Adolf Otto (lawyer)

Adolf Otto

Adolf Otto (born December 29, 1827 in Esslingen , † February 27, 1898 in Heilbronn ) was a German judge and later a lawyer who played an important role in the society of the "money aristocracy" and the upper classes in Heilbronn.

Life

Otto was born as the son of Ewald von Otto (1797–1841) and Sophie. Heigelin was born. Otto's father was an assessor at the court and later chief tribunal councilor in Stuttgart, and his paternal grandfather was the Württemberg finance and interior minister Christian Friedrich von Otto . After Otto graduated from high school in 1845, his uncle Eberhard Christian von Heigelin introduced him to the administration.

jurist

From 1846 Otto studied law in Tübingen , in autumn 1848 he continued his law studies in Heidelberg . He passed the first legal service examination in July 1850 and the second in November 1851. In September 1852 he began his judicial career as a court assistant at the Heilbronn District Court . In 1854 he became a court actuary, that is, second judge at the court. On May 15, 1855, he married Emma Heermann. After he was a judge at the district court in Heilbronn for seven years, he should be transferred. Since his wife did not want to leave Heilbronn, he left the civil service and became a lawyer in Heilbronn on February 1, 1860. In 1861 he received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen .

Business citizen

In the 1870s Otto was a member of the board of lawyers in the Heilbronn Court and worked as a lawyer in Heilbronn business circles. He advised the merchants Friedrich Cloß , Carl Reibel and Andreas Faißt on the purchase of the Böblinger sugar factory in bankruptcy proceedings in September 1861. In November 1861 Otto received a mandate from the city of Heilbronn to settle the estate of the doctor Dr. Philipp Safe. In 1866 he represented the son of the factory owner Gustav Schaeuffelen on the sale of his share in the Heilbronn gas factory to Carl Wolff. From 1868 to 1875 he was a committee member of the newly founded Agricultural Creditbank Heilbronn, a cooperative bank . In 1870 he was a committee member of the Heilbronn commercial bank. He thus contributed to the development of a regional banking system that was set up in Württemberg after 1860. Due to his legal advice from important Heilbronn business circles, Otto received supervisory board mandates in the then important branches of industry: In 1881 from the stock corporation Mechanische Zwirnerei vorm. C. Ackermann et al. Co. in Sontheim , 1888 at the Böblingen sugar factory. In 1893 he was appointed to the supervisory board of the Heilbronner Wohnungsverein AG. The construction company was founded after the economic upswing after the German-French War won in April 1872 under the leadership of the Rümelin Bank and with the participation of the paper manufacturers Rauch and Schaeuffelen. When it was founded, the banker Max Rümelin was the chairman of the supervisory board and the chairman of the board was Adolf Otto. The company built the machine brickworks in Böckingen , which began operations in May 1873. After almost 19 years on the Board of Management, Otto received the position on the Supervisory Board.

“Adolf Otto from Stuttgart succeeded in marrying into the best circles in Heilbronn. He gave up the profession of judge and advised the city's 'money aristocracy' as a lawyer. After some time he took part in companies in the city and became a business citizen ... The life of this interesting personality gives a glimpse of the Heilbronn upper middle class in the second half of the 19th century ... He was a good lawyer who was also successful with the construction company ran a commercial enterprise. The assumption of communal offices and tasks in social associations are not to be explained with a need for validity or the concern of the Heilbronn 'money aristocracy' to have a representative in these bodies. ... "

family

Otto had married Emma Heermann (born November 12, 1834 in Amsterdam) on May 15, 1855, whom he had previously met at one of the Heilbronn wine festivals in the Stiftsberg vineyard while “catching cats and mice” and lovingly called her Heermännle . Their father was Ferdinand Heermann, a cousin of Robert Mayer . Ferdinand moved to Amsterdam, where he worked in the grocery store and married a Dutch woman. In 1840 Heermann returned to Heilbronn with his family. After the death of her Dutch mother, Emma and her brother grew up with her aunt and her husband, Karoline and Adolf Goppel . Emma's biological father was born in Heilbronn Associé by J. G. Goppel, a grocery store run by the brothers Heinrich and Adolf Goppel. In 1843 and later Heermann became commercial director and authorized signatory of Gustav Schaeuffelen's paper and paper machine factory in Heilbronn, which he remained for life. After the death of the founder Schaeuffelen, Heerman became head of the Schaeuffelen's business: from 1850, Heermann built the Heilbronn gas factory together with the son of the company founder.

After a stillborn son, Otto and his wife had five daughters: The eldest daughter Johanna (1858–1934) married Freiherr Moritz von Trott zu Solz (1848–1913) from the Hessian nobility. They had five children on the Imsfeld family estate near Rotenburg an der Fulda , including Ernestine von Trott zu Solz , whose son was the administrative lawyer Bodo von Trott zu Solz (1879-1934), his grandson. Moritz von Trott zu Solz's mother belonged to the von Rauch family of paper manufacturers in Heilbronn , and so her son was able to become director of the paper mill in Heilbronn after graduating from the Stuttgart Polytechnic . The second daughter Thusnelde was married to the merchant Ferdinand Closs, the son of Friedrich Closs (born August 23, 1813 in Winnenden, † October 7, 1877 in Heilbronn). The third daughter Emma married the Heilbronn doctor and medical adviser Dr. Gustav Wild. The remaining daughters married officers.

