Friedrich August (Oldenburg, Grand Duke)

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Friedrich August of Oldenburg (1901)
Friedrich August of Oldenburg (1902)

Friedrich August von Oldenburg (born November 16, 1852 in Oldenburg ; † February 24, 1931 in Rastede ) was the last ruling Grand Duke of Oldenburg .

To person

Friedrich August was the eldest son of Grand Duke Nikolaus Friedrich Peter von Oldenburg and Grand Duchess Elisabeth , born Princess of Saxony-Altenburg . His younger brother was Georg Ludwig . From 1861 both princes had the future Bavarian general Otto von Parseval (1827–1901) as their educator, who was a son-in-law of the former Oldenburg court marshal Alexander von Rennenkampff . Friedrich August studied at the universities of Bonn , Strasbourg and Leipzig . His training was completed with a seven month trip to Asia Minor , Palestine , Egypt and Italy .

In 1878 Prince Friedrich August married the Prussian Princess Elisabeth Anna (1857–1895), a daughter of the "red prince" Friedrich Karl Nikolaus of Prussia , nephew of the German Emperor Wilhelm I.

Grand Duke Friedrich August of Oldenburg is sometimes referred to with the ordinal number "II" and is then seen in the name continuity to his predecessor Grand Duke Paul Friedrich August (I) of Oldenburg (ruled from 1829 to 1853). With his full titles he called himself: Grand Duke Friedrich August Erbe zu Norway, Duke of Schleswig, Holstein, Stormarn, Dithmarschen and Oldenburg, Prince of Lübeck and Birkenfeld, Lord of Jever and Kniphausen .

After the death of Stephen of Austria , his brother inherited Georg Ludwig von Oldenburg in 1867 in the Duchy of Nassau located able lords rule Schaumburg and County of Holzappel . Associated with the rulership was a seat in the Nassau municipal parliament and in the provincial parliament of the province of Hessen-Nassau . Since his brother was a minor, Friedrich August took part in the meetings of the municipal council in 1873.

government

Grand Duke Friedrich August II of Oldenburg with Duke Ernst August III. von Braunschweig and his wife Viktoria Luise on the occasion of the funeral of General Otto von Emmich on Trammplatz in front of the town hall in Hanover (1915)

Friedrich August's reign began on June 13, 1900, the anniversary of his father's death. Friedrich August was considered conservative and a typical representative of Wilhelminism . His personal interests were mainly in the technical area. So he showed a great fondness for seafaring and the navy . Friedrich August made an emphatic effort to expand waterways, such as the Hunte-Ems Canal , expanded the Oldenburg ports on the Weser and promoted the settlement of industrial companies in order to strengthen the country's economic power. “[…] He was popular with the population, everyone smiled when his car drove through the streets with Trari trara. But he was also headstrong. The old soldiers in the country still suspected that as a lieutenant he had been a soldier trafficker. [...] "

During his tenure, he had the Elisabeth-Anna-Palais built in Oldenburg, which was named after his first wife, who died during the construction work.

On December 1, 1906, the law introducing administrative jurisdiction came into force through a decree by Friedrich August . The law had previously been drawn up by the administrative lawyer and chairman of the specially established commission, Karl Dugend .

As part of the German Empire , the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg took part in the First World War under him . During his reign he also commanded the Oldenburg Dragoons . During the war he belonged to the group of radical "annexationists" who wanted to secure German power through the acquisition of territories and a complete redesign of the European map. In addition to the annexation of Belgium , he wanted to make France a German vassal state and divide it into a northern republic and a southern kingdom of Bourbon . Presumably pushed forward by Grand Admiral Tirpitz , whom he revered , he beat the Bavarian King Ludwig III in March 1915 . before, on behalf of the German princes of Wilhelm II. the dismissal of the supposedly weak Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to demand that stand a "German peace" in the way. He also resolutely rejected the Reichstag peace resolution in 1917. In the course of the November Revolution and the associated abolition of the monarchy in Germany , he resigned on November 11, 1918 and retired to Rastede Castle .

