Arrondissement de Cologne

The Arrondissement de Cologne , an administrative district of the Département de la Roer divided into cantons , which existed from 1798 to 1814, was a brief episode in the history of Cologne .

French erect a tree of freedom on Neumarkt , Cologne , 1794

Canton de Cologne with parts of the canton Weiden around 1810

History of origin

Occupation, annexation and recognized incorporation

The occupation of areas on the left bank of the Rhine by French revolutionary troops took place in the late autumn of 1794. This annexation was provisionally recognized in the peace of Campo Formio (1797) and then finally in the peace of Lunéville (1801).

The structural territorial regulations that took place in the meantime were essentially based on the plans and proposals for a reorganization of the conquered territories that had been drawn up by the government commissioner and judge at the court of cassation François Joseph Rudler . The Alsatian Rudler, who was then sent to the Rhine, divided the areas to be incorporated into the Republic of France, following the example of the French provinces (after 1789) into départements, which abolished the previous forms of feudal territorial administration and gradually brought the Rhenish legal system into line with the French.

The Peace Agreement of Lunéville in 1801 created the international legal requirements for the equation of the new Rhenish departments with the old French administrative units , which was formally completed on September 23, 1802 .

Administrative structures and reforms

Stamp of the Arrondissement de Cologne

One of the most important features of the reorganization was the introduction of the departmental constitution in 1798. The conquered country had been divided into four departments, the administration of which consisted of five members of a specially formed board of directors, from which one of them was elected president every year. Below this administrative level were the cantons, which with their municipalities represented the (provisionally) next administrative division. At the head of the municipal administrations were the municipal agents who were recruited from the associated municipalities. Both administrative levels, departmental and cantonal administrations, were monitored by government commissioners.

The Napoleonic reform of February that year, which came into force in May 1800, transformed the administrative structure into a centralized and hierarchical organization. At the head of the departments, whose territorial definition remained unchanged, were prefects who were assisted by prefectural and general councilors. The latter was responsible for the administrative jurisdictions and for tax matters .

The departments now received a further subdivision and were subdivided into arrondissements, which were headed by sub-prefects to whom arrondissement councils were assigned.

Changes have also taken place at the municipal level. In the cantons, the large number of municipalities, which often consisted of very small associations, was reduced in number by order of the prefecture and united to form grand mayorships, which were known as Mairien . The respective mayor , to whom a municipal council was attached, was subordinate to the sub-prefect (sous-préfet) like the latter to the prefect.

law and order

First page of the German edition of the law text 1810

The judicial system was organized in the same way as the administrative structures were structured. Declared it the lowest instance in each canton one with a judge occupied Magistrates' Court , which was responsible for the Bagatellgerichtsbarkeit in civil and criminal matters.

A tribunal set up in the arrondissements was equipped with three to five judges and was responsible for all disputes and criminal matters that did not fall within the competence of the peace courts. In addition, the Tribunal took the Court of Appeal , the case brought against the decisions of the Peace courts revisions to.

Appeals could be lodged with the courts of appeal against the judgments given by the tribunals . For all courts on the left bank of the Rhine, Trier was the only court of appeal until 1805 , after which the appellations from the Rurdepartement went to the court of appeal in Liège . The court there, with twelve jurors and twelve professional judges, was the last possible instance. No appeal was possible against a judgment passed there, only the request ( Coram nobis ) for annulment at the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation) in Paris .

In the fields of law, the achievements of the revolutionary era in the “Cinq codes” of the Napoleonic Empire were completed with the Code civil (also “Code Napoléon”, civil law) of 1804, the civil procedure law of 1807, the commercial law of 1808, the criminal procedure law of 1809 and the criminal law of 1811.

Specification of the arrondissement

Town hall with the emblems of the French Republic

The arrondissement comprised 290 parishes with a total of around 137,000 inhabitants. The seat of the administrative district of Cologne, which is located in the Mairie Cologne, which is divided into five sections, comprised the cantons of Cologne , Bergheim , Brühl , Dormagen , Elsen , Jülich , Kerpen , Lechenich , Weiden and Zülpich .

Since the new regulation passed in February, the prefects, like their counterparts in the French departments, have been directly subordinate to the Paris ministries. Several later changes only affected the business allocation plan within the prefectures.

The sub-prefects

According to the decision of the consuls of July 22, 1800 on the appointment of the prefect, the prefectural councils and the sub-prefects of the Roerdepartements, A. Sybertz, who had previously acted as section president of the civil tribunal of the Roerdepartement, took over as the first sub-prefect of the district of Cologne Office. He held this until November 7, 1804.

A. Sybertz's successor was the former councilor and mayor of Cologne, Reiner Josef Klespé , in November 1804 . He was the one who symbolically presented the city keys to the French general Jean-Étienne Championnet at the turnpike of the Hahnentor in 1794 .

