Aloys Friedrich Wilhelm von Hillesheim

Title page of a work on salt mines by Aloys Friedrich Wilhelm von Hillesheim (1798)

Aloys Friedrich Wilhelm von Hillesheim (born June 12, 1756 in Waldbröl , † September 24, 1818 in Munich ) was a German Enlightenment journalist , economist and Illuminate .

Life

Origin and advancement in prince service

Aloys Friedrich Wilhelm von Hillesheim came from the middle-class family of civil servants Hillesheim in Oberbergischen . His father Johann Christian, married to Franziska Xaveria Ursula von Pfisterer from 1756, had served as captain in the Bavarian Electoral Army . His cousins ​​included the Cologne cathedral capitular and professor Franz Karl Josef von Hillesheim (1731–1803) as well as the Cologne councilor Johann Wilhelm von Hillesheim.

At the latest since 1781 he had the family name of Hillesheim , which was also used by the Bavarian government. Like his relatives in Cologne , he had probably invoked an alleged descent from the von Merscheid family called von Hillesheim.

After studying at the University of Ingolstadt , he joined as Hofkammerrat at the service of the Elector Karl Theodor von Pfalz-Sulzbach , of the duchies since 1777 in personal union Bavaria , Neuburg and Pfalz-Sulzbach , the Palatinate and the Lower Rhine duchies of Jülich and Berg ruled .

In 1778 the elector moved his residence from Mannheim to Munich . In 1780 Hillesheim also became a member of the Electoral Palatinate Bavarian Book Censorship Board, and a little later became electoral fiscal councilor and rural culture commissioner .

Activity as editor

Hillesheim, who lived in Munich, published the monthly journal Baierisch-Ökonomischer Hausvater from August 1779 to June 1786, with articles on benefits and enjoyment that were intended to serve agricultural and urban use as well as the police, finance and chamber . In terms of content, the magazine included practical advice on agriculture and economic news, and above all, cameral science treatises and thus primarily addressed a learned readership. In 1781 Hillesheim succeeded, through the intercession of the Palatinate-Neuburgian Chancellor Johann Caspar von Cunzmann, in getting a letter of recommendation from the Elector to all lower regional authorities.

Even if the volumes from 1780 onwards had the subtitle Collected and Increased Writings of the Electoral Society of Moral and Agricultural Sciences in Burghausen and almost all of the Burghausen Academy's papers published from 1769–1779 were reprinted, they were not an official organ of this as a competition to Munich Academy founded enlightening society, Hillesheim was appointed as its "ordained actuary" in 1779.

Illuminat

When Hillesheim became Illuminat with the religious name Philepus is unknown, but it was certain before 1780, when he entered the electoral book censorship college, which was completely dominated by Illuminati . Apparently he had already come under the influence of his colleagues Constantin Costanzo , Franz Xaver von Zwack and Anton von Massenhausen , who were among the "top functionaries" of the order committed to the Enlightenment . For the Illuminati, Hillesheim's activity as a publicist was of particular interest, as the importance of the press for the dissemination of Enlightenment ideas was clearly recognized. In 1781, three professors from the Ducal Marian State Academy in Munich , including the Illuminati Ferdinand Maria von Baader and Georg Grünberg , published the Palatinate-Bavarian literary almanac , which was primarily aimed at farmers , craftsmen and tradespeople with practical information . However, unlike Hillesheim's, this magazine, despite an initial success after two years, had just as little survival as the Bavarian contributions to beautiful and useful literature, which were also provided with economic contributions .

Blasphemy charges

Hillesheim's membership of the Illuminati Order was not the reason for his imprisonment in 1785. As early as 1781, his colleague Weizenbeck publicly accused him of blasphemy during a meeting of the court chamber . Thanks to the influence of his sponsor in the vicinity of the elector, the Privy Council of State and finance director Josef Sebastian Freiherr von Castell , he initially emerged unscathed from this affair, but in the following years, Weizenbeck succeeded in bringing Hillesheim into disrepute in such a way that he May 1785 the function of the land culture commissioner with an annual salary of 600 guilders and the business of the police were withdrawn.

On September 24, 1785 Hillesheim was arrested in his Munich apartment and taken to the prison in the "New Tower". Two weeks later, a commission headed by the Jesuit father Ignaz Frank presented him with the indictment in which Hillesheim was accused of several blasphemies, including critical statements about the death of St. Franz Xavier , St. Ursula of Cologne and her 11,000 virgins, the "Kripplein" , about the meal before communion , about a picture of Mary in Schleissheim and about the display of the ciborium . He was also asked whether he had been to "Saxony's coffee house". After his declaration that he could no longer remember all these things, Hillesheim was removed from office on November 9, 1785 following a cabinet decision by the elector and, as “such a godless and honor-forgotten person”, he was sentenced to remain imprisoned for an indefinite period of time . During his detention, he should only be allowed to read religious literature in order to receive the necessary religious instruction "which he seems to be completely lacking". Hillesheim refused the offer to be released in exchange for an admission of guilt and to be banished from all countries of the Elector on death penalty ( original feud ); instead, he demanded the opening of an ordinary court case by the court councilor , which, however, was unable to do so in view of the cabinet decision .