On September 24, 1914, Friedrich August donated the Friedrich August Cross in two classes as an Oldenburg military order.

Time after the government

In order to be able to continue to finance himself, Friedrich August sold part of his art possessions, which had been given to him as private property after the abdication. Among them was a third of the former Grand Ducal Picture Gallery from the Augusteum . He carried out the paintings in 1919 with the help of the Oldenburg industrialist Georg Bölts in the Netherlands. They were valuable works by famous masters, including Rembrandt van Rijn . Friedrich August reinvested part of the profit in the Bölts meat factory , but suffered considerable financial losses in 1927. Karl Jaspers , who grew up in Oldenburg, commented on this in his memoir: "The Grand Duke used the money from the sale of the pictures to help set up a sausage factory, which subsequently fell." As the sale of the former Oldenburg paintings in 1919 gained national fame, this became an important argument to demand the introduction of a cultural property protection law for the German Reich.

Nautical and technical talent

He obtained a captain's license at the seafaring school in Elsfleth, which he sponsored , liked to run ships himself and was awarded the Golden Rescue Medal by the Italian government for the personal rescue of shipwrecked people . In 1888 he saved a Danish sailor on Heligoland in front of numerous bathers. Because of his outstanding seafaring skills, Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed him as the only German federal prince admiral of the Imperial Navy . He personally led his yacht Lensahn on many voyages in the Baltic and Mediterranean.

Friedrich August invented a ship propeller protected by DRP 157706 (April 6, 1904) and many foreign patents , the "Niki propeller". He asked the leading manufacturer of ship propellers, the Hamburg company Theodor Zeise , to build this propeller for him. Zeise refused because he recognized the "Niki Propeller" as a competing product that appeared to be detrimental to his own business. In this context, Friedrich August was also given the title Dr.-Ing. E. h. awarded by the Technical University of Hanover .

On January 14, 1914, the sailing training ship Grand Duke Friedrich August in Geestemünde was baptized in his name. It is still in service in Norway today as Statsraad Lehmkuhl . In 1918 the Imperial Navy put the escort boat named Grand Duke Friedrich August into service.

Since its founding years around 1900, he has acted as honorary chairman of the Shipbuilding Society and exercised this until 1930 and in January 1900 was one of the founders of the "German Training Ship Association", which campaigned for the expansion of nautical training capacities for the German merchant navy.

Marriages and offspring

Princess Elisabeth Anna of Prussia
Grand Duchess Elisabeth, born Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin

On 18 February 1878, the then Hereditary Grand Duke Friedrich August married in Berlin Princess Elisabeth Anna of Prussia (1857-1895), daughter of the "red prince" Friedrich Karl Nicholas of Prussia , nephew of the German Emperor Wilhelm I.
From the marriage produced two daughters , before which the younger died in infancy:

Hereditary Grand Duke Friedrich August married Princess Elisabeth Alexandrine zu Mecklenburg (1869–1955), a daughter of Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II of Mecklenburg, on October 24, 1896 in Schwerin . This marriage produced five more children. Here, too, a pair of twins died shortly after the birth:

The marital crisis of the Grand Duke, which had been smoldering since 1909, led to serious dynastic and political upheavals between the royal houses involved, which came to a head in 1913/1914 after details had leaked to the public and led to speculations and rumors, so that the Grand Duke in January 1914 in one Entering the Oldenburg state parliament member was requested to be more lenient towards his wife. Friedrich August then threatened the dissolution of the state parliament . After several adulteries had become known to the Grand Duchess, he had initially declared Elisabeth to be mentally ill and finally expelled from the country. Since Kaiser Wilhelm II forbade the divorce , advocated by many advisors, and the personal hostilities involved the ruling houses of Mecklenburg , Hesse and the Netherlands , tensions threatened to break up the Federal Council with Friedrich August, who was largely isolated in princely circles except for the support of Prussia . The Grand Duchess had lived with her mother Marie at Raben Steinfeld Castle near Schwerin since 1910 . Dealing with their children was severely restricted.

