Florentiae, 1588: — De rebus Japonicis libri v. At the request of Gregory XIII he wrote a history of the reign of that pope, which remained in MS. until 1743, when it was published at Rome by Carlo Coquetines. A History of India, written by request of cardinal Henry, was published without Maffei’s name, though he was its author. His collected works, accompanied by a biographical sketch, were published under the style J. P. Maffei Opera omnia Latine scripta nunc primum in unum corpus collecta (Verona, 1747, 2 vols. 4to). — Herzog, Real-Encyklop. 8:660.
Alessandro Scipione, Marquis de Maffei
Distant Relative to Christopher Maffei was Alessandro Scipione, Marquis de Maffei, He Was Born in 1662 in Verona. He was an Italian Lieutenant General of Infantry in Bavarian service. He was the brother of the Italian writer and archaeologist Francesco Scipione.
After entering the army of Bavaria in 1683 he was wounded at the Siege of Mongatz in 1687; he was later promoted to Colonel in 1696.
During the War of the Spanish Succession he served as the second in command at the Battle of Schellenberg in 1704. In 1706 Alessandro led a brigade at Ramillies against the Allied forces under the command of the Duke of Marlborough. After being taken prisoner, he became involved in abortive negotiations for peace.
In 1717 he contributed to the victory over the Turks at the Siege of Belgrade in the Austro-Turkish War and was subsequently made Field Marshal of the Empire. He died in Munich in 1730.
Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei
Unlike Christopher Maffei’s direct family connection to Marcantonio, Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei inherited his titles from his brother, Alessandro. Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei, (born June 1, 1675, Verona, Republic of Venice [now in Italy]—died February 11, 1755, Verona), An Italian dramatist, archaeologist, and scholar who, in his verse tragedy Merope, attempted to introduce Greek and French classical simplicity into Italian drama and thus prepared the way for the dramatic tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri and the librettos of Pietro Metastasio later in the 18th century.
Like many family members before him, Maffei studied at the Jesuit college in Parma and Rome and then fought in the War of the Spanish Succession with his brother Alessandro. In 1710 he was one of the founders of an influential literary journal, Giornale dei letterati, a vehicle for his ideas about reforming Italian drama, as was Maffei’s later periodical, Osservazioni letterarie (1737–40). Maffei’s verse tragedy Merope (performed and published 1713; modern ed., 1911) met with astonishing success and, because it was based on Greek mythology and the drama of Euripides and the French Neoclassical period, pointed the way for the later reform of Italian tragedy.
Maffei also wrote a number of scholarly works, librettos, occasional verse, translations of the Iliad and the Aeneid, and many plays (collected in Teatro italiano, 1723). His only other major work, however, aside from Merope, is a valuable account of the history and antiquities of his native city: Verona illustrata, 4 volumes (1731–32; A Compleat History of the Ancient Amphitheatres and in particular that of Verona).
Francesco Maffei
Relative to Girolamo Maffei and Antonia Mattei. Francesco Maffei was a Baroque painter. He had a fluid style combined the richness and splendor of the Baroque, the elegance and exaggeration of Mannerism, and his own flair for the visually dramatic. He probably trained in Vicenza with his father and with a local Mannerist painter. Active in Vicenza for most of his career, he also left intermittently to work in other Italian cities, including Venice, Rovido, and Brescia. Maffei specialized in civic allegories, elaborate machines that glorified the region’s dignitaries. He painted religious works as well, like Crucifixion Supported by God the Father in the Church of San Nicola in Vicenza, where his debt to Jacopo Bassano’s figure types and exaggerated lighting is evident.
Maffei painted with a nervous and rapid brush in flashes of brilliant color, often achieving a hallucinatory effect. He studied a wide variety of Baroque and Mannerist painters, including Paolo Veronese, Alessandro Magnasco, Parmigianino, and Jacques Bellange. Tintoretto’s attenuated forms and sudden lunges into space were also an influence. Maffei left Vicenza in 1657 and settled in Padua, where he died of the plague. A contemporary critic judged him a painter “not of dwarfs but of giants . . . whose style stupefied everyone.”
