Anastasius Ludwig Mencken

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Anastasius Ludwig Mencken

Anastasius Ludwig Mencken (born August 2, 1752 in Helmstedt , † August 5, 1801, probably in Potsdam ; also Menken ) was royal Prussian cabinet secretary under Frederick the Great , cabinet councilor under Friedrich Wilhelm II and first cabinet counselor under Friedrich Wilhelm III. As a liberal administrative reformer, he made great contributions to the Prussian state.

Life

Anastasius Ludwig Mencken was born in Helmstedt in 1752. His father Gottfried Ludwig Mencke (the younger) was a professor of law in Leipzig and Helmstedt and came from an old Leipzig family of scholars (descendants of Lüder Mencke ). Mencken graduated from the city school in Halle and studied law in Helmstedt and Leipzig . Immediately before the Rigorosum, he fled Helmstedt in 1775 and went to Berlin . There he worked as a tutor for the wealthy family of the legal adviser and mayor Christian Ludwig Troschel. An appointment as a teacher at the Berlin Knight Academy , which Mencken had promised, failed in 1776 because of an objection by Minister Ewald von Hertzberg . Instead Mencken, however, was in the diplomatic academy of the Pépinière added.

In May 1777 he went to Stockholm as legation secretary , in autumn 1777 and September 1779 he was interim head of the Prussian legation in Sweden. He mediated skillfully in a conflict between the Swedish King Gustav III. and his mother Ulrike (a sister of the Prussian King Friedrich II. ) and was also active as a mediator between Ulrike and Friedrich. This earned him the goodwill of the Swedish royal family. In March 1782 he was recalled to Berlin and, at the suggestion of the cabinet minister, Count von Finckenstein, appointed Frederick the Great's secret cabinet secretary. His task was to (de-) encrypt diplomatic correspondence and later to draft his own dispatches and cabinet orders on behalf of the king. With his talent in this field, Mencken won the full confidence of Friedrich, who awarded him an unusually high salary.

When Frederick the Great died, his successor, Frederick William II , appointed Mencken to the secret war council. According to the historian Hermann Hüffer , Mencken was "the most intellectually important" of the king's cabinet councilors. However, the politically liberal and enlightened-rationalist Mencken temporarily lost his influence to favorites of the new king such as Johann Christoph von Woellner . Nevertheless, he accompanied Friedrich Wilhelm to the Congress of Reichenbach in 1790 and to the headquarters of the French campaign in 1792 ( First Coalition War ).

Mencken considered the ideas of the French Revolution - in a moderate form - to be applicable and desirable for Prussia, which exposed him to the suspicion of " Jacobin sentiments". He fell out of favor and retired to Potsdam in December 1792. Financially independent due to the wealth of his wife, he devoted himself to political science and philosophical studies. His friends included the finance minister Carl August von Struensee , the justice minister Eberhard von der Recke , the journalist Friedrich von Gentz , the theologian Heinrich Philipp Konrad Henke , who had been known to Mencke since his youth in Helmstedt , the publisher Friedrich Unger and the prince educator Friedrich Delbrück .

Since Friedrich Wilhelm could not do without the administrative talent of Anastasius Ludwig Mencken, he entrusted him in December 1796 with the task of working out the administrative organization of the Prussian provinces of South Prussia and New East Prussia , which had been won as a result of the second and third partition of Poland (1793 and 1795) . Mencken seized the opportunity and incorporated modern administrative methods based on the French model into his concept. According to Martin Philippson , the instruction for the commission for the organization of the financial administration in South Prussia was "basically a comprehensive reform plan by Menken and Struensee for the Prussian state". On the other hand, the work missed the current organizational needs. Later, however, it served Baron vom Stein and Prince von Hardenberg as a model for their reforms (from 1807).

In the last years of his life he served under King Friedrich Wilhelm III. from his accession to the throne in 1797 to Mencken's resignation due to illness in 1800 as first cabinet councilor. In this position he again had considerable influence on Prussian politics. The cabinet regulations of this time show a liberal and humane attitude, but are also “verbose and unclear” ( Paul Bailleu ). He worked out the basics of further reform projects that were later implemented. He was influenced by the thoughts of his friend Struensee as well as the works of the Marquis de Mirabeau and Johann Gottlieb Fichtes .

Memorial plaque to Wilhelmine Luise Mencken in Kladow

From 1785 Mencken was married to Johanna (Anna) Elisabeth Schock, widow of the Potsdam tobacco manufacturer Pierre Schock and daughter of the forester Wilhelm Reinhard Boeckel. The couple had two children: the son Samuel Karl Ludwig became the Prussian chief magistrate in Königswusterhausen. The daughter Wilhelmine L (o) uise (1789-1839) was the mother of Otto von Bismarck . Most recently Mencken lived in his manor house built by David Gilly on Gut Neu- Kladow near Berlin. Spa trips to Bad Pyrmont could not improve his health. He died at the age of 49. In retrospect, Freiherr vom Stein characterized him as “a liberal-thinking, educated, sensitive, benevolent man with the most noble attitudes and intentions”.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The ADB and NDB indicate Potsdam as the location, according to the Prussian Chronicle the location is unknown.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Ina Ulrike Paul:  Mencken, Anastasius Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 35-37 ( digitized version ).
  3. ↑ Martin Philippson: History of the Prussian state from the death of Frederick the Great up to the wars of freedom. 1880, p. 202. Quoted in: Ingeburg Charlotte Bussenius: Die Prussische Verwaltung in Süd- und Neuostpreussen, 1793–1806. Quelle & Meyer, Heidelberg 1960, p. 133.
  4. ^ Paul Bailleu :  Mencken, Anastasius Ludwig . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, p. 313 f.
personal data
SURNAME Mencken, Anastasius Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Menken, Anastasius Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian administrative reformer
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1752
PLACE OF BIRTH Helmstedt
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1801
Place of death Potsdam