Adolf von Bennigsen
Adolf von Bennigsen (born July 28, 1860 in Bennigsen ; † January 17, 1902 in Hanover ) was a lawyer, landowner and district administrator of the Springe district.
Life
Bennigsen came from the Lower Saxon noble family von Bennigsen . His father was Rudolf von Bennigsen , the national liberal Reichstag politician and Chief President of the Province of Hanover , while his older brother Rudolf became known as a German colonial official and governor of German New Guinea . After attending school at the Lyceum in Hanover, Bennigsen studied law at the University of Göttingen , where he became a member of the Corps Hannovera . After the trainee exam (1881) he became a court assessor in 1886. He took over the family's farm and in 1887 became district administrator of the Prussian district of Springe am Deister . In 1890 he married Elisabeth von Schnehen , who was eleven years his junior and with whom he had five children.
Pistol duel in the bison enclosure
“ Frivolities ” in the linguistic usage at the time meant that the district administrator felt compelled to challenge his much younger neighbor, the domain leaseholder Oswald Falkenhagen , to a duel because of the insult . The duel on pistols took place on the morning of January 16, 1902 on the "Coronation Square" in Saupark Springe . The place is located in the bison enclosure Springe and is now called the “duel place”. The conditions were exchanges of fire until incapacitation at a distance of 15 leaps . Bennigsen's second was the assessor Ernst Freiherr Langwerth von Simmern , Falkenhagen was seconded by trainee Wunnenberg. The claimant was hit in the abdomen during the third exchange of fire and collapsed. A quadruple rupture of the bowel by the bullet was later noted. He was brought to the train station in Springe with a carrying basket and from there by train to Hanover, where he died in the hospital of the Henrietten Foundation the next day of complications after the operation due to bleeding in the abdominal cavity. He was buried by his family in the park of the estate in Bennigsen. The Reich Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow attended the funeral with the entire Reich government as well as political celebrities from the Province of Hanover .
Consequences of the duel
His wife was expelled as " casus belli " by the von Bennigsen family. The frivolous offender Falkenhagen was established in February 1902 by the Trial Chamber I of the District Court of Hanover in a time especially the ladies acclaimed jury trial to six years imprisonment convicted. The fact that the district administrator's wife was four years older than her admirer and was regarded by the court as the real culprit was taken into account to mitigate the penalty. The dueling pistols, which the district administrator had provided as the claimant, were confiscated in competitive proceedings before the vein court .
In the German Empire in the 1890s there was already a violent, but inconclusive political discussion following the similarly spectacular duels between Freiherr Leberecht von Kotze vs. Karl von Schrader and Ketelhodt vs. Zenker (1896) given. In the latter case, the imperial naval lieutenant Baron Hans von Ketelhodt (1871-1948) shot the lawyer Zenker. As in the Bennigsen case, the request was made by Zenker's husband, who was injured in his honor. President Rudolf von Bennigsen had already in 1896 in the case of the duel Ketelhodt vs. Zenker pointed out in a political declaration that the restoration of injured honor in such a way is highly questionable and that such cases should only be brought before the courts of honor. After the family of the well-known politician himself was affected in 1902, resistance to this form of satisfaction was formed on a broader front in Germany with the German anti-duel league founded in Kassel in 1902 .
literature
- Tobias Bringman: Reichstag and duel. The duel question as an internal political conflict in the German Empire 1871–1918. Freiburg 1997.
- Heinrich F. Curschmann: Blue Book of the Corps Hannovera zu Göttingen, Volume 1: 1809–1899 Göttingen 2002, p. 231, No. 746
- Hugo Friedländer : Interesting criminal trials of cultural and historical importance. 12 volumes, Berlin 1911–1921. P. 204 ff at Zeno.org
- Herbert Kater: The duel between the district administrator Adolf von Bennigsen and the domain tenant Oswald Falkenhagen in Saupark / Springe 1902. In: Einst und Jetzt Volume 37 (1992), pp. 215-227.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Kater, p. 222.
- ↑ a b Kater, p. 218.
- ↑ He belonged to the crew of the imperial state yacht Hohenzollern .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bennigsen, Adolf von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German lawyer, landowner and district administrator of the Springe district |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 28, 1860 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bennigsen |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 17, 1902 |
| Place of death | Hanover |