August Dietrich Marschall

August Dietrich Marschall , since 1760 Count Marschall , since 1776 also Count Marschall auf Burgholzhausen , (born June 19, 1750 , † January 31, 1824 in Weimar ) was Hereditary Marshal in Thuringia , Freemason and Illuminate .

Life

August Dietrich was the son of the imperial field marshal Ernst Dietrich Marschall auf Pauscha (1692–1771) from the Thuringian noble family of marshals and his wife Henriette Sophie, née von Schönberg , widowed von Einsiedel , (born November 17, 1720; † February 16, 1779).

Marschall studied mathematics, history and political science in Strasbourg from 1766 to 1768 . He then moved to Leipzig , where he studied law from 1768 to 1771. There he met the later Prussian Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg (1750-1822) and the writer Christian Fürchtegott Gellert . After completing his studies, he was accepted as an assessor at the Wolfenbüttel court and in December of the same year at the Minerva Masonic lodge for the three palms in Leipzig.

In 1776, together with his brother Friedrich Ernst Graf von Mansfeld, he acquired the grandfather's estate Burgholzhausen , which was under sequestration due to heavy debt , after the family branch is also known as Marshal of Burgholzhausen .

He later became the Brunswick Chamberlain and was given the management of the French theater in Brunswick. He became friends with Lessing and the Enlightenment theologian Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem . Through freemasonry, he met Duke Ferdinand . With this he traveled in October / November 1779 via Altona to Copenhagen. In 1780 he was in Copenhagen again, this time on behalf of the Danish king. He traveled to the Russian border to bring the children of Grand Duchess Anna Leopoldowna (1718–1746) - she came from the Brunswick royal family - to Denmark. In 1781 he left the Brunswick service and traveled to France and Italy for two years.

In 1783 he settled in Altenburg . But then he moved to Weimar , where he married twice. There he exchanged sympathetic ideas with Johann Gottfried Herder and his wife Karoline on literary issues (see Lessing's Nathan the Wise and the Count's sick son). From 1783 to 1795 he was the owner of the Schatullgut in Oßmannstedt . He was a knight of the Danish Order of Danebrog and since 1775 a member of the lodges Charles de la Concorde and the Crowned Pillar in Braunschweig and, under the name "a Thymalo", a member of the discipline of strict observance . He became the leading member of the great club in Braunschweig. In 1783 he was the so-called “regent” with the religious name “ Philostratus ” in the Illuminati League .

family

He was married twice. His first wife was hydrangea Freiin Waldner von Freundstein since April 26, 1788 (* July 9, 1767; † March 20, 1800). From this marriage a son emerged: August Ferdinand Theodor Graf Marschall auf Burgholzhausen (* May 25, 1791, † August 21, 1867). He was royal Prussian hereditary marshal in the Landgraviate of Thuringia , royal Saxon chamberlain and chief forester at Moritzburg and since October 25, 1825 with Amalie von Mellish (* October 17, 1799, † April 18, 1872), a daughter of the royal Prussian chamberlain and former royal British chargé d'affaires and consul general to the Lower Saxony Reichskreis , Joseph Charles Mellish Esq., married and is buried in the Dresden St. Pauli Cemetery, where the marshal's corpse, one of the oldest memorial trees in Dresden , commemorates him.

In 1803, the imperial count married Countess Antoinette, born von Alten auf Wützenburg and Theile (* January 28, 1767, † April 2, 1824).

literature

• Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock: Klopstock letters 1776–1782 , p. 746

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Bülau, Secret Stories and Enigmatic People , Volume V, p. 390, digitized
2. ↑ Otto Werner Förster: Register of the Freemason Lodge Minerva to the three palms 1741-1932 . Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-9807753-2-1 .
3. ↑ Ernst Heinrich Kneschke: "German count houses of the present: In heraldic, historical and genealogical relationship" 2nd volume, p. 90, TO Weigel, Leipzig 1853