Anton Christian Wedekind

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Anton Christian Wedekind

Anton Christian Wedekind (born May 14, 1763 in Visselhövede , † March 14, 1845 in Lüneburg ) was a German historian .

Life

Wedekind, who came from the Wedekind zur Horst family, was the only son of Heinrich Friedrich Wedekind, governor of Visselhövede. He had five sisters, four of whom died as children.

He began studying law in Helmstedt in 1782 and moved to Göttingen in 1784 . He received his doctorate as Dr. jur. et phil. and after his exams started a civil service career in Hanover . He made a name for himself there in the world of theater by publishing the theater magazine Small Contributions to Hanoverian Dramaturgy . But it did not get beyond four issues. On May 22, 1792 he married the Hanoverian pastor's daughter Dorothee Henriette Zwicker. The marriage had no children.

In 1793 he was appointed to take over the monastery office of St. Michaelis in Lüneburg. There the landscape director Friedrich Ernst von Bülow entrusted him with the management of the monastery archive. Wedekind, who had not had any prior history education at university, now began to study historical auxiliary sciences on his own. As a result of his work, he published a large number of individual genealogical, geographical and chronological investigations as well as documentary reports on the medieval history of northern Germany and neighboring countries. These appeared in the Hanover magazine, later in the Vaterländisches Archiv, but also in independent publications.

He left the historiography to others, he concentrated heavily on source criticism , where he saw considerable grievances compared to classical philology :

“We still find conclusions drawn up every day in the books of those hasty pragmatists that do not disintegrate when the fact is examined. Far too little has been done so far for a criticism of our sources, for their interpretation and comparative discussion; It seems insignificant, especially when one compares it with what happens for Greek and Roman writers, very commendable and praiseworthy indeed, but also not infrequently excessively and with lavish effort. - Isn't critical knowledge of the patriotic history and constitution also philology? "

- Wedekind in the foreword of the first volume of the notes on some historians of the German Middle Ages

Wedekind openly criticized the uncritical adoption of uncertain and questionable sources. This was also evident in a series of reviews, which he published in the Göttingische Schehrten advertisements , but mostly not under real names . With his many, mostly smaller contributions, he tried to correct errors, misinterpretations and misunderstandings. He summarized a number of these small contributions in the notes to some historians of the German Middle Ages , with whom he found general recognition among medievalists . Further works in this area were Hermann Duke of Saxony and the Nekrolog des Lüneburg Michaeliskloster, which later appeared in the notes .

Another concern of his was the reliable representation of connections between historical events. The two works Chronologisches Handbuch der Welt- und Völkergeschichte and Chronologisches Handbuch der Moderne Geschichte (1740 to 1815) , evidently the results and notes of his self-study, are kept in synoptic tabular form, a completely new concept at the time.

Wedekind also remained open to the present. He published various statistical works, lists of diplomats, authorities and officials ( Yearbook for the Hanseatic Departments, Hamburg 1812 ) and commented on current events, partly in the form of pamphlets, such as the copy of the Peace of Lunéville in French and German (1801 and 1803 ), the documented representation of the arrest and liberation of the hundred inhabitants of Lüneburg in April 1813 (Lüneburg, 1815) or a poem to greet Lieutenant Colonel von Ramdohr when his battalion entered Lüneburg on February 6, 1816. During the French occupation he was sub-prefect and Member of the Conseil Generale of the department of the Elbe estuaries, later (since 1831) Kgl. Hann. Chief bailiff. He expressed his interest in literature with the anonymous publication of Feronia: Selection of beautiful passages from German writings .

For health reasons he had to ask for his retirement in 1842. Three years later he died, almost blind, in Lüneburg.

Wedekind was also charitable in everyday life. But when he once postponed a project and it suddenly became impossible, he resolved not to allow it again. As a reminder, in 1794 he added the motto "Nil Differre" (postpone nothing) to his coat of arms.

In 1819 Wedekind was particularly generous in giving the royal society of science to Göttingen , to which he donated 8,000 gold thalers. This was intended to set up a prize foundation after his death, today's Wedekind Prize for German History . As a thank you, a memorial in the form of an obelisk was erected on his grave in 1886.

Awards

Wedekind was a knight of the Guelph order , since 1818 correspondent of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen and since 1837 its honorary member. The Göttingen Faculty of Philosophy awarded him an honorary doctorate in the same year . On his 50th anniversary in service, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Göttingen and Jena law faculties.

Works

  • Small contributions to the Hanoverian dramaturgy. Hanover 1789. New edition: Wehrhahn-Verlag, Hanover 2000, ISBN 3-932324-15-3 .
  • Chronological manual of world and peoples history . Lueneburg 1812.
  • Chronological manual of modern history (1740 to 1815) . Two volumes, Lüneburg 1815 & 1817.
  • Hermann Duke of Saxony . Lueneburg 1817.
  • Notes on some historians of the German Middle Ages . Three volumes, Hamburg 1821, 1835, 1836
  • Feronia: Selection of beautiful passages from German scripts . 1829.
  • World historical memory sheets . 2nd edition, Lüneburg 1845.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Anton Christian Wedekind  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annals of the Braunschweig-Lüneburgischen Churlande. 6th year (1792) 4th piece, p. 765 ( Memento from January 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Notes on some historians of the German Middle Ages . First volume: Note I - XXX , Hamburg 1821, p. IV .
  3. ^ Wedekind, Anton Christian in German Biography according to ADB 41 (1896); accessed on April 18, 2020
  4. ↑ www.uni-goettingen.de: Wedekind Prize for German History
personal data
SURNAME Wedekind, Anton Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and administrative lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1763
PLACE OF BIRTH Visselhövede
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1845
Place of death Luneburg