Social activities and awards

Otto was also known for his work in social institutions. In 1863 he helped found the Heilbronner Beautification Association , in 1869 he took part in setting up a people's kitchen in the old slaughterhouse, from 1872 to 1875 he was director of the agricultural winter school and in 1875 he was mentioned as a parish councilor. Otto was also on the parents 'council of the higher girls' school in Heilbronn and was a member of the committee for the erection of a memorial for Robert Mayer. Otto was also chairman of the Froebel Kindergarten in Titotstrasse and was involved in the formation of the Heilbronn department of the Society for the Rescue of Shipwrecked People.

His commitment to the Nursing Association, which was founded in 1874/75 and was responsible for the Heilbronn Olga House, was particularly strong. In the Olga house there was a day nursery as well as a toddler school and a lounge for factory workers. The Olga Sisters performed the nursing service at the city hospital in Heilbronn. In 1885 Otto was a member of the association's board and supported the crèche financially. For this he received the silver Karl Olga medal in 1889 . In the Heilbronn hospital war between several hospital employees , in which Mayor Paul Hegelmaier was also involved, Otto wanted to mediate as a member of the board of the association responsible for the Olga Sisters, but the efforts were unsuccessful. That is why he resigned his offices in the association in March 1890. The Nursing Association was dissolved in 1892 and the facilities in the Olga House were closed; the Heilbronn Olga Sisters moved to Stuttgart. The Olgahaus building on the corner of Safe Street and Nordberg Street was acquired by the City of Heilbronn.

Politician

At the end of 1848 Otto had attended several sessions of the National Assembly in Frankfurt that sobered him. His opinion was confirmed that it was impossible to bring Austria and Prussia “under one constitutional hat”, and he was therefore committed to the Little German solution . June 1849 he could see how the rump parliament of the National Assembly in Stuttgart was prohibited from holding a session. The procession of MPs was pushed back by the military, the "protest of the president [was] drowned in the drum roll". He found Scotland, which he had got to know on a trip, exemplary: "That was really the life of a free, great people".

Otto was a member of the national liberal German party and declared himself ready to the regional chairman Julius Hölder to form a local association of the party in Heilbronn. So he founded the Heilbronn local association of the national liberal party together with Adolf Goppel, but it dissolved again in 1873/74. The reason for this was the upset between Otto and Friedrich Eduard Mayer , DP member who was elected to the state parliament in December 1870 . As the local chairman of the DP, Otto felt himself to be unjustifiably neglected and withdrew from party work with his involvement in the people's kitchen and the workers' union actively campaigning for an improvement in the conditions of the workers in Heilbronn. After Mayer's death, the Heilbronn local group was re-established in 1874 without Otto's involvement. He later reconciled himself with the DP and in April 1884 took part in a meeting of South German party friends in Heidelberg. In a Heidelberg declaration, the district represented a national and imperial-friendly policy, with the “famous upswing of Heidelberg” leading to a right-wing orientation of politics in Württemberg.

Otto's "favorite creation" was the Heilbronn local association of the national liberal German workers' union, founded in February 1869 and last mentioned in 1897. It was important for the local branch of the national liberal workers' union: "From ... the fact that the union was no longer named after Otto's death, it can be concluded that Otto's participation was decisive for the association." The liberal trade unions were able to use their liberal ideas from Balancing interests does not credibly solve the social question . The reason for the loss of credibility and attractiveness was the company's interests: "The liberal trade unions lost their attractiveness ... The liberal entrepreneurs took ... tough capitalist positions towards the workers".

Residential building

The house at Wilhelmstrasse 7 in Heilbronn was built in 1842 under Adolf Goppel . In 1861 it was acquired by Adolf Otto and sold to Max Rosengart in 1892 . After that he lived with his family at Karlstrasse 26.

literature

• Jürg Arnold: Adolf Otto (1827-1898). Lawyer in Heilbronn, business citizen (gas factory, Böckingen brickworks), member of the regional executive committee of the National Liberal Party. In: Journal for Württemberg State History, 66th year 2007, p. 325 f.
• Jürg Arnold: Adolf Otto (1827–1898). Lawyer and business citizen . In: Heilbronner heads V . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2009, ISBN 978-3-940646-05-7 , pp. 149–170 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 56)
• Jürg Arnold: Contributions to the history of the Otto family (in Ulm, Stuttgart and Heilbronn) and the Heigelin family (in Stuttgart). Ostfildern 2012, pp. 20–24, 270–288 (here memories of Adolf Otto up to his marriage)

Web links

Commons : Ziegelei Böckingen, Baugesellschaft Heilbronn AG  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Short biography of the Heilbronn City Archives

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jürg Arnold: Adolf Otto (1827-1898) In: Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte , 66th year, Stuttgart 2007, p. 326
2. ↑ Jürg Arnold: Adolf Otto (1827-1898): Lawyer and business citizen . In: Heilbronner Köpf V (2009), pp. 149–170. Heilbronn Verlag Stadtarchiv 2009 (Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives; 56), see p. 163.
3. ↑ Jürg Arnold (see literature), pp. 149, 168 and 170
4. ↑ Jürg Arnold (see literature), p. 152.
5. ^ Friedrich Cloß (1813–1877) and Emma (1829–1901) at stadtarchiv-heilbronn.de
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Jürg Arnold (see literature), p. 151.
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Jürg Arnold (see literature), p. 168.