August Fischer (clergyman)

August Ludwig Gottlieb Fischer (* 22. June 1825 in Ludwigsburg , † 18 December 1887 in San Cosme , Mexico ) was a from Germany originating Roman Catholic priest and finally one of the closest confidants and advisers of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico .

Childhood and youth

August Fischer was born as the son of Karl Fischer and Friederike Fischer. Born Mason. The father ran a butcher's shop in Ludwigsburg. Fischer was a gifted child, but was considered difficult to raise. In 1837 his parents sent him to the Lichtenstern children's rescue center near Löwenstein near Heilbronn, from which he was released that same year because of his bad behavior. He lived in his parents' house until his confirmation in 1839, after which his parents apprenticed him to a blacksmith.

Escape to America

In 1840, in the course of an argument, Fischer seriously injured an employee of the blacksmith's workshop with an iron bar. When his father found out about this, he took him in a horse-drawn carriage across the Black Forest and the French border to Strasbourg that same night, thereby avoiding prosecution and the threat of punishment. In Strasbourg, Fischer met his mother's sister who was about to emigrate to America with her children. August joined them. But during the crossing, the ship wrecked near the coast, numerous travelers drowned, including his aunt and children.

Beginnings in America

Clerk and gold rush

Fischer initially worked as a butcher's assistant in America, as he knew this job from his father's business. He then went on trips with drovers and colonists, and after 1845 worked as a clerk in San Antonio , Texas. He stayed there for three years until he moved to Sacramento to search for gold in 1848 . It is not known whether he was successful in this regard, but later he worked again as a clerk in San Francisco .

Training as a clergyman

During this time, Jesuit missionaries became aware of him, who were involved in the settlement of California under Spanish rule and who ran a number of missionary organizations there. Fischer accepted the Catholic faith and was trained as a clergyman. Whether he also joined the Jesuit order cannot be proven with certainty; on the one hand, his name is not listed in the register of members of the Jesuits in the Vatican; on the other hand, during his visit to his homeland in 1864, according to the statutes of the Jesuit order, he renounced his inheritance. Despite his ministry, he lived for a few years with a woman with whom he had two children. After a few years he left his wife and children and moved to Mexico.

Beginnings in Mexico

In 1852 Fischer was ordained a priest in Victoria de Durango by Bishop José Antonio Laureano López de Zbiria y Escalante . As curator of the Sacrament House of Nuestra Señora Cathedral, Father Fischer stayed at the bishopric and won the trust of the bishop, who appointed him his secretary. The bishop dismissed him when he discovered a love affair between a fisherman and a servant. Fischer left Victoria De Durango with the young woman, but she too did not stay by his side for long.

Reform war

During the reform war in Mexico between 1857 and 1861 , conservative Catholic forces fought against the liberals under the leadership of the future president Benito Juárez .

As a pastor in Parras, Fischer gained access to illustrious conservative circles. His environment included u. a. the large landowner Don Carlos Sanchéz Navarro, the generals Leonardo Márquez and Miguel Miramón as well as politically ambitious clergy like Father Francesco Javier Miranda.

The liberal side under Benito Juárez won the Reform War in January 1861 and leading figures of the conservatives went into exile in Europe.

Conservative Party envoy to the Vatican

After the military intervention of the believers in Mexico in 1862 and the victory in the battle of Puebla by Napoleon III. , the Conservatives were involved in the first government after the intervention. Fischer advanced to the front ranks of the conservative party. In December 1862 he was sent to Rome to influence the new rulers in the appointment of a new bishop for the diocese of Durango. At the same time he should ask the Vatican for support against the French high command and campaign for the restitution of the church property expropriated under Juárez. In March 1864 Fischer came to Rome, stayed there for two days and negotiated with Pope Pius IX. on a concordat between Meiko and the Vatican.

Adviser to Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico

First encounter with Emperor Maximilian

On April 10, 1864, Ferdinand Maximilian von Habsburg was elected Emperor of Mexico. Conservative forces placed Father Fischer near the emperor in order to influence him in the interests of their political interests. On April 18, 1864, Fischer arrived in Rome to give the emperor a detailed report on the situation there before he left for Mexico. At this first encounter, Fischer won the emperor's trust.

Fischer initially stayed in Rome and traveled to his home town of Ludwigsburg in September 1864, where he visited the grave of his father, who had died in 1851, and renounced his inheritance in favor of his sister Wilhemine.