Fortress imprisonment 1785 to 1796

Despite a petition from his father submitted in October 1787 and the advocacy of a fortress commander responsible for his imprisonment, Aloys Hillesheim spent almost eleven years in prison before he fled. Since no other Illuminat was sentenced to prison after the order was banned and its members were persecuted from 1785, Hillesheim's imprisonment must actually have had reasons other than membership of the order. Rather, an example should be made here early on, with which conservative church circles wanted to express their determination in the fight against the Enlightenment .

After being imprisoned at Grünwald Castle (December 1785 to June 1786), in the “New Tower” in Munich and in the Rotenburg fortress in Upper Palatinate (April to July 1789), Hillesheim was brought to the fortress Otzberg in the Odenwald. After a new petition for release from Hillesheim had been rejected in April 1795 after the death of the Jesuit father Frank, he managed to escape from Otzberg on March 17, 1796. In May 1797 he reached Wetzlar , where he brought an action against Elector Karl Theodor before the Reich Chamber of Commerce there .

Continuation of the journalistic activity

As Hillesheim's publications from 1795 to 1799 show, he continued to work as a writer during his long imprisonment. The fact that he was able to anonymously publish a general description of Electoral Palatinate Bavaria as early as 1795, i.e. still from Veste Otzberg , was apparently due to its determination to support the small town of Kusel in the Palatinate, which was burned down by the French in 1794 as a punitive action , an event that was common at the time caused a stir.

His treatises on the refinement of silk rabbits (1797), salt mining in Upper Bavaria (1798) and the better use of fruit trees were also written or at least conceived in Otzberg and underscore Hillesheim's unbroken interest in improving the economy .

In 1801 two legal journals in Central Germany published detailed accounts of the Hillesheim affair, who was portrayed as a victim of the Inquisition and as an upright man who had been denied the right to due process, which was generally recognized in the Reich . A little later, Hillesheim was rehabilitated in Bavaria and returned to Munich, where from 1802 to 1805 he published a weekly with practical advice on health care . In 1815 he was finally entered into the aristocratic class of the royal Bavarian aristocratic registers, his title of nobility, which had actually only been presumed up to that point, is now officially recognized as such.

Fonts

• (Ed.) Baierisch oekonomischer Hausvater , Vol. 1–8. Munich 1779–1786. Online editions: Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 5 Volume 6 Volume 7 Volume 8
• Palatinate-Baier agricultural calendar to the year 1780, together with a short draft of the principles of agriculture for communal use, especially for the farmer . Munich 1780.
• Pfalz-Baierische Erdbeschreibung . [Mannheim] 1795, 128 pages. Online edition
• The twisted silk rabbit business in Germany: considered in all respects and collected for the benefit of all those who really deal with them or who intend to do so . Giessen 1797. 40 pages. Online edition
• Articles on salt science: Or detailed information from the salt works in Reichenhall and Traunstein. Mannheim 1798. 77 pages. Online edition
• How can fruit tree cultivation in our fatherland be brought up in the easiest and most charitable manner? A price question from the Kurfürstl. Academy of Moral and Agricultural Sciences in Burghausen i. J. raised in 1792 . Frankfurt a. M. and Leipzig 1799. 28 pages. Online edition
• Secret letters about the history of our day from the papers of a German man who died long ago; together with a summary overview of all countries ceded to France by the German Empire. Altona (di Frankfurt a. M.) 1799. 51 pages. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: online edition )
• (Ed.) Health weekly for the instruction of all stands , Vol. 1 and 2. Munich 1802 and 1805. Online edition Vol.1 Vol.2

literature

• Sieglinde Graf: Enlightenment in the province. The moral and economic society of Ötting-Burghausen 1765–1802 . Göttingen 1993.
• Karl Friedrich Häberlin: State Archive , 6th vol. Helmstedt a. Leipzig 1801, pp. 463-469. Online edition (reprint 1804) .
• Ludwig Hammermayer: On the journalism of enlightenment, reform and society movement in Bavaria. The Burghausen Moral-Economic Society and its "Baierisch-Ökonomischer Hausvater" (1779–1786) ; in: Journal for Bavarian State History 58 (1995), pp. 341–401.
• Michael Schaich: Spanish Inquisition in Bavaria ; in: Murder and other trifles. Unusual criminal cases from six centuries (Eds. Andreas Fahrmeir and Sabine Freitag), Munich 2001, pp. 68–80.
• Michael Schaich: State and Public in the Electorate of Bavaria of the Late Enlightenment (= series of publications on Bavarian national history, vol. 136), Munich 2001.
• Franz Josef Burghardt: Nobility without documents? The Hillesheim civil servants from Waldbröl ; in: Mitteilungen der Westdeutsche Gesellschaft für Familienkunde, Vol. 46 (2013/14), pp. 130–137.