The training ship Grand Duchess Elisabeth was named after Elisabeth Alexandrine in 1901 , today's Duchesse Anne . Today's sailing school ship of the Maritime School in Elsfleth , the three-masted schooner Grand Duchess Elisabeth , built in 1909 , was also named after her in 1982 and was previously called Ariadne .

Trivia

Advertisement for the feature film Two Blue Boys , Germany 1917
  • Friedrich August appeared personally in the German feature film Two Blue Boys , which was produced by Erich Pommer on his initiative in 1916/17 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Friedrich August (Oldenburg, Großherzog)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Journal for Bavarian State History , Volume 63, Issue 1, 2000, pp. 63 and 79; Preview online .
  2. ↑ a b c d Hans Friedl (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch zur Geschichte des Landes Oldenburg. Isensee Verlag, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pages 211-212.
  3. ^ Catalog for the 10th order auction of Fritz Rudolf Künker GmbH & Co. KG (Künker auction 253, October 4, 2014), Osnabrück 2014, p. 54 f. in Google Book Search
  4. ^ Grand Duke Friedrich August of Oldenburg . In: Vaterstädtische Blätter , Lübeck, October 12, 1902.
  5. ^ Nassau parliamentarians. Part 2: Barbara Burkardt, Manfred Pult: The municipal parliament of the Wiesbaden administrative district 1868–1933 (= publications of the historical commission for Nassau. 71 = prehistory and history of parliamentarism in Hesse. 17). Historical Commission for Nassau, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-930221-11-X , p. 248.
  6. ↑ August Geerkens: My memories from the first ten years of the Oldenburg Chamber of Agriculture . In: View over Eiderstedt , Vol. 5.
  7. ↑ Biography Karl Jakob Christian Dugend In: Hans Friedl, Wolfgang Günther, Hilke Günther-Arndt, Heinrich Schmidt (eds.): Biographisches Handbuch zur Geschichte des Landes Oldenburg . Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 . Pages 160-161. ( online )
  8. ^ Malve Anna Falk: Dissolution and a new beginning. The Oldenburg Gallery and its paintings after 1918 . In: Sebastian Dohe / Malve Anna Falk / Rainer Stamm (eds.): Die Gemäldegalerie Oldenburg. A European collection of old masters . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-7319-0447-2 , p. 49-66 .
  9. ↑ Karl Jaspers: Fate and Will. Autobiographical writings . Piper, Munich 1967, p. 99 .
  10. ^ Prager Tagblatt dated August 19, 1888.
  11. ↑ Andreas Welp: Where Highness proved himself as a seaman . In: Wilhelmshavener Zeitung , August 18, 2007, p. 38.
  12. ^ Friedrich August von Oldenburg: Superheated steam systems with valve machines . In: Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society 1910, pp. 418/419.
  13. ↑ "Arrangement of propeller blades for two or more-bladed propellers." , Electronic copy of the original document of patent no. 157706 , on www.epo.org (official website of the European Patent Office ), edition January 7, 1905
  14. ↑ 100 years of Theodor Zeise Hamburg-Altona . Hoppenstedts Wirtschafts-Archiv, Darmstadt 1968.
  15. ^ Obituary in: 32nd Year Book of the Shipbuilding Society (1931), pp. 52–53, with photo
  16. ↑ Lothar Machtan : The abdication. How Germany's crowned heads fell out of history. Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 2008, pp. 54–57 (unabridged new edition by dtv, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-423-28085-3 ).
predecessor Office successor
Peter II Grand Duke of Oldenburg
1900–1918 		-
personal data
SURNAME Friedrich August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Friedrich August von Oldenburg; August II
BRIEF DESCRIPTION last Grand Duke of Oldenburg
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Oldenburg
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1931
Place of death Oldenburg