Coahuila State advocate

In November 1864 he returned to Mexico to his old parish in Parras. When, in March 1865, the state of Mexico, consisting of autonomously governed federal states modeled on France, was to be divided into centralized departments, he again took on a political mission. A popular assembly elected him to represent the interests of Coahuila State against the government in Mexico City . Fischer traveled to Mexico City, where he arrived in August 1865.

Court chaplain under Emperor Maximilian

Despite protracted negotiations, the Concordat between Mexico and the Vatican had stalled. However, Emperor Maximilian urgently needed the Concordat in order to secure the support of the clergy and withstand the pressure of Benito Juaréz and his supporters. On September 21, 1865, he appointed Father Fischer court chaplain and commissioned him to work out a new draft of the concordat that was acceptable to all.

The emperor's envoy to the Vatican

In October 1865 Fischer traveled again to Rome and negotiated the Concordat there. He frequented literary circles and maintained a friendly relationship with the papal house prelate Robert Graf von Lichnowsky .

The negotiations on the Concordat failed because the geopolitical changes and the withdrawal of Napoleon's troops had weakened Maximilian so much that the Vatican was no longer interested in the Concordat.

After Fischer's return in August 1866, Maximilian appointed him real court chaplain on September 16, 1866 and cabinet secretary on December 22, 1866, despite the failure of negotiations . He was the emperor's official advisor and confessor and had reached the climax of his career. The contemporary witnesses Felix zu Salm Salm and Samuel Basch remember that Fischer was an important advisor in almost all political decisions in the last months of Maximilian's reign.

August Fischer's role at the end of the Empire in Mexico

In 1867, with the support of the USA and other American states, Benito Juárez succeeded in pushing back the emperor. He was arrested, sentenced to death, and executed on June 19, 1867. Fischer was arrested on June 21, 1867 and sentenced to four years in prison on September 6. He was already pardoned on August 6, 1867, allegedly he is said to have promised to work out the history of the Mexican Empire in the spirit of Benito Juárez.

Retirement

At the end of December 1867, Fischer left Mexico, traveled via New York and London and arrived in Stuttgart on February 10, 1868. His reputation as a major player in the reign of Emperor Maximilian opened doors for him to aristocratic circles, and he made contact with Bishop Hefele in Rottenburg . After a few weeks, Fischer traveled to Vienna to defend himself against accusations at the court of Emperor Franz Joseph and to justify his political engagement in Mexico. At the same time he demanded the repayment of advances that he had granted Emperor Maximilian out of his own pocket; but without success.

Fischer returned to Stuttgart and bought Gießen Castle near Tettnang for 13,737 guilders , which he sold again two years later on June 19, 1870.

In October 1870 the Mexican government issued a general amnesty . Fischer returned to Mexico in the spring of 1871 and took a job with a family as a tutor for two children. In July 1878 he stayed with this family in Paris and tried again unsuccessfully to get his bills paid at the Austrian court from there.

In the last years of his life, Fischer worked as a priest in San Cosme without political ambition. He died unexpectedly of a malignant fever on December 18, 1887.

literature

• Norbert Stein: Father Augustin Fischer from Ludwigsburg - last cabinet secretary of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico . In: Historical Association for the City and District of Ludwigsburg eV (Hrsg.): Ludwigsburg history sheets . Issue 34, 1982.
• Christian Belschner: Augustin Fischer. The adventurous life of a Ludwigsburg . In: Historical Association for the City and District of Ludwigsburg eV (Hrsg.): Ludwigsburg history sheets . Issue 12. Ludwigsburg 1939.
• Volker Grub: From Welzheim to Ludwigsburg - In search of traces of the history of a middle-class family named Fischer . regional culture publisher, Ubstadt-Weiher, ISBN 978-3-95505-134-1 .
• Theodor Schön:  Fischer, August Gottlieb Ludwig . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 49, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1904, p. 225 f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Volker Grub: From Welzheim to Ludwigsburg… Ubstadt-Weiher
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Norbert Stein: Father Augustin Fischer from Ludwigsburg… Ludwigsburg 1982
3. ^ ^{A b} Christian Belschner: Augustin Fischer. The adventurous life of a Ludwigsburg. Ludwigsburg 1939
4. ^ German biography: Fischer, August - German biography. Retrieved April 8, 2019 . 
5. ^ Felix Constantin to Salm-Salm: Queretaro. Sheets from my diary in Mexico . First volume, 1868, ISBN 978-3-7436-7666-4 .
6. ^ Samuel Basch: Memories from Mexico . 1868, ISBN 978-3-7446-1782-6 .