August Ferdinand Culmann

August Ferdinand Culmann (born August 1, 1804 in Bergzabern ; † September 13, 1891 in Ommersheim ) was a German lawyer , entrepreneur and member of the Frankfurt National Assembly .

Life

August Ferdinand Culmann was born in Bergzabern as the 10th and youngest child of the reformed pastor Friedrich Culmann. After attending grammar school in Zweibrücken , he studied law and political science , first in Göttingen , then in Würzburg . At both universities he came into contact with the ideas of the Vormärz . After his training, he worked at the district court in Kaiserslautern , and from 1830 at the appellate court in Zweibrücken . Here he came into contact with Johann Georg August Wirth and Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer , the initiators of the Hambach Festival .

In 1833 he represented the Sembach pastor Johann Heinrich Hochdörfer , one of the most radical speakers at the Hambach Festival , in Landau in the Palatinate region at the assize trial against the spokesmen of Hambach . He tried with success to convince the jury of the transformation of the feudal society towards a democratic order. In 1844 Culmann became the main shareholder of the “Frankenholzer Bergwerksgesellschaft”.

In 1848 he ran for the German National Assembly in the Bergzabern constituency, but was surprisingly not elected. Only when the member of the Landau constituency, Maximilian Glaß , was forced to resign, August Culmann moved up to the Paulskirche in Frankfurt as a representative of the Landau district . Here he confessed to the radical democrats of the extreme left: He belonged to the Donnersberg faction . His nephew Gustav Adolf Gulden was also a member of the Paulskirchenparliament. In May 1849 he was appointed to the provisional government of the Palatinate . After the smashing of the rump parliament , as the National Assembly that had moved to Stuttgart was now called, and after the suppression of the Palatinate Revolution in June 1849, he fled to France. There he was initially considered a political refugee, later he became a citizen. In 1851 the court in Zweibrücken, where he had worked himself, withdrew his license to practice as a lawyer . The same year he is "because of conspiracy, assassination and direct provocation by speeches, placards, etc." in the absence sentenced to death . In 1865 there was a general amnesty which enabled him to return to Germany.

In exile in France, he devoted himself to geological and mining law studies, for example with Professor Gabriel Auguste Daubrée , who taught geology and mineralogy in Strasbourg . In 1867, Culmann wrote the text “Mining Systems in Europe” and in the same year published the “Memorandum on the Frankenholz coal mine, in particular the destruction of the demarcation of the previous one and the formation of a new mining district for the operation of the same”.

Culmann's tomb in the old cemetery in Frankenholz

From Forbach , in close cooperation with the Dinglerwerke in Zweibrücken , he re-established the Frankenholzer Bergwerksgesellschaft. Only after the amnesty for the revolutionary participants in 1849 was Culmann, who had meanwhile become a French citizen, able to return to German soil. Despite all financial difficulties, he operated the development of the Frankenholz coal seams.

In August 1879 he had reached his goal, he was able to break the ground for the sinking of shaft 1 of the Frankenholz pit . Coal mining began on December 16, 1879. Until his death, Culmann was general director of the mine, which employed 1,600 miners at the turn of the century and became the largest coal mine in the Palatinate and Bavaria . Culmann supported the founding of the Frankenholzer Knappschaft in 1873, which he also considered financially. Other sources speak of 3,000 employees and the largest private mining company in Germany's southwest. He was very popular with his miners when the workforce went on strike in May 1889, and the strike leadership emphasized several times that the strike was not directed against him personally as the owner of the mine. Culmann not only saw the company flourish, in 1883 he witnessed the first firedamp explosion at the Frankenholz mine, in which five employees died.

Culmann died in 1891 on the Philippsburg estate near Niederwürzbach / Saar. His request to be buried near his miners was granted and so his final resting place is in the old cemetery in Frankenholz. The obelisk has since been placed under a preservation order. Particularly noteworthy is the inscription on the base, which can also be interpreted as August Ferdinand Culmann's motto: “venturi non immemor aevi” - “Whatever you do, consider the consequences for the future”.

His nephew, sons of his older brother, were the theologian Philipp Theodor Culmann (1824–1863) and the civil engineer Karl Culmann .

literature

• Baus, Martin: August Ferdinand Culmann, lecture on the 100th anniversary of his death on September 13, 1991 , Demetz St. Ingbert (small series of the Siebenpfeiffer Foundation, vol. 2);
• Herrmann, Hans-Walter (ed.): Between democratic rebellion and industrial revolution - August Ferdinand Culmann (1804-1891) , Jan Thorbecke Verlag Sigmaringen 1993 (= writings of the Siebenpfeiffer Foundation, vol. 2);
• Baus, Martin: "Allegedly, coal used to be extracted here" - August Ferdinand Culmann and the founding of the Frankenholz mine " , in: Saarpfalz, Blätter für Geschichte und Volkskunde, volume 3/1994, pp. 39–61.
• Barth, Manfred / Forthofer, Wolfgang: Frankenholz: a village through the ages . Verlag Hügel, Bexbach 1997;

Web links

• Illustration of a share with Culmann's signature
• About Ferdinand Culmann; with portrait photo

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.demokratiegeschichte.eu/index.php?id=224
2. ^ Philipp Theodor Culmann: The Christian ethics. (Speier 1863) 4th edition (anastatic reprint). Publishing house of the Evangelical Association for the Palatinate, Kaiserslautern 1926, p. XIII.