August Adolph von Hennings

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August Adolph von Hennings; Painting by Jens Juel , 1780

August Adolph von Hennings (* 19 July 1746 in Pinneberg ; † 17th May 1826 in Rantzau ) was a Danish-Schleswig-Holstein politician and journalist and writer of the Enlightenment , the "true apostle of enlightenment in the duchies".

Life

Youth and family

August von Hennings came from a family of lawyers born in Dithmarschen . His older sister Sophia (1742-1817) was married to the doctor Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus .

After visiting the Christianeum in Altona and studying law in Göttingen , he received his doctorate in 1766 as Doctor iuris utriusque . During his student days he came into contact with the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire . Through his former tutor and later brother-in-law, Lucas Zabel, he made friends with Ernst Heinrich von Schimmelmann , the son of the Danish treasurer Heinrich Carl von Schimmelmann , and went to Copenhagen with him in 1767 . During this time he also met Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock .

In Danish service

In 1770, under Johann Friedrich Struensee , Hennings received his first position as administrator of Antvorskov Sogn near Slagelse on Zealand and a little later the rank of “Real Chamber Secretary” in Copenhagen. After Struensee's fall in 1772, he traveled with the Danish embassy to Berlin to the court of Frederick II , where he became friends with Moses Mendelssohn , and to Dresden . In 1776 he returned to Copenhagen. There he rose to chamberlain until 1783 . He was entrusted with the supervision of the industry and was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, which Heinrich von Schimmelmann presided over. Despite his acquaintance with the influential Ove Høegh-Guldberg , he was not given a higher state office because of his enlightening views.

From 1780 Ernst Schimmelmanns led, through his sister Julia, who was married to Friedrich Karl Reventlow , to the politically conservative and theologically orthodox Emkendorfer circle to alienate his friends. Hennings turned to writing. In 1780 he married Eleonore von Krabbe (1761-1847), the daughter of the Danish Minister of the Navy, Frederic Michael Krabbe. In the same year he published his first work - after some writings on economics - the verse epic Olavides , in the appendix of which Hennings compared the cruelty of the conquest of South America by the Spaniards and the Inquisition with the progressive continental congress of the New England states . The church protested against this book.

About the real sources of national wealth

In 1784, Crown Prince Friedrich, who was close to the Enlightenment, took power in the entire Danish state into his own hands and dismissed Guldberg, who had ruled in the name of the mentally impaired King Christian VII . Several other members of the government, including Hennings, were also removed from office, while Ernst Schimmelmann became finance minister. Hennings left Copenhagen with his family. He lived in Schleswig for the next three years .

During this time - in addition to a four-volume work on the European colonies in East India - appeared on the true sources of national prosperity (Leipzig 1785). In contrast to Adam Smith's The Prosperity of Nations , Hennings saw prosperity not based on mercantilism , but primarily on morality and religion. On his travels through Sweden on behalf of the Danish Crown , he had recognized that both serfdom and the excessive influence of the nobility had a negative effect on the prosperity of the people, while freedom and equality of all classes, protected by a civil constitution, the powers of all citizens set free for the benefit of others. Hennings assumed, however, that general prosperity could not be achieved without the involvement of the authorities. A wise government, under which he could only imagine a monarchy , must see to it that “ all people who are healthy in spirit and body find trades which provide them with comfortable livelihoods; that there are workers for all useful trades, that no trade employs more people than is necessary to operate it ... "

Bailiff in Plön

In 1787 Hennings was appointed bailiff for the offices of Plön and Ahrensburg . He thus represented the absolute rule of the Danish king. He lived in a wing of the Plön Castle , where otherwise only the mentally handicapped Duke Peter Friedrich Wilhelm von Oldenburg lived. Although he was always very concerned about the welfare of the people in his writings, he found no access to the population in Plön.

The French Revolution he greeted like most of the Enlightenment leanings initially enthusiastic. In 1792 he compared the " purification of church doctrine and morals from the great 16th century revolution " with the " purification of political principles and morals [that] emerged from the current revolutions ". At the same time, out of revulsion against the Jacobin tyranny, he spoke out against freedom of association. He took in French emigrants, including the wife of General La Fayette . For his work Prejudice-Free Thoughts on the Spirit of the Nobility and Aristocratism , in which he portrayed the harmful effect of the nobility as a superfluous intermediate layer between king and people and demanded free access to education and office for all, he received anonymous replies as well as a duel demand .

Magazines

In 1792 Hennings founded the Schleswig Journal together with Johann Heinrich Voss , in which a translation of the Marseillaise also appeared. In various essays, the role of the aristocrat , who, in contrast to the democrat, was always judged negatively and egotistically, was particularly treated. The magazine was banned the following year. However, the efforts to do this did not come from the Danish government, which granted freedom of the press , but from Lower Saxony princes.

In the following year Hennings began to publish a new monthly, which appeared in Altona until 1802 : Der Genius der Zeit (title of the last two volumes: Genius of the 19th century ). In it he spread his rationalistic doctrine of virtues, which clings to the good in all people without, for example, determining the role of religion. For example, there was an examination of Kant's Metaphysics of Morals and benevolent reports about the abolition of the Catholic Church in France - while at the same time religious tolerance was praised in the Netherlands. In addition to Johann Heinrich Voss, Adolph Freiherr Knigge and Hennings' brother-in-law Samuel Reimarus also contributed. Goethe, on the other hand, ridiculed Hennings in his Xenien and on Walpurgis Night as a naive optimist.