Marquis – Andrea Maffei
Andrea Maffei was an Italian poet, he was related to Marcantonio Maffei cousin to Giuseppe Maffei and father to Desiderio Maffei, Christopher Maffei’s great-great grandfather. Andrea was a translator and a librettist. He was born in Molina di Ledro, Trentino. A follower of Vincenzo Monti, he formed part of the 19th-century Italian classicist literary culture. Gaining Laurea in jurisprudence, he moved for some years to Verona, then to Venice and finally to Milan, wherein 1831 he married contessa Clara Spinelli. They separated by mutual consent on 15 June 1846.
As well as Verdi, Maffei also built up close relationships with others in the Italian cultural scene of the time, including Vincenzo Monti, Antonio Rosmini, Gino Capponi, Mario Rapisardi, Carlo Tenca, the painter Francesco Hayez, and the sculptors Vincenzo Vela and Giovanni Duprè. Key cultural figures from the rest of Europe also passed through the lounge of his house in Milan, including Liszt and Stendhal. In 1879 Andrea Maffei was made a senator of the Kingdom of Italy and participated in Italian political life. In the mid-19th century he frequently lived at Riva del Garda, where he organized his rich art collection and where, in 1935, the town’s Liceo classico was named after him. He died in Milan in 1885
Desiderio Maffei
Christopher Maffei’s great-great-grandfather Desiderio Maffei was born in Verona in 1861. He was baptized in the Diocese of Verona. A five-minute walk from the Palazzo Maffei and Juliet’s Balcony. During this time the last feudal order was collapsing to liberal constitutions. Desiderio worked as an accountant on his family’s Vineyard, once home to relative Marquis Maffei, just north of Verona. In 1881 he left Verona to New York City to set up a location to import wine from his family’s lands. During this time in New York, electricity was just an experiment, the Brooklyn Bridge was just being built and the statue of liberty would have been shipped 4 years later from France in 1885.
Desiderio Maffei traveled back and forth from New York to Verona during his life. He stayed in New York for most of the time up until the 1930’s. He then moved to California where he stayed with his Son Victor.
They sold and imported produce from the San Francisco wharf until they moved to where the San Francisco market is today. Victor’s son Donald helped run their business up until he sold the business in the late 1990’s. Christopher Maffei, son of Donald Maffei as gone back to Europe. Working within the Jesuit order like his family before him.
The Museo Lapidario Maffeiano
The Museo Lapidario Maffeiano in Verona is one of the oldest archaeological museums in Europe. It shows a rich plethora of Etruscan, Greek and Roman find’s
The Museo Lapidario Maffeiano is located near Piazza Bra, within the ancient walls of Verona. The Forerunner of today’s museum is a collection of 28 inscriptions. They were set up in the lobby of the 1612 Philharmonic Academy.
Phaeton’s fall (1st century AD) – from Rome at the Museo Lapidario Maffeiano
The museum was realized in the first half of the 18th century, after 1716 the project for a “Museo Lapidario” in Verona was created. It was realized by the Veronese writer Scipione Maffei who presented there his collection of Greek, Etruscan, Roman, and early Venetian inscriptions, reliefs, urns, sarcophagi, and sculptures. Between 1718 and 1727 the first version of the exhibition was prepared. Maffei had a wall covering the court of the Philharmonic Academy covered by a small weather roof. There were 230 walled inscriptions. This first exhibition was revised in the following years and completed in 1745. An arcade was built around the courtyard of the Philharmonic Academy for the museum. Maffei himself worked until 1754
In 1797, following the fall of the Republic of Venice, the museum was looted under Napoleon. Although most of the pieces were later returned, some remained in the Louvre. In 1882, the city of Verona took over the museum. In 1927 the museum was rebuilt for financial reasons. It was reduced in size, many inscriptions were in the museum in Castelvecchio. At the end of the Second World War, the block of the Philharmonic Academy was damaged and the museum and academy remained intact. During the reconstruction of the damaged parts of the building, the museum was closed until 1965. The reconstruction provided for a doubling of the height of the external structure of the building complex. In the 70s of the last century, the museum was rebuilt again and reopened in 1981.
Istituto Maffei Verona
Istituto Maffei, officially called Liceo Ginnasio di Stato ‘Scipione Maffei’, is the oldest high school in Italy. It is situated in the center of Verona in northern Italy.
Istituto Maffei Verona is a grammar school, with students who focus on the classics and can choose different paths: communication, or languages. Students who choose the first path study Latin, Ancient Greek, Mathematics, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy, History, Geography, Italian and Italian literature, English and English literature, I.T, Law and Economy. Students who, on the other hand choose the second path study the same subjects (apart from Ancient Greek) plus some other modern languages like French, Spanish or German.