Web links

• Franz Josef Burghardt : About the origin of the Hillesheim patrician family in Cologne (PDF file; 868 kB). In: Kölner Genealogische Blätter, Heft 2 (1975), pp. 7-17.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Johann Christian Hillesheim (+ October 8, 1793) made a donation on August 26, 1762 as an ensign for the Catholic community of Waldbröl (Historical Archive of the Archdiocese of Cologne, Berg. Missionsstation XVII), in 1785 he was captain in Burghausen (Häberlin, p. 459-460).
2. ↑ 1739–1766 councilor. His son Johann Theodor Ferdinand von Hillesheim was also a Cologne councilor from 1766–1796 and in 1797 a sergeant major; Herbert M. Schleicher: Councilor Directory of Cologne at the time of the imperial city from 1396–1796 . Cologne 1982, p. 286.
3. ↑ His advertisement for the first volume of the "Baierischen economic house father" in the Münchner Intellektivenblatt 1779, p. 352, he signed only with "Hillesheim", the preface of the second edition of the "house father" 1781 with "Aloys von Hillesheim, Hofkammer- und Büchercensurrath ".
4. ↑ In February 1781, Elector Karl Theodor spoke of his “Court Chamber and Book Censorship Council Aloys Friedrich von Hillesheim”; Graf, p. 209.
5. ↑ To this aristocratic family extensive estate of Kurt Niedrau, LA NRW, Rhineland Department, Düsseldorf, RW 1262, folder 468. In 1815 Hillesheim took over their coat of arms when he was accepted into the Bavarian aristocratic class.
6. ^ Matriculation in Ingolstadt 1775; The register of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Ingolstadt-Landshut-Munich, Part I: Ingolstadt, Volume IV , Munich 1981, p. 554. A further study location could not yet be determined.
7. ↑ Hillesheim's birthplace Waldbröl also belonged to the Duchy of Berg .
8. ↑ Häberlin, p. 453, also names the office of a commissioner "the Schwaige Schleißheim". Hillesheim called himself a "real court chamber, book censorship and fiscal council".
9. ^ Based on Hillesheim's information from 1779/80, here cited in abbreviated form from Graf, p. 203.
10. ^ Graf, pp. 209-210. Hillesheim dedicated the fourth volume of the house father to his sponsor Cunzmann ; ibid. p. 206.
11. ↑ In detail on this Graf, in particular pp. 203–217.
12. ^ Graf, p. 276.
13. ↑ Franz Josef Burghardt : The Illuminati Secret Society (PDF file; 3.6 MB), Cologne 1988, pp. 19-20. For details on the Munich censorship board Eberhard Weis: Montgelas 1759–1799. Between revolution and reform. Munich 1971, pp. 22-33.
14. ↑ 1781–1783 edited by Lorenz Westenrieder (1749–1829); Graf, pp. 211-212.
15. ↑ As a token of thanks, Hillesheim dedicated the third volume of the Baierisch-Ökonomischen householder to Baron von Castell in 1782 . Graf, p. 206 and 220.
16. ↑ Häberlin, pp. 454–455.
17. ^ Karl Theodor von Heigel:  Frank, Ignaz . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 252 f.
18. ↑ Häberlin, pp. 455-461
19. ↑ Richard van Dülmen: The secret society of the Illuminati. Stuttgart 1975, pp. 90-91.
20. ↑ Häberlin, pp. 462–464.
21. ^ Ernst Schworm - Dieter Zenglein: The fire of Kusel in 1794 according to contemporary sources . In: Westricher Heimatblätter , Volume 25, 1994, pp. 60–84.
22. ^ Hillesheim . In: Walther v. Hueck (ed.), Adelslexikon , Vol. V (Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels 84), Limburg ad Lahn 1984, pp. 221–222.
23. ^ Ludwig Hammermeyer: On the journalism of enlightenment, reform and society movement in Bavaria ; in: magazine for Bayer. Landesgeschichte 58 (1995), p. 363, note 58.