In 1795 Hennings founded two further journals , the Annals of Suffering Humanity , which appeared until 1801 and contained both medical and political articles, and in 1798 and 1799 the Musaget (= guide of the muses ) with a scholarly literary content.

Dispute with Matthias Claudius

Matthias Claudius , who was critical of the Enlightenment, reacted to the announcement of the genius of the time with the fear that this would undermine the authority of the king. A fierce argument for several years ensued. When in 1798 an anonymous work by Friedrich von Stolberg appeared in connection with the introduction of the new church agendas by General Superintendent Adler , Hennings suspected that the author was Claudius, which led to another bitter exchange of correspondence. In the invitation to the attention of a secret, and perhaps iezt yet generally unrecognized because of the agendas disputes in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein , he believed himself to do a noble conspiracy on the track, as the tool he Asmus saw.

Administrator in Rantzau

In 1808, Hennings used his good contact with the Crown Prince in order to be able to leave Plön, and took over the position of the Danish administrator of the County of Rantzau , based on the castle island (Barmstedt) . There he wrote The Germans represented in the earliest prehistoric times, from the meager sources of history and far-reaching deeds , an attempt to reconstruct the history of the Germanic peoples from the works of ancient writers. In 1815 he was made a knight of the Dannebrog Order and baron .

family

Hennings had eight children with his wife Eleonore von Krabbe, of whom the youngest daughter Louise married the future mayor of Hamburg, Friedrich Sieveking . He is the grandfather of the historian Wilhelm Wattenbach through his eldest daughter Cäcilie . His second daughter Sophie married Christian August von Rumohr at Gut Rundhof .

Works (selection)

  • Olavides. Edited and accompanied by some comments on tolerance and prejudice by August Hennings. Godich, Copenhagen 1779 - full text ( SLUB Dresden ).
  • Collection of all pamphlets, according to the book of Olavides in Denmark. A supplement to the Olavides. Proft, Copenhagen 1780.
  • About the true sources of national wealth, freedom, crowd, diligence, in connection with the moral determination of people and the nature of things. Copenhagen / Leipzig 1785, ( Internet Archive ).
  • My duel story. To correct the truth and to give thought to duels in general, submitted by August Hennings to the Royal Danish Chamberlain. Altona 1795, ( Google ).
  • The Germans depicted in the earliest prehistoric times, from the scanty sources of history and far-reaching deeds. Altona 1819, ( Google ).
  • An attempt at an East Indian literary history, along with a critical assessment of the authenticity of the Zend books , Carl Ernst Bohn, Hamburg and Kiel, 1786, ( Internet Archive ).
  • August Hennings Philosophical and Statistical History of the Origin and Progress of Freyheit in Engeland , Christian Gottlob Prost, Copenhagen, 1783, ( Internet Archive ).
  • Prejudice-free thoughts on the spirit of the nobility and aristocracy. 1792 digitized

editor

literature

  • Hans-Werner Engels : Hennings, August von . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 161 .
  • Erika Süllwold: "The Genius of Time": Constitution and failure of a model of the Enlightenment public . Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1985.
  • Hans Wilhelm Ritschl : August Adolph Freiherr von Hennings 1746-1826. A picture of life from Holstein, Copenhagen and Hamburg in turbulent times . Christians, Hamburg 1978.
  • Joachim Hil: August Hennings, a Schleswig-Holstein publicist around the turn of the 18th century ; Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1932.
  • Wilhelm Wattenbach :  Hennings, August . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, pp. 778-780.

Web links

Wikisource: August Adolph von Hennings  - Sources and full texts

Remarks

  1. ↑ Christian Degn: The Duchies in the State 1773-1830 . In: Olaf Klose , Christian Degn (Hrsg.): History of Schleswig-Holstein. Volume 6: 1721-1830. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1960, pp. 163–407, here p. 273.
  2. ↑ Figure by Antvorskov Slot
  3. ↑ August Hennings: About the true sources of national prosperity, freedom, crowd, diligence, in connection with the moral determination of people and the nature of things . Leipzig 1785, p. 307.
  4. ↑ Comments on A. von Hennings after: Friedrich Stender and Hans-Joachim Freytag: History of the City of Plön . Plön 1986.
  5. ^ August Hennings (published anonymously): Doctor Martin Luther! German sound reason, from a friend of the princes and the people; and an enemy of the deceivers of one and the traitors of the other. 2nd edition, Altona 1773, p. 3.
  6. ^ August Hennings (published anonymously): Doctor Martin Luther! German sound reason, from a friend of the princes and the people; and an enemy of the deceivers of one and the traitors of the other. 2nd edition, Altona 1773, p. 146.
  7. ↑ Cf. Claudius' mocking poem Urian's message from the new Enlightenment
  8. ↑ The genius of time. Volume 15, 1798, pp. 1-7.
personal data
SURNAME Hennings, August Adolph von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish-Schleswig-Holstein politician, publicist and writer of the Enlightenment period
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1746
PLACE OF BIRTH Pinneberg
DATE OF DEATH May 17, 1826
Place of death Rantzau