It was officially founded in 1808 under the name “Liceo con Convitto”, although it was actually already in operation in 1805. Then in 1867 it was renamed “Regio Liceo Scipione Maffei”, after an Italian writer and art critic, author of many articles and plays.
Joseph Anton von Maffei
Coming into the modern world, Joseph Anton von Maffei (4 September 1790 – 1 September 1870) was a German industrialist. Together with Joseph von Baader (1763–1835) and Baron Theodor Freiherr von Cramer-Klett (1817–1884), Maffei was one of the three most important railway pioneers in Bavaria.
Joseph Anton Maffei was born in Munich, the son of an Italian tradesman from Verona. The Palazzo Maffei still stands today on the Piazza delle Erbe. His father came to Munich in order to run a tobacco wholesale business, that Joseph Anton Maffei continued. In 1835 Maffei was one of the founding shareholders of the Bavarian Mortgage and Discount Bank (Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank).
In 1836 Maffei founded the locomotive firm of J. A. Maffei in the English Garden in Munich. His desire was to make Bavaria competitive in the field of industrial engines. From small beginnings, a locomotive factory of world renown arose. Maffei, amongst others, also championed the construction of the railway line from Munich to Augsburg and supported Johann Ulrich Himbsel in building the private railway from Munich to Starnberg.
In 1851 Maffei supplied the first steamer, the Maximilian, for boat services on Lake Starnberg. By 1926 there were 44 steamships.
Maffei was also a city councilor (Magistratsrat) in Munich and busied himself e.g. with the construction of the famous hotel, the Bayerischer Hof.
Joseph Anton Ritter von Maffei died on 1 September 1870. His grave may still be found today at the Old Southern Cemetery (Alter Südfriedhof) in Munich.
Legacy of Joseph Anton Ritter von Maffei
Krauss-Maffei was formed in 1931 from a merger of the two Munich firms of Maffei (founded 1838) and Krauss & Co. (founded 1860). Both belonged to the leading German makers of locomotives of various types. Maffei also built other steam-operated vehicles and, later, manufactured vehicles with combustion engines, including locomotives, trolleybuses and buses until the 1950s.
In the 1960s, Krauss-Maffei built several examples of the ML 4000 C′C′ diesel-hydraulic locomotive for demonstration and testing on American railroads. Southern Pacific Railroad and Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad participated in the tests, but both found the locomotives unsuitable for service in the rugged Rocky Mountains through which the two railroads ran. 1963 the company started production of the Leopard tank, 1973 production of Leopard 2. In the seventies they were involved in the development of the Transrapid magnetic levitation train. In 1999 the company merged with Mannesmann DEMAG.
Krauss-Maffei’s defense and locomotive component was later spun off and merged with Wegmann and became the present-day company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), which is independent of KraussMaffei Group.
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann GmbH & Co. KG (KMW) is a defense company based in Munich, Germany. The company produces various types of equipment as well as railroad locomotives, tanks, self-propelled artillery, and other armored vehicles.
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann should not be confused with a separate present-day company, KraussMaffei Group, which is also descended from the original Krauss-Maffei merger. KraussMaffei Group manufactures injection molding machines, machines for plastics extrusion technology, and reaction process machinery.
KMW’s predecessor company, Krauss-Maffei, was formed in 1931 from a merger of the two Munich firms of Maffei (founded 1838) and Krauss & Co. (founded 1860). Both belonged to the leading German makers of locomotives of various types. Maffei also built other steam-operated vehicles and, later, manufactured vehicles with combustion engines, including locomotives, trolleybuses and buses until the 1950s.
The production of armored vehicles was later spun off and merged with the company Wegmann to form Krauss-Maffei Wegmann. Siemens had a 49% stake, but Wegmann & Co. Unternehmens-Holding KG in Kassel bought this stake in December 2010 to become the sole shareholder of KMW. The family holding is owned by about 26 silent partners. The partners are members of the families Bode, von Braunbehrens, von Maydell and Sethe and are all descendants of the firm’s founders or the later owners of Wegmann & Co.
In 2015, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann merged with the French state-owned defense company Nexter Systems. KMW is now a subsidiary of a newly formed holding company, 50% of which are in turn controlled by the former owners of the German company.
