Andreas von Riedel

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Maria Andreas Nicolaus Tolentin Riedel , from 1792 Freiherr von Riedel , (born September 12, 1748 in Vienna , † February 15, 1837 in Paris ) was an Austrian officer and mathematician. In 1791 he worked out a constitutional proposal for a constitutional Habsburg Empire and, together with Franz Hebenstreit, was one of the heads of the Viennese democrats ("Viennese Jacobins ").

Life

Memorial plaque in the Kufstein Fortress

From 1764 to 1770 Andreas Riedel attended the military academy in Wiener Neustadt , but due to his weak constitution he did not pursue a military career, but studied mathematics, engineering and land surveying. He took part in various expeditions, including to Eastern Galicia in 1774, before he was commissioned by Grand Duke Peter Leopold, later Emperor Leopold II , to bring up his children in 1779 and lived in Florence for this purpose until 1790 . Already during this time there were repeated conflicts between Riedel and Leopold's son, Franz Joseph Karl, who later became Emperor Franz II.

Riedel accompanied Leopold to Vienna in 1790 and in 1791 worked out a constitutional proposal for a constitutional Habsburg empire in the spirit of the Enlightenment . However, he still rejected a revolutionary transformation of state and society. With the death of Emperor Leopold in 1792, his conflicts flared up again with the new Emperor Franz, who was hostile to the enlightenment ideas of his father, and thus also of Riedel.

This circumstance, accompanied by a radicalization of the secret circles to which Riedel belonged, parallel to the French Revolution , led to Riedel's rethinking, so that in his appeal to all Germans for an anti-aristocratic freedom league, he called for an open uprising. 1794 Riedel was in the course of "uncovering the Jacobin conspiracy ", a wave of arrests and repression of all democratic elements in the Habsburg monarchy arrested, and 60 years imprisonment convicted.

Riedel served his imprisonment in Kufstein (until 1796), in Graz (until 1797) and in Munkács. He was explicitly excluded from an amnesty in 1802. In 1806 he was pardoned to a monastery and transferred to the Minorite monastery in Brno . The French Marshal Davout freed him from prison in 1809, and Riedel left Austria in his wake for Paris, where he died in 1837 at the age of 89.

Andreas von Riedel is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery and lies under a tombstone designed by his friend, the architect Henri Labrouste . The grave was disbanded in the 1980s.

meaning

Like his colleague Franz Hebenstreit , Riedel was a symbol of the democratic movement and "one of the earliest and most consistent champions for a democratic-republican form of government in Austria." Nevertheless, nothing in Austria today reminds of his work, not even a plaque in Vienna's Schwertgasse 3, where he had lived for many years.

Fonts

  • The ungrateful Vienna . 1790 (?; Anonymous).
  • Draft constitutional project for the Habsburg monarchy . 1791.
  • The downfall of a revolutionary. Diary, letters and memorandum from Andreas Riedel from his years in prison in the Minorite monastery in Brno (1806–1809) . Budapest 1993.

literature

Web links

Commons : Andreas von Riedel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry on Riedel, Andreas Freiherr von in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon ).
  2. ^ Wiener Zeitung online ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved July 4, 2007.
  3. ↑ Graveyart , meijsen.net. Retrieved November 2, 2009.
  4. ^ Alfred Körner: Andreas Riedel (1748–1837). On the life story of a Viennese democrat . In: Yearbook of the Association for the History of the City of Vienna 27, 1971, pp. 83–114.
personal data
SURNAME Riedel, Andreas von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Riedel, Andreas Freiherr von; Riedel, Maria Andreas Nicolaus Tolentin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1748
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1837
Place of death Paris