Administrative tasks of the arrondissement

Finance and commerce

• Taxation, leasing of domain goods, listings of goods and income from church factories in the arrondissement, recording of auctions, sales and leases , leasing of fee income and rights to the flying bridge , capital, overview of community forests of their income and expenses, debts of the communities, Establishment of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce , listing of the richest merchants in the arrondissement and the highest taxable persons in the cantons with their tax payments, election of the members of the commercial court, recording of harvest yields in the arrondissement; Formation of the trade court and election of members, listing of manufacturers, maintenance of the cranes and shipyards in Cologne, establishment of a free port , relocation of the customs line to the Cologne port in 1802, monitoring of the introduced Rhine tariff , the freedom of trade, controls of the introduced uniform dimensions and weights, maintenance of forests and timber sales, leasing of hunts, fishing and mills

Communal

• Surveys in the arrondissement by surveyors , salaries, recording of the population of the cantons in the arrondissement, listing of "patent-worthy Jews", sale and leasing of community goods, public charity, maintenance of the local police and the detention centers , the naming of streets, squares and the numbering of houses in Cologne, awarding of public works (repairs, buildings, demolition, etc.) inside and outside Cologne, dyke construction , Rhine ferry in the arrondissement, bridge and path construction, watercourses, water mills , ship mills , construction of cemeteries outside of residential areas

Social

• Creation of lists of names of practicing doctors, surgeons , midwives and permits to practice their profession, dispositions on diseases and epidemics such as smallpox vaccinations , conversion of some religious institutions into hospitals or military hospitals , reports from the hospital administration on their institution, registration of hospitals in the arrondissement and occupancy values, listing of health workers , Establishment of central charity offices in the cantons, appointment of members of the charity offices, registration of foundlings and orphans in the arrondissement

Military affairs

• List of annual conscripts ( Levée en masse ) in the arrondissement, documentation of Fouragelieferungen for magazines or cash payments, fitting-out of veterans camps in district

General

• Filing of files in the sub-prefecture, creation of outgoing books , transfer of archival files from the old archives and accommodation, storage of the old court archives, civil servants, listing of maires and adjuncts, lists of proposals for the appointment of municipal councilors, budget and accounting. Further details on secularization , domain estates, taxes, elections, population lists, agriculture and livestock

Education

• A number of other tasks and processes were listed for the arrondissement: hiring primary school teachers (very incomplete), setting up a secondary school in the canton of Brühl, in the canton of Elsen, in the canton of Jülich, in the canton of Cologne (= Mairie Cologne). Establishment of a normal school and a lyceum , establishment of secondary schools , appointment of professors and members of the school administration commission, salary, preparation of the former Jesuit high school (Cologne) as a secondary school, administration of the goods and income of the central school (successor to the old University of Cologne ) and of the two secondary schools. Information on the establishment of the former women's monastery for school purposes, the construction of a school building with a boarding school for girls in the parish of St. Kolumba and the retention of the Ursuline school in Cologne for teaching female youth.

Soil monument maintenance

• As part of the education system (enseignement), Ferdinand Franz Wallraf , who was initially appointed Conservateur des monuments for Cologne in 1798 , was also responsible for the arrondissement with the sub-prefect's circular on the protection of monuments of April 25, 1807.

End of the arrondissement

With the beginning of the French era in Cologne, the centuries-old rule of the council was interrupted. Since then, the Cologne City Hall has been owned by the French state. The imperial court of Vienna, which had approved the cession of the Rhineland to France with the "Peace of Lunéville" in 1801 with the signature of Francis II , should be significant for Cologne's history again. With the agreements of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the city of Cologne then belonged to Prussia and the town hall became the seat of the council again.

literature

• Joseph Hansen (ed.): Sources on the history of the Rhineland in the age of the French Revolution 1780-1801
• Jakob Obermanns, Hanns Clemens: The community of Lövenich in the mirror of history . Published by Otto Ritterbach, Köln-Weiden 1956
• Wilhelm Janssen : Small Rhenish History . Düsseldorf 1997, pp. 261-264
• Carl Dietmar: The Chronicle of Cologne. Chronik-Verlag, Dortmund 1991, ISBN 3-611-00193-7

Web links

Commons : Arrondissement Cologne  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• The Rhineland under French occupation

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Janssen: Small Rhenish History, Düsseldorf 1997. Page 262
2. ↑ Jakob Obermanns, Hanns Clemens, section: The Rhineland becomes a French territory
3. ^ Wilhelm Janssen: Small Rhenish History, pp. 263-264
4. ↑ Carl Dietmar, p. 221
5. ^ The main state archive in Düsseldorf and its holdings. Volume 3 Part 1 The areas on the left bank of the Rhine. Page 125 and page 338
6. ^ The main state archive in Düsseldorf and its holdings. Volume 3 Part 1 The areas on the left bank of the Rhine.
7. ↑ Cornelius Steckner: Wallraf as Conservateur des Monuments de Cologne, Wallraf in focus . In: Wallraf's legacy. A citizen saves Cologne . Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-9819709-0-6 , p. 166-176 (258